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How Newsletters Can Help You Stay In Touch And Build Deeper Relationships With Your Customers And Prospects

Guest post by: Paul Tobey

Article Overview: Many business owners worry about how to stay in touch with a growing customer base. They know when you build relationships, you build sales, but worry about the cost of person to person contact. One of the most common responses is to start a newsletter. Newsletters are an excellent medium to keep in touch with a large volume of customers and prospects. The idea works, but not everyone does a good job.

How Newsletters Can Help You Stay In Touch And Build Deeper Relationships With Your Customers And Prospects

Many business owners worry about how to stay in touch with a growing customer base. They know when you build relationships, you build sales, but worry about the cost of person to person contact. One of the most common responses is to start a newsletter. Newsletters are an excellent medium to keep in touch with a large volume of customers and prospects. The idea works, but not everyone does a good job.

Few people understand the few basic rules.

It sounds a little obvious, but most newsletters are interesting to no one but the writer. If you talk about how wonderful your company, your new equipment or product is, you will be amazed how quickly people hit the delete button. Interesting newsletters are hard work. They have to be written from the readers’ point of view. How do you write about your new equipment from the reader’s point of view? Tell me how I can get what I need from you quicker, or cheaper or more simply. Tell me that's why you bought the equipment. No one wants to know you have bought a new $500,000 widget packaging machine unless it translates into some specific advantage for them.

I believe it is better to focus on providing information to help your readers be more successful, or more informed or showing them how to avoid pitfalls in buying and using your type of products or services. People love quizzes and how to guides. For example if you are in home improvements, you might write about 6 Ideas For Giving Your Home Better Looks And Extra Living Space or if you are in carpet cleaning 4 Dangers Lurking In Your Carpets. That would be much more useful than talking about your 23 years of experience, your new trucks or the new guy you hired.

Remember it cost 6 times more to get a new customer than keep an old one. Don't send out a news letter that will turn existing customers off.

Make Your Newsletter Newsworthy. People love to be kept up to date on interesting or important things going on in their business or their industry.

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Simple way to avoid Cold Calling - Gary, A chiropractor I work with hates cold calling (me too!) and he uses a technique to warm people up to using his services - it's so simple! In Sales your dealing with 3 pools of people: 1. Strangers 2. Prospects 3. Returning Customers You need to move people from one pool to the next. We'll concentrate on #1 and #2 as it's most relevant to your question. My Clients does the following (you just have to tailor it to your situation - be creative). My Client (we'll call him Bob) Bob leverages his time and resources to only get people that need his offer (pain relief) to put their hand up. Dealing with Strangers can get expensive and they don't like to be told what to do as they have no trust or relationship built with him. So to get Strangers to put their hands up he writes up an offer with a free report on a particular pain relief - let's say lower back pain (note: he can simply just change lower back pain to neck pain and have a new report). and uses multiple marketing vehicles to promote the Free report - magazines, newspaper, forums, postcards, private clinics etc. The only people picking up this information are the very people Bob would like as customers as they have Lower back pain. Bob's Free report ends with him stating his services and includes a Free in-house Consultation with no obligation. You'd be surprised at how easily Bob converts Strangers into Prospects. Note: They become prospects when they ask for the Free Guide and in exchange provide their contact details. This gives Bob unlimited opportunity to contact them for the Free in-house consultation with no obligation to continue using him. At this stage Bob's ability to close the sale lies in his office providing good customer service, Bob's ability to help the prospect and provide value at the free in-house consultation. Notice, he hasn't had to pick up the phone to COLD-CALL his Stranger pool or his Prospect pool. Hope that example helps to increase your prospecting!
Re: Two Useful Books To Help You Focus On The CLIENT - Hi David, To add to your thread, I'd like to recommend Jonathan Tisch's "Chocolates On The Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience". Tisch's book includes content on "Welcoming Customers", "The New Art of Customization", "The Challenges of Customer Diversity" and "Offering Something Extra to Your Customers" to name a few.
Do webinars really work? - Since I began this website I've received numerous offers to put on webinars. My concern has always been the time and effort put into creating the webinars versus written content and the ability to rank in search engines for webinats versus articles. To date I have not done a webinar from my site. I was reading Inc's Sales & Marketing section and they had an article profiling a company, LeanLogistics which tested newsletter vs. webinar marketing campaigns. The results? The newsletters yielded double the sales leads at one sixth the cost of the webinars. According to LeanLogistics it was because: - Newsletters can be emailed multiple times - Newsletters can sit in a client's inbox for many days - If a client does not visit the webinar at the appointed time they will not get the information and will not go back to it even if it is available online anytime afterwards Have any of you found success with webinars or do you prefer the traditional written content method of marketing?
aweber - At RSC Business Group Inc., we plan on using Aweber for sending out Newsletters and to use as an autoresponder to inform clients of upcoming seminars they showed interest in attending.
Re: Great start, but no finish - My advise is FOCUS on your business. Focusing is the main factor to succeed on business. If you have a great idea, then follow it only, don't look anywhere else. It is especially essential in an online business. Because there are a lot of mind blowing sales letters promising millions dolllars or overnight success, people find it difficult to concentrate on one business and they lose their energy. Concept is simple. 1- Have a good idea; 2- Build your business on it; 3- Monetize your business; 4- Promote it; 5- Build list of responsive customers; 6- Maintain You Business. Focusing and not fearing from competition (instead you can learn from competitiors) are main tips of billionaires ,BTW. Orxan


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