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Welcome to Alaska Web News!
This newsletter is intended to provide information, tips and advice to Alaska business owners on how to more effectively use the web to increase business. If you would like to be removed from the mailing list click the unsubscribe link at the bottom.
Unleash the power of ...Email!
Email? A newsletter edition devoted to the use of email? That might seem too prosaic a topic for much serious discussion but the truth is that email is the most powerful yet underutilized tool you have to drive your business forward.
Every email is an opportunity
Do you groan when you open your inbox and see it full of email for your business? Assuming that it's not a load of spam, you should see each contact as an opportunity. So the first step towards more fully utilizing the potential of email is one of attitude.
Utilize your web site to generate email
One of the primary goal of your web site should be to generate email inquiries for additional information. There are several things you can do on your website to encourage email contact:
- Place an email link on every page of your site, not just the contacts page
- Present opportunities for contact regarding specific inquires not just general contacts.
Example: Ask about our special pricing on web hosting.
- Create online surveys and contests that require only an email address to participate.
What to do with all that email you're getting
You made some changes to your site and now your getting lots of email. Great! This is a terrific opportunity to make a good impression and rise head and shoulders above your competition in the eyes of your prospective customer.
Answer promptly!
It's surprising how often inquires are answered a week or more later, or not at all. Send off a reply in a day or two. A same day reply will really impress.
Answer ALL the customers questions
It never fails - I send off an email to a company with three or four separate questions and I am lucky to get answers to half of them. Read the inquiry carefully and reply to each point or question separately.
Get Specific
Don't just answer a question as briefly as possible and hit the send button so you can get on to the next email in your inbox. Give a full and in-depth response. If a customer asks if there are good fishing opportunities don't just say "yes there are several fishing guide services in the area." Mention the guests who just came back yesterday with a huge lunker. Send links to fishing guides that work in your area. Send links to pictures on your site. Every email is an opportunity to provide not only information but excitement about your products and services.
Start a dialog
Answer the customer's questions, provide even more information than requested, and then ask some questions of your own!
For example:
Hi Frank
Thanks for your inquiry about our backcountry cabins. Yes, there are several experienced fishing guide services that work out of the Lake Clark area. Below are links to the ones that we have had good relationships in the past. What sort of fishing are you mostly interested in doing: salmon, trout? Are you interested in remote fly-in fishing? Let me know more about what you are looking for and I can make more specific recommendations.
You have answered the customers question and opened the door to a continued dialog. The more expensive your product or service is, the more important this type of relationship building is.
Format your email with a designer's eye
It's surprising how often business email goes out with little thought to style and appearance.
- Include the customer's name in a salutation. A message that greets you by name shows courtesy and personalizes your message.
- Chunk your message into paragraphs if it is long.
- Use HTML formatting if your email program supports it. Judicious use of bolding, bullet lists and other formatting can make your email cleaner and more professional.
- Create a standard signature line for your emails that includes your name, company name, phone number and email. Many email programs allow you to set this up to be automatically appended to your emails.
- Don't use all caps, even for EMPHASIS, use bolding instead.
Follow up
This is where a lot of people drop the ball. The higher priced your service or product the more important this becomes. A brief email sent a week after your reply can be as simple as "just wondering if you have had a chance to look over the material I sent last week. Let me know if you have any more questions."
A simple follow-up can generate additional questions or simply recall your company and products to the customer's mind.
Beyond email...
Once you have been in business for a while you should have received quite a bit a email. You have been saving all of those email addresses right? Good, because now you're ready to go beyond email and start sending out an email newsletter to your customers. Newsletters will be the topic of our next edition. We will talk about how to create effective newsletters that your customers actually look forward to receiving.
That wraps it up for this month. In the future editions we will go into greater detail on these and other topics. Is there a topic you would like to see covered? Let us know.
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