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Email marketing expert gives tips on reaching customers
Published 10:55am Wednesday, December 5, 2012The Fergus Falls Chamber of Commerce helped bring the power of email marketing to 40 members and guests Tuesday at the Bigwood Event Center.
As part of on-going educational programs the Chamber provides, Jeff Ferrazzo, a professional speaker, trainer and regional development director from email service provider Constant Contact was brought in to share tips on email marketing essentials.
“Whether you are marketing in person or over email, it’s still all about relationship building,” said Ferrazzo. “It’s six to seven times more expensive to gain a customer than to retain a customer, but people don’t trust the ‘big business’ message.”
The session covered the steps of connecting with customers and building a relationship so business owners and marketers can communicate with them more effectively.
Some useful tips included how to identify your email messages and what to say in the subject line.
“Don’t use ‘info’ or some generic label, use a real person’s name and the company name,” suggested Ferrazzo. “The subject line can be used to grab attention. Since we know who the email is from, and it is arriving at the time of month you normally send a newsletter, a subject line like ‘December Newsletter’ will not compel a potential customer to open your email right away.”
Ferrazzo cited a few creative examples for subject lines, including one an associate had used — Seven ways to get fired this month — as a subject line for newsletter covering how to keep your job in a tough economy.
Another tip was to change digital signatures periodically — those preset messages at the bottom of an email with the sender’s contact information — to also include brief reminders on upcoming events or promotions.
While participants do not need to be Constant Contact customers to apply the information to other email services, Ferrazzo did provide details on a new Constant Contact product, Save Local, launched to compete with products like Groupon. While both products allow consumers to find tremendous savings on products and services in their local area, Save Local is designed to have much lower fees for companies to promote products while having more control over promotions and access to valuable customer data.
The Chamber is planning on a follow-up session in January which will tie email marketing to social media applications.
