Small businesses can sale using Email marketing

Financially based objectives:

I want more money

A small business owner in one of my seminars defined his broad-based objective of making money by saying, “Someday I’d like to add the word profit to my loss statement.” If making a positive impact on your profit and loss statement is one of your broad-based objectives, e-mail can make a significant contribution to both sides of the ledger because e-mail can help you increase revenue and cut costs. Stating your broad-based financial objectives clearly begins with understanding how e-mail causes your audience to respond financially in favor of your objectives. The next section explains how e-mail causes several types of financial responses and gives you examples of stated objectives for each cause.

Increase sales

E-mail has the ability to become the proximate cause of a sale, such as when someone clicks a link in your e-mail to make a direct purchase from your Web site. E-mail can also help generate activity and inquiries that can lead to increased sales, such as when someone replies to an e-mail in order to request an appointment or additional information.

If your objective is to increase sales, you can state your broad-based objective in the following ways and craft your e-mail content with one of the stated objectives in mind (depending, of course, on your business):

- Drive foot traffic to your store

- Bring visitors to your Web site

- Increase event attendance

- Ask for referrals

- Generate phone or e-mail orders

Increase repeat business

Potentially, sales not only increase when you reach more prospective customers with your message but also when you motivate and prompt current customers to make repeat purchases.

e-mail is a great way to make repeat purchases more convenient and efficient because you can link your audience directly to an online purchase process. Time and convenience are powerful motivators to increase the number of customers who make frequent and regular repeat purchases. If your objective is to increase repeat business, you can state your objective in the following ways and craft your e-mail content with one of the following stated objectives in mind:

- Stay at the front of your customers’ minds.

- Attract prospects to convenient purchase links and options. - Reward repeat customers with incentives based on repeat sales

Shorten a sales cycle

Your sales cycle is how long someone takes to become interested and actually make the purchase. For example, if you own an automobile dealership the sales cycle is how long someone takes to recognize their need for a new car, research models, visit showrooms, test drive models, negotiate price, and finally purchase the vehicle. Your sales cycle also applies to prospects. Your prospecting sales cycle is how long someone takes to make a purchase after they become aware of your products or services.

Use e-mail to help shorten your sales cycle by sending prospective customers the following types of information:

- Information to help justify a decision

- Reminders to take action

- Incentives to take immediate action

If your objective is to shorten your sales cycle, you can state your objective in the following ways and craft your e-mail content with one of the following stated objectives in mind:

- Drive prospects to helpful or persuasive information.

- Provide reminders to act at various sales cycle stages.

- Announce incentives to reward completed purchases.

Lower your costs

Keeping your costs under control while staying productive is always a challenge. E-mail is a cost-effective tool because e-mail is affordable to deliver and lowers costs by saving paper, printing, and labor costs. If your objective is to shorten your sales cycle, you can state your objective in the following ways and lower your costs when you set up your e-mail campaigns with one of the following stated objectives in mind:

- Automate appointment reminders.

- Deliver information electronically instead of in print.

- Use e-mail instead of, or in conjunction with, phone calls for customer follow-up.