Email Marketing

What exactly is email marketing?

For some people, email marketing is a foreign language. It’s the collecting of email addresses through market research and then blasting the email lists with marketing material. Sending any kind of communication through email is considered marketing material. It is not the traditional sell sheet and product catalogs sent through the mail. It’s more along the lines of being a viable option and conveying that within your messaging.

Market Research

To gather a targeted email list, using Select GCR Pro would be the easiest and quickest method of exporting contacts. You can search via keywords, NAICS, locations and more. Filtering the results to best match your target audience and then exporting is a feature you won’t find anywhere else. The export feature gives you all the contact information you would need to upload into your email marketing service provider.

There are other methods of market research. You can utilize websites like SAM.gov or USASpending.gov. They do have the ability to search and create your own database from. It is a time-consuming process and can lead to incorrect information. Our marketing strategy covers how to locate the correct contact information by emailing the contact you have directly and simply asking for the right person’s email address.

Finding Email Service Providers

The best way to find the right provider is to do your research. Make sure you read reviews of the provider and pay attention to the messages people give about the service. Another good thing to do is to get a “test drive” or “demo” of the service you’ll receive.

You want to be sure your email provider can do the following:

Store your contact’s information securely
Create a complete database of every contact
Ability to import and export contact lists in a file format you can work with
Reasonable limits to the amount of emails you can send out at once
No limits to the amount of contacts contained in the database
Unsubscribe feature for compliance

Customer Relationship Management Software

Chances are the CRM software you use for your business has an email marketing feature. This is the easiest way to send email communications, with the software you already use. The contacts are already listed in your system as well as their email addresses. Usually they have a way to send text emails that have a more personal feel and like they come directly you. Typically they also have the ability to send marketing emails with color and photos that you can use to sell your business and keep your contacts informed on your progress.

Other providers to review (this list is not exhaustive):

What do you send?

You’ll want to send correspondence that introduces your company in a professional and straight forward way. Be cognizant of your contacts time. Give them all the pertinent information upfront and in a clean and concise way.

Also you always want to send your Capabilities Statement with your emails. Make sure your information is accurate and has everything they will need to quickly reference your business. You want your contact information to be accessible on a whim. They need to remember you as well so make your business stand out from your competition.

Government Marketing