The Learning Center

I talk to business owners all the time about email marketing and I am constantly amazed at how many of them do not use email to help market their business. Most of our clients are local businesses like heating and air conditioning companies, automotive shops, catering companies, roofing companies, real estate companies, and other such businesses that are primarily local in nature.

Email Marketing and Past Customers

Personally I love email marketing for local businesses but what I like to use it for is to reach out to past customers. People you’ve already done business with. They know your product or service. They’re likely to remember if doing business with you was a good thing. They are people that have the potential to become evangelists for your business. And most importantly they are people that are likely to do business with you again.

A Client Example

With email marketing you can consistently market to people that know you but the beauty of email marketing is that you can target people when they need you most. For example one of our clients is a catering company. And this catering company provides wedding cakes and birthday cakes. These aren’t your average Walmart cakes. These cakes are custom over-the-top masterpieces. When we first got together with them I asked if they were collecting email addresses? The answer which I find is actually pretty rare was yes. So we put together an email program using those email addresses to reach out to past clients and proactively market the cakes and catering services for future needs.

Now the goal is to take our email marketing to another level. To do that we asked ourselves one fundamental question. What is the single most important piece of information that we could possess from the people on our email list? We determined that it is birthdays. Why birthdays? Because our client makes birthday cakes! To give you an example of how we would use such information let’s say that we know that a past customer has two children and we know the birthdays of each child because we have provided cakes in the past. Wouldn’t it be smart of us to send an email to the client a couple of weeks before each child’s birthday, asking if they need a birthday cake? If we did this may in turn prompt repeat business from that client. Hence the most important piece of data we can have is birthdays.

Another Example

Personally I love email marketing for reaching people that I’ve already done business with or are interested in what I do. The question is can I find one piece of information that would allow me to target my marketing to such clients as to increase the chance for them to do business with me again. To give another example, imagine you own an auto repair shop. And your business offers oil changes. Every time you do an oil change you put a sticker in the window that says the date and mileage of the next suggested oil change. Well wouldn’t it be smart to send a reminder email to that same person whose oil you just changed about two weeks before the next oil change would be do? How much repeat business could you be bringing in?

The Bottom Line

It’s a proven fact that it’s always easier and cheaper to generate repeat business than it is to garner new business. Email marketing is the perfect tool to do that. The customer is already familiar with you. They are more likely to open your emails. And if their first experience was good they are more inclined to do business with you again. The first step is to start collecting those emails and then determine if there is one piece of information or even multiple pieces that will help you target your emails or directly. If you can do that you’ll be mining for gold.

If you are interested in email marketing for your business and need help please call our office at 615-890-3600 or email us. All of our consultations are free and we always love meeting new people.