Retaining Your Online Customers

If the telephone is the front line of business-to-business, customer-to-business, and business-to-customer interaction, then email might be described as the rearguard action.

There’s no point in winning the battle if you’re then clobbered from behind. Yet that’s just what many businesses are allowing to happen through their email dealings.

They’ve got face-to-face customer service down pat. They’ve trained their team members in customer-friendly telephone techniques. They’ve got a great product with wonderful after sales service – and atrocious email response times.

With the growth of mobile internet and wireless services, more people are sending emails and expecting replies in email, and their number is likely to grow exponentially within the next few years.

Yet many business owners still seem to treat the Internet and email as a kind of ‘exotic add-on’ to their business rather than as a vital part of everyday communication with customers.

Where a telephone response is usually immediate or at least forthcoming the same day, a response by email invariably takes well over 24 hours.

Having a website and email address means you’ve got to be ready to respond to customers and potential customers who contact your company through them. Belatedly responding to an emailed request for information or an emailed complaint, several days or weeks down the track, means a customer frustrated and possibly lost forever.

Net Happenings, a weekly newsletter for internet marketing professionals, declares that any business which hosts online email feedback “should be aware that customer emails deserve the same level of respect as incoming customer phone calls.”

They should receive a response within 24 hours, and not just an automated response.
Other tips for responding to emails include:

• Make sure you understand the customer’s problem or query, and be specific in your reply.
• Train your team members to respond to emails and create an environment where each team member takes responsibility for customers.
• If a customer is expressing frustration or anger, respond in an empathetic, not confrontational, manner. As with telephone calls, let people know you will do your best to help.
• If dealing with a problem, follow up by email or phone to make sure the customer’s concerns have been satisfactorily addressed.

Improving online response times needn’t be a big deal. It simply means seeing email as a vital part of everyday customer communication instead of an exotic add-on.

For more information visit: www.unitymanagement.com.au/e-commerce-strategy-development.html OR call +(612) 9011 5220.

E-Marketing Your Small Business

E-Marketing offers you the chance to reach customers and clients at a relatively low cost and in a range of formats. E-Marketing may involve the use of emails, electronic newsletters, e-zines and website banner advertising. It may also involve participation in online discussion groups or PR activities. Used in conjunction with each other, e-marketing strategies can provide a well-rounded and persuasive marketing mix.

Emails offer the simplest and most direct method of e-marketing. Marketing emails cost only a matter of cents on average, so they are one of the most economical marketing tools around. Unfortunately, they can also be a hit-and-miss marketing tactic, as consumers may open as few as 2 percent of unsolicited emails.

The key to successful email marketing is to work from an opt-in list. It’s possible to buy opt-in lists, but you can generate your own by having an opt-in box on your website. If you have a well-designed site that contains useful features, then visitors may well feel like hearing more from you. People will be more willing to sign up if you have a link to your privacy policy prominently displayed on your website.

You can also generate an opt-in list by sending introductory emails that give a brief account of the benefits offered by your products and services. People will be more likely to open the email if you can come up with a punchy subject line that will appeal to the particular audience you are marketing to. You can then follow through with a brief pitch on your key selling points and end with a request for permission to send more detailed information. When people reply, you know you have good prospects and you can focus your marketing activity on them - this saves you time and money.

Alternatively, you might send out an email that offers something your potential customers would value. If you were running a gardening supplies business, for example, you might send out a tip sheet on caring for indoor plants. People who replied to the email could be sent a follow-up email that contained a special offer - perhaps a discount designed to entice them into your store.

E-newsletters often work well in conjunction with marketing emails. For example, if you are running a business-to-business (B2B) operation, your clients might value a regular newsletter that contains business news and gives insights into industry issues.

E-newsletters should also be mailed to an opt-in list and, once again, this list can be generated through an opt-in box on your website. You might want to use a registration form for the newsletter, gathering not only permission but also some generic marketing information. Bear in mind, however, that a longer form is likely to generate fewer customer responses.

The beauty of the e-newsletter is that, like the email, it involves no printing costs and costs very little to distribute. It is an inexpensive way to strengthen your brand image (as every newsletter should feature your trademark). As long as you provide high-quality content you will gain credibility, and you may also strengthen your B2B relationships.

For example, you might include content from your business partners, gaining by association with businesses that have a strong brand and a good reputation. You can also contribute to e-newsletters run by other businesses. This could potentially broaden your customer base.

E-newsletters can also be used to generate two-way communication. You can seek feedback from customers, encouraging them to fill in surveys, perhaps enticing them to do so with coupons or discounts. And established e-newsletters can generate some direct revenue through advertising, though this shouldn’t exceed 20 percent of space of the newsletter.

If you run a very small business, you might not be able to produce your own e-newsletter, but you can still provide feature articles to online and print media, and you can either post electronic press releases on your website or circulate them to the editors and industry publications.

The thing to remember here is that, while you want to showcase your business, editors are only interested in material that fits their own criteria. They won’t find your product details newsworthy, for instance, but they might be interested in news of a merger or takeover, or some unexpected market developments.

The hub of your e-marketing will be your website. It’s your business presence on the web and people will judge you by it. So the website needs to look attractive, have interesting content and to be very easy to navigate.

And you need to get the basics right to make sure that people can find the site in the first place. You need to make sure that the right keywords are encoded into the heading and subheadings for your web pages, so that that you show up prominently in web searches. You may want to give yourself an edge by paying to have your site highlighted by search engines.

Or you can join a price comparison website such as BizRate.com. Your website feeds product information to the price-comparison site and the information will pop up when consumers use the website to do their shopping. Price comparison sites draw a huge amount of web traffic.

You can also attract people directly to your website by having the site address prominently displayed on all your marketing material, whether that be electronic or print ads, brochures, giveaways or employee uniforms.

While the website provides a way to market, it can also provide direct market intelligence. If you employ a web tracking service, you will be able to analyse traffic on your site and this will give you constantly updated information on which of your products or services are generating the most interest. This can help you with product and marketing strategy development.

So, e-marketing offers you a range of flexible, low-cost marketing tools. It provides a range of channels for getting your marketing message out to customers and clients and it can help you to build better B2B relationships and to improve your understanding of the market environment.

For more information call one of our professionals today. Call (+612) 9011 5220.

Cultivating Strategic Alliances For Your Small Business

Looking for a smart way to grow your small business? Strategic alliances are a good place to begin. The SME entrepreneur who invests in strategic alliances will most likely find it a reliable way of consolidating or improving on their market position. As with all business plans, there are some rules to keep in mind when trying to gain maximum benefit from your strategic alliances.

Communication should be your foremost consideration. While it isn’t necessary that each member of a strategic alliance have exactly the same objectives, each should still be committed to a common outcome. To make sure that you and your business alliance partner share similar goals it is important to be honest from the outset. That is, be frank about what you hope to achieve from the alliance, and what you can provide to make sure your partner’s needs are met.
One of the most common small business mistakes is the failure to clearly articulate the details of an alliance from its inception. The result of this failure can be significant; mismatched goals, insufficient commitment, and an inability to alter the alliance easily at a later stage.

Another tip for strategic alliance building - look for situations that will deliver strong benefits to both alliance members. Only take part in an alliance when you think it will improve your business relationship with the other party overall, not just during the term of the arrangement. Never initiate a strategic business alliance if you think it won’t support your business goals in the short or long term.
Knowledge sharing is also an area that you need to be aware of before establishing a strategic alliance. By mastering the ability to share knowledge effectively, you will smooth your new business partnership considerably. Also, knowledge sharing has important ramifications for your clients – if you can maximise the quality of knowledge that you receive from a business partner, you can then pass this on to your clients to ensure they are increasingly satisfied with your services.

For the SME it is also vital to understand what is involved in the development of a strategic alliance with a larger firm. When dealing with a larger firm, try to establish connections with several of the company’s members. This is important because, in a large firm, it is more likely that if one department is dealing with you, another will be unaware of, or at least unfamiliar with, the alliance.
Imagine what would happen if you had a single contact in a large firm, and that person suddenly left the company or moved to another office – you would lose all the value of the strategic alliance that you had cultivated until that point.

Creativity is key here, too. The nature of many SMEs is that they are specialised in one area or another. That means that your skills and knowledge will be more attractive as a strategic alliance package to a particular type of organisation. So do some research, have a look at your client lists, and try to determine which type of company is most likely to engage in an alliance with your firm. Then think of a new and interesting way in which you could package your firm to that type of company, and go for it!

Keep the big picture in mind. It is true that many small business owners choose alliances to pursue a fairly narrow goal, ensuring that they form a number of alliances and therefore cover the majority of their objectives.

So try and imagine how your current strategic alliance fits into your overall business plan, and tailor it according to how you see your company in the long term. Knowing as much as possible about the likely consequences of one alliance will allow you to prepare properly for future partnerships.

Remember also that not every business alliance is beneficial to a company. Some partnerships may have suited your goals when they commenced, but have since lost relevance. Others may have proved to be too narrow and need to be widened to meet your continuing business needs. In such scenarios, terminating the alliance can be beneficial to your operation in the long term.

Also, strategic alliances need not be the sole determinant of your business success. A small firm is only viable as long as it remains competitive, so try not to rely purely on your business partnerships for profitability and success. Instead, focus on your business’ inherent skills and strengths as well. In this way, you will retain an element of independence, and still remain profitable if your business alliances are not as successful as you might have hoped.

If you are able to grow your small business on your own and play to its strengths, chances are your company will prove more attractive to a prospective business partner anyway. Finding a strategic alliance that is attractive to you is only half of the equation – you also have to ensure that, from a partner’s point of view, your SME is the right one with which to establish a business relationship.

For more information visit: www.unitymanagement.com.au OR call +(612) 9011 5220.