Successful Customer Follow Up

Email is back!

Despite repeated proclamations of its extinction, rumors of the death of email marketing have been greatly exaggerated — especially since email and social media are a powerful combination. You might not reach the average college freshman, but for slightly older types (you know, the ones with the money), email is still the way to go in many lucrative mainstream niches.
You must first, of course, get your emails read. And it all starts with the subject line.
Email subject lines are a form of headline. They perform the same function as a headline by attracting attention and getting your email content a chance to be read.
So, headline fundamentals still apply. But the context is different, with the email space having its own funky little quirks that need to be accounted for.
Here’s the good news — email also implies a special relationship with the reader; a relationship that will get more of your messages read, even with subject lines that wouldn’t work in other headline contexts. So, in the next few days, we’ll take a look back at headline fundamentals, the specifics that apply to subject lines, and the “secret sauce” that makes email your top conversion channel.

1. The Fundamentals: Using a checklist

2. The Specifics: Beyond headline fundamentals

3. The Secret Sauce: Getting someone to trust you with their email address is not easy

http://www.copyblogger.com/email-subject-lines/

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder and CEO of Copyblogger

Listening to the news will besiege you with Doom and Gloom about the economy. Yeah, times are tough for many, but they don’t have to be for you. That’s why I really want you to read this article from  my friend MaryEllen Tribby. She’s a working mom and has all the same challenges you and I face everyday (including the economy), yet she’s created 3 multi-million dollar businesses from scratch and building more! It goes without saying, she’s got some great insights we all can learn from. So, check this out, you can thank me later.

In Tough Economic Times: Market Smarter, Not Harder

By MaryEllen Tribby

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going” is a motto your more resilient and clever CEO’s and marketing professionals
adopt while their meek counter parts tend to bury their heads in the sand during these tough economic times.

Yes, times are still tough, and people are still scared regardless of their current income level.

And rightly so, many people who are in decision-making jobs feel a sense of responsibility to their employers, their
colleagues and their staff. Very often these folks have a knee-jerk reaction and cut marketing dollars before weighing the
consequences.

In reality, cutting your marketing budget in a bad economy is the last thing you should do. This is not the time to focus
less on marketing … rather the opposite. The beauty of marketing in the 21st century is that many of the marketing channels
available to you are cheap, easy and fast to execute.

The cost of entry has never been lower (and I am not just talking email marketing), there has never been more niche markets
available and it has never been easier with today’s technology to accurately measure the impact of your marketing efforts and
make educated decisions about going forward to plan cohesive multi-channeled marketing campaigns.

Smart companies that continue to grow and prosper during hard economic times understand the value of multi-channel
marketing:

* Create strong customer relationships.
Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of multi-channel marketing is that it provides great customer relationship-building
opportunities. Direct mail and email allow you to stay in front of your customers while letting the customer learn about your
product on their own schedule. Telemarketing allows you to provide additional information and answer questions
your customers may have.

Regardless of which channels you use you should never promise anything that you aren’t going to be able to deliver. In
fact, you should always be over delivering on the promises you make in your marketing
copy. Remember that integrity is the key.

* Choose efforts that help you pick the low hanging fruit.

Never forget to market most often and most strongly to those loyal customers who buy from you. Direct email
marketing, well written and based on a compelling offer, is critical. It is easy to implement and extremely cost effective -
allowing you to communicate with your customers as much as you (and they) want. It also gives you the ability to test, see
what’s working, and quickly react to generate more sales. It allows you to make your message as timely and relevant as
possible.

For the most part, direct e-marketing is a two-step process. The first process is to develop a list of people who will accept
your promotional messages. This list is built through the use of banner ads, insert ads and asking for your customers’ email
addresses. The second step is to send them your direct response promotions. These are usually longer sales letters, much like
direct mail.

* Some forms of marketing don’t cost you a dime.

You can create online buzz about your product through social media. This can take on many forms: online forums, message
boards, blogs, video blogs, and social networks (such as LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc.). Use social media methods to
stimulate conversation about you, your business, and your products.  The key is to be genuine. To ensure the buzz is positive,
you have to promote yourself gradually and organically by developing real relationships with your desired audience on
targeted social media sites.

It is also imperative that you are involved in the conversation on your own site. To ignore your own customers (on your website
or others) is an unforgivable mistake in today’s interconnected world. You must always be answering their questions,
responding to their complaints, exploring opportunities, announcing new products, listing upcoming events, and reminding them
of deadlines. The list is endless.

* Want to drum up great PR? Get to know the media.

Of the many channels of marketing, public relations is one that every business should embrace. That’s because it is nearly
free. If you have a good writer on staff, your only cost will be the event you are publicizing and the small amount it takes
to mail or email out your own press release.  When it works, it really works, going from regional to national to
international faster than it takes to write up a conventional advertising campaign. The trick is creating successful, newsworthy
stories.

It’s very important to target your press releases to specific publications and media outlets whose customers you want to reach.
Rather than sending out 1,000 general press releases about a story that has general appeal, it’s much more effective to send
out a dozen or so targeted press releases containing stories that are exactly right for the intended audiences. It’s simply
quality vs. quantity.

* Don’t go it alone.

Many small businesses balk at the idea of joint ventures. They don’t like the idea of splitting revenues. They like selling their own products
because they keep 100% of the revenues. This is the kind of thinking that destroys a business. When a joint venture is executed properly,
it doesn’t subtract from the business it adds to the business. There are many ways to do joint ventures and the best ones are those that pair
up businesses with asymmetrical resources and skills.

To find your joint venture “soul mate” think about the major players in your marketplace. Consider the strengths and
weaknesses of each.  Ask yourself how you might benefit from working with them. Make a list of potential partners and develop a
strategy to approach them and show them how they could benefit from doing business with you. The idea is to develop joint venture
relationships that are easy to maintain, financially profitable, intellectually rewarding, and long lasting.

Regardless of how many channels you use and which ones they are, smart companies understand ROI (return on investment).

If you see a company, perhaps one of your competitors advertising often and in multiple channels — chances are it is a
healthy company. Study that company, is there something they are doing that you can implement.

If you are interested in expanding your company’s reach, try incorporating multi- channel marketing campaigns into your
business model. But to make sure you spend the appropriate amount of time on each channel (for the revenue generated) check
out my #1 Amazon.com best-seller, Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business

Creativity and being strategic are two of the key factors to have when doing client follow up. A client follow up is the procedure of maintaining prospective clients by giving them updates and all other information about the products and services of the business, negotiating with them to build good business relationships and interacting with them all throughout what the business offers to keep them as the business’ loyal customers. Whenever there is a client to follow up, a door of endless opportunities will be opened up to the business.
Following up clients is part of a business field called the Professional Advertising. It is the process of maximizing the total revenue and return on investments for an advertisement made, which is done by targeting prospective clients, creating professional promotions, engaging in more media presence, getting responses, and following up with them. But the business should not always focus on getting new customers, for existing customers are also valuable for a client follow up. Following up new prospective clients is done by giving them information about your business, seeing what your business offers and how competitive it is in the business industry.  Through creating letters, brochures, flyers and other related materials that will represent your business and what it is all about. Always follow up after they made a purchase from your business. Following up with new clients can be done by setting up a meeting or having contact with them so that whenever they will be available, they would have time to negotiate with you. But at some point, your new clients, that you have targeted, do not immediately respond to a certain promotion or after a purchase because of unknown reasons, such as they may prefer to look for another business to shop, they may not have time to make business decisions, or they may have misplaced or forgotten the information that was discussed about your business. They may not be interested at all. However, you, as the businessman, should know how to effectively follow up with new customers in whatever instances it would be.
On the other hand, a business should also follow up with its existing potential clients. Nowadays, few businesses are active in doing client follow up with their existing customers. This would be a great mistake on the part of businesses that are seeking to renew customer satisfaction and don’t do follow up. Undoubtedly, customer retention is always the best and the most significant thing to have in the business to successfully increase sales and profit, and giving lower ad costs to you. Following up existing potential customers is done by informing them more about what your business offers after they have made a purchase, or building a business relationship with them, securing that you can be a great business partner for them to rely on.
If you aim to really maximize your profits, sales and returns on investments, create a follow up system that is strategic, well-planned and well-constructed. Your client follow up will not be effective without paying a lot of attention to it. If you don’t follow up with your clients, someone else will.

Sending a follow up sales letter to your new, prospective or current customers is always an important factor in a follow up system, whether you have just completed making sales calls and transactions or not. Through this kind of letter, you are presenting the name of your business to a potential market in a positive side, giving your business career a boost and an opportunity to become successful.
Writing a good follow up sales letter is one great way for a successful job of getting the customers’ interests towards what your business offers.
There are several functions that a follow up sales letter should perform, such as it gives your customers or clients information about your business, it can review their decisions that they had come up with after what had been discussed during a business meeting, it can reaffirm the value of your products and services, and it reminds your customers or clients for future projects of your business.
When sending a follow up sales letter, you should send them within 24 hours after meeting your customers and clients. They will not be disappointed when they receive your letter. But if you cannot send them out at that moment in time, be sure to send them within 1 week of the sales talk. This will show how professional you are, and how good your business is at follow up.
The format of a follow up sales letter is just the same with the usual business letter – the company’s letterhead is printed on the top of the letter together with the customer’s name and address, the salutation is in formal tone, having the body of the letter that is polite and personalized and ending it with thanking the customer and stating that you are looking forward to speaking with them again very soon.
These are the guidelines in writing a follow up sales letter.
One consideration that a businessperson should always keep in mind when writing a follow up sales letter is to state in the letter that you are needing the customer’s response or if he or she can be contacted. Also, another thing to consider is to have the follow up sales letter with the necessary contact details of your business, so that the customer can contact you if he or she changes thoughts and decisions towards building a business relationship with you.
You can have templates from the Internet that you can use for your follow up sales letter, for contact details are sometimes oddly included in the letter.
What must not be done – never ever send an email to the customer. Email service providers often classify email messages from businesses and companies into spam messages when that establishment is not that recognizable and prominent to them. Since spam messages are not good forms of information delivery, customers will tend to be uninterested with your email to them.
These are the guidelines in writing and forming a follow up sales letter. With a good follow up sales letter, you can surely get the interest of a prospective customer that can contribute to your business success.

When it comes to developing continuous relationships with customers, but also continuously marketing to them, putting together an email marketing strategy and plan is crucial for many companies to do. Email marketing campaigns are inexpensive compared to other marketing techniques like television and billboard advertising, while being useful and targeting your market. Using email-marketing software helps to carry out marketing promotions and campaigns to existing customers and to leads that can become customers to your company.

The strategy of email marketing software is raising conversion rates with your marketing efforts. The higher your conversion rate, the better sales you will have and more profit you will in turn make. However, the dilemma here is that a marketing strategy is needed to turn potential clients into paying customers, or inactive clients into paying ones, through a follow up purchase.

Developing a Customer Service Relationship

The first thing to consider when using the email marketing strategy is that you should be able to develop relationships with clients prior to throwing advertisements or promotions at them. Often times it will take about seven email messages to be sent before someone will buy a product or service from you. Once this number is reached, the chances for purchases from other individuals on your list increases exponentially.

The strategy now relies on what you should do and say in the first seven or so emails you send out with the automated email marketing software. You can use this time as a sort of trial honeymoon period for the relationship between your business and new leads. Regardless of how it seems, the first few emails are undoubtedly a trial to your new subscribers.

During this trial period, you need to offer useful information. Consider sending messages through your Email Marketing Software that include “top ten” lists of important things your contacts should know. Make your Email Marketing messages seem like staying enrolled in your mailing list is worth pure gold to them by giving solid information about solutions to your subscribers’ problems.

In this time, it is important to offer helpful tips and useful information. Consider messages to send that include top ten lists of valuable facts your contacts should know when you are using the email marketing software. Make the automated messages seem fresh and have clients want to stay enrolled on your list. Make them feel as though this information is a solution to their problems, or potentially good advice for the future.

It is the Time to Begin Marketing

After a relationship is established with customers and leads through your email marketing software, advertisements and marketing promotions can begin to be solicited. Sending out emails of product endorsements, affiliate marketing links, as well as new product or service announcements are great examples.

However, be aware that you do not flood your client contact list with messages that are too frequent. Using the email marketing software, you can time emails to be sent appropriately spaced out: bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly or just about any other interval time period. Even after beginning to send promotions, continue to nurture your clients with valuable tips and important information to keep clients consistent in checking your email.

The whole email marketing process used with the email marketing software can help to create, manage, and send successful campaigns from beginning to end. There are all kinds of programs today that easily help create email marketing campaigns and databases. This allows business owners and marketers to focus more on marketing techniques and less on the technicalities.

Of course, you probably will not become an email-marketing guru over night. But, the sooner you start, the sooner you can begin building this new skill, which with today’s intuitive software will happen rapidly. One you really get good, you’ll be amazed at the ROI that email marketing can produce.

Despite any advice you take, you will not become a successful email marketer instantaneously. Though, the sooner you start, the sooner you can begin to expand on new found technique and skill in marketing, which will rapidly increase your success. When you are quite talented at utilizing email marketing you will see the improvement in sales that it can make.

How to Expand in Database Marketing and Increase Back-end Sales to Raise Overall Profits

Establish a number of simultaneous promotional campaigns with a promotion automating email applications that will improve results for your web business sales, while growing in opt-in lists, prospects tend to follow, increasing back-end finishing sales, and bottom line profits.

Follow up is important because when you don’t follow up prospects or repeated customers with additional products and information, valuable potential sales opportunities are escaping from your reach. They will instead go to competitors, have their wants and needs fulfilled, and do it at the expense of what should have been your sale.

There are potential customers that may be interested in your products, but lose your information or were too busy for your sales pitch when it was given. Some customers will choose companies to buy from that follow up on inquires in a timely manner and friendly way. When they do not receive feedback, or the feedback is vague, their business is taken elsewhere.

Though everyone’s experiences are different, a commonality seems to be that just about everyone doing business on the internet has had that happen to them because of failing to follow up. Even customer follow up at preset times with a standard thanks or message has a huge effect on returning customers and thus increase in sales.

Those who have relatively automated marketing campaigns, email lists and database management, tend to follow up with personalized marketing software for email. Thus, the return in back end sales and bottom line profits increases.

Though raising profit margins and increasing sales is important, automation marketing is a time saving feature, as is email marketing. Both of which are important aspects of database marketing and gaining back end sales.

Doing internet business with email marketing automation comes with many benefits. One of which it to follow up old clients and make them prospective clients again. While following through, you will be collecting leads, prospects, customer contact information and personal data, all from a scope within your target market. Growing an opt-in list is important and vital as managing lists on multiple servers and using a number of marketing campaigns with many automatic responses.

Regardless of spam filters that have been recently employed, email is still the most effective medium for a number of reasons:

• It can be used to keep customers in touch with your new products and services
• It promotes continuous communication with website visitors
• It is a proactive way to keep clients interested and reaffirm brand loyalty
• Keeps organized all contacts and email communication
• Gives prospects a mode to ask questions

That list can be elongated by a series of other important functions of the email follow up. This has unlimited possibility for increasing return clients and following up well with prospects, aside from perhaps technological or software limits to follow up.

More to follow in your next post…

Related articles business owners must know:

• Why Opt Out is Not a B2B Marketing Strategy (thecustomercollective.com)
• Small Business Growth Expert Offers Free Report on Email Marketing 2.0 (prweb.com)

Give your customer a strong reason to come back to you. Create your own Unigue Selling Proposition (USP) and get more customers calling you.

Marketing Tip #3

Follow Up With Your Customer Sales, marketing, loan officer …

Image via Wikipedia

Following up with your customer shows that you care. Another reason to follow up with your customer is to find out how they are doing, and how their new product is benefiting them. Ask questions about the product and the experience they have had with you and … The more you stay in contact with your customers, the stronger your relationship with them becomes. The stronger the relationship, the more business and referrals   you can expect from them. So follow up, Always. …

Reeling in Clients: Hook, Line and Sinker …

Follow

Up with the Client Image from: spunkinator. Remind your client of your interest and your presence by chatting with them on Twitter or Facebook. Stop by their office to offer articles or further information that you feel will be useful to them and … Reeling in Clients: Hook, Line and Sinker | Onextrapixel – Showcasing Web Treats Without Hitch Great read on getting the client – Freelance (tags: freelance business marketing clients design freelancing job sales)

Image via CrunchBase

Follow Up: Nobody’s Doing It, What About You? | Mike Lyon …

Nicky Joy says it best, “Follow up is your first customer service test.” This is how people see what it’s like to do business with your company. Most people can’t make it past this first test. When we talk about follow up we need to be …

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One of the best tips I can give you about converting potential clients into paying clients is this: Add one extra follow-up step. That step can make the difference in bringing that client to finally making a decision. …

Eight Steps to Attracting More Clients

To maximize all the hard work you’ve already done, you must follow-up consistently. What’s the best way to make sure that happens? By automating and systematizing as much of your follow-up as possible. Here’s the rule: Always follow up, …

How to Solve All Your Advertising, Marketing and Sales Problems …

Let’s continue where we left off on “HOW TO FIX YOUR FOLLOW-UP. ” The one thing you need to do right now is to Show Up More. To do this most.

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• Is the art of following-up lost in the age of social media? (socialmediatoday.com)

Stupidity or Laziness in Your Small Business Marketing? | Glazer …

The incredible stupidity, cheapskatedness, laziness of business owners is most visible in their consistent bizarre behavior regarding present customers vs. new. … Author Info: Dan Kennedy is internationally recognized as the ‘Millionaire Maker,’ helping people in just about every category of business turn their ideas into fortunes. Dan’s “No B.S.” approach is refreshing amidst a world of small business marketing hype and enriches those who act on his advice. …

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