Automating The Email Process For Online Sales

Email is the "killer app" for the internet. When I imagine life the way it was before Email, I get very depressed. I love Email.

From a marketing/sales perspective, Email rules. There are several ways you can use it that will make your business thrive.

Rules of the Road

Before I continue on the discussion of Email marketing, let me say: NEVER SPAM! I can't emphasis that strongly enough. If we get complaints about you spamming, we will drop you like a hot potato! We have no love and no room for spammers.

Image Enhancers

An Email newsletter related to what you're selling on your site is a great tool. It helps establish your expertise, reminds people that didn't buy from you before that you're there, and reminds people that bought from you before that they may want to buy something else.

I subscribe to dozens of newsletters, and I've bought products from the people sending the newsletters. I will never buy from people that send me a newsletter that is nothing but advertising. You must give people something of value if you expect them to respond. Newsletters that work are a mixture of useable information and some advertising.

Ralph Buys a Dish

Another way that Email works great is sales follow-up. Let's say you sell one of the satellite dishes to Ralph Smith.

The day you ship it you can send an Email letting Ralph know it shipped. You might send Ralph an Email a week later check to see if he's received it and if he has any questions.

Maybe two or three weeks after that you send another follow-up to see if it's working well and if he's had any installation problems.

If you have something the would be an enhancement to the satellite dish Ralph bought, you could send an Email a month after the purchase suggesting the upgrade.

I've used this follow-up approach for software I sell. The customers love it! It adds that extra touch of customer service in, what is  becoming, a much less personalized world.

Worthwhile Helpers

There's software and online services that will help you with all the above.

If you just want to do a newsletter or simple mailings like that, there are a number of inexpensive programs that will help you do it. WorldMerge is a program I've used and recommend. It's cool in that it will allow you to personalize every message sent with the person's name and any other information you've collected. If you're not using Outlook as your Email program, they have a companion program that will collect email addresses from your email. If you're using Outlook, there's an add-on I've used to take messages I receive and write them to a database for processing. It's called CATRAP and you can find it here.

There are a number of other desktop Email programs that will do what the above will do, and some of them have additional features. But, for the money, I don't think you can beat it.

AutoMail by eCOMpal

The next level is totally automating the Email process to automatically follow up with your customers or prospects as well as mail newsletters and the like.

You can completely automate your email processes with AutoMail. You can have multiple mail lists, e.g. customers, newsletter subscriptions, special reports, etc. You can set up a series of emails to any or all of the lists so that you can keep in contact with them.

I've used this a couple of different ways. If you signed up for the "Seven Steps..." you've received your emails automatically in the sequence I created.

I also use it for another product I sell. I've set up a series of follow ups to my customers that has reduced my return rate and has improved my customer service. It works like magic. I get Emails from people thanking me for the follow up and commenting on my software and it takes me a moment to realize they got the automated Email. It's marvelous.

By the way, there's a program that gets a lot of "ink" on the net. It's called Mailloop. I've used it, it's a good program. One thing that's slightly misleading is that it does NOT do automated follow ups even though the marketing materials speak in glowing terms about automating your processes. To my mind, the automated follow up is one of the key requirements for automating your processes.