In this lesson we’re going to answer two questions: Why & How? Although we touched on the issue of why and how in the last lesson, those were generalities. In this lesson, we’re going to examine – hands-on – the why and how of email marketing for your business.

Why would you use it?

Every business decision should start with this question. Put another way, you might ask the age old WIIFM (“What’s in it for me?).

If, after analyzing its potential value, you discover none for your business, you should scrap the idea. Don’t waste your money or time on it… especially on a plan like this that generally requires a long-term commitment on your part.

Weigh the pros and cons to your business and ask a few trusted friends what they think of the idea first.

Not everyone will find it useful. Some will and some won’t. If you don’t think you’ll find it useful, then there’s no point in using it. However, many businesses – both for-profit and non-profit are finding ways to use email marketing. As well, the internet is constantly changing so you might not find a use for email marketing in your business today… but you may just a few months down the road!

Why use email marketing? The first reason is fairly simple: unlike direct mail, which costs per person, email marketing has lower per-person costs because the cost to send an email to 10,000 people is roughly the same as it is to send it to just 10 people. But more than the cost, there’s another reason: Asking for permission (by getting someone’s email address) is a way of discovering and marketing to warm leads.

Business is all about leads.

Cold leads are the ones who have absolutely no interest in buying from you. Perhaps they typed the wrong word into the search line and ended up at your store. Maybe they thought they clicked on one link and ended up clicking on your URL instead. They are the mall-walkers to stroll past your store and – when asked by your staff if they can be helped – they say, “no thanks, just looking.” Cold leads have no interest in buying from you and require a lot of work to convince that they should buy from you.

Warm leads, on the other hand, are people who may have some interest in buying from you… or, at the very least, they want to know more. They are the people who show up on the car lot and ask the car salesperson questions about a specific model of a car. Warm leads may not be ready to buy yet, but they’re more likely willing to listen to your sales message… and they’re more likely going to buy when they have a need and the price is right. They require a lot less work to get a warm lead to buy from you than a cold lead.

How do you get warm leads?

There are several ways. One way is through appropriately placed text ads, like Google AdWords. Another way to get warm leads is by asking your happy customers for referrals. But one way to get a lot of your warm leads is from permission-based email marketing.

So email marketing, then, is a way to find warm leads and continue to market to them over and over.

While many business do try to survive on cold leads (and if you’re on the internet and not using email marketing or Google AdWords, for example, you’re trying to survive on cold leads, too) many businesses can do so much better with so much less effort by marketing to warm leads.

By putting an email capture line on your website, you’re basically asking people to self-identify as warm leads. And, depending on what you offer in exchange for that email, you can control the amount of warm leads you get.

How would you use it?

There are all kinds of ways to use email marketing. We’ll try to cover the gamut of the most popular ways, but there are more ways and technology is always changing and you may yet find new ways that are more appropriate to your business.

Here are two of the most popular ways to use permission-based email marketing:

• Email-based newsletters are one of the most popular forms of email marketing out there. It’s a great way to get your prospects to sign up (and you can automatically enroll your customers at the same time). Newsletters are popular only if they are useful. By useful, we mean that they have to be informative, helpful, and not packed with sales messages. People don’t mind receiving an email-based newsletter from someone that does have sales messages in it, but there should be some good, useable content. One example might be a newsletter from a vacuum cleaner sales company… they may put small ads in their newsletter about their vacuum cleaners, but they might also put in really useful tips about house cleaning or running a cleaning business. The key is USEFUL. Email newsletters should be interesting and regular.

• Another popular email marketing is more popularly used for customers (as opposed to prospects) although there’s no reason why you can’t use it for both. This email marketing method is to send out periodic messages about upcoming sales or end-of-the-season blow-outs. The idea here is that it is clearly a highly sales-oriented email. If people sign up for it, they are likely more willing to receive sales messages.

Which one is better?

Here are the pros and cons:

Newsletter
Pros
• Regular… customers come to expect it.
• Helpful… readers will save it and turn to it again and again.
• Subtle… readers will read sales messages without realizing it.
• Reach your target audience BECAUSE THEY ASKED FOR IT.

Cons
• More work… there’s an element of design and the regularity needs to be maintained.
• Your sales messages may be too subtle to be effective.

Sale update
Pros
• Clear, distinct sales message.
• Not a lot of work.
• Biggest sales get you noticed by more people.

Cons
• No reason to save email.
• Could be confused with spam.

Summary

Email marketing is a great permission-based method of marketing. It’s basically the process of asking prospects to identify themselves as warm leads and when they’ve done that, you can continue to tell them about your products or services. Two of the most popular email marketing strategies are the regular newsletter or the periodic sales update… these strategies are both used effectively by businesses and non-profits to market to their warm leads.

Watch your email for lesson 3 in a couple of days…

You are Awesome!

–Dave