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You have a fantastic marketing tool that you are most likely not using and it is literally right at your fingertips!
E-mail can be one of a distributor's most powerful marketing weapons. With a very small investment in time and money, an effective e-mail campaign can easily grow your business by up to 30 percent. Incredibly, most businesses still do not take full advantage of this communication method.
Every time a business fails to capture someone's e-mail address, they are missing an opportunity to contact them for weeks, months, even years — for free! Besides throwing possible business away, they are also losing a valuable opportunity to nurture their relationships with their current customers.
Not about selling
The fact is e-mail isn't just about selling more products. E-mail can be used for surveys, special offers or to send educational links, articles and reports. It can be used to relay success stories about other customers, and even to send unique thank you cards. Using e-mail can result in significantly less service costs and provide another contact point that you would not have had. The ideas are limited only by your imagination!
So what keeps people from using this valuable marketing method? Fear of asking for the e-mail address is the most common answer, along with just not knowing where to start. There are many effective ways to capture e-mail addresses, and here are just a few of my favorites.
Capturing addresses
Have a contest. Hold a monthly drawing for a $20 dinner gift certificate that requires buyers to e-mail in to participate. Announce the winner in a return e-mail, along with providing them with some educational information about your products and services. One caveat: be wary of trying to sell something in your first e-mail — it can quickly diminish your customer's future involvement.
Update your information. Create a customer contact update form ("So We Can Serve You Better") that can be faxed out or put in invoices and shipping. Give them the opportunity to e-mail in the information.
Tell them about it. Let buyers know that your company regularly sends out offers, promotions and educational material via e-mail and ask if they would like to receive those offers.
Give them an invitation. Send out postcard invitations to seminars, training programs or other events that require an RSVP by e-mail. People understand businesses are trying to operate in more of a paperless world.
Use the Web. Websites are a great way to generate more e-mail traffic. Give visitors a free membership inside your "members only" website. It's a great way to boost sales from current clients.
There are countless creative ways to collect and build your e-mail database, and once you have them — use them! This is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to separate your distributorship from the competition because almost no one else is using e-mail marketing.
Customer contact
As salespeople, that brief moment with a customer in their office or on the phone is never enough. An ongoing e-mail campaign helps to warm up customers before your sales calls, so they know who you are, what you sell and most importantly, how you can help them! The outdated method of dropping in with an order pad on today's overworked buyer is downright insulting and reflects badly on your distributorship.
What's important to remember as you begin your e-mail marketing campaign is to do it right or don't do it at all. Opinions will quickly be formed when your e-mail is opened. This is the equivalent of getting another dozen or more calls in a year, so make each message count.
E-mail campaigns are long-term investments. It's all about creating customers and nurturing relationships, not making sales. Give people a reason to notice you, think differently about you or recognize your company. Start an e-mail marketing campaign today. It's targeted, inexpensive, data driven and builds customer loyalty.
author: BY ROBERT KRAVITZ