Today's customers demand more than a "satisfaction-targeted" sale! More and more customers are seeking a meaningful and personal-connection experience when they give you their business.

The following are two articles which will give appreciation of the value and effect of well-structured email contact in the development of Customer Connection after the sale!

This connection strategy requires that the customer be asked - and provides - their name and email address. The very best way to present this is for the provision of a free Newsletter and/or "Sales and Specials" notification direct to each customer personally. This can be either by sending an individual email to each customer (requires "First Name" mail-merging) or by BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) bulk-sending.

As indicated in our website, the email can either contain your Newsletter (either updated by you or by us) or have a short hyperlink to a Newsletter section within your website (updated by us).

Extract from: "The 'Rhythm Method' Works for E-Mail!"
Lydia Sugarman, Private Label Interactive
May 2007

"It is not unusual for your e-mail marketing strategy to be one of the many details of launching an online presence relegated to something that "we'll get to when we get everything else up and running."

But I promise you that if you incorporate e-mail marketing from your earliest strategy sessions, you will be rewarded many times over. Like the exercise of writing a business plan, it helps you focus on what you want and need to do to have a successful online venture. A well-considered e-mail marketing strategy should be deeply integrated into your website design, making it easy for your visitors to subscribe while automating nearly everything to help you manage your visitor information and begin the dialogue with them.

Following are a few tips to get you started with a rhythm of your own:

* Develop an editorial schedule. Relevant to what you are doing and what you want to accomplish, your broadcast may be monthly, weekly, bi-monthly. Prevailing market research tells us that touching people at least once per month keeps your business in mind. Build your schedule around the events that make sense for your business or create events to give you a reason to contact your readers.

* Keep Your Design Consistent. Have a design for your e-mail that is consistent from e-mail to e-mail. Of course, it can evolve, but consistency of design helps to brand you -- in a good way. Keep regular features in the same position from issue to issue, including the special article front and centre.

* Give something of value in each issue. Don't be afraid to give away information, special offers, and some pure fun, like a joke or site of the month.

* Be consistent in who is sending the e-mail. You want your readers to immediately recognize that the e-mail is from you or your company so they will open it and not delete it. If they know your company name, use that along with the name of a real person.

* Use a compelling subject line. This is where you will spend the most time, depending on your business. There has been a tremendous amount of research done to learn what makes readers open and respond to e-mails. Of course, everyone's customers are going to be different to some extent. However, it's been found that people respond to something that has "real meaning" for them. $10 off, Free Shipping, and Limited Time Offer are extremely effective and compelling versus, say, 20% off. What does 20% off mean? Oops! They're on to the next e-mail. Be sure to clearly explain what your offer is in the body of your e-mail. There's nothing worse than a potential customer who feels misled.

* Take advantage of the click-through. Recent research from MarketingSherpa shows that 39% of viewers accept offers on Thank You pages. Where do people go now when they click on a link in your e-mail or on your site? Are you taking advantage of this upsell opportunity? What's most exciting about this statistic is that it is consistent year-over-year, only dropping 1% in the last 5 years.

* Engage your readers in a conversation. "Markets are conversations" is the first thesis of the Cluetrain Manifesto (www.cluetrain.com), a seminal online marketing book that is available free online.

* Relax and have fun putting together your newsletters! That comes through and makes your readers more receptive to whatever it is you're offering. Having a strategy in place from the beginning makes all this possible.

Getting the rhythm of putting out a regular newsletter is half the battle. Try it. You'll find that the rhythm method actually does work."

Extract from : "Why Consumers Open E-mails"
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, Editor, Web Marketing Today
April 2007

"Just how can you get recipients to open your e-mails? Return Path recently released their Third Annual Email Consumer Survey. It was conducted in late December 2006 with 2,413 respondents, ages 18-54, in the U.S. and Canada. It found that these factors influenced consumers to open and read e-mail:

Of course the subject line, overall attractiveness, and offers are important according to this survey, but significantly less important than "know and trust the sender" (56%) and "previously opened and thought valuable" (51%). I learn two lessons from this.

1. E-Mail as Relationship Building
First, effective e-mail marketing is about building relationships of trust with the recipients. These are not "mass" mailings, but e-mails to individuals whom we respect and with whom we are building a relationship. E-mails sent to exploit, deceive, or take advantage of recipients will immediately decrease opening of further e-mails.

You have one good chance to build this relationship. When someone signs up for your newsletter or regular e-mail, he will probably remember your company name as it appears in the "From" field and open it to see what you have. If he likes it, he may open it in the future. If he doesn't he may or may not unsubscribe, but he certainly won't open it henceforth with the same positive attitude.

If he does like what he sees, he'll be likely to open it in the future, since 32% of respondents said "I only opened the e-mails I normally read." You may become one of the select few whose e-mails get through not only spam filters, but also the recipient's "trust filter."

Three action steps seem evident:

A. Help the recipient to get to know you. You need to e-mail regularly enough that the recipient gets acquainted with your e-mails. Too infrequent and she won't remember you. Too often and your e-mail will remain unopened. For many companies that frequency sweet spot is one to two times per month, though you'll need to determine this by testing open rates and revenue generated.

B. Help the recipient to trust you. In Walt Disney's 1977 movie "The Rescuers," Madame Medusa says famously about the child she has captured, "I force them to like me!" You can't force recipients to trust you, but you can be trustworthy. You can temper your claims so they are believable.

C. Offer a consistent, personable "voice." The third-party corporate voice doesn't build a relationship except with a brand. But a consistent corporate spokesperson is able to build a relationship with readers, especially if he or she writes in a personable way.

2. E-Mail as a Value Proposition
Second, e-mail recipients must view your e-mail as valuable or they won't read it in the future.

I subscribe to and scan e-mails from Staples, Tiger Direct, and CompUSA. Why? Because they seem to have good offers. Even if I don't need what they offer right now, they may have what I need next time. When I'm convinced that they no longer offer what I might need at good prices, I'll stop reading them.

As the publisher of an e-mail newsletter to over 140,000 subscribers, I am very well aware that every newsletter I send may be the last a recipient will ever read. If I send out a newsletter of questionable value, I can get an unsubscribe or a silent vow not to open my newsletter any more.

This could freeze me into inaction, since I'm aware that every newsletter I send always results in a certain number of unsubscriptions. Rather, this knowledge creates in me a commitment not to send out a newsletter unless I believe it offers good value to my readers. It can't be merely self-serving. E-mail newsletters must offer value to readers. That's the unwritten contract I have with you, my e-mail reader -- and that you have with your readers."

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