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Dear Reader,
Ahh...summer is upon us! For us and most of our clients, summer stands out in the annual business cycle - whether as a slow time when clients are hard to reach, or as a super busy time for those of you whose businesses peak with warm weather and tourist traffic. What about you - Does summer change the way you market? Take our quick poll.
On my end, I was lucky enough to attend an event which featured modern marketing expert Seth Godin last month. Hearing speakers like that is always motivational and sparks creativity. The first action item I took out of it was his insistence that if you have a blog, you must post EVERY DAY. So I've given myself that challenge. (OK, so in my case just aiming for every business day - weekends are still a little out of reach for me.)
So keep on me - and visit the blog! Your views and comments are definite incentives to keep us writing!
Have a great month!
Karen
krenzi@beyondus.com
Case 1: For BUSY Summer Businesses
First of all, if you are a busy summer business - kudos for even making the time to read this email. You’re already on the right track by making sure to keep up on marketing even during the time when you can’t tell left from right for all the customer issues you’re dealing with. Whether you have a summer attraction, restaurant, or shop – or a business selling products whose demand peaks in these hot months (Citronella candles? Sunscreen? Anyone?) – don’t neglect your marketing!
- Promote opt-ins like crazy. You have the people right there!! Implement permission marketing tactics and collect their contact information and PERMISSION to contact them. Get whatever contact info you would use most but ONLY that you would use. Don’t make them fill out more info than absolutely necessary. At a minimum I would recommend names and email addresses, and city, state if you deal with out-of-towners in the summer. Then you can analyze, segment, and market to the list at your heart’s content the rest of the year. In my book, there is no excuse NOT to do this.
- Consider frequency rewards and referral coupons. You won’t turn down business will you? Encourage repeat visitors and word-of-mouth by formalizing a program.
- Ensure proper staffing and properly trained staff. Nothing is more frustrating than when poor service ruins a summer day. Make sure you have sufficient staff to meet demand and that staff is professionally trained to deal with the stress of a busy environment. I remember one ice cream shop in a nearby town that had one or two people serving on during a busy hot festival day. Not only was the line out the door, but the staff was audibly complaining about having so many people to deal with. I know this even though I never even went inside – word-of-mouth travels fast and you bet I don’t bother stopping at that shop during festivals, even to this day.
- Collect as much data as you can during the busy season. You can’t be expected to do too much extra when you are so busy, but try to keep tabs on things like # of customers each day, even by time of day, and related revenue. Even loose numbers will help you have a basis to analyze and plan for the next year.
Case 2: For SLOW Summer Businesses
The goal of course is not to be slow any time of year, so if summer tends to be a slow time, take advantage of it to plan future marketing so that the next year summer WON’T be a slow time.
- Build relationships. Sure a lot of buyers are hard to reach in the summer, but sometimes it just means they just have temporarily shifted priorities. They might not be feeling the need to rush into a purchase in the relaxed days of summer. Use this to your advantage and focus on building your relationships with customers and prospects outside of the sales process. This might mean just keeping in touch, inviting them to a ball game, or hosting a company picnic.
- Follow your customers. Where did all the customers go? Look at your typical customer profiles and use that to help determine where you might find them now if there is a seasonal shift. Maybe they are not attending tradeshows inside dark hotels, but you can reach them at a sponsored golf outing.
- Plan, plan, plan. Use any downtime to catch up on all the things you’ve been “meaning to get to” – and formalize a plan going forward. Consider very carefully how the activities you plan for the winter and spring can help contribute towards increased business NEXT summer. Do you need to plan a spring ad or direct marketing campaign to fill the pipeline? Offer special summer purchase incentives?
These of course are just a few ideas – but the main idea in both cases is this: no matter what the pulse of your business, marketing must be part of the plan to keep the wheels turning.
We’ve been hearing a lot of questions on email marketing from clients lately, so I thought I’d devote some space this month to a few email topics. I’ll also be hosting a free Virtual Q&A Session - Email Marketing 101 – next Tuesday, July 10th beginning at 1:00pm ET. Please email me to RSVP for the dial-in and details.
Study Shows Email Marketing is Tops
Datran Media released a study on marketing & media – some interesting tidbits sourced from Datran Media’s release specific to email marketing:
- Overall, 82 percent of the marketers surveyed by Datran Media indicated that they plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2008.
- 55 percent of the respondents cite that they expect ROI from email to be higher than any other channel.
- Datran Media's survey results are consistent with the Direct Marketing Association's recent report, which found the ROI from email is much higher than other channels. In fact, email ROI will hit $45.65 for every dollar spent in 2008, more than twice the ROI of other mediums including search and display.
CAN-SPAM Updated
The FTC recently updated the CAN-SPAM act which has been in place since 2003. What does this mean for you if you are doing e-mail marketing? As it turns out, not too much – if you’ve been diligent in following best practices. The changes in a nutshell (directly from the FTC release):
- An e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender
- The definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements
- A “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address
- A definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons
Other resources on CAN-SPAM:
The rules for CAN-SPAM compliance
Free CAN-SPAM compliance review for your business
New Features in Constant Contact
Many of our clients, including us, use Constant Contact to manage our email marketing. It’s one of the simplest and most cost-effective services we’ve looked at for small business email marketing. However, no system is perfect and we’re glad to see Constant Contact recognized this. Some recent improvements fix things that have been little pains in the you-know-what for those of us using the system to set up campaigns:
- Auto-save – no more cursing the computer when you realize you forgot to save your work and the system timed you out! Your work will auto-save every 5 minutes.
- Paste text without formatting – this was particularly annoying if you worked in Word first, then pasted over to Constant Contact. It seemed to have a mind of its own with how the text formatting would appear. Now we have the option to paste content as text-only – using the right-click function on the mouse.
Businesses and Publicists:
Don’t miss this great, relatively new resource for accessing reporters and other writers at precisely the moment they need you! Peter Shankman emails you queries 3 times a day of reporters asking for sources and experts! See Help a Reporter Out (HARO) now.
Press:
Take advantage of a free network of over 11,000 potential experts when you need help on a story. Visit the press link at HARO.
| Pssst... | Did you know that Beyondus now has easy-to-use modules that we can plug into your site? Contact us to find out how you can:
See our site for Database Solutions to learn more. |
Contact Alessandro Renzi at 716-304-1925x103 or email info@beyondus.com |
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