xMarketing Newsletter – 09/23/08

xMarketing Tip

What is drip marketing?

Smart Alec Answer: You are reading a drip marketing piece now.

Useful Answer: Drip marketing is a slow but steady stream of information that you provide to prospective and existing customers, hence the “drip”.

One of the challenges with making a sale is timing. You may have the perfect customer who needs your product or service, but the timing can be off. They may have spent their budget until their next fiscal year. They may be dealing with an employee or customer situation that is taking priority over everything else. They may have been burned by an inferior vendor in the past, and are reluctant to talk to another one in the same industry.  They may be a “cup is half empty” person who thinks all sales people are crooks. They may be going through a divorce and hate life at the moment.  Who knows.

With drip marketing, its not about making a sale NOW. Its about staying on their radar until THEY decide its time to call and make a purchase.  We all love it when we get those type of phone calls.

So what are some drip marketing techniques?   Here are several options:

1. Autoresponders – Sending email automatically by a computer program when a website visitor takes an action.
2. Blogs – Website forums to discuss topics in a message board format (see previous two newsletters at  http://www.neonexuscorp.com/blog/?cat=8)
3. Twitter – Software to follow people’s daily thoughts on their website or phone.
4. eNewsletters – Periodic email newsletters sent to your list.
5. eVideos – Periodic email videos sent to your list.

Today we are going to focus on autoresponders.

An autoresponder is triggered when a website visitor fills out a form.  It can be a simple “Sign up here with a name and email to receive our daily/weekly/monthly information on XYZ”, or they might fill out a detailed application.  Like all advertisements, the key is the “Offer”.  Visitors won’t fill it out unless they feel they are getting something of value in return.

The power of an autoresponder is it can be setup to send emails automatically at timed intervals. For example, a visitor fills out a form for a home builder. Immediately, the visitor gets an automated response thanking them for filling out the information. That automated response confirms that the website didn’t send their data into cyberlimbo, and helps get them past SPAM settings since the visitor will check his SPAM filter immediately while it is fresh on his mind.

Next, the person gets a series of emails (once a day for a week, once a week for 6 weeks, 1 week before every holiday (if you have seasonal products), etc.). These contain the information that you promised them on the website when they filled out the form.  For a home builder, it might be pictures of houses they have built recently, tips on maintenance (like carpet cleaning), rate information on mortgages, information on local school systems, tips on how to prep your old house to sell it, etc.   It can be a series of articles, PDF eBooks (all at once, or one chapter at a time), pictures, video, links to other blogs or websites etc.  It could be the “Top 10 things you need to know before you buy a new home”, with one tip per email.

The key is that while all of this information may be on your website or brochure anyway, by “dripping” out the information in small amounts, the are more likely to read it AND they read it over time.  Remember that “timing” thing we talked about earlier?  If you drip market to them long enough, they will get past their other issues and eventually decide to deal with their problem, which may mean hiring you.

I have had some people read my newsletter for 15 months before they decided to buy a search engine optimization package.  Without drip marketing, they may have forgotten about NeoNexus completely.

So, think about some ways you could use drip marketing to grow your business.  If you want some help brainstorming, let us know.

Next week…how to build your drip marketing list

Company News
Google is going after Apple, Microsoft, and Symbian (Blackberry) offering an open source operating system for smart phones.  It appears they are wanting to get to targeted advertsing on phones similar to their success with targeted advertisting on websites.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology
/7630135.stm

If you have (or want) a website that sells products or services that might interest people when the only tool they have is their phone, NeoNexus can optimize your website to run when viewed with a smart phone.  Call us at (910) 796-0551 for more details.

Internet Cool Site of the Week
Do you have a marketing video and want to find different ways to leverage it?  Check out this new technology from Vestic.  Its like Constant Contact, except you can include video.

http://www.vestic.net/default.asp?Reseller=PGDIRECT

For more information on Vestic, contact David Pendegrass at (910) 520-3346.

Tech Tip

Best Anti-Virus Software?

What’s the Best Anti-Virus software?  Ask ten people and you will probably get ten answers.  Ask me and I will say we like Webroot with Spy Sweeper best because we have seen it remove viruses the others don’t and because it’s easy for customers to use.  You can purchase the 3 user package for all your computers, schedule it sweep automatically and sweep your machine any time you feel a need.  Once your computer already has viruses, it is much more difficult to remove them and a professional may have to step in.  If you have viruses they can cause your computer to slow down or even stop working entirely.  Anti-Virus program load before your other programs and can cause slowness on start up and also suck computer resources.  When you add an anti-virus program you should always make sure that you have enough RAM to run the computer.  We recommend 1G of RAM for the average user with XP.  To find out how much RAM your computer has, and for more hardware information, go to: http://www.yourcomputerfriends.com/upgrade.php

Customer Spotlight

First Choice Gift Baskets

First Choice Gift Baskets is a great on-line source for holiday, seasonal, and corporate gift baskets.  They came to NeoNexus to improve their conversion.  NeoNexus gave the design a fresh look, toned down the home page to make it less busy, improved the text, and improved the navigation so visitors could find what they wanted.  We also performed our basic search engine optimization (might as well improve the visitors as well as the conversion, right?)

The next time you need a basket of goodies to send to friends, customers, employees, or family, check out the website.  It has a little something for everyone!

www.firstchoicegiftbaskets.com