E-Mail Marketing For The Cash-Strapped Small Business Person

I went bust. So when we re-started, we didn't have a penny for marketing.

That may not be you. You may have mountains of cash to spend on marketing.

On the other hand, you may be ultra-successful, but just love saving money.

Either way, let me tell you all about e-mail marketing as a no-cost or low-cost method of generating business.

Why Do I Know What I'm Talking About?

Now that's an understandable question. After all, I went bust!

My passion has always been marketing. I wasn't so good at business though! In fact, the company grew spectularly. Our first year turnover was $42K. Next £189K. Then £390K. Then £719K. And if we'd finished the last year before we went bust, it's likely we'd have topped £1M.

By the time I had served my apprenticeship in business (finance, operations, management etc), we were carrying a legacy of debt, having borrowed to finance the growth.

So in business terms, I've been there, got the T-shirt, lost the T-shirt, and since then got another one with a much better slogan on the front. The slogan should read "A success from the devastation of failure".

But I think "Recovering Workaholic" is more appropriate. That's another story for another day.

Back to marketing though, ironically I did very little in the failed business - I quickly realised that the passion and skills you have are not enough in a business.

But as you can imagine from the growth we experienced, the little I did do worked really well. And email marketing lay at it's foundation.

I have had the honour and privelege to be taught by Drayton Bird. Both in his classic books on the topics all the world's gurus in direct marketing used when they were learning, and during many booze-fuelled evenings. Luckily, the day after, I managed to remember the odd snippet of wisdom and apply it.

But unlike the experts, I use email marketing as a small business person, and I know the limitations you have, and the time-challenges. That's why I'll detail absolutely everything you need to know and the stuff you need to make this happen.

First Of A Series Of Articles On E-Mail Marketing - Know Your Audience

I intend this to be the first in a series of detailed articles, chock-full of practical advice. But with a big difference. I'll go into the detail I've seen missing elsewhere. Even which buttons to click to get an email out.

So while I know most people who can find a page like this know how to send an email, I'll assume you don't know how to get emails out in a highly personalised way, and I'll show you step-by-step.

I'll also compile a list of tools you will need before you are ready to start. And I'll include tips on preparing not just for the email, but also for the moment it goes out.

The job is not finished when you hit send by any means. Far from it. I've failed before with email campaigns, but not from a lack of responses. Rather a lack of preparation for the avalanche of replies - on one occasion I wasn't there and only spotted the replies too late to fully capitalise.

And I'm going to make another assumption, with apologies to the rest.

This is only for small business people. Either home-workers or those who employ a few staff.

While it may be useful to those who work in marketing or for larger organisations, you will probably have too many rules you have to follow.

The only people I want to benefit from this are hard-working small business people who need to get more business, and have little or no marketing budget.

People, maybe like you, who really need more business and want to learn how.

One Last Warning

Do not subscribe to receive emails on the rest of the series if you think this is going to be easy and quick.

The Internet is chock-full of short-cuts to huge volumes of sales which don't work because it needs effort. Back in the real-world, you have to put time and energy into this. Nothing worthwhile, like a ton of sales in your inbox, is achieved with no effort.

This may sound a little rude, and for that I apologise, but I'd much rather people who are prepared to put in the effort benefit from this and see their business volumes increase.

Please Google "short-cut to business success" and pay someone for an e-book that won't work.

This is free. It was the worst experience of my life going bust. So I simply want to share this with those who deserve better and are prepared to do this step-by-step.

If you're prepared to put in the effort, you can subscribe here at the bottom of this article. But please don't if you're not prepared to put a little effort in.

Enough Preamble, Let's Get On With It - Know Your Audience

Forget what words to use in your email. And forget learning how to personalise your emails.

Personalising an email with the first name of the recipient in the subject and body of an email will triple responses.

So if you have ever had say a 2% response rate to an email and 50% conversion rate, for every 100 emails you send, you get a sale.

So if a sale is worth £100 to you, tripling the response will make you £300 for every 100 email addresses you have.

That's a 200% increase in your marketing effectiveness.

Do you think it's worth learning about this stuff now?

Think back to the last marketing campaign you did that was good. Now imagine improving that by 200%?

I failed from being niaive about business. I didn't even get the chance to properly practice this stuff.

Now I'll assume you're not as incompetent in business as I used to be.

And I'll also suggest that if you're up to running a good business, you are more than capable of following these tips.

Nowyou may have noticed that I'm talking about you an awful lot here.

And you may also have noticed that I have spoken about who this article is aimed at, and more importantly isn't aimed at.

By now the shirkers will have stopped reading and gone and spent money on a get-rich-quick short-cut because they're too lazy.

I have also planted a seed in the article. I've referred to something which will triple your response rates - by personalising the email that you send out. But I've not revealed how to yet, because I don't want people rushing off too soon.

All of that personalising stuff is a waste of time, and effectively spamming, if the audience is wrong.

You don't need to appeal to everyone in your email. It's actually far better to de-select people in the body of your email because you are narrowing down your audience.

Many people assume paper-based mailings are a waste of money and time because 98% of people don't respond. But in many cases, the 2% that do, make it worthwhile.

Back to the example of 2% response, and 50% conversion to a sale, you've made £100 if that's your unit price.

Sending out 100 letters, will cost you maybe £40 if you did it as cheaply as possible.

But with email marketing, your cost is nothing (bar your time).

So, forget about the people who don't respond. There are many reasons they don't:

1) They aren't the right person to be receiving your email

2) They weren't interested AT THAT TIME

3) They were interested but didn't respond

Those 98 people that didn't respond contains people who MIGHT as some point in the future. Some of them may even have intended to, but the phone rang just as they were going to hit reply.

Then when they finished the call, they closed your email intending to come back to it later while they dealt with whatever the call was about.

But they forgot to. Or your email had disappeared off the screen as more emails came in through the day.

So Who Is Your Target Audience?

With the pre-amble over with, and the introductions, I'll come back to this in depth.

But I will say that it's actually the most important thing to get right.

I will talk about words and content. And personalisation. And handling high response rates. And calls to action. And other stuff in due course.

But all of that can be a huge waste of time if you're saying it to the wrong people. You have to invest time in defining your audience. Their characteristics. Their age. Their location. Their favourite things. Their likes and dislikes etc.

Once you've defined them, you then need to do your database housekeeping.

And you need to develop good habits. For example, making sure you collect email addresses and data wherever possible during the relevant parts of your business process.

Next Article: E-Mailing Marketing Is NOT Spamming

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