Better Marketing Can Help Battle Recession

Are you a printer or are you a marketer?

If you’re successful in this business you’re probably a bit of both as neither could survive without the other. While business just does not “walk through the door,” it must be pursued. Similarly, no good marketing effort can survive a poor print job. In the end, the customer must receive what she wants or she’ll no longer be your customer.

So the trick then is to regularly give your customers what they want while consistently moving new names from the prospect list to the client file. To do this we have the traditional means of advertising such as direct mail, trade shows, networking and other forms of word-of-mouth communication as well as new forms, such as e-mail marketing, social media (discussed in a prior column) and green marketing.

While each of these topics deserves extensive, individual attention for the sake of this article I’ll provide some of the most recent cutting-edge solutions that can help you grow your business in this stubborn downturn.

What’s Old Is New Again

Consider one of the dinosaurs of marketing, direct mail. Like all forms of direct response advertising, direct mail is a cost-conscious medium. While direct mail is rarely the most creative medium, it’s more about getting a lot from a little. It’s mass market based on low cost, high volume and tiny response rates. But even direct mail is fast-forwarding as it evolves into e-mail marketing, which is proving to be one of the most cost-effective and affordable ways to reach customers, according to the Direct Marketing Association.

Consider that Deluxe Corp. of Shoreview, MN, has launched EasyContact, a free e-mail marketing solution designed to make it easy for small businesses to tap the power of e-mail marketing. EasyContact allows users to send to 100 e-mail contacts per month absolutely free. Additional flexible plans allowing users to expand their mailings to a larger group are competitively priced.

“Deluxe’s experience in partnering with hundreds of thousands of small-business owners to help them market themselves online, has helped us build a more effective e-mail marketing solution,” said Lee Schram, Deluxe Corp. CEO. “EasyContact allows the smallest of the small businesses to better compete with big business with its professional looking designs, ease of use and pricing plans that fit any business need.”

A manufacturer’s commitment to eco-friendly practices greatly influences purchasing decisions.

Small business owners can use EasyContact to create e-newsletters, special promotions, event announcements and general business updates and drive traffic to their Web sites and increase search-engine results.

But what do you do to make e-mail marketing as effective as it can possibly be? Start by learning what not to do, says Dylan Boyd, vice president of sales and strategy at e-ROI, an interactive and e-mail marketing agency in Portland, OR.

“Every e-mail sent must have a purpose and needs to personally relate to the subscriber,” notes Boyd. “If the e-mail lacks personalization or has no purpose, you’re taking a risk that may cause subscribers to not only opt-out of your e-mails, but also to mentally and emotionally opt-out from any future engagement with your brand. When this happens the recipient immediately becomes emotionally unsubscribed.”

A few more points from Boyd who adds that sending to an unsubscribed address is the “ultimate fail.” He urges marketers to avoid confusing or tricking recipients as this will almost always lead to an unsubscribe and not to “pimp out” one’s e-mail list as this causes more harm than good.

Give ‘Em What They Want

The majority of 10,000 people in 21 countries have a guilty conscience about their carbon footprint when using their home and office technology, according to a Lexmark International, Inc. global survey.