Nothing works as well as a smartly executed content based email marketing plan for your business, Debbie Mayo-Smith writes. Photo / Getty Images
Is it me being stupid or are the vast majority of small businesses just plain lazy (or worse dumb) when it comes to marketing?
Personally I cannot comprehend why this:
• American (penchant for shopping)
• Mother of 6 (lots of different retail needs)
• Master(?) of two dogs and two cats
• Well heeled (willing to spend)
• Technologically fit (can be communicated with by email, sms, mms, video, social media)
• Shopper (at malls and stores at least 4 times a week)
Is so very rarely asked for my contact details when out spending money. Literally thousands of opportunities missed each year.
Loyalty Cards? Ha!
Don't fool yourself. Who has loyalty nowadays? I have no loyalty. I just collect cards. I simply clock up my free-bee's on so called loyalty cards. Loyalty programs based on handing out pre-printed 'come back to us' cards are a misnomer. Perhaps 'Passive Freebies' is a better name.
Your Problem
How can you control bringing your customers back to you when you want, if you have no way of communicating with them? With 'stamp 'em' cards you can only wait passively for your customers to return to you.
What's the point?
From the self employed professional, to the trades, to the small business owner to the national retailer, how can brick and mortar small businesses be so universally skewed, short sighted and wasteful? How can management not see what should be so blatantly obvious?
The larger the company, the larger the open bucket pouring fabulous amounts of money on 'mass advertising'. Commercials. TV and print advertising. Circular drops. Radio. Inserts. Social Media. While these strategies accomplish their goal of bringing customers to the front door — everyone makes the fatal mistake. The tap is then turned off.
The dumb, lazy, wasteful
How sad there is no money; no thought; no time invested in trying to capture information about your customers with your goal to personally communicate with them again and again and again — bringing them back to you in a cheaper, targeted more personal (what's in it for them) way.
Nothing, let me say it again, Nothing works as well as a smartly executed content based email marketing plan for your business. Full stop.
Charlene White talks to Tom Raynel about her event-management business, The Cartery.