FYI: Staying in Front Of Your Audience With Third-Party Email

"Top of mind" is a favorite phrase in sales and marketing discussions. It refers to keeping your business in the thoughts of your prospects and customers on a regular basis until they're ready to buy. There are plenty of ways to stay "top of mind" -- follow-up calls, networking, regular sales letter mailings, and so on -- and you may already be using a mix of these methods yourself. But one technique in particular has taken the online world by storm. I'm talking about third-party email.

Yes, the humble email. It's now possible for any businessperson to put together a gorgeous, compelling email blast or e-newsletter in minutes and launch it to a predetermined contact base. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 clients or 10,000 customers, isn't it time you jumped on the email bandwagon?

Constant Contact offers over 300 sharp-looking, customizable graphic templates for your email blast or e-newsletter, arranged by industry, holiday, or marketing purpose. Just select the template you want, add your written content, and then tell Constant Contact which of your contact lists to send the finished product out to. You can even send out customer surveys at the touch of a button. And if you're not a computer whiz, don't worry -- there are plenty of tutorials and help options in the online Learning Center to keep you on track. Constant Contact is easier to use than ever and imports your contacts from many sources, like ACT! and Outlook seamlessly.

Swiftpage is another web-based e-marketing service that can greatly simplify your online marketing efforts. This ingenious system performs on-demand marketing, but it also allows you to pre-program your e-marketing campaign to launch itself in stages automatically, delivering multiple emails over time. It even allows for conditional branching, reacting with different follow-up emails based on the response of the recipient. Swiftpage works with ACT!, Outlook, or Excel databases, so you can integrate it with your own centralized client file system.

Programs such as Constant Contact or Swiftpage let you really make use of your contact database to get your message out there in a smart, professional, regular manner. You'll find yourself "top of mind" in no time!

©O’Donoghue&Associates,Inc. 2003-2009

The above article may be published. Quoted or reproduced in part or in entirety with the following attribution to the author:
Midge Norris is a Marketing Strategist who works with Owner-operated businesses and specializes in Affordable Marketing Action Planning and Implementation. Ms. Norris can be reached at www.marketing2go.com or 800-541-9945.