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Needs, Leads and Seeds:
Greater ROI for Sales Reps
Permission-Based E-Mail Publishing
Reach
out via e-mail and you can measure the response.
That's the value of permission-based e-mail
publishing. Case studies show that successful e-mail campaigns:
-Are relevant and valuable, targeted directly to the individual subscriber
-Deliver Tracking Reports, revealing subscriber's areas of interest
-Integrate web material, and then track new leads as they click through to your web site
-Include follow-up, where new client data drive new content which is even more relevant and valuable
Stay Relevant
Relevancy
is the key. Paul Soltof of SendTec, Inc. recently wrote, "Think
of marketing message relevancy and the recipient as rungs on a ladder.
The lowest rung is an untargeted offer sent to a list of unknown
recipients. The highest is the most targeted offer, sent to the
recipient most likely to respond." (Climbing the E-Mail Relevancy Ladder, ClickZ, April 19)
Segment Markets
Customers
demand relevancy and ROI. David Collins, Lecturer in the Tippie
College of Business at the University of Iowa, teaches his students
that we have entered a new era of marketing. He says this shift
is as significant as when mass marketing first appeared
early last century. Consumers pull product information as needed
-- and as desired.
And at AssociationForum.org
you'll find an article by Bruce Murdy of the Charlston Business Journal
that says, "(Twenty) years ago, a strong mass media vehicle would have
been advertising on the evening news with Dan Rather. But the
average age of the CBS Evening News viewer is now 65...So choose media
wisely." These days, markets are more segmented, audiences are
more selective, and one message won't suit the whole audience any more.
See Data, Track Preferences
Internet
communication enables companies like WinCommunications to interact
with target audience members in ways print messages cannot. This
two-way communication system based on relevant messages to
target audiences generally will result in cost savings for
marketing departments and time savings for sales departments.
Let's
look at how a relevant e-newsletter benefits a sales team. A
local food sales representative is responsible for
1) assessing the needs of hundreds of prospects, 2)
determining which are hot leads each month, and 3) planting
seeds with those leads who would be hot the next month.
Through
traditional advertising and direct marketing, corporate marketing
manages some of the communication necessary to achieve these goals.
But mass mailings and advertising won't generate all the
leads this food rep needs. Mass marketing and even mass
direct marketing don't deliver quantifiable results related
specifically to this local rep's sales. Corporate does
a reasonable job of sowing seeds for future business, but the rep
doesn't know where they are planted.
The rep still needs to assess needs, find leads and plan strategies for next month.
A well-planned permission-based
e-mail publication would be the perfect addition to this rep's
marketing mix. Reviewing the tracking reports, the rep learns
which prospects are reading his news and narrows his target list
accordingly. As the rep looks further into tracking reports, each
subscriber has clicked into a page at the web site, so the rep will
follow-up by sending more information on that selected topic.
Follow Up
The
rep follows up on the e-mail tracking report with a phone call and
a visit to each interested prospect. Impressed that the rep has
so accurately assessed his/her needs, wants and desires, the prospect
becomes a customer on the spot! | 
