| This article explains how email marketing can be utilised in the B2B sector. There are correct and respectable ways to use email marketing and harness the marketing power of Internet to bring you a continuous flow of prospective clients... |
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| This article explains how email marketing can be utilised in the B2B sector. There are correct and respectable ways to use email marketing and harness the marketing power of Internet to bring you a continuous flow of prospective clients... |
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B2B email marketing explained
Some B2B companies see it undignifying and borderline-illegal whereas others like it for its speed and low (or no) cost. Technically, email marketing is simply a way to educate individual members of your target group about the benefits of your products or service. Email marketing has several applications, some of which are extremely beneficial and others that will only beget problems. So let's look at these various forms of email marketing.
B2B email marketing: Newsletters from your web siteThe most traditional way of utilising B2B email marketing is to create a web site for the purpose of prospecting only. This is basically the theory of two web sites, each with a specific purpose. The first of these is the type of web site most B2B companies currently have. It is created with visual style and minimalist "to-the-point" scientific approach for one's existing clients, networking partners, financial institutions and whomever. Its purpose is to present an immaculate and impressive corporate image reflecting power and respectability. The second of these is a web site few B2B companies utilise. This site is built SOLELY for the purpose of attracting prospective clients. It contains many full-length articles on the various subjects and problems which the target group wants solved, giving new information and creating more awareness of the quality of your products. This strategy is explained in much more detail in the article "B2B web design — the two-pronged online strategy" which explains the many benefits of this approach. If you've not read this article yet then it might be easier if you familiarised yourself with its contents first so you have a full picture of the benefits of having two web sites. In any case, if you had a prospecting site then, for that, a string of email-based newsletters is a great way to achieve several important results of email marketing. This is set up as a series of e-mails, utilising a special service providing you with something called a "sequential autoresponder." This is a solution that allows web site visitors to subscribe to your free newsletter, taking their names and phone numbers (and any other information you wish to obtain)... and then starts sending the string of newsletters (uploaded onto the server) in the correct sequence and with the preset intervals. The end result is that each subscriber receives his or her newsletters as if you sent them out specifically. Most of these automated newsletter sequencers allow you to set codes onto the newsletters so that each bears the name of the individual receiver, that date when he receives it and so on... all to make it appear very current to the receiver. This type of newsletter delivery provides several benefits to the B2B company in email marketing. For one, you'll be able to obtain the names and contact phone numbers of those prospective clients who are interested in your services. For the other, if these email-based newsletters are planned wisely, each will give just a bit more information and enhance the recipient's positive image about YOUR company as the ideal service provider.
B2B email marketing — offering expert articlesAnother useful email marketing technique involves utilising other email-based newsletters. The idea here is to search the Internet to locate the newsletters of others that address YOUR target group or parts thereof. Let me explain the two kinds of COMMERCIAL web sites that exist on the Internet. One is the kind offering something for sale, be it a service or a product. Whether or not this item of sale can be purchased online is not the point here but that the publisher of the web site IS SELLING something to his visitors... however discreetly. The second kind of commercial site is the FREE INFORMATION site, whose strategy is to offer a lot of valuable information to their visitors totally free of charge... and thus amass a huge number of daily visitors... and then SELL ADVERTISING to those companies who wish to reach these visitors. The latter kind of site is costly to run unless the owner of the site is a prolific producer who can write some 15,000 words a week easily... which is a TALL order. So there are very few such individuals around and even fewer who are willing to "trap" themselves into such gruelling weekly routine from hereon out. Thus, usually this type of site employs a good number of writers and editors. But as it takes quite a while to AMASS a large number of visitors (and newsletter subscribers) all while you must put forth a good selection of new articles and news every DAY, we can see that these information sites are under a lot of financial strain and, consequently, cannot always employ as many (and as skilful) writers as needed to fill their pages. These circumstances open the opportunity for you. You write (or have someone else write) short articles about your area of expertise and send them to these web sites, offering the article for free PROVIDED they also give you "a monkey box" — a short "About the author" -description which you write and which MUST include a link to your prospecting web site. If these articles are written in an advisory spirit without any attempt to SELL anything to the reader then you will find it very successful. If your target group considers the information interesting and valuable, they WILL click the link and visit your web site. Modest as the idea may appear, this email marketing strategy of piggy-bagging on the newsletters of others can produce a tremendous number of prospective clients of the very best type.
B2B email marketing — utilising the potential of the InternetThere are many ways to utilise email marketing in the B2B sector. Which suit you best depend on your specific details of course. Don't let the bad examples of email marketing deter you from investigating its potential. There are many ethical ways to utilise email marketing without the use of unsolicited e-mails, which would never work in the B2B decision-making process anyhow. Planned and executed correctly, email marketing is really a way to harness the immense networking power of the Internet to work for your B2B company without practically any cost whatsoever. To fully tap onto that potential, you need to know exactly what your target group wants, what they think, how they see things, what's missing in the services of your industry in their view... and things like that. This knowledge can be acquired through a market research survey, on which subject there's a separate article on this web site. If you want some help in evaluating what email marketing could do for your company, please read the presentation of our Marketing Analysis introductory service which will give an exterior expert viewpoint on how to utilise the natural strong points of your production in marketing. Finally, if web site presentation is on the top of your list at this moment then, please, click here to read about our Internet Marketing & Search Engine Optimization Analysis. Consider utilising email marketing... it could be the starting point of a whole new level of success for your marketing.
Best wishes, Harry Kafka |
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Email marketing evokes mixed reactions
from one person to another.