The most cost effective form of direct marketing that there is involves having your own list of the email addresses of customers and potential customers.

If you haven’t got such a list, or you think maybe you have but you are not sure, I would say you should check the situation now (well, not exactly now, finish reading this first, but then check).

If you have not got such a list or if it is out of date, or not typed up into a spreadsheet, my answer is, start this now, this minute, before doing anything else, right away, without hesitation.

Quite simply a list like this is your gold dust.

First put on the list all your customers.  Then start work on all the people who have enquired.

When I have said this in the past, what I have found is that some firms have come back to me and said, “We looked but we don’t have such a list,” or “It wasn’t in a format we could use.”

But my view is that even if you have to phone up every individual customer and ask for the email address of the person to whom you sell, and then if you have to pay a temp to type up the data into a spreadsheet, this is still worth doing, because this list is so powerful.

Once you have a list of customers and potential customers (even if it is very incomplete) you need to write to them every week.  Not with the same email over and over again – that is a total waste of time, but with information, thoughts, background, offers, insights and everything else.   In fact, what you have to do is build a relationship with them.  You need to tell the recipients that you are a jolly nice person working in a jolly nice firm, that sells very good products and services.

Obviously you can do all this on your own, without calling on Hamilton House for anything.  But just in case you do think that we are awfully nice people who maybe could lend a hand here’s a quick summary of the sort of things HHM does in this field

  1. We can do the research to help you build you list of customers and potential customers.
  2. We can help you write the weekly email that goes out to them.
  3. We can hold your list for you, set it up with the “unsubscribe” button and the other best practice and legal requirements, and do the email each week.
  4. If you want to control the emailing yourself we can supply software that will do exactly that.
  5. We can turn the weekly emails into blogs – which is not a bad idea since recent research shows that companies running blogs get a huge increase in the number of sales they get, as a result of the blog.

My colleagues and I will be thrilled beyond belief to talk through any of these approaches with you – just call 01536 399 000.

But, if you feel that you would prefer to read more of my exciting prose before talking, here’s some starting points…

First, if you want to see some examples of promotional emails of the new style, take a look at www.blog.hamilton-house.com These emails are turned into blogs, but the content is pretty much the same as the original email.

Second, the software that we use to send out tens of thousands of emails a week across hundreds of lists was developed to our particular specification throughout last year and this year, and is now available for sale – with full tech support.   There are details at http://www.yesmail.org.uk/software.html

Finally, if you wish to pay for the emails you send out on a job by job basis without having to buy the software this can be done via Hamilton House.  There are details of this at http://www.yesmail.org.uk/broadcastemails.html

But probably it is quicker to give myself, or one of my colleagues a call.   01536 399 000 usually works.

Tony Attwood