Sales & Marketing Effectiveness for Sustained Growth

Shopping for E-mails

E-marketing is fast becoming one of the most effective, low-cost marketing vehicles of choice. But how do you find those e-mail addresses to expand your efforts?

Guest Author – Kristy Amy

 
The answer is tricky. More and more list vendors are working to add e-mail lists to their service offerings. Vendors like infoUSA.com, edithroman.com and termedia.com do have lists for sale.

But before you start emailing, you need to fully understand the legal aspect of the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act of 2003  and the subsequent modifications / clarifications made to the Act in 2008.

The Act specifically tells you to whom you can send e-mail. For instance, you can only send commercial e-mails to individuals that your company has a relationship with or is currently engaged in a transaction. It also prohibits sending to harvested e-mail lists, meaning you can’t cherry pick addresses from various Web sites and add them to your list.

But there is a gray area. The law does not specify regulations related to purchasing an e-mail list. When you buy a list, you don’t technically know the individuals on the other side, nor do you know how the list was harvested in the first place.

Bottom line, the best way to expand your e-mail marketing is to simply build your list one address at a time. Collect everything you can from customers and prospects. And make sure to allow everyone the opportunity to opt-in to your e-communications.

There are few other issues you need to watch out for related to the CAN-SPAM Act.
Unsubscribe:
    * Include a visible unsubscribe mechanism in all e-mails, and make sure it works 
    * Hone consumer opt-out requests within 10 days
    * Use opt-out lists, also known as suppression lists, for compliance purposes
Content Standards:
    * Design accurate “from” lines describing the sender that doesn’t mimic others, including “friendly froms”  
    * Create relevant subject lines, meaning that it accurately describes the body of the e-mail 
    * Provide a legitimate physical address or a PO Box registered to the USPS
    * Label adult content

E-mail marketing is powerful, but without these standards in place, you may be walking a fine line—fines can soar into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So definitely utilize e-mail communications, but fully understand the legal and technical complexities.

For more information, feel free to contact:
Kristy Amy / President, OnMark Solutions
kristyamy@onmarksolutions.com or call 440-463-2183
Also, visit their website at http://www.onmarksolutions.com

InfoGrow Turns 20! Join Us in Celebrating!

2009 marks our 20th year of success and commitment as a leading sales and marketing solutions provider. This fantastic achievement is due to a combination of my dedicated employees, loyal customers, supportive business partners, along with our mission of being central to all of our clients’ sales and marketing success. 

November 6, 2009 is the official date, but we are going to CELEBRATE all year long.  In the spirit of celebration, I invite everyone to take part in, and enjoy, our monthly Anniversary 20/20 Trivia Contest.  Test your trivia knowledge and get the chance to win a great prize. 

Oh, by the way, categories change each month, so you have many chances to win.

HAVE SOME FUN!

Application Hosting – What it is and Why Use it?

I’ve often had clients and prospects ask me what exactly does hosting an application mean?  It is a fairly easy concept, but not so easy to explain given today’s technologies and rapid change of definitions, so here goes my try at explaining it. 

You may know it as Application Hosting as ASP (Application Service Provider), SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), On-Demand software, or simply Outsourcing.  Though all of these terms are closely related to each other, they are not completely interchangeable, but the concept is the basically the same and fairly simple. 

What Does Hosting Mean?

Hosting is a software application distribution system where your application - CRM, Location Intelligence/ Mapping or others, are maintained and managed by a qualified service provider and made available to you, as a service over the WWW.  Essentially, this means that an application resides on the provider’s servers instead of your in-house servers. The application can be instantly accessed and shared by your sales/marketing and other company staff, through a web browser. In most cases, this means that the hosting provider is responsible for support, maintenance, installations, upgrades and security on a 24x7 basis. 

What is a Qualified Provider?

Generally, a qualified service provider is a company that has either developed the application and/or is certified by a software manufacturer, such as Microsoft.  Qualified Providers have worked extensively with your application and understand all the ins and outs.  They know exactly how to make the application work and are able to support you with best practices.

What are the Highlights:

With a good hosting service, you should experience the following

• No loss of data security or control
• Quicker implementation and quicker ROI
• No steep learning curves, plus ease of use
• Reduced Sales, Marketing and IT support
• Lower software and hardware costs
• 24x7 maintenance and support and security
• Automatic and frequent upgrades
• Ability to implement enhancements on an ongoing basis

What are the Benefits:

The biggest benefit is that you are sharing and accessing vital information with all your sales and marketing teams, instead of it all residing on your separate desktops.  In addition, you should get:

• Sales & Marketing on the same page, sharing the same information all the time
• Enhanced company image and customer loyalty
• Reduced costs and increased revenue and ROI

Bottom line is: You get to concentrate on your core competencies, and increase your sales and marketing effectiveness.   

What Companies are Using Application Hosting? 

CRM Magazine’s January 2009 Special Supplement, Best Practices Series: Software-as-a-Service said, “according to Analyst Perspectives, 55 percent of businesses based in North America will have deployed at least one SaaS application by the end of 2008.  They further stated that, “in fact, if industry forecasts can be believed, by 2012 nearly 30 percent of business software will be deployed and delivered via the SaaS model”.
 
So, do you now have a better idea of what hosting is?  Are you using it?  If so, what are the results?  If not, are you considering it?  I welcome you comments. 

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Hard Times Require Hard Work

I’m sure many of you have heard that phrase before.  For real marketers, that should mean more marketing and smarter marketing. A slow economy shouldn’t slow your  efforts.

As pointed out in his recent post, “Now Is Not the Time to Hide”, Lewis Green, Founder and Managing Principal of L&G Business Solutions  said "When everyone else is being super-cautious, this is the time for business to move from good to great. When everyone else is pulling their heads in, poke yours out. Get noticed. Rise above the pack."

His post provides some great suggestions for smarter marketing in these tough economic times and is well worth a read.

Yes, economic conditions are bad, have been for quite a while, with no real solutions in sight. We’ve all been flooded with blog posts, articles, newsletters, email and editorial opinions on how this puts a brake on marketing.  But unless you’re working in a progressive, marketing-oriented company aren’t you, in essence, used to working in a slow economy in your very own company?  How many of your companies are suffering their own internal recessions?   

Budget cuts, staff cuts, idea cuts, along with increased demands for proving ROI, aligning up with sales, and trying to explain to your CEO and CFO why marketing is valuable – isn’t this the norm for marketing people? Isn’t that our every day, own internal recession? 

At the first of the year, On February 26, 2008, I wrote a post addressing the issue of marketing during a recession. In that, I offered some advice on what, I believe, might help all of you live out the storm successfully.  The storm still builds around us. 

Again, you are on the brink of another year and also on the brink of possible major economic disasters, but unless you are anticipating that the bad economy is going to drive you right out of business, then you better plan on driving your marketing strong and in the right direction. 

Marketing is the push and support that drives sales.  And sales are what drive economies – all economies - yours and the world’s.  

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