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Using E-Marketing to Promote Your Business
Internet retailers rely heavily on their ability to communicate using email – they have no face-to-face sales contact, so they have to work smarter and harder to generate business. And they’re very good at it. So what can traditional retailers learn from them? Quite simply, the answer is that effective communication and promotion equals more business. And there’s no reason why you can’t employ the same marketing techniques – albeit on a smaller scale!
So where do you start? Well, if you have Microsoft Outlook (part of Microsoft Office), you already have the tools to start e-marketing. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to build and manage a campaign.
Using Outlook for E-Marketing
First, you have to get the customer and prospect data into Outlook. You can do this manually (one contact at a time) or if you have a list in Excel or as a Database file, you can import them in bulk.
Adding Contact Information Individually
In the Contacts section of Outlook, start a new folder for, let’s say, your customers. To do this click on FILE on the top menu and select NEW and FOLDER. Give the folder a name (i.e. CUSTOMERS) and click OK.
This new folder will appear in the list on the left hand side of the screen. Click on it to ensure you are in the Customer folder you have created. Now you can add contacts to this new folder. To add them individually, click on NEW. Another screen appears for you to add information. Add as much or as little as you like. However, you must have the customer name and their email address, click SAVE when you have finished. Repeat this until you have your customers in the folder.
Contact Data in Bulk This is the easiest way to get all your data into Outlook. It works best if you import a “comma separated file” – called a CSV file. Excel spreadsheets and databases should be saved first in CSV format. To do this, open your list in Excel for example, and click on FILE > SAVE AS. In the box that comes up there is an option “SAVE AS TYPE”. Click on this list and select CSV (Windows). Click OK.
Back in Outlook, to add data in bulk, make sure you are on the correct folder (CUSTOMERS) under the CONTACTS section. Click on FILE on the top menu and select IMPORT AND EXPORT. The Import wizard appears. Select “Import from another program or file” and then run through the setup wizard, selecting CSV Windows as the type of file, select the file name to import and select the destination folder. On the next screen, map the fields to include (normally name, company and email) by dragging and dropping them into the Outlook list.
Working Within the Data Protection Act
Please note that you need to have permission to email these contacts under the Data Protection Act. If you don’t, your email campaign will be considered “spam” and you could be prosecuted! See www.dma.org.uk/content/Pro-BestPractice.asp for the document “Email Marketing Best Practice Guidelines.pdf”
Planning the Promotion
Now that your data is in Outlook, start thinking about your promotions. What are you going to promote, what discounts are you going to offer? Perhaps you have excess stock that you want to shift. Is this going to all your customers or a sub-section? Remember, you can build folders in Outlook for specific campaigns or you can build Distribution Lists. See the “help” section in Outlook for more information.
Linking in With Your Stock Management Software
If you have a good stock management system, you will have an integrated customer database within the system enabling you to manage customer data and log sales against each customer. You may have gathered customer information by running a loyalty scheme – a good stock management system will support and manage loyalty schemes for you. You would then know, for example, the people who bought the last England football kit and can mail these people when a new strip is released. The result is you can work far smarter and profile your customers far more effectively. Export data from your stock management system to a CSV file and import it into Outlook as described above.
Writing the campaign
The secret to successful E-marketing is to get straight to the point. Many people scan email without reading it, so you need a snappy, to the point headline. Follow this with short paragraphs and plenty of pictures if you can. Think about your key points and don’t forget to add a strong “call to action” with your telephone, web and email address clearly visible. Are you putting a time restriction on the promotion? If so, make it clear. Are there any terms and conditions to your promotion? Add these at the end of the email and be specific. For example, if your offer is a free football with every new England strip purchased, what is the make of the ball, what is its value, what is included in the “strip” – shirt, shorts, socks, boots – or just the shirt and shorts?
Mailing the Promotion
By now, you have your data in Outlook and have planned and written your promotion. Now you need to send it. In Outlook, select MAIL and click on NEW button on the top menu - a new message box appears.
- Link in to your address book by clicking on the TO button next to where you add an email address.
- At the top of this screen is the ADDRESS BOOK list, click on it and select the folder that you have added your data to (in our example this was CUSTOMER). In the TO address line – add yourself.
- Now select the contacts to mail from the list. A quick way to select all contacts is to highlight the top contact, hold down the SHIFT key on your keyboard and scroll down to the bottom of the list and click on the last contact. This selects them all. Click on BCC and click OK.
- BCC is “blind carbon copy”. This means that multiple people will get the promotion but they will not be able to see the other recipients. Beware, if you add your list to the CC box, all names will show on every email – not very professional!
- Now, add the title for the promotion in “subject” and add text for your promotion – use colour and bold large typefaces for headlines. Insert pictures – remember don’t add too much text – people only scan these emails.
- You may choose to write the promotion in Microsoft Word, using tables and adding pictures. You can then copy and paste this over to the Outlook mail.
- When you are ready, press SEND and it’s away. You may like to do a test run before sending the campaign. In this case don’t add the big list of recipients just add your address to the TO and BCC sections.
Heather Betts, Commercial Director, Kudos Software Ltd
heather@kudos-software.co.uk
www.kudos-software.co.uk
Outlook is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
