Internet Marketing 6

E-marketing is one of the newest forms of marketing and provides many opportunities to keep in touch with your existing customers, sell your products and services to new customers and also it opens a new channel for improving sales on the web. So what is e-marketing? E-marketing can be defined as the use of internet technology to build close relationships with customers, suppliers and staff, improving productivity and finding new ways to add value to those you do business with.

Customers

Not only can you communicate and interact with your customers but you can send specific messages that target their issues. This more personalised method of communicating what you are offering and the benefits of doing business with you

helps to increase customer retention and customer satisfaction.

Prospects

By the use of opt in lists you can target specific offers to groups of prospects. By tightly focusing specific messages to these groups a more cost effective campaign can bring significant savings and improved return.

Suppliers

Online suppliers can be significantly cheaper than their offline rivals. It is usually simpler to deal with these suppliers and more information on products, services and process and delivery is available at the touch of a button. This exemplary level of service ensures quality customer relationships.

Staff and Partners

Many companies have third party sales and distribution channels. Communication between these parties has always been difficult but e-marketing allows them to become a key

part of the business. These channels receive more information about you, your business and what you want of them. This in turn improves morale and performances of both staff and channels are significantly improved.

Many SMEs think that e-marketing is only about having a website and possibly having some form of shopping cart enabled. However while this is part of e-marketing it is certainly not the whole picture. As with all marketing it is the balance of the different elements of the marketing mix that any campaign needs. So using emailed newsletters to drive visitors to the site to purchase, that site having been optimised for the right keywords is a much better approach. None of this is expensive and

the results can be extremely good.

Typical e-marketing programmes are designed to do the following:

Manage your e-marketing campaign

Improve marketing response rates

Capture website visitors email details for inclusion on your database

Develop tailored offers to your customers

Design and write newsletters or e-zines

Build opt-in lists

Integrate email with other marketing

Monitor and report on performance including click throughs

Keep you abreast of the latest data protection and anti-spam legislation and trends

Drive traffic to your website.

Supply lists of contacts for your target markets.

Using the latest techniques highly practical, cost effective and relevant campaigns which could include a series of newsletters and announcements designed to get your customers doing business with you can be achieved increasing

your sales and profitability.

Bob Francis is an experienced business consultant spending most of his time helping clients with sales and marketing issues. His expertise lies primarily in strategy, sales and marketing and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He is an expert at sales performance measurement and improvement.

For a free business healthcheck please go to http://www.abio.ltd.uk and he can be contacted at [mailto:bob@abio.ltd.uk]bob@abio.ltd.uk