Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Email Marketing To Existing Leads

Posted by cread on 10/6/2006 at 6:35 PM ET 1000 Points
We are a payroll service bureau (think ADP but much smaller with better serivce and pricing) who markets over the internet. We offer a full service bureau at a competetive price and a Paperless Payroll at a very very aggresive price point. US market only. (www.custompayroll.com for full service and www.payrollonabudget.com for paperless discount service)

We have developed numerous leads over this year over the Internet (our own websites and purchased from lead services) but who have not bought our service for one reason or another.

Prime buying time in the payroll business is November/December to avoid the problems of changing services in mid year.

I am considering a series of emails to all of our existing leads pushing our discount service.

I wonder if we don't want to define a pathway for the prospects to follow. A series of email which educates and elucidates them without the sales hype, but none the less leads them down a path, willingly, into our embrace.

For instance maybe define what we want them to know to be able to make an informed decision to purchase our service.

Reintroduction
Who we are, maybe two email three days apart.

Education
What we can do for them without too much pitch. A series like the old Shell Oil drivers handbook series maybe 4 or 5 or more touting benefits.

Call to Action
Now you know who we are and what we can do Buy

Hard Close
It is getting late to change: call now or lose out.

We can use it on all leads through the end of October and then a more abbreviated or closer sequence for Nov and Dec leads as they come in.

Maybe a fifth classification of:

References
Certification (CPA's on staff). Aerican Payroll Association Member, Fidelity Insurance Bond in place for one million dollars, Better Business Bureau member, Rotarian, MBA, 15 years in business,
and so on. (maybe should be in reintoduction?)


Or maybe a different set of goals:

Awareness
Who we are

Consideration
What we can do, Case history, Phone Consultation, ROI, Benefits

Preference
Why our service, toot our horn, testimonials etc.

Purchase
Buy Now, Setup kits and forms included, almost an assumed close

Followup
Newsletters, user groups

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Charles Read
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 10/6/2006 at 7:38 PM Member
    Hi Charles,

    I am alex Kohl with Supremelists. Supremelists is a full service Multi-Channel Marketing company. We offer Custom List Building, Pre-Packaged Records, Data/Email Appending and Email campaign with complete campaign tracking services.

    By looking at your description I am very sure that what you want to do is reach out your existing clients to educate or send your information to your clients as well as expand your reach to new client.

    I would like to propose you for an email campaign to your existing clients as well for the industry which you would like to target. We have our in-house web development team who can be utilized for the content creation for the email campaign.

    You can tell us your target industry and we will send the email campaign to your existing clients as well as give your criteria for which we can run the campaing. I would like to make a mention that we have a minimum of $2,500.00 billing.

    Please let me know your interest and I will get back to you with additional information. You can reach me on my email address - alexk@supremelists.net

    I look forward to hear from you, Charles.
  • Posted by Inbox_Interactive on 10/8/2006 at 11:33 AM Member
    Hi, Alex -

    At least you're honest about why you're here: to place ads for your business.

    Unless something has changed in the last few months, this forum is more for the sharing of useful information and ideas. It's not the place to post replies that offer little more than a proposal for services.

    Granted, some of the people here do reply with the hope that work will come from the effort. However, these replies do usually carry with them a nugget or two of useful, actionable information.

    I see that you're new here, so I suggest that you look over a handful of previous threads to get a feel for the kind of content that is sought and provided on this forum.

    Welcome to the board. We all look forward to your future contributions.

    Paul
  • Posted by amarcomperson on 10/10/2006 at 1:06 AM Accepted
    Hey Charles,

    I am a marketing manager for a tech company ... so I am NOT trying to sell you something!! :)

    Honestly, e-mail campaigns can be effective but you will be lucky to get a 1-2% response rate. I would combine an e-mail campaign with either follow up phone calls, a print postcard campaign or a webinar. If you go the webinar route try to get one of your largest "well known" customers to talk about their payroll problems and how they solved them and then have someone from your team present your services. Another way to attack the webinar would be to touch on an industry hot topic and then find some well known guru to present the issue and then present your services.

    In our industry part our sales process is giving a demo which seems to be very effective in terms of getting our foot in the door ... perhaps via the phone you could offer them a no-obligation demo of your services.

    On a side note have you also considered attending local business or HR associations to network?

    I think you are on the right track if you send out an email that touches on industry hot topics or government compliance (if that is an issue in your industry) Then do the medium to soft sell by letting them know that your company solves that issue and at the end have a little capsule about your company ... much like you see at the end of the press release. Be sure to link the e-mail to a specially created page on your website ... in case they click through figure you have 2-3 seconds to capture their interest. (Also I would at most send out 2 emails per month) You don't want to leave a bad taste in their mouth.

    Also be sure to use some sort of e-mail website or program that will track who opened the email and who clicked through to your website. These types of services generally also have the ability to detect whether an html email or a plain text email should be sent as well.

    Hopefully this helps!!

    Thanks,


    Aimee
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