Clicks 'n Conversions Blog

This article was first published  November 18, 2008 on the Tatum Marketing blog

In my November 4th post, I offered up 3 e-mail tips to help entrepreneurs better connect with their prospects. Here’s the remaining 4 tips from this two-part story….

Mining for New Business Tip #4: Move Past the Techie Language to Demonstrate Tangible Business Benefits
Gone are the days when people would jump on the latest technology “just because.”

Technology is now just the means to the end. You’ll go far if you can move beyond the so (e.g. we offer virtualization technology services) to discuss the so what (i.e. the real, underlying benefits Sally can realize by leveraging this technology).

Then, back up your claims with tangible proof. The original letter claims that technology was used to “drive significant savings,” but there’s nothing tangible to back it up, making it sound like meaningless dribble.

Numbers, specific examples, and before-after comparisons will help drive your point home.

Mining for New Business Tip #5: Ease into your Offer, but Don’t Try to Go Straight for the Sale
After you’ve connected with the reader and established some level of credibility, go ahead and subtly pitch your services… but tread lightly.

Most B2B products and services are complex sales, which unfortunately translates to a long sales cycle. At this point your only goal with an introductory e-mail is to pique their interest so they’ll want to “learn more.”

Mining for New Business Tip #6: Don’t Forget to Include a P.S.
Believe it or not, studies have shown that the P.S. portion of an e-mail is the most read and recalled.

I understand this can be an especially hard concept to grasp, and I’ve even had some techies react to this advice with cries of “cheesy.”

But this is a case where you need to abandon what you “think you know,” relying instead on the marketing experts who have proven out this theory time and again.

The advice is simple: Add a P.S. to your e-mail, reiterating the primary message you want the reader to retain.

Mining for New Business Tip #7: Don’t Forget to Build in a Way to Measure Response to your Solicitation
Once your e-mail hits the ether, how do you know when you’ve struck a nerve with the reader?

List hosting providers (e.g. SparkList, Constant Contact) offer valuable e-mail marketing statistics such as open rate and click thrus, but for the new business owner who’s generating a handful of e-mails at most, a landing page is a practical alternative.

Set up a landing page where the reader can go to learn more about something that was highlighted in your letter (e.g. Joe can give Sally a link where she can learn more about how virtualization helped the two companies mentioned in his e-mail).

Be sure to install a web analytics program (Google Analytics, WebTrends, etc.), or embed your own code in the landing page, so you can count the number of times the landing page was viewed.

Then, direct the reader to your page in the P.S. portion of your e-mail. Why there? Because the P.S. portion of any e-mail is the most frequently read and recalled.

Putting it all Together
Putting all these suggestions to work, here’s a mock-up of Joe’s revised introductory letter:

Would you like to have your own high-tech marketing collateral featured in a future story? Sign up online at http://www.marketinglure.com/marketinglure-cc-landingpage.html.

Sue Anderson
Marketing Lure, Inc.