 Are You Touching Your Prospects In All The Right Places?
Building a business relationship is a lot like dating. You have that first awkward meeting, search for common interests, try to avoid long stretches of uncomfortable silence, and wonder who'll make the first move. Is there love in the air? Each date gets progressively easier, built on the familiarity of the last, then, before you know it, you're picking out china patterns, buying major household appliances and living happily ever after. But to reach this fairytale ending you have dates to go on, love letters to send and telephone chats. Aside from picking out china patterns, strong business relationships develop the same way. They evolve slowly, are founded on mutual trust, require attention and lots of communication. But short of trying to hold your customer's hand and risking a lawsuit, how do you start touching and, more importantly, keep touching until they fall in love with you too? An easy and cost effective solution is eNewsletters. When sent on a regular basis, eNewsletters work to develop a relationship by maintaining open lines of communication and keeping you forefront in your customers' minds. And the statistics support this. A recent survey* found that: - 60% of decision makers considered eNewsletters a foundational tool for enhancing client relationships.
- Almost 50% stated that a timely, well-written eNewsletter article would prompt them to call the solicitor.
Furthermore, eNewsletters allow you to touch your audience in the right place . . . that is, their in-box. Unobtrusive and subtle, an eNewsletter will sit patiently in the recipient's email until they're ready to read it. And when they finally do -- yowza! You've touched them exactly where and when they wanted to be touched, while gently communicating your message and letting them know they're on your mind. If only love relationships were that easy. So all this talk of love and relationships begs the question: How much are you touching your customers? And just as importantly: Where are you touching them? In today's fast paced business environment, personal meetings are great, but not always the most convenient. Therefore, staying in contact with your customers in between sales calls is essential. While even the most diligent sales and marketing team can't touch all customers all the time, eNewsletters can. Consider the power of the numbers. Assume your company is already in contact with 2000 customers face to face or personally twice a year. Good, but you can do better. If you add eNewsletters into your marketing mix — sending one eNewsletter a month to each of your customers for 12 months — you easily increase the number of touches by 24,000 per year. Imagine: increasing your number of recipients two-fold, three-fold, even four-fold per year! With one simple tool you're more than doubling the frequency of communication, enhancing the quality of that communication, and communicating with your customers when and where they want you to — in the privacy of their in-box. eNewsletters are gaining popularity because they work. According to the Internetmarket Group: - 65% of marketers plan to increase their use of email newsletters.
- Among B2B marketers, 65% cite sales and 63% cite customer education for their reason for using them.
- Among B2C marketers, 59% identify increasing sales and 56% cite maintaining customer relations as the main objective for using email newsletters.
And we've saved the best for last. A recent study conducted by the Direct Marketing Association found that email, particularly those sent to in-house customer lists, produced the highest overall ROI: an outstanding 14.2% compared to direct response television (8.4%), inserts (7.3%), and direct mail (7.2%). So get out and touch someone. Preferably your customer and in just the right place! If you are reading this article... it works! Don't wait any longer to contact your marketing pros at Proven Systems to create a client-centered eNewsletter for your organization. * Survey of decision-makers for corporate legal services, conducted by ClientFocus, Inc. | 
