Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

there are many things to focus on. Two of the most important are your list and your offer. How can you identify local people who have ongoing needs for meeting rooms? And what kind of an offer might they respond to? For example, could you have some sort of a free event? Could you have some sort of a free educational opportunity which would be a good use of their time and would be a chance to showcase your facilities?

Include photos and videos showcasing the facilities.

The biggest challenge is creating an email that will work well across all the popular email clients. There are many and each handles email slightly differently. How easily you can do this will depend largely upon the platform you choose to use, e.g., Constant Contact, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, etc.

No matter which platform you choose, the first thing to decide is which email clients you plan on supporting. If the platform you are already using allows you to, look at which email clients your subscribers are currently using.

If your research shows that almost none of your recipients are using a particular client - say Outlook 2007 - I would advise you ignore it completely. Knowing which email clients you are going to target will make it a lot easier for you to design your flyer.

There are some HTML considerations worth noting - such as making sure that you use tables in your email. Many email clients don't support some of the more modern CSS techniques like float or padding.

If you're designing a flyer, no doubt you will be including images. The most important thing to remember here is that, for many email clients, images won’t be visible by default for most people. If you design with that assumption, you will be forced to keep things simple; ensuring that no important content is hidden because it's in an image.

Also take into account mobile email - which increasingly is the way that most people consume their email. Keep your email to no more than 600 px wide and remember that a lot of mobile devices will automatically resize text.

On the marketing side, test subject lines if you are able - select two subject lines that you want to test and send each to a portion of your list. Measure the results, however you do that - clickthroughs, conversions, bookings or whatever and see which heading converts best.

Also test headings, lead images, introductory text and, of course, offers. On the subject of offers, make sure that they're time sensitive - give people a reason to respond quickly and provide strong calls to action throughout the email. Don't bombard people but make it clear what you would like them to do.

At the same time, make sure that you offer people valuable information. Those that aren't ready to buy or have no reason to do so right now will happily unsubscribe and then you'll lose them forever. Consider also offering your list valuable information. A series of free guides or ebooks that they can access from your site because they're a subscriber (and website visitors can access IF they subscribe to your list) will help you build a strong list of interested and loyal subscribers. Consider writing short guides like a Corporate Event Checklist. Or titles like "The 9 things you need to know before booking your next conference room".

There are many others but as a parting thought, make sure that you provide as many ways to get in touch. Not everyone will want to book from your website (assuming you offer that facility) and amongst others, some will prefer to email you, others to talk on the phone, etc.)

I hope this helps.

Regards

Patrick

Also, what is your approach on repeat sales? Target previous bookings? Getting word of mouth or email referrals?

Do you target your message and service offerings to target audience? Non-profits or community groups want low-cost. Businesses want no hassle and how to glam it up. Training or promotional sessions require variable use of the space.