Technology Marketing Minute

What Almost All Computer Consultants Don’t Know and
Will Never Understand About
E-mail Marketing

By Robin Robins, President, Technology Marketing Toolkit, Inc.
www.technologymarketingtoolkit.com

As a computer consultant, you should be more than aware of the growing difficulty in getting e-mail messages delivered. If one of several spam filters doesn’t snag your message, then there is a good chance it will get overlooked and deleted by the end users because of all the “junk” they get these days.

Yet I know that all of my computer consulting clients want to use e-mail in their marketing mix because it’s incredibly easy to do and downright cheap. And they are not entirely wrong in their strategy; BUT there certainly are drawbacks and limitations to e-mail, and there are certain best practices and “secrets” to maximizing the response, and that is what I’m going to share with you this month.

What To Expect From E-mail Marketing

In my experience, leads generated from e-mail campaigns and search engines tend to be less qualified than leads generated from direct mail or other offline marketing. You can expect a higher percentage of “tire-kickers” when generating leads online. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but know in advance you’ll have to sift and sort through a lot of rubble to find the diamond.

E-mail is also highly regulated, and the laws governing this medium are only getting more restrictive. You have to be very careful about how you send your messages and who you send them to. Make sure you ONLY send e-mail to people who have joined your mailing list or otherwise given you permission to send them e-mail. Using spam to win over a new prospect is NOT a good strategy.

That is why I recommend that you use e-mail marketing to supplement your current marketing efforts instead of using it to replace direct mail advertising. Send an e-mail newsletter AFTER you’ve sent it out via snail mail, not in lieu of.

Here’s another critical point about making e-mail work…

E-mail is simply another means of getting your message in front of prospects and customers, and it follows the same rules as any other marketing campaign. You must have a good, responsive list AND an offer or message that will entice them to buy or respond. If you don’t have a good grasp of the fundamentals of marketing, you won’t be able to save yourself with e-mail. A bad marketing campaign with an ill-conceived message, lackluster offer, and poor market to message match won’t magically work just because you are posting it online or in an e-mail.

The Truth About Renting E-mail Lists

Simply forget renting e-mail lists. If you were selling low-cost consumer items that could be sold around the world, rented e-mail lists might be a viable option; but when you are selling high-end, professional services in a limited geographic territory, it just won’t work. In my experience, rented lists of e-mail names are terribly off-target and of poor quality. Plus, most have rental minimums (meaning you cannot rent fewer than 5,000 names) and cannot be segmented by area. There MAY be a few exceptions to this that I’m not aware of, but generally speaking, don’t waste your time or money on rented e-mail lists.

The absolute BEST list to use is the one you’ve home-grown through direct response marketing and opt-in forms on your web site. Offer a free report, a free audio recording or CD, a free gift, or some other free resource and require the visitor to “opt-in” by filling in a form to provide their name, company, address, and e-mail.

If the visitor willingly gives you their email address, you now have permission to e-mail them until they say “stop.” NOTE: Make sure you include removal instructions at the end of every e-mail explaining how someone can remove themselves from your list. If you use a removal link, make sure it works.

To drive traffic and build your house e-mail list, I recommend using offline direct mail, pay-per-performance search engines like Google and Yahoo, and links from affiliates. The “build it and they will come” theory just doesn’t cut it online. You have to constantly promote your web site to get people to go to your web site and join your mailing list.

Keep in mind your click through rate may only be 1% to .5% on the search engines (click through is the percentage of people who actually click on your ad after seeing it), and your web site conversion may only be 5% (web site conversion if the percentage of new visitors who actually opt in. If you drive 100 people to your web site but only 5 join the mailing list, then you have a 5% conversion rate). You need to know this or you will be disappointed with the results. It takes a LOT of traffic to generate a handful of qualified leads. Is it worth it? You better believe it! The ROI (return on investment) can be enormous AND it’s a great auto-pilot way to acquire new customers.

3 Critical Questions To Answer
Before Creating Your E-mail Campaign

What Do You Want To Accomplish? Do you want to generate leads? Get customers to sign up for a new service? Purchase a product? Sounds obvious, but I wish I had a nickel for every person who didn’t think this through before sending out their e-mail. To maximize your success, choose ONE SINGLE OBJECTIVE for your campaign. Too many offers confuse the recipient and will lower your response rate.
What Action Do You Want People To Take? Do you want them to fill in a form? Call you? Download software? Every e-mail should contain a single call to action and offer a direct, ONE CLICK path to completing that action. My experience has shown that your response will drop by 50% or more for every click or step the visitor has to take to respond to your offer.

If you want them to fill in a form to receive a free report, you should direct them to a web page that reiterates the free report offer and has the form in plain sight. Do not make them click through multiple pages OR take them to a site where the response form is competing with 10 other offers and headlines. I’m sure you’ve experienced the same frustration after clicking on a sponsored ad in Google for a particular product or piece of information only to discover the page you go to does NOT contain what the ad promised.
What’s Your Irresistible Offer? The offer is what makes your response rate soar or fall flat on its face. Don’t get complicated or sell too hard in the e-mail message. Use it as a teaser to move them to take the next step. In most cases, that should be a web page that has a response form or sales letter.

But most importantly, remember that the ultimate marketing sin is being off-target and boring. Don’t send e-mail just because it’s a cheap way of marketing. There are busy people on the receiving end who want to be entertained, enlightened, and engaged. If you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t waste their time (or yours) adding to the spam problem.

How To Get Done-For-You E-mail Messages
That Are Certain To Generate New Client Demand

If you are like most computer consultants, WRITING marketing messages is the hardest part of creating a marketing campaign. What do you say? How should you say it? What offer should you make? How do you get the reader’s attention and then KEEP it long enough to sell something?

To get answers to the above questions AND proven marketing messages handed to you on a silver platter, make sure you sign up for one of the remaining Client Attraction and Marketing Blueprint Seminars.

You will learn…

How other SMB consultants are doubling the number of qualified leads and new clients they have using an “auto-pilot” client attraction marketing system that doesn’t require a sales team or large marketing budget to work.

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How to avoid wasting thousands of dollars and your precious time on marketing campaigns that don’t work. I’ll reveal the exact marketing media that has been proven time and time again to work best when marketing IT services.
How to position yourself as the most “in demand” consultant in your area with the highest fees and still get more business than cheaper competitors.
The 3 critical characteristics you must develop to unlock a flood of new sales and business opportunities; these have nothing to do with your marketing, the type of clients you serve, the way you price your services, or your competition.

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Auto-pilot marketing systems that will cut the time and effort of selling in half while virtually eliminating cheap clients. This is price-shopper pest control for your business!
How to get every ad, sales letter, brochure marketing campaign, website - and even your business card - to generate two to three times as many leads and sales as it currently is.
What type of marketing media is hands down the BEST for promoting your computer consulting services, and which ones will waste your time, drain your bank account, and leave you disappointed and frustrated.

This seminar is unconditionally guaranteed to give you specific, usable marketing strategies you can implement into your business and see results in your bank account within 6 weeks or less.

You will see actual campaigns and strategies that other small computer consultants used to double or triple their annual revenue, launch a profitable managed services practice, and transform the way they do business.

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