E mail success for small businesses August 2010 There are four main reasons small businesses fail to generate enquiries and sales for e mail campaigns: Mailings are not regular Mailings are too general Mailings are not targeted Mailings fail to link to specific products and services on web sites You must make full use of your mailing list. Remember your mailing list is made up of customers who have either bought from you in the past or you have expressed an interest in your products and services. How do you improve your success rate? A few simple techniques will give you the opportunity to increase enquiries and sales from your mailings. Begin by adding categories to your database as simple tick boxes. For example record what products and services customers are buying. Categorise by: Geographical areas particularly if you visit county shows or farmers markets Loyalty club members Purchase types Purchase dates Next add your customers into your E mail system. Set up distribution lists by category. For example a distribution list for loyalty club members. Plan for 6 months mailings in your diary and make these mailings, seasonal offers, new products, and new products similar to the ones customers have bought before. For example mailings for: Loyalty club members News of events Special events and promotions Aim to send out mailings fortnightly or monthly. Don’t forget to include an unsubscribe and also ‘A pass onto a friend’. It is very important to include a link to your web site from the mailing which should go directly to the product or service you are promoting in your E mail. Finally monitor the repose rate from your mailings. Doing this will help you find out what offers and products generate sales. How small businesses are found on the Internet August 2010 As the internet grows it becomes harder for businesses to be found on the web. The good news is there are still plenty of things you can do to be found on searches for your business and for the products and the services you offer. Small businesses can compete on equal terms with larger businesses on the internet. Here are six of the best Find a niche and specialise. It doesn’t matter what business you are in you cannot reach everyone on or off the internet. Specialising means you stand out from the crowd and your competitors. Make your specialism clear on your web site, on your social network profiles and pages. Optimise your web site for your specialism, in other words, include in the text of your web site and in the source codes of your site. Optimise your web site for local search. In the text of your site include for example ‘traditional tailoring in York’. Repeat this in the source codes of your web site. Reinforce this by adding your business to Google maps local search so your business is found on a search for ‘tailoring in York’. Using the ‘right’ keywords improves the chances that your business will be found on searches. Use the keyword tool in Google adwords to find the most popular words used in searches. The keyword tool allows you to see how much competition you there is for each keyword. The trick is to find and use popular words that don’t have too much competition. Links to your web site are important, but just as important are links within your site. The search engines like these links and they will increase the ‘crawl’ by web bots. Keep internal links to no more than six per page. Take it one stage further and include keywords in the link e.g. ‘tailoring for the spring in York’, with a link taking site visitors to another page, featuring tailoring for the spring. Keep the text of your site natural as the most important thing for any site is to appeal to site visitors. Break the text up on your site into short paragraphs with a theme. Include paragraph titles in bold and try to include keywords in the title. Include your web site or web site address in the profile of your social media profile. Doing this will raise your profile on the web and provide a valuable link back to your site. Mobile Marketing July 2010 What is mobile marketing? Mobile marketing is the use of mobile phones to sell products and to make offers. Mobile marketing is an underused but growing marketing tool. It’s a cheap form of marketing and is easy for small businesses to adopt. Despite the numerous applications of i phones the majority of people use their mobiles for calls followed by text messages. But mobile marketing is effective for much more than selling products and services. For example government health agencies use mobile marketing to send health text messages to young men. Use mobile marketing to send people to your web site for offers, to sign up for downloads, to send customers to your outlet for one day offers, for pre sale offers and for new collections and seasonal products. Who’s doing it? M & S use mobile marketing to promote their meal deals. Text messages are sent out three days before the offer is available with a reminder the day before. As you would expect the phone companies such as Orange make good use of mobile marketing and surprisingly car dealers are now using mobile marketing for time limited offers. Jamie Oliver is making good use of mobile marketing by providing an application for i phones. The application at £4.99 shot to the top of popular paid for applications. The application delivers a recipe when recipients shake their phone. Political parties also make good use of mobile marketing with all parties using it during the last election campaign to target specific messages at people who signed up on their web sites. Messages asked for views, sent recipients to the web sites for articles on specific election issues and finally a reminder the day before and on the day of the election to vote. Motorolla had a spectacular success, which generated increased sales, with a ‘Goodbye’ campaign held at Hong Kong airport. Cleverly promoting the brand and demonstrating the phones features. Motorolla allowed travellers to take a photograph on the phone, add a text message. The image was then sent to a huge screen in the departure lounge where it was displayed to friends and relatives. Small businesses making a success of mobile marketing Hull Truck Theatre moved premises two years ago. As part of a campaign to promote the new premises and an increased number of promotions the company used mobile marketing as part of a marketing and PR campaign. Promoting ‘Macbeth’ to a wider audience and one not familiar with the works of Shakespeare was a challenge. Using a combination of advertising on local buses, PR to local radio and promotion on their Facebook page brought in bookings. Using mobile marketing to a mailing list on ‘Truck Tuesday’ brought in more bookings. Continued use of ‘Truck Tuesday’ to promote other productions and to give pre booking offers creates a buzz for the theatre and continues to generates bookings. Making it work for your business Use mobile marketing as part of other marketing and promotion activities. For example use text messages to send your mailing list to your web site or outlet, use it to promote charity sponsorship, for competitions and to send specific offers exclusive to text recipients for specific one day offers and pre sale deals. How to use mobile marketing Use short messages Make messages specific to events and days such as Monday 2 for 1’s Segment your customers with specific offers tied into their preferences Get recipients to respond to messages with ‘DEAL’ ‘SIGN UP’ ‘TELL ME MORE’ etc. Sign up on your web site for mobile messaging Send vouchers with a code Simple Social Media for small businesses Social media is a fantastic way to extend the reach of a small business. It’s a way to find contacts and prospective customers that you would otherwise not come across. The number of social media sites is steadily increasing and knowing which to join, how to use them and what to use them for is the key to business success. Here is my guide to the best social networks and what to use them for. Never overtly sell on any of the networks. Be persistent it takes time to build contacts and followers. Add links to your social networking pages, using widgets, from your web site, E mail and blogs. All the networks provide the opportunity to link back to your web site. Update your pages on social networks regularly to build your reputation as an expert in your field. It’s not about the number of contacts you have it’s having the right contacts. Make sure you complete your profiles on all the social media sites, including your web site, business details and logo. Use the social networks you like, that fit the profile of your customers and that you find easiest to use. Using social networks takes time so it’s a good idea to choose one or two to concentrate on. Pick a user name that matches your business name so you will be easier to find. Facebook – Use Facebook to build your reputation as an expert in your field by contributing to discussions and by posting information that links back to your web site and blog. Facebook is an excellent way to find employees, giving you the advantage of seeing a little of the personality of prospective employees before any interviews. Use your Facebook page to get customer responses to products and services and for reviews from customers. Monitor requests for new products and for developments of existing products. Twitter – the quickest and easiest network to use. Use twitter to announce new products, new events and for quick changes of information. For example changes of location or events you a re attending. Link all your Twitter posts to your web site and blog. Give punchy titles to articles you have written and post with a link to your web site. Linkedin – A network for business, that gives the chance to include an extensive profile including work experience and information about your business. Join a group and comment or ask questions to raise your profile. You can also set up your own group for a specific area of work, for example solicitors working in the personal accident field. Youtube – the network for videos. Include a video of you talking about an area of expertise. Link to your web site. Post videos of ‘how to’ and include interviews with clients. Squidoo – For posting your articles and hints and tips, Squidoo allows you to write articles and position yourself as an expert, link to your web site. Slideshare – for presentations. Very simple to use and best used in collaboration with Linkedin and Facebook to add power point presentations to your page. Back to the top Giving your customers what they want! July 2010 We all spend a great deal of time and money marketing and promoting our products to prospective customers. Changes in the economy mean that consumers and business buyers have become more discerning, shopping around and expecting more for their money. Customer loyalty is now more difficult to maintain, so its time to look at the way we promote our businesses on and off the internet. More importantly, its time to relook at what we offer.
Using customer personalities is an effective way to discover what our customers want and develop our products and services to fulfil this. In addition taking a customer centred approach to marketing and promotion fits very well with social media or inbound marketing. Using this approach is all about what your customers want rather than what you think they want.
First be clear about the benefits of using your products and services.
Next look at your specialism and an area of expertise. If you don’t have one, develop one, so your products and services are distinct. Doing this builds your business brand and appeals directly to prospects looking for your products and services.
Problem solve for your ideal buyers. Do this by putting your ideal buyers into groups e.g. small retail businesses, one man consultancy businesses, young professionals setting up home. Take the young professionals for example. Look at their lifestyle? Do they have disposable income? What styles of home do they like? Where do they shop? Where do they work? As a property provider you can now develop a portfolio that fits their lifestyle and one that addresses their needs directly. To help research what your ideal buyers are looking for, use situations vacant columns to see what job specs are asking for. Research on the internet for lifestyle statistics and buying trends. Interview your customers or ask your online networks to find out more and to discover the ‘language’ your markets use Doing this will position your business as customer focused and as a company that consumers and business owners alike will want to buy from. To do this you can use existing customers, but better still look at the markets you are aiming at and develop your ideal buyers. How do you use customer personalities for your business? Who is doing it? Everyone from the coffee shop down the road to Tesco, M & S and Monsoon. Asda so far have resisted introducing a loyalty scheme, preferring instead to rely on special offers and TV advertising.
What do loyalty schemes achieve?
Planned well, loyalty schemes increase the volume of sales, build brand loyalty and keep out the competition.
Does it make money for the companies that have them?
Yes, by increasing sales to existing customers and by building brand loyalty. Many loyalty schemes offer points, redeemed by vouchers. The rewards given by the schemes run of Monsoon and M & S are poor in return for the amount of money you have to spend. Both companies are in danger of alienating customers by doing this. One of the most generous schemes is the one run by Boots, which gives points redeemable in store at any time against any products and makes joining the scheme worthwhile.
What form do loyalty schemes take?
Typically points given as a percentage of spend and this usually now includes online spending. In addition to vouchers and points to redeem in store some companies offer vouchers or discounts from other members of their company group. Some companies restrict spend of points and vouchers to one shopping experience for example, in store, online and vouchers usually have a time limit.
Other loyalty schemes offer a free purchase for a set number of spends, schemes favoured by coffee shop chains. One scheme in Germany rewarded farmers buying crop protection products. The scheme was introduced with the objective of building brand loyalty and of increasing market share for the crop protection company. Using bar codes the farmers log in to a web site where points from purchases are logged. Points can be redeemed against farm products or leisure rewards which are viewed on an online rewards shop. (The Marketer April 2010)
Setting up a scheme for your business
Remember that it is cheaper and easier to sell to existing customers than to find new ones so it is worthwhile considering loyalty schemes to reward existing customers and to increase sales. Loyalty schemes work best with retail, restaurants, coffee shops and tourist attractions but can be made to work for business to business customers where customers make regular repeat purchases. For example if you provide training of some sort could you build a reward system for repeat customers. Before you start your loyalty scheme be careful to work out your projected increase in sales. Decide what you want to achieve from your scheme, for example increase the volume of sales by 15%. Make sure you give the right reward, one that is seen by your customers as worth having. To reward repeat buyers offer a ‘free?’ with every £60 spent, rather than a ‘free when you spend £60.
Back to the top Case Study Castle House 21st June 2010 The client A seaside holiday cottage in North Yorkshire The situation A newly renovated cottage with the best view in the village, overlooking the bay. The resort has few facilities, apart from a seasonal shop and a pub. The bay is sheltered and the resort is popular with day trippers. What was needed? To make the cottage distinct in a resort with many holiday cottages. A marketing strategy to: Promote the cottage Decide who we are aiming at The client had a limited marketing budget. What we did A SWOT analysis of the cottage and of the competition, mainly other holiday cottages in the same area, but also cottages in the neighbouring resort. Online research to ascertain the level of competition online for cottages in this resort, for neighbouring resorts and for holiday cottages in North Yorkshire. This was done using searches such as holiday cottages Whitby, holiday cottages North Yorkshire. The research indicated a lot of competition, online this is mainly made up of the larger holiday cottage agencies. We decided to appeal to a generation who had undertaken traditional seaside holidays with parents or grandparents and who would like to provide the same sort of holiday for their children. Concentrating on nostalgia and simple pleasures, this same generation would demand a higher standard of accommodation than previous generations. Summit up photography took images of the cottage to show the outstanding views and to show the comfortable and stylish accommodation. We built a simple two page web site which was optimised for the resort rather than the wider area. This was done with the knowledge that the resort is well known in Yorkshire and most people on holiday in Yorkshire are from the county. The web site was ‘written’ to appeal to nostalgia for old fashioned seaside holidays. The site includes a list of things to do in the area that appeal to families and that fulfils the nostalgia for families. The outcome Within a short period of time (4 weeks) bookings came in from the web site. These continued through the year and despite working on a proposed outcome of filling the cottage in the main summer season the cottage took booking throughout the year, with over demand in August and Christmas and the new year. Year 2 and the cottage again attracts bookings, many repeats and Christmas and the new year is already booked. Back to the top The Best farm Shops Full of quality local and seasonal produce they are welcoming and busy with baskets and shelves filled with a variety of quality food. Then there are the imposters, they look like farm shops but delve a little deeper and you will see they are simply grocery stores. With the farm shop own label branded meat and meat products, how can you tell how the meat is produced, how the animals are reared and if it is locally produced? For example some farm shops sell ‘local’ sausages with the producer a 100 miles away. Others sell their own brand label meat bought from the same suppliers as supermarket chains. Why do we visit farm shops? Not usually to buy cheap food, more likely to buy local quality and traditionally produced food. We are usually looking to find flavoursome produce. So what is local and what should you look for to find genuine, quality local produce. For me local is something produced in the same county, a local traditional speciality for example. How to identify ‘real’ farm shops This is how I identify ‘real’ farm shops, ones where the owners love quality food and want to share it with their customers. Do they support local producers? (same county) How do they define ‘home made’. Is it made on site or by a local producer? Are the fruit and vegetables seasonal? Are farm animals reared ethically or organically? What does the farm shop grown and produce itself? Do they offer box schemes and freezer boxes? Does the farm shop feature new and seasonal products? Do they have a range of organic produce? The most obvious give away for a ‘true’ farm shop? The owners will proclaim the produce they are proud of, they will display their food awards and offer tastings of their produce. By buying from the true farm shops, where the producers care about the products they sell, we get the chance to buy quality tasty food and support the best of them. My favourite farm shops The Ballon Tree Gate Hemsley East Riding of Yorkshire The Farmers Cart Strensall North Yorkshire The Market Garden at Sands Lane South Cave East Riding of Yorkshire Kelleythorpe Farm Shop Driffield East Riding of Yorkshire Barmston Organics Barmston East Riding of Yorkshire Brockbushes Corbridge Northumberland Bradley Burn Wolsingham County Durham Back to the top How to work out who your customers are 27th April 2010 When you run a busy farm shop or café some customers you get to know. By chatting to them you find out what they buy, what they like and why they buy from you. What about your other customers? What do they buy and what do they like? Where else do they shop? What could you do to make them buy more and more often? How do you increase customer loyalty to your business and so increase sales? Finding out who your customers are will help you to do just that
Why do you need to do this?
For starters it’s easier and cheaper to sell to existing customers than to find new ones. Why? They know your business, the products you sell and like the service your staff provide. Finding out more about your customers, their buying likes and dislikes, the times they buy and what they buy means you can:
Sell to them in quieter times
Sell to them out of season
Sell more of what they like
Introduce similar products and food lines How do you do it?
Use simple surveys and questionnaires in store and on your web site. Offer a gift voucher or entry to a free prize draw as a thank you. Introduce loyalty cards to give you the opportunity to collect information about your customers.
Using the information you get
Now you know who your customers are and their buying patterns. How do you use this information to your best advantage? Once you know your customers likes and dislikes you can introduce more of the product types they like and develop what you already sell.
Keep in touch regularly with your customers to keep them up to date with what you are selling now to build loyalty and increase sales. Doing this means your customers are more likely to tell friends and family about your business. Get Results with E mail 20th April 2010 Do's and Don'ts for successful campaigns Do Time when you send out E mails e.g. if you are aiming at young mums, mid morning and early afternoon Do Get permission to send E mails and offers Do Give opt outs in mailings Do Sell one product/service or range at a time Do Separate customers into groups who have expressed interest in specific products & services Do Write an eye catching subject line Do Do - Use E mails to 'sell' products that failed to make your catalogue Don't E mail out of the blue, keep them regular Don't Send out to people who are not interested in your products and services Don't Use clip art When we all receive so many e mails and spam an ongoing problem, is it worth undertaking an e mail campaign? As a part of marketing your business the answer is definitely yes. Used in combination with your web site and networking, carefully planned E mails campaigns do bring results. For both B2B and for businesses selling products E mail campaigns are quick to implement and a low cost alternative to direct mail and arguably more effective. How to do it Use html E mails (web based) as used by M & S, Monsoon etc. Evidence shows that people open and read these more than text E mails, particularly when they offer a selling message. HTML E mails are more sophisticated than text E mails and you can monitor responses and click through to your web site rates. Use companies such as e.g. and make your html E mail unique. Divide your mailing list into groups e.g. people interested in specific services, car parts and specific products. Get information on enquirers preferences when you sign them up. for example on your web site 'Tick if you would like more information on.....', 'Tick for special offers' etc. By signing up for specific information your enquirers have already expressed interest in what you are offering and are much more likely to read your e mails and take up offers. Time your e mails by remembering your customers celebrations and anniversaries. Send out seasonal e mails, 'New for spring', send out e mails to coincide with special events such as bank holidays and make sure your e mails go out regularly with fresh interesting content. Who is doing it? IKEA's main marketing tool is its catalogue. As soon as the catalogue goes out it is out of date. Usually 2,500 products fail to make the catalogue. Separating the 170,000 members of its loyalty scheme into categories according to the interest they expressed allowed IKEA to use e mails to 'sell' new products. By using categories IKEA improved opening rate of E mails by 75%. Sales increased by 42% Alchemy Worx ran a 'cutest pet' competition for a client. this encouraged people to send in photographs of their pets. A targeted E mail aimed specifically at pet owners to the 2,000 people who responded resulted in an opening rate of 70%. Stats - the Marketer Back to the top Tourist and Food businesses – Do you need to advertise? For cafés, restaurants and tourist attractions knowing if advertising and which advertising has brought in customers is difficult. Factor in the increasing number of publications, some paid for and some free. Which one do you choose? When advertising you have to find: | The right publication | √ | Circulation numbers | √ | | Circulation area of the publication | √ | And you have to consider: | √ | | The design of ad | √ | Cost of advertising | √ | | How much you are prepared to pay | √ | How long to run your ad for | √ | | If online advertising the right keywords to use | √ | If to include editorial with your ad | √ |
Work out the cost of advertising against the likely increase in customers and alternatives to advertising become attractive. So given all this and falling readerships, what are the alternatives? Building and using your own customer mailing list is a cheaper, more flexible and potentially more effective way to increase sales and find new customers. How you do this is as important as the message you send. Use your mailing list to: | Target existing customers Send news of events Give opening times and dates | √ | Send out offers Promote seasonal products Send farmers markets information Send menu changes | √ | | √ | √ | | √ | √ |
Build your mailing list from your web site and in house. Give web site visitors a range of reasons for giving their contact details. Use prize draws in house and on line and questionnaires in exchange for E mail addresses. | What form should your mailing take? | * | E mails to subscribers | * | | Flyers | * | Postcard offers | * |
If you use Facebook invite your customers to become friends or fans and use your page for offers and to promote particular events. copyright Summitup Marketing April 2010 Internet Marketing How do you ask prospects to contact you? Seen on web sites and marketing material everywhere ‘contact me’ is added almost without a thought. Think about it a little more closely. What you are actually asking for takes a giant leap of faith and trust. You are asking the recipient, assuming they are new to your business and based on what they have seen or read, to hand over their details. Why does the way you ask people to ‘contact us’ matter? For a start ‘contact me’ is a bit vague. Give web site visitors or prospects reading your marketing material options. Do this and: Prospects are more likely to contact you because you have made it easier for them You will have more information from prospects When prospects tick ‘I would like to know more about…..’ a particular product or service, gives you a head start, a chance to prepare and most important of all give them specific information rather than a general response. By giving your prospects options you are breaking down the barrier it takes to send details to an unknown business. Giving prospects options means you are appealing to what they are interested in. Helping prospects to see what it is you do means they are more likely to fill in their details and give you more information about what precisely they want. So what options should you give prospects? Try some of these in a multiple option communications centre on your web site and in a tear off coupon on your marketing material. | Tell me about special offers | √ | Request a call back | √ | | Ask for a brochure | √ | Tell me about special events | √ | | I would like more information about ‘specific products and services’ | √ | Tell me what’s in season now | √ |
April 2010 Copyright Summ it up Marketing Back to the top Does my shop or café need a web site? How will joining face book and tweeting help my retail business to grow? July 2010 Will the time it takes to update a web site and social media pages be worth the return in sales? These are the questions facing the owners of shops and cafes. Whatever your business a web site, it is crucial to send your customers to your site, by giving them a reason to visit, browse and buy. For retail this is more important and more time consuming, adding in new products or revised and seasonal menus. So is it a web site worth it and will it increase sales? A lot depends on what you are selling and the type of café and gift shop you run. This is what you should consider: Do your customers use the internet? | √ | Are you looking for visitors and sales from outside your immediate geographical | √ | | Are you planning to sell online? | √ | Do you add new and seasonal ranges to your products? | √ | | Do you change menus seasonally? | √ | Do you have a mailing list of your customers? | √ | | | | | |
Do you have time to spare to update your web site? Answer yes to more than two of these and a web site will be another sales and marketing tool for your business. To make your site work for your business, sign up regulars to your shop and café and consider starting a loyalty club with online benefit for members. Adding your business to the internet by launching a web site takes more than simply a web site, you need to include mailings and finding some way of encouraging your shop customers to visit your site. Adding social media such as Face boo and Twitter into the mix will add to the power of your web site. This is how you can make your web site increase sales and customer loyalty for your business | Send customers to web site for: | √ | Monthly offers and monthly specials | √ | | Preview this seasons products | √ | To pre-order | √ |
Add web your address to menus and marketing material and add to your shop window. Tell customers why they should visit your site. On your web site add visit us on Face book and Twitter. Use your Face book page to link to your web site and use it to ask for customer feedback and to monitor customer responses. Ask your customers what they would like to buy from you and respond to customer requests for new and difficult to obtain products. Lastly, add your web site to Google maps and Four square. Back to the top Mid season buying and marketing trends July 2010 Internet goes mobile with consumers. Businesses such as M & S are only now using mobile marketing and small businesses barely use it at all. But mobile marketing can be effective and need not be difficult or time consuming. Tie offers into events such as the M & S £10 meal deal or keep offers and deals anticipated ‘Tuesday deals’ or Thursday 2 for 1’s’. Sales of newspapers and magazines continue to fall as consumers go online for news and magazine style features. Online news and magazine sites update quickly with stories and events. Newspapers and the glossy magazines have lengthy publications cycles and can’t compete. So traditional advertising no longer reaches the circulations of previous decades. Online advertising is an alternative but with click through rates at 4% alternatives such as Internet Marketing and social media marketing are more lucrative and effective options. Consumers are still cutting back on luxuries and taking the time to research bigger purchases before buying. Treats and small indulgencies are still popular. Companies have to work harder to secure sales as consumers increasingly shop around before making large purchases. Checking reviews online is more important than ever to get customer reviews and testimonials. Home cooking trendy in 2009 is not as popular with consumers who are now beginning to go back to buying ready meals and convenience foods. Grow your own is the buzz for 2010 be it in gardens, allotments or in containers on patios and balconies. DIY is still popular as people improve their homes rather than moving. The housing market varies with some areas seeing a quick turn around of properties. Estate agents are now beginning to embrace alternative forms of marketing to deal with difficult markets, becoming more pro active. Turning marketing around by addressing customer needs rather than marketing to customers, by actively seeking out properties not for sale for buyers looking for specific properties. Nine out of ten in the UK have a computer and numbers using social networking sites is increasing among all ages. Companies will have to overcome reluctance and take internet marketing one stage further and adapt social media networking strategies to reach customers. Making sure your E mails are opened and acted on! 26th May 2010 As much as the contact of your mailing, be it an offer, a bulletin or your monthly newsletter both the style and content of your mailing matters. Get it right and your mailings will be opened and the percentage visiting your web site will increase. Make sure the style of your mailing and content both appeal to your customers. Use different mailings for specific groups of customers by offering products based on previous purchases. Statistics show that using a web based style of e mail will increase the numbers opening your mailing. Include links to your web site from your mailing, for example ‘Click here to see full range.’ Make sure your offer relates to the web link or you will lose them very quickly. Style Include your logo, use your corporate colours, strap line and include quality images. Use web based E mails (html) or alternatively design your mailing in a word table. Remove the lines around the table and copy and paste into an e mail. What to include In the subject line include a benefit e.g. ‘Save money on fuel costs this winter’. Depending on your mailing include a call to action and a two ways for people to contact you, including a direct link to your E mail or contact page on your web site. Give news and details of events, include offers and seasonal products and give recipients the chance to forward to a friend and finally to unsubscribe. Keep your mailings simple with a theme and include details of special offers and new products. Planning your mailings Before designing your mailing ask yourself
Who are you aiming the message at?
What do you want them to do?
When is the best time to send out your mailing e.g. monthly, weekly, time of day etc
Why should they do what you want? Really good mailings, Taylors of Harrogate, Gardeners World, Next and Monsoon Back to the top Marketing a traditional English tea room 15th May 2010 The client
Traditional family run tea room
The problem
New business, lots of local competition, mainly seasonal customers
Solving the problem
Create a uniqueness to make the business distinct from other tea rooms and coffee shops in the town
Attract summer visitors
Attract business out of season
What we did
Built the business brand by commissioning a distinct and memorable logo that reflected a traditional English tea room
Used the logo on all marketing material, shop signage and web site
Produced marketing material including seasonal menus, promotional cards and arranged to distribute the cards around the town. All promotional cards include web site and Twitter symbol.
Promotional cards were also distributed to the coach companies who bring in day trippers through the season, to local holiday cottages and Bed and breakfasts in the area. Promotional cards included a special introductory offer.
Created a loyalty club with special offers and promotions to attract local people, including a sign in section on the web site for short term promotions
Advertised in the local street market brochure with an offer for readers
Introduced ‘Time for tea - Cake of the month’, and emphasised the selection of speciality teas available to make the business distinct. Announced the cake of the month on the web site, in the window, on tables and announced on Twitter the week before the next cake launch, with a link to the web site
Offer to local afternoon theatre goers and approached local groups to use as a venue to attract year round custom. The result
Early days but so far trade has increased in a cold spring with fewer than normal visitors to the town. Good take up of loyalty club membership and of promotional offer.
For the future
To promote ‘cake of the month’ to local press as an ad or an advertorial piece
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