‘Email Marketing’ needs to be Restructured

I had a nice experience today.

I met some guy, director of a company, which offers rental services for electronics high cost devices like Server, Laptops, Desktops etc. to different companies for short-term and long-term basis. I liked the concept of his business very much. Technology is something you cannot buy for every up-gradation but if you are in a IT-dependent sector, for the best outcome, you always need something updated. So the tagline, I personally found it more interesting. “Do not buy, rent it” “Today’s technology, tomorrow’s junk” Very true.

   The company is in the same market for last 25 years and still the company hadn’t seen any exponential growth. I discussed with the Director for almost 2 hours and found it really interesting when he also got some interest talking to me as I have quoted him few details of my research done in last few days!

I have checked the statistics details of the company. They send more than 35, ooo E-mails each week and out of them, 30% emails bounced back. 2% recipient opened the email and 68% never opened the email. So the delivered mails had been opened by 2.8% recipient.

So the outcome is like almost 700 recipients had opened the Email and 1% or 450 people clicked on the link attached with the Email body!

No reply and no more queries in return from client side for last three months.

Moreover, what I realized, the statistics is almost same for small scale medium companies, who had a auto-generated slowly increasing database by some software. The cost can be very less and the effort for such type of marketing process is minimum.

The director was really tensed about the particular problems and asked some suggestion for better Online Marketing strategies.

I felt something interesting with the problem and went through the details once again.

I talked with the employees. I should call it an IDI session.

After a long discussion, I came across with few solutions for the particular problems.

1: Target Market Definition: As the service was about IT infrastructure, your voice should reach, the IT-Dept. Purchase Dept. CTO and other C-Level Executives. If we target 1000 companies at a time, the number of leads should not be more than 5000 to 7000. Apart from the existing leads, the organization should focus on the particular 5000-7000 leads. Add 3000 more leads; they are event managers, Educational Institutes and popular exam centers and exhibition organizers and entrepreneurs, who are just going to start a business, and want to reduce capex.

2: Lead Generation: The very last part of the target market is easily available. Their contacts are available in free directories and online forums. You can find them advertising their contacts. So get that!

Now for first 5K-7K leads! The most valuable leads, you have to develop yourself from social media. It is very tough to find out such people from Facebook. The most relevant platform to find them is always LinkedIn. Create few accounts, get one premium and just search out the IT-People, CTOs and purchase dept. representatives. It can take few days but once these people are in your Professional account, you can easily access any updates, job changes, and the vital, email ID. Each time a person is changing employer, the email ID is also changing. Just do follow the people and you will get your business.

Now, you use your software but take a special care of the leads generated from LinkedIn. Because, for them you have an Online Identity. They know your name and sometimes they can recall your LinkedIn profile picture. If you can create a good impression on them.

So, just be in LinkedIn and for a niche market, it is the best way to reach your customer.

3: Inter-related accounts: When you are posting something, you are posting to a mass. The message is almost same and that is your services. So post in many by one click or you can say inter-link your all accounts. The message you just have posted on a LinkedIn group will be posted on you facebook timeline or twitter page. It will help you in two ways. Firstly if you have less time for Online media, focus on any one and you can cover maximum people. Secondly, anyone interested can access your so many accounts and that always create a credibility of your services, and personally you. The visibility will increase across so many pages.

The target market was India and Specified People so I ignore pinterest, Facebook and Google plus.

4: Blogs and Content Marketing: Blogs are always a source of reliable opinion. Better you put your sales pitch in your blog, answer the queries and the most important is announce seasonal offers of your service. Blogs can be the case-studies, short videos and definitely story of your customer. Add pictures of your products or office environment, cartoons, related articles anything. Post it. The service of renting is very old in USA, so get few people to comment on your blogs. They can assure your lines written is true and go back to your old customers and request them to post something on your social media platform. Put those expert comment links across your network. As people will find someone known in your satisfied client list, they will know more about your services.

But how to deal with 2%??

Email marketing is too old and reliable. So anyone cannot ignore the email Marketing. The lead should be checked again and again. More pure your data, you can have a better control over it. If maximum people is not opening your email, make some changes in Subject line and first few lines. These should be something attractive or reference of anything, you can co-relate with the lead. Mail Body, if you want to put fewer words, just because you feel people hate reading more, put some pics, charts and make it attractive. Use Kotler’s AIDA model in your email.

A recipient can open your mail one time, second-time.. But if there is nothing attractive in your mail body and the title is always the same, what can make him to open the email again and again? Nothing!

So, keep some food inside the email. It can be anything, you think, can be intersting for your target market! Show them some profit, investment guides, weekly review of the perticular industry, gift coupons. In a single line, surprize them for each click on your email.

Create attention by some good subject line and start with a greetings. Formal, but out of box. Ask your employees to generate new ideas. Experiment and check, how the rate is increasing. Keep a track to the events in your city and contact with the concerned person, who can assure you a huge fund!

5: Strategic Sales: Your sales team should be a social media expert. Because for a small scale company, it is not always possible to hire another person for a social media promotions. Infact it is not often needed, but when you are calling a lead, ‘Hi! Mr. Kaul, This is Pinaki from ….comapny” Your lead should know your name. ‘Ohh! Yes Pinaki, tell me..what …” Not for every lead, but you can create this image for your 30%-50% of potential leads! So the strategy is only to mix-up your social media and sales team in a same platform.

Any Idea you can share, So the small comapnies in India can have a effective low-price digital promotion solution?