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Holiday Greetings Are Not Enough
As an email marketer I am duty bound to extol the virtues
of holiday greetings sent via email rather than direct mail.
Email greetings are less expensive, easier to create, quicker
to deliver and likely have a better chance of being opened
than any direct mail these days. But, a holiday greeting alone
cannot compare to the results you can achieve with, say, an
email newsletter. Our good friend Michael Katz of Blue Penguin
Development agrees. Here is what he has to say on the subject:
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"Trash The Holiday Cards, Send an E-Newsletter"
by Michael Katz
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With December almost upon us, businesses everywhere will
soon be scrambling to get their customer holiday cards out the
door. Although this tradition may at first glance seem to make
sense, the fact is that sending holiday cards out once a year
to a list of people with whom you have infrequent contact is
expensive, and largely ineffective.
While doing a presentation recently to a group of small
business owners, I asked the audience three questions:
- Why do you send holiday cards?
- How many do you send?
- How much does it cost you?
The universal answer to question number one was, "to keep
in touch with my customers." Questions two and three had more
variation, but on average, each member of this group was
sending out about 500 holiday cards at a cost of about $1
each.
Here's the problem: Although it feels like an
accomplishment to drop off 500 cards at the post office, the
perception that this effort builds relationships and helps us
stay in touch with our customers is an illusion. It's a good
illusion, but it's an illusion all the same.
Remember that we are not really mailing 500 holiday cards.
Instead, we are sending out one card, 500 times. The
recipients don't know (or care) how many total cards we send,
and because each individual gets only one, there is no
cumulative impact related to the number of cards mailed.
From a relationship enhancing perspective, this tactic doesn't
have nearly enough frequency with any one customer to move the
needle in a positive direction. Add to this the fact that our
holiday card has no useful information, and is not requested
or anticipated by our customers, and it's likely that our
efforts - although well intentioned - will largely go
unnoticed.
Contrast this with the benefits of a regularly scheduled,
email based newsletter:
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Because sending email is free, cost ceases to be a
constraint, and achieving a sufficient amount of
frequency is no longer a problem.
By choosing topics that are valuable and of interest to
our customers, and by putting this information in the
form of an opt-in newsletter, we can be confident that
the people on our mailing list want what we are sending
them (further increasing the value of the
communication).
Because the medium is inherently two way, recipients
often respond, creating a dialogue with customers that
doesn't occur with holiday cards.
Finally, as the size of our mailing list expands and
contracts over time (as people opt in and people opt
out), we've got a real time barometer for gauging the
effectiveness of our communication (if not the strength
of the relationship we have with our customers)!
One final note and I'll leave you alone. Isn't it
interesting how the Internet has transformed a fundamental
business tradeoff? The primary consideration in deciding
how frequently to initiate outbound customer
communications used to be COST (i.e. pieces mailed
multiplied by cost per piece). In the digital world, it's
TIME and CONTENT. You can have an unlimited number of
communications, as long as you have the time to write them
and something to say.
Happy Holidays! (I won't be sending you a card).
Michael J. Katz is founder and Chief Penguin of
Blue
Penguin Development, Inc., a Reading, Massachusetts
consulting firm that helps clients generate effective
E-Newsletters; to generate leads, increase sales and
retain customers. Contact Michael at
michael@BluePenguinDevelopment.com
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Email
Marketing Video Tutorials Show you how to plan, create, and send
successful newsletters.
Read Email Marketing Tips
and Lessons written by Michelle Keegan, Constant
Contact's Email Marketing Diva.
Learn E-Marketing Lingo from the
glossary of Email
Marketing terms.
| by Michelle Keegan, Constant Contact's Email
Marketing Diva(TM) |
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