E-mail Selling by Dan Ramsey
Anything that you can do with direct-mail sales you can do using e-mail. Your employer may use direct-marketing methods and direct-mail tools to help you do your job. Most sellers have applied what they know about direct marketing to e-mail marketing. It, too, can be an efficient and effective way to reach more prospects and customers with your sales message.
Direct Mail
Direct marketing is selling products or services directly to the end user. In most sales, that means individual consumers. However, direct marketing also is used in business and industry to develop prospects' interest in your product or service. Depending on what you are offering, part or all of your sales job will involve direct marketing.
Direct mail is using the mail service to deliver marketing and sales messages. Because much of the mail is delivered at third-class postage rates, the cost can be relatively inexpensive. A single postcard mailer can be delivered to a prospect for less than twenty-five cents. That's a lot cheaper than most other message-delivery systems. Because of the lower cost, sellers send out millions of direct-mail pieces every day, flooding mail boxes with what often is called “junk mail.”
The Direct Marketing Association (www.the-dma.org) has expanded its reach to include companies and salespeople that sell using e-mail. In addition, they co-sponsor a conference with the Email Experience Council (www.emailexperience.org), which helps sellers and marketers understand best practices and leading-edge strategies for e-mail selling. E-mail is becoming big business.
Why does some direct mail work and some not? Because of target marketing, focusing your efforts on people who have the greatest need for what you are selling. Offering refrigerators to Eskimos, for example, can be a waste of everyone's time. Target marketing means offering refrigerators to people in warmer climates, who would benefit from keeping food fresher longer. By targeting your direct mail, you can help more people at less cost. The same is true of e-mail marketing.
E-mail Opportunities
Electronic mail, or e-mail, is even less expensive to deliver than direct mail. The “postage” is free! The costs involved include designing a message and preparing it in a form that attracts the interest of the user, often using HTML or another tool. Your employer will help you in understanding and using their e-mail sales tools and campaigns. In essence, e-mail campaigns and functions are similar to direct mail efforts. They are designed to:
Build a brand name
Make prospects aware of the features and benefits of products or services
Tell prospects and customers of sale and discount opportunities
Assist prospects in making a decision regarding what you sell
Help keep existing customers happy
Following is a list of some of the opportunities that salespeople have for using e-mail.
Send a survey to find qualified prospects.
Respond to prospect requests for additional product information.
Confirm a sales appointment.
Send a periodic newsletter to prospects or customers updating them on products or services you offer.
Confirm an order placed.
Confirm the shipment of an order.
Check back with a customer to ensure that the order was satisfactory.
You and your employer will find hundreds of ways of using e-mail to find, help, and keep satisfied customers.
