Every now and then, I always appreciate a good reminder of a best practice in business. After all, there are so many of them, it can be a chore to keep up to speed. If you read Nolan Burris’ or Mike Marchev’s columns with any regularity, I am sure you have a drawerful of brilliant, yet unimplemented tips—I know I do. Now that my marketing plan is in place for 2012 (if you need some help, check out this great series on TRO), I have implemented some tried and true best practices to give me a leg up in 2012.
With the entire world buzzing about social media, sometimes, we forget the basics—email. Hopefully everyone has some type of email broadcasting service—Aweber is my choice, but there are others including Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, My Emma, etc. Many of these offer a free trial and a very low monthly cost. Harness the power of email.
We are undergoing a communications shift. People are communicating by text, Facebook, Twitter and other social avenues today. Today’s email, quite possibly, is yesterday’s handwritten letter. Rather than writing “Happy Birthday” on a Facebook wall—send an email (or a card) and stand out from the crowd! Here are a few ideas to boost your business in 2012.
- Create your holiday emails now, in advance…for the entire year! And don’t stop at the end of the year—Happy New Year, Happy Valentines Day, Happy St. Paddy’s Day, Flag Day, Memorial Day….you get the picture. The more you touch your prospects, the more apt they are to become clients.
- Mine your statistics. All emailing programs have a follow up ability. Are you looking at yours? Where are your prospects clicking? If they clicked on a link to check out a cruise; do you think they might be more apt to buy from you if you followed that up with a video you took on your last cruise on that line?
- Ask your questions. Your newsletter subscribers are the most engages prospects and clients you have—they took an extra step to ask for information from you. Use this pre-built focus group to answer those burning questions. Survey Monkey is a low cost survey generation site. You can hone your demographics, figure out which group cruise might be best to book, further refine your newsletter, and any number of things. People love to be included and to feel special—do not overlook this powerful group of people in your business.
- Move your brand forward. Ask your subscribers to forward your newsletter to friends, ask them to “like” your business page on Facebook, ask them to follow you on Twitter, ask them to visit your YouTube channel. Remember, marketing your brand is not a single platform task. Make sure all of your platforms are on all of your marketing materials!
Have you used email marketing successfully? Please share your tips in the comment section.
