Walking into a business where the first dollar of profit is framed victoriously on the wall always reminds me how important the first customer is to any small business. Your first customer represents validation of your business idea and proof that your products and services are valuable enough to cause someone to part with his money in order to obtain them. The first dollar of profit is certainly cause for celebration. However, no matter how useful, important, unique, beneficial, or fitting your products or services are to consumers, no one will purchase them if you can’t effectively demonstrate that their value exceeds their price. Demonstrating your value takes a lot of communication as well as the application of sound marketing principles. E-mail, Web sites, business cards, signs, and postcards are all good ways to communicate your value to consumers, but some mediums are better than others for certain kinds of objectives, and all your marketing mediums have to work together to have the greatest impact. In this chapter, I show you how to use e-mail in combination with other marketing mediums and how to apply basic marketing principles to your e-mail marketing strategy so your framed dollar of profit won’t start to feel lonely.
Including e-mail in your marketing mix isn’t as simple as transferring more traditional message formats into electronic formats or abandoning more expensive mediums in favor of e-mail delivery. Maximizing your business’ e-mail marketing potential involves two ongoing tasks:
1. Analyzing the strengths and limitations of each medium in your
marketing mix
2. Developing messages that work harmoniously across multiple mediums
to achieve your objectives
Determining which mediums are likely to work together to make a significant, positive impact on your business is a matter of some trial and error. At the same time, though, some mediums have obvious advantages for small businesses. E-mail is one such example because it’s cost effective and because the returns on permission-based e-mail campaigns are generally outstanding. According to the Direct Marketing Association (www.the-dma.org) economic
impact study released in October 2006, e-mail marketing returned $57.25 for every dollar spent in 2005. The study also found that print catalogs generated $7.09 and non–e-mail Internet marketing generated $22.52 for each dollar spent on those marketing mediums. Combining e-mail with another medium can improve the returns on both mediums. The next sections explain the benefits of combining e-mail and other mediums together, and include tips for using various combinations. Sending commercial e-mail to complete strangers is illegal. To keep on the right side of the law, combine at least one other medium with e-mail in order to initiate relationships with prospective customers.
