Keeping in Touch With Customers Using ENewsletters

We’ve all heard that it costs five times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep one. So what is the best way to reach customers, especially in these perilous times?

We recommend enewsletters a lot and the results that we’re seeing these days tell us just how successful these newsletters are at reaching people.

When we look at the analytics that show opens, we’re seeing a lot more opens than before. Some people are opening newsletters eight times, 11 times, 15 times.

That’s great news. It helps that people have more time to read their email, but also people find these emails interesting. We believe it’s the stories AND the images. Images that show before and after photos or that feature and new products are especially interesting.

Plus, one of the great things about email marketing is that people can come back to an email time after time to find more items they’re interested in, seeing more value that our clients provide.

Enewsletters are a great way to remind customers that you’re ready to meet their needs, to announce a business reopening or to announce new services that you’re planning to offer. Best if all, it’s cheap and it’s fast.

If you’re looking for great ways to stay in touch with your customers we’d be happy to help.

Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash

What's Your Marketing Strategy For Recovery?

Be ready to think differently about what your customers want.  Consumers think differently in a downturn so we need to adjust too.

After the last recession the Harvard Business Review broke consumers down into four segments – Slam On The Brakes, Pained But Patient, Comfortably Well Off, and Live For Today.  The first two economize in every way.  The last two don’t. 

They all look at purchases in the same ways – Essentials, Treats, Postponables and Expendables.  Priorities can shift – for example a treat could become an expendable. 

As we go into recovery map your clients by what segment they’re in to understand where they are in terms of purchasing.

The more you can position your products and services as essential – not in the current legal sense, but in the consumer sense – the better chance you have to engage them in the near term.

Need some help with that? We’ll be happy to work with you on a strategy.

Email Marketing For Leads

Image by rawpixel on unsplash.

About 70 percent of marketers use email in promotions. Why do businesses like email marketing?  It’s a valuable channel for both lead generation and lead nurturing.

Email is one of the most powerful tools for engaging consumers and generating high levels of ROI.  But previous research has revealed a disconnect between how marketers view their email campaigns and how recipients perceive the messaging.  Just eight percent of consumers are “very satisfied” by the efforts.  That’s from an Adobe-commissioned study by Forrester released in June.

We focus on eliminating that disconnect by helping businesses zero in on consumers’ needs and interests.  We love email marketing.  We especially enjoy working with small business owners who need experienced professionals to make their email marketing work.

A dollar-saving bonus makes it great for small businesses.  Email marketing costs a lot less than many other marketing tools.  There's no printing and no postage, making it a low cost marketing bargain.

Own A Small Business? Here's Why You Need A Website

Why You Need A Website

Control the best information about your business on the web.

Here's a scary small business statistic - 42 percent of all small businesses don’t have a website.  That’s better than it’s been.  But the news is not all good.

In the midwest 58 percent of small businesses don’t have their own site.  And 77 percent of very small businesses –with gross revenue under a million dollars – don’t  have a site.

If your business doesn’t have its own site and someone tries to look you up on the web what are they going to find?  They’re only going to find stuff that other people have posted about your business.  And it may not be all that complimentary.

If you want to control the best information about your business on the web you have to have your own site.

When you talk with small business owners about why they don't have a website they're likely to say they can't afford it.  That's just not the case.

Sure, there are agencies who won't talk to you for less than $5,000.  We're not one of them.  

Part of our mission is to make professional marketing services affordable for small businesses.  

Our websites start at $1,000.  That includes five pages of content optimized to give your site the best shot at online visibility.

When you decide you want to take control of your business's presence on the web we'd like to talk with you.

Making Web Sites Affordable & Effective for Small Businesses

Can a small business afford not to have a web site?

Three years ago 52% of small businesses didn’t have a web site.  A new survey shows that now 46% of small businesses don’t have a web site.

That’s progress.  But it’s still 46%.  That means nearly half of small businesses aren’t going to be found by potential customers who search for products and services they need and want. 

Three Reasons
Ask those 46% why they don’t have a web site and you’re likely to get at least one of these three reasons.

One – They think a web site isn’t relevant to their type of business.  Actually consumers search for everything online.  Just ask Google – they handle an estimated 5.5 billion searches every day.

Two – They think they can’t afford it.  They really can’t afford not to have a web site.

Three – They’re using social media and they think that’s enough.  The thing is you just can’t do on social media everything you need to do to explain your business to people who want to know if you can meet their needs.

“We’re committed to making web sites affordable for small business owners.”

— Ruth Steele Walker, President, Due North

We’re Looking For That 46% Who Don’t Have A Web Site.
Call us hopelessly optimistic, tell us we’re tilting at windmills, even suggest we’re on a mission impossible.  That’s fine with us. 

We’re committed to making web sites affordable for small business owners.  Web sites that articulate details of their business and their mission.  Web sites that proudly proclaim to the entire world the unique value – and added value – of the products and services they provide.  Web sites that help prospective customers find them.

Let’s talk about the whole perception that web sites are expensive.  It depends on who you ask.  Like many other creative service providers web developers are all over the scale in terms of price.  Some of them won’t talk with you for less than the price of a luxury dream vacation.

Our Sites Start At A Fraction Of Those Rates
It’s part of our commitment to small business owners in this region.

Looking for an affordable and effective web site for your business?  Give us a call for a no-cost consultation.  Or use our convenient contact form to send us an email.

Facebook Video Ads: Great for Small Businesses

Video makes compelling and engaging ads on Facebook.  This was shot on a phone!  click through to see the ad & watch the video on Facebook!

Video on Facebook is an efficient way to reach people
Small businesses can do this.  We can help you do it easily and at a reasonable cost.

Here’s an example.  Leelanau Uncaged on Saturday, September 24 had a great turnout.  One business manager told us it was their biggest day of the whole year.

Part of the promotion was a Facebook video ad.
We took a 23 second video that was shot on a phone last year.  We turned it into a Facebook ad and here’s what happened.

• We reached 29,000 unique individuals
• We had 33,000 video views – as many as 3,000 views a day

We Make It Easy
We did nothing to the video – no production at all.  So why did it work so well?  We did a few things in configuring the ad that made all the difference. 

The cost was less than peanuts.  The turnout was great and local businesses had a phenomenal day.

Looking for a way to make Facebook work for your business?
Give us a call for a no-cost consultation.  Or use our convenient contact form to send us an email.

Email Marketing that Works - Three Tips to Success

Is email a cornerstone of marketing for your business?  It should be.

A lot of small business owners seem to struggle with how to succeed with email marketing.  Here are three tips for using your email marketing campaigns to help increase revenue.

Number One.  Make An Offer Your Customers Can’t Refuse
Giveaways are great, especially giveaways that don’t cost you anything yet help your customers with a problem or a need.  For example you may offer a free guide covering five main points that customers need to know before they buy.  Discounts are also useful to get people in the door.  These days a discount on a new service or a new item generally needs to be at least 20 percent to get someone’s attention.

Number Two.  Your Email Needs Compelling Headlines
Make your email headlines specific and timely – and include a call to action.  And test the headlines.  A great thing about email is there’s no cost other than time to split your campaign into two flights and test different headlines.  Then you can see which headline pulls more response. 

Number Three.  Ask for the Sale.
How many emails do you get that contain some information that’s nice to know but they don’t give you any clue about what they want you to do.  This is where the call to action gets serious.

We Love Email Marketing
And we're good at it.  If you're trying to figure out how to make your email list work for you give us a call for a no-cost consultation.  Learn more about our email marketing services.

A Milestone for Us - Our 10th Anniversary!

This month we celebrated our tenth anniversary in business as Due North Marketing Communications Inc.!

We're happy to have made it this far.  We incorporated in an economy that seemed as challenging as '08.  Actually it turned out to be a good strategy because as companies downsized they were happy to outsource.  Small businesses turned to small agencies who could keep costs down because of low overhead.

We discovered we loved the small business niche.  Entrepreneurs are great fun to work with.  They know they need some help and they also know they need someone with the expertise to advise them on what they need to do in marketing.

What we enjoy most is working with small business owners who have exactly that outlook.  That's where we can be most productive and helpful.

We're happy to bring our experience with large organizations to the small business arena.  Mom and pop shops may need those skills even more than those we've worked with who had budgets in the millions. 

We've opened up access for small businesses to the world of affordable Facebook services, online video that engages like nothing else, web sites that don't cost a bazillion dollars, email newsletters that save the cost of printing and postage and that can reach prospects wherever it's most convenient for them.  And on and on.

That's what our commitment to small business is all about - great service at a great  price with more than 40 years of professional expertise as a starting point.

Aren't we ever going to retire?  Not as long as we're having this much fun and feeling as appreciated as we do now.  We tried to retire once and we got bored.  We have traveled, vacationed and relaxed more than we ever imagined.  Plus we missed the work we love, which makes it seem not like work at all.

No, no hoopla around this anniversary.  We're saving that for the 25th.

But Can They Read It?

Writing for Your Audience

You pour your heart and soul into growing a thriving business.  And if you're driven enough to succeed a big part of what gets you there is the way you marshal your marketing communications.  How well you articulate what you do and what you sell may very easily make the difference between going back to the office with a new client or wondering where you went wrong.

So it's more than worthwhile to be as sure as you can that what you're saying is what your prospect is actually hearing.  Today that means getting it right in social media as well as in your traditional media, collateral literature and interpersonal communications. Your Facebook business page, your blog, your email newsletter, your web site all have to communicate effectively.

The question is how.  One way is to use something called a reading comprehension scale.  It's a tool that helps you figure out how easy it is to read what you wrote.  Some business owners are surprised to find that they write at a very high level.  That's a good reflection on their intellect, language skills, knowledge and experience.  But if their prospects are more comfortable reading at a more moderate level the intended message may be lost in a lot of complex compound sentences that contain lots and lots of long words.

Two Main Tools

The two main readability tools used today are the Flesch Reading Ease scale and the Flesch-Kincaid index.  Google them and you'll find more than you wanted to know.  The gist of it is the Flesch scale ranks a writing sample on a 100-point scale.  The higher it scores the easier it is to read.  The Flesch-Kincaid index estimates the grade level reading proficiency needed to comprehend the text.

Our general rule of thumb is to shoot for at least 60 on the Flesch scale and no higher than 8th grade on Flesch-Kincaid.  If your text requires greater reading skill it's a good bet that your reader is going to need some extra time to understand what you're trying to say.  So save them the time and say it as simply as possible.

Lowest Common Denominator Argument Misses the Point

We've run into way too many wannabe highbrows who are self-described sticklers on grammar and proper English.  Invariably they accuse us of pandering to the lowest common denominator by using simple straightforward language.

Guess what?  I'd rather have a piece of copy that someone can read through once and understand it than an elegant grammatically perfect construction that people have to read three times before they think they know roughly what you may be getting at.

Even those who read at post-graduate levels can find it more comfortable to read at a much lower grade level.  Why?  Because it's faster, it's easier to understand and retention is better.  Stuff that in your lowest common denominator!

Both the Flesch and Flesch-Kincaid are baked into a number of software applications these days from word processors to blogs.  I was dumbfounded when I saw a post today on a respected social media site in which the author recommended ignoring these tools.  Instead, this author opined, you should just write for your audience.

Seems to me that's the whole point.  These scales can tell you where your copy is in readability and how comfortable it will be for your reader to get through it.  If you're writing for a blog that's read primarily by university faculty, rocket scientists, think tank experts and other brain trusts write with a bit more complexity.  But if you're writing for us mere mortals keep it at a comfortable level.

Readability is Vital on Facebook

This is particularly true these days when most of what happens on social media like Facebook happens on mobile devices.  That's because we're all trying to fit in as much as possible during each hectic day, and our smart phones and tablets are convenient means of reading whatever we can whenever we have a chance.

We're looking for knowledge, yes – but convenient knowledge.  If it's too difficult to read forget it – I'll go back to Google and look for something that gives me what I need to know quickly, straightforwardly and simply.  And if you don't do it chances are your competitor will.

So which would you rather be?  The choices are A, a grammatically correct stickler who writes proper English but doesn't communicate very well or B, a colloquial speaker and writer who articulates simply and well – and thrives as a result.

I'll take a B any day.

(Writing for readability doesn’t have to be hard and it doesn’t have to be perfect.  This was written quickly and the score is good enough.  Flesch Reading Ease – 64, Flesch-Kincaid – 8.6)

Email Marketing With A Newsletter

We're frequently surprised to find small business owners who have an email database of customers - and they're not using it.  Email newsletters are one of the fastest, easiest and most cost efficient ways of reaching your clientele with important product and service updates that they're likely eager to hear.

When it comes to receiving permission based marketing communications 77% of consumers said they prefer to get it through email.

Yes, you need to be creative about your email content.  Equally important if you really want your email to produce you need to spend at least as much time on the strategy behind the email.

Email is easy to use for split testing, or AB testing.  For example you can test the subject line – and most serious email marketers do.  Try subject line A and subject line B.  And keep testing to see what works best.  Don't stop there - you can test any number of elements in your email to determine if there's an offer that works better than others.

Choose your email platform with care.  Our experience is that some are much more straightforward to work with than others.  And if you're not using a platform that can be easily viewed on a mobile device you're missing out on 75 percent of your potential target.

Our clients who use email newsletters for marketing love it.  They like the direct channel to their customers, they like the quick turnaround from concept to delivery, and they like the fact that it's so much less costly and more immediate than surface mail.

Another advantage is that there are few barriers to entering the email marketing realm.  All you need is a good permission based email list and some great content about your products and services. 

And as long as you provide useful information and great offers you'd be surprised how frequently you can connect with your clients without wearing out your welcome.