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Research Proves It: Email Helps Get, Keep
and Regain Customers
Quiz time. Name two medium-sized organizations that have
shown creativity, guts and increased revenue as a result of using
email to get closer to and stay closer to their prospects and
customers. That's right. E-mail. With an assist from their Websites.
Details. Organization ABC finds itself unable to use its
own facilities to solicit customers during a crucial sales period.
To be specific, ABC's own telemarketers won't be able to use its
phone system or offices. What does ABC do? Goes with an e-mail
sales campaign. Results -- ABC increases revenue by 383% during
the one-month period compared to the previous year. How would
you feel about a 383% increase in revenue, especially given the
limitations given above?
Now consider the success of the XYZ organization. XYZ decides
to send a monthly e-mail newsletter to its prospects and current
customers. XYZ's approach is relationship selling. XYZ uses the
e-mail newsletter, called @XYZ, to strengthen relationships with
prospects and customers. Side benefit: no printing, handling or
postage costs to pay.
XYZ compared revenue results from those getting @XYZ with those
not receiving it. Consider these three results. One, in targeting
new customers, market, XYZ got 8% more new customers from the
group who received @XYZ. What about current customers? XYZ got
5% more to remain customers by sending them @XYZ. And what about
former customers? Well, @XYZ caused 10% more to become customers
again, compared to those who did not get the newsletter.
In short, both the ABC organization and the XYZ organization
increased their revenues through the use of email. Both documented
their successes and shared them publicly. Who are they? These
savvy marketers were Wake Forest University (the "ABC" organization)
and Stanford University (the "XYZ" organization).
Who were the prospects, current customers and past customers?
Alumni. Now, your first thought may be to discount these success
stories in various ways: "Stanford graduates are rich." "People
automatically give to their alma mater." "They're nonprofits so
they don't matter."
Whatever disconnect you are having from the reality of these
successes, just stop yourself for a moment. True, if the development
officers at the nation's universities and colleges could hear
your objections, they'd laugh a lot. Now get real. The fact is
that nonprofits are nearly always more challenged than for profits
in finding ways to increase revenues, particularly when technology
and its expense is involved. In other words, if Stanford can do
it, most for-profit companies company should be able to as well.
For details about @Stanford (the e-mail newsletter), go to http://www.stanford.edu/~jpearson/.
The report includes enough graphs and numbers to make any number-cruncher
happy. Last week I was in a meeting in which one top manager commented,
"The devil's in the details." That seemed funny to me because
I'd always heard it, "God is in the details." Whether you're looking
for the devil or divine inspiration -- you'll find plenty of detail
in the Stanford report. Marketing directors and CEOs who read
the report carefully will want to rethink their organization's
strategy for getting new customers, keeping current ones and getting
former customers back.
About Wake Forest. Remember the Presidential debates last year?
One of them was held at Wake Forest, where legions of media camped
out and used up every available phone line and office, wiping
out Wake Forest's opportunity to conduct the first month of its
annual telemarketing campaign. So Wake Forest went to e-mail.
Wake Forest told e-mail recipients, "hey, if you contribute now,
we won't send you any printed material." It worked! So give Wake
Forest credit for adapting. It proves the axiom, necessity is
the mother of invention. Next time you see a necessity staring
you in the face at your organization, think Invention. Think Internet.
This article first appeared as a column written
by Dave Tedlock, NetOutcomes' president, for Inside Tucson
Business and/or the New Mexico Business Weekly.
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