Dear Friend,

At a time when your inbox is being filled with offers and Ideas on how to market and advertize during these difficult times, we have decided offer you some free assistance through our new eSuccess Tip, which will provide you with tips and tools to help you maximize your online presence. Peter Martin and Irish Carroll are recognized as the Experts on eMail Marketing and were featured seminar presenters at the NADA (National Auto Dealers Association) Convention this year. You can download a copy of their Power Point by clicking here. It contains some great thought starters for any type of business.

Every month, we will provide you with an eSuccess tip designed to assist you in these tough times and maybe even give you a competitive advantage. Click here to get 5 of the top reasons to Market NOW.

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March eSuccessTIP

eMail marketing has quickly become the TOP method for direct advertising and marketing communications. It is now an absolutely essential component of your marketing mix.

Before you can start eMail marketing you need one critical component; you need your customers' and/or prospects' email address. Having all the latest tools and email marketing techniques and tips is useless unless you are able to send your email to your customers and prospects.

This first eSuccess Tip addresses the basics of developing your email database, and it provides some easy-to-use tips and ideas to help you get started.

First, you need to analyze where you are in the email collection continuum, we will refer to this as a continuum, because you will need to be constantly working to increase the number of emails collected and methods for doing it.

The best way to start organizing your email database is to use Excel, because it is a universal tool and most, if not all CRM tools or email distribution tools, are compatible to it. When you start compiling your database be sure to use separate columns for information, specifically, the first name and last name need to be in separate columns, which will allow you personalize your message when you send it.

We often say that content is king and with your database more is better, which means the more information you can include in your record the greater number of options you will have later. For example, if you have the customer's birth date, go ahead and include it, so you can automatically send them an eMail Birthday Card.

There are a number of ways for you to actively build your database.

• Try employing the fish bowl technique, it's easy. Just place a fish bowl by the checkout counter with an offer of monthly prize drawing.
• Incorporating data capture forms on your web site. A major benefit of eMail marketing is its ability to drive traffic to your web site. You should have a data capture form on each page of your web site and have a reason for someone to subscribe, perhaps offering a monthly eNewsletter, or service coupons, etc.
  
  One of the biggest mistakes we see on web sites are poorly designed data capture forms, which ask for too much information. With data capture forms the rule of thumb is less is more, the less information you ask for, the more people will actually complete the form.
• Having your employees ask for an email address is one of the most difficult and challenging ways to build your email database. It's difficult because your employees won't do it, and its challenging because people are apprehensive about giving out their email address. One suggestion is to let the customer know that you won't sell it and you want to add them to your online family, so they can get special discounts and "insider" information. Often, when someone feels that there is a benefit of allowing you to send them an email, they are more likely to share it.
• The easiest way to gather an email address is to utilize a process called eMail Matching or email appending, as it is also called. This is a process whereby your customer records are cross matched with a huge email database. When a match is made and after permission has been requested, the email address will be added to your file. This process typically yields a 20% match rate, takes less than 3 weeks and it gets your email marketing program up and running quickly.

Once you have the email addresses compiled, you will be on your way to reaching customers and growing your business. There are a myriad of new and exciting email tools available, but the first step is developing your email database. If you would like to learn more visit our web site www.cactussky.com or email us at: esuccess@cactussky.com

Next month we will address "First Contact"