Yesterday, I decided to work late into the night and use the time to focus on “marketing my business”. I looked at what resources I had, and I decided to do “email marketing”.
Not with Aweber, Constant Contact, Vertical Response, or Intellicontact.
I didn’t blast out 7000 emails.
I sent 7 personally hand-crafted emails just from my Gmail account, asking for referrals from existing contacts and clients.
Guess what? Within 24 hours, now I have at least 5 potential deals lined up and I’ll be meeting up with some of these business owners tomorrow and on Friday to discuss their web design and SEO requirements… and that is not taking into the “broadcast” which one friend offered to help me do when he gets back from his holiday – to his colleagues, over on the other side of the world in Austin, Texas.
I was very surprised with the response and I’m so glad I have so wonderful clients and associates. I really appreciate their help!
The Money is in the List?
In the Internet Marketing arena, they always say that “the money is in the list”.
While that is true to an extent, I feel that what is more important is for you to have a good relationship with the people in your “list”. Many small businesses read too much into the idea of building a massive list, and really fail to focus on building those relationships.
Then we end up with “lists” that are so void of relationships that when we email out we need to track “open rates”.
I’ve certainly fell into this trap myself, and the short marketing exercise yesterday was a good wake up call for me to focus back on relationships. This will not be easy for me, since I can really be a total woodblock when it comes to socializing.
But I think it will be worth it.
How about you? When was the last time you sent a really personalized email?
Wake up call for me.
Maybe you can share with your readers the template of your “personally hand-crafted emails”.
Can’t agree more with you on the need to customise your communications. As a blogger, I do disregard spam from people whom I have no connection with and who doesn’t understand what my areas of interest and passion are. Mass emails in particular are difficult to swallow. In a way, this move towards social media has forced us to go back to the one-on-one approach in communicating.
While social media and Web 2.0 has improved the way in which humans can communicate more closely, it doesn’t do much for productivity and efficiency (unlike e-commerce).
Nice description. Money is in the list. But is in the list of your customer base. We always blast mail to ask for customer upgrade or add on products. For new customers, we always blast for the product promotion and new feature. Email is still the most effective internet marketing among others which it easy to reach customers and better respond as well. It also provide higher conversion rate.
very true. a good working relationship will bring you more potential clients. email marketing may work but you will most likely get a cold reception.
Rightly put,the money is the list indeed.Moreso,if there is no business and customer relationship the list is as good as useless.It is better to have a customer data-base of 50 customers with whom you have a solid relationship than to have a mailing list of 10 000 people with whom there is neither business relationship nor trust.E-mail marketing is a great marketing tool provided there is a relationship with your customers otherwise you will end up sending e-mails that will never be opened.