Using
Permission-based E-Mail Marketing
to Increase Retail Store Sales |
Deepening your relationship with your customers using a Permission-based
E-mail Marketing (PBEM) strategy offers a 100% proactive means for bringing business through your front door. This is a big change from passively waiting for customers to visit your store.
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today and start increasing store traffic, customer
loyalty, and average dollar sales.
OMSuccess
is the free, twice-monthly e-newsletter
that's packed with practical strategies on
how to efficiently market your retail store
by leveraging your website, e-mail, and powerful CRM
(Customer Relationship Management) tools. |
The thing that distinguishes your retail business from a competitor is becoming more about the quality of the relationship with the customer than it is with price or even store location.
Until now, there has been no practical – or cost-effective -- means for developing the kind of relationship with the customer that gives an independent retailer a competitive advantage over more aggressive, big box merchants.
Online
Marketing: More Than Just a Website
Until the use of the Internet became
commonplace there was no easy -- and inexpensive -- way
for small- to medium-size, independent retail merchants to
communicate with customers when they were not physically in the
store. The dream was that a store's website would
close that communications gap and bring untold riches to
any retail merchant who registered a domain name and threw
up a website. Today, it's rare for even the smallest
retail store to not have some kind of Internet presence,
such as a website, a MySpace account, or an eBay
store.
In spite
of the sales hype by website companies, a large percentage
of retail store websites are ignored today by both
customers and frustrated store owners and
managers. Stores were sold on the "if you build
it, they will come" marketing strategy that may have
worked five or ten years ago, but it definitely DOES NOT
work today. The reason is simple: Your website
is competing for "eyeballs" among hundreds of
thousands of other websites that are selling exactly
the same thing.
So, if
you are a retail store owner who is unhappy with your
website you
may be asking yourself "Do I really need a
website?". The answer is "Yes,
definitely!" You would be extremely foolish in
today's modern economy to ignore the proven marketing
benefits of having an online presence.
But if
you're asking yourself "Have I wasted money on my
store's website?". The answer is
"Maybe".
If you
answered "No" to any of these questions then,
yes, you are probably wasting money on your website.
But like a car that doesn't run very well, that can be
fixed.
On the
other hand, if you have a store website that is
generating a good ROI then
"Congratulations!". Keep up the good work
and continue getting what is probably good website
marketing advice.
But,
whether you
are unhappy or deliriously pleased with your website's
performance I would propose that you can easily make your
site work even harder than ever by making it one of
the spokes in a much bigger wheel that we call the "Online
Marketing Strategy for Retail Stores", or OMS/RSTM.
A critical component of OMS/RSTM
is the use of Permission-based E-mail Marketing.
Permission-based
E-Mail Marketing Changes the Marketing Game
If you
are paying for an unproductive website the reasons for
this poor ROI could be many. Your best advice would
be to contact a good consultant (of course, we happen to
like MELCOOPER!)
and ask them to make some recommendations. Once your
website is repaired or updated, we can then begin to
decide how to make it a functioning part of your overall
online marketing strategy. Permission-based E-mail
Marketing (PBEM) -- along with learning some new in-store
strategies for capturing basic customer information -- can
be effectively and efficiently used to drive prospects and
customers to your website and then to your physical
store. Or, PBEM can even be used to drive customers
directly to your store in some cases.
For those
retail merchants who have been successful with their
website's ROI, the same strategy for using PBEM to
ultimately drive even more customers to the store
-- more frequently -- would apply.
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