How To Use E-Mail To Sell More of Your Products And Services
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As with any new technology people are often reluctant to try it, or the opposite happens; they run out eager to get it and once the novelty is over never use it again. So is true with electronic mail, although it has been around for a while and some people can't live without it, others who could truly be benefiting from its use, just aren't for whatever reason. For businesses, especially those who have a web site, an e-mail address is a must, as is familiarity with how this efficient, low cost piece of technology can help your business grow in ways not possible before now.

If you run a business here are some of the advantages of having e-mail capabilities

Customer and company interaction

Customers can e-mail you for any number of reasons including product information and customer service inquiries. Contrary to what people have said about the "impersonal, cold world of technology", e-mail actually gives people a greater sense of connectivity and feeling of importance. Especially for the customer who can send an e-mail message to a company, get a personal response to a concern he or she may have, on their time as opposed to having to telephone during business hours, perhaps absorb long distance charges, get put on hold, and get the run around that most of us have experienced at some time.

If you also have a company web site with e-mail access, you add another dimension to what you can offer customers. For example a visitor to your web site wants more information on the specs of product ABC for use in a specific application. They simply have to type out a brief message and select "submit" or "send" and presto the message is sent to your e-mail address. The immediacy of e-mail provides incredible power. All of this in a few seconds when before the era of electronic communication, the prospect had to take down your phone number, make the call and often times get a busy signal or get put on hold. Or the even greater delay method of jotting down your address, writing a letter, getting an envelope, stamping it and taking the letter off to a post box. Today's consumer wants; accountability, reliable customer service, and the feeling that their business matters. E-mail bridges the gaps and provides more of what the customer wants and when they want it. This assumes of course that the business offering the technology does the footwork to make the most of the technology and has competent personnel to do so.

On-line Purchasing

Product purchases can be made via e-mail provided you offer your customers a secure method of ordering. Discuss security with your e-mail provider to determine if you are on a secure server and whether e-mail messages are being encrypted. Despite popular belief that e-mailed credit information is safe, this is not entirely true. Mastercard and Visa are in discussion with Microsoft and other companies for making secure transactions a reality, but there is a way to go yet.

E-mail Lists

Customers can be sent a company newsletter, product announcement list or anything else that was being sent out previously by regular mail to a customer list.

It's no secret that once you have made a customer, you want to keep that customer satisfied and coming back to your business for future purchases. One way of doing this is by sending to the customer (at their request) a regular mailing by e-mail. For example, you might send a newsletter filled with useful information, new product announcements, preferred customer offers and more. The only real limit is your imagination. You stay in touch with your customers, you reinforce their importance as valued customers, and you stay ahead of the competition because your information is before them for their ease of use and convenience. The cost for all this? The time it takes to create the mailing, create the customer e-mail list, and send the messages. Oh and of course the cost of your e-mail service; $5 a month roughly. Not bad compared to perhaps thousands of dollars in direct mail costs through traditional sources.

An electronic mailing can also allow you to expand your potential customer base by inviting interested parties to submit their e-mail address to receive your free electronic mailing of a useful newsletter, product announcements etc. Since the mailing is free to recipients it's not hard to get people to submit a request to receive it.

The ability to attach pre-prepared files for specific purposes

By creating a number of documents that are made available on request you can send out information with the click of a mouse. For example if you have a document related to your product line this can be sent to someone inquiring about such, as an attached document. Simple type in your e-mail message, select attach document, select the document to be attached and press send. Presto, only about 30 seconds and the prospect has your information. The same could be done with other pieces of information that customers routinely request such as price lists, distributor locations etc. Now if you get a large volume of requests for specific information and you are finding it time consuming keeping up with the demand, you have another option - e-mail on demand.

E-Mail on Demand (Automatic response to information requests)

E-mail on demand (EOD) allows you to prepare files that can be sent automatically to anyone who requests more information about your product or service. EOD is similar to an autoresponder but more user friendly, attractive and inexpensive. Entire catalogs, brochures, price lists, product information, virtually unlimited information can be offered to your prospects without great expense to you, and in a manner that is convenient for prospects. An "e-mail on demand center" can be set up within your web site as a kind of help booth or information desk for visitors to your site (for an example see; http://www.worldprofit.com/fmdemo.htm) Visitors use a simple check box form to indicate the information they would like to receive, they then type in their e-mail address and press submit. Within seconds the information selected is sent and appears in their e-mail box.

E-mail on demand offers advantages for both the user and the advertiser. The user of the system can read the information later at their leisure after they have logged off and therefore avoid costly online time. For the advertiser the advantage lies in freeing up time that would have been spent manually attaching and sending information every time someone requests it. The major advantages then, are the ease of use and the time saving factors, and of course the cost savings associated with sending out information electronically rather then by mail or fax.

Cost Savings

An e-mail address costs about $5 a month depending on how many e-mail addresses you have, and whether or not you have added some technical features. The bottom line is that e-mail offers considerable savings once you shift from the tradition of mailing and faxing materials out, to the practice of sending it instead by electronic mail. And you get that warm feeling of not contributing to further mass destruction of our forests due to the reduction in paper waste. You will of course have to assign someone (hopefully with some technical knowledge) to be in charge of handling the e-mail (unless you do it yourself), but given that you have to have somebody answering the phones, and stuffing envelopes anyway, it really amounts to a shift in tasks rather than creating of a new position. In actual dollars and cents terms it works out to great cost savings. Here is why:

• reduced long distance telephone and fax charges
• reduced mailing supply and postage costs
• reduced printing costs and paper costs
• reduced time costs.

Having an e-mail account but not checking for new mail.

Believe it or not this is a big problem for some people. We know people who have paid to have e-mail and then refuse or forget to check or use it. Remember the advantage of e-mail is that it is instantaneous. E-mail is sent to your address and within seconds it appears in the recipient's e-mail box. Now if the recipient doesn't bother to check for new or incoming mail on a regular basis than the advantage is lost.

Not being familiar with how to use it and what it can offer.

For example, the use of a signature file (similar to a letter head stamp at the foot of your e-mail message). We receive dozens of e-mail from people who don't provide any type of information with their message, despite having just sent a message requesting information on a specific service. Now, assuming that this person has just done this ignorantly, rather than on purpose for reasons of anonymity, this is foolish. Every e-mail you send out should have a signature block at the bottom that says your name, address, contact info, perhaps your web address, and even slip in a little plug about that month's special "2 for 1 offer" on product ABC. To apply a signature file to your e-mail messages select from your e-mail software the signature option. Type in what you want the signature block to say, select "submit" or "save" and voila, each time you send out a message that signature block is attached. No need to type the information in every time, and if you prefer, the signature file can be removed (turned off) for certain e-mail messages simply by selecting " no signature."

Limitations in the formatting and structure of e-mailed messages is a problem.

When you send an e-mail message you can forget about trying to format it into columns, or adding in underlining, bolding or italics because it simply doesn't work. No, e-mail is not a publishing tool - yet - so you will have to live with a pretty bland presentation. Nor do most programs allow spell checking, so be sure to proof read anything you send out or face the embarrassment of having possibly sent out an error ridden message to 5,000 people.

Lack of emotional content in just the printed text.

As human beings we rely to a large extent on the unspoken aspects of a message that are gleaned from facial expressions, body tone and a sense from the personal proximity to that person. In a straight text message it can sometimes be easy to misinterpret a message that may have been sent in an innocent, joking or teasing manner but is read by the recipient and perceived erroneously as perhaps sarcastic or downright nasty. To overcome this difficulty, an "e-mail language" has developed to add some of the emotional cues back into electronic messages. This consists of simply adding characters at the end of a sentence to indicate the tone in which the message is sent. Here are some examples:

: - ) is the sign for happy; ; - ) is a wink; : - ( is a sad face.

Hundreds of these "expression" signs have been developed to add emotional content to your messages. You can find out more about this on the Internet or get one of the many books that have been written on the topic.

Another example of conveyance of tone is the use of all capital letters in an e-mail message which is considered to be YELLING and very rude. A sure sign of a "newbie" is the tendency to send e-mail messages that are written in all capital letters.

Lack of a standard e-mail software program.

This can mean lack of compatibility amongst users, and service providers. With everybody using a different program it makes for great difficulty in getting technical support and assistance as required.

Summary

Convinced that you want to get e-mail? You will need a personal computer and a connection with an Internet service provider. We recommend going with a local service provider rather than one of the major online companies. You will get better service and better rates, just check in your phone book under "service providers" or "Internet". The cost for e-mail is only about $5 a month and the provider will give you the software you need to send and receive e-mail. A program that we recommend is Eudora Mail. Your Internet provider will assign you an e-mail address and you should receive instructions on how to get started.

There you have it, a brief summary of what e-mail can do to help you sell more of your products and services. Yes, there are some problems with e-mail but they are things that will eventually be worked out with new and better software, user familiarity, and wider acceptability. The problems are extremely minor given the huge advantages we have outlined.