e mail marketing

Author
Discussion

davey707

Original Poster:

87 posts

259 months

Monday 5th April 2004
quotequote all
Business is quiet and I'm considering a targeted e-mail marketing campaign thro a professional company - not chosen yet- anyone have any experience of this, or any reccomendations??
Oh - we are in the I.T cabling field, fibre, wireless etc.

Your help as always, apprecieted.

Dave

D-Angle

4,468 posts

249 months

Monday 5th April 2004
quotequote all
Hmmm, dodgy. Check out the company and their list thoroughly, to make sure that it is truly opt-in. Even then some people have a very loose definition of it, namely "they've signed up to our list, so they'll want to hear from anyone we sell their address to". As such it can be very ineffective, and it can even drive people away from your business.

If there are any particular websites that your target market use a lot, you could gET in touch with any of them who publish a regular e-zine to their members/list. Maybe offer a prize in a competition they can enter, and everyone who doesn't enter gets offered a small discount etc. It will be more effective as it will be coming through someone they know and recognise, instead of someone they don't know from Adam. If you have a website yourself, put a little sign-up box on it and let people opt-in to keeping informed of what you do, you'll be amazed how many people will sign up.

Regards,
Justin

Ex-Biker

1,315 posts

254 months

Monday 5th April 2004
quotequote all
Our company has made powerpoint and html presentations that you can email to prospective clients in the past.

Have you thought about doing this sort of thing yourself?

After all, you know your market and it is better to target warm leads directly.

furby

378 posts

253 months

Monday 5th April 2004
quotequote all
I can do email marketing and have doen for peeps like Sony, Veritas etc in the past. Fully reputable, either one offs or ongoing campaigns using your own marketing interface over the interwebs logging onto my techie gubbins.
I would some sales spiel here but not the place. Prob best if you go to my web site:
www.vingtquatre.net
and go to the marketing section. There is a PDF you can download which tells you some basics.
I will send you an email as well via your profile.

Furby

robjacksonsnr

18 posts

261 months

Monday 5th April 2004
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Don't people get irritated by these and chuck them ?

dcw@pr

3,516 posts

250 months

Monday 5th April 2004
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Never send anything to your customers which could ever appear to be spam. People get very wound up and it causes a negative reaction. Surely you don't like getting unsolicited mail - ask some of your friends what they think of it too.

That's my opinion anyway...

furby

378 posts

253 months

Tuesday 6th April 2004
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Unsolicitred email is very bad, gets binned and makes your customers wary of you as a company.
Opted in mails can do you the world of good though. Include info your customers need, or competitions etc and they can be really good brand awareness.
As I say, make sure your customers are happy recieving them, and they can be very good for sales. Just need to be done in the right way.

rpguk

4,484 posts

291 months

Tuesday 6th April 2004
quotequote all
IMHO Unless they have opted in to recieve email from YOUR company I always look very dimly on these. No one wants advertising in their email, opt-in lists might have people who have agreed to accept it, but usually this is to get a free email address or free access to a site or something, either that or they mistakenly forgot to untick a box.

The only email marketing that I think is OK is sponsorship of email newsletters (like the TVR one here) or a short line of text on the bottom of free email (like yahoo)

steviebee

13,570 posts

262 months

Tuesday 6th April 2004
quotequote all
A one-off mailing or even the odd couple every now and then will do no good whatsover.

You need to create an e-mail "newsletter" and provide the receipients with something interesting and useful to read rather than simply "can we have some business please".

Get it right and you will find that people will respond well and come to look forward to your monthly e-mail.

Talk to these people: www.in-sourced.com

LATATA

9 posts

247 months

Wednesday 7th April 2004
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getting an opt in list from running a web based competition (or game) would give you a great basis for future email campaigns. People need a reason for visiting your site and if you can make it fun or in their interests, you're onto a winner.

Certainly know a couple of people who construct games for the web! Simple and addictive. This can then lead to a viral effect where people email their friends etc