By Kathleen Schrempp

An effective email campaign has several components: A subject line that grabs your attention, a compelling message, strategically placed calls to action, and sometimes even an offer. The other important component is the integrity of the list that is being mailed to.
• You could have a very integral database, but if your message is poor or too long and doesn’t grab the attention of your audience you run the risk of the email not getting read.

• You could also have a really compelling message with a subject line that grabs the attention of the viewer, however if you don’t have an integral database to mail to your results could fall short.

• You could also have all the right tools: a compelling message, an intriguing offer and an integral contact list, but if you aren’t sending out regularly scheduled campaigns (at least once per month) your results won’t meet your expectations.

COX has been helping companies for over 10 years build/create successful email campaigns. We have the knowledge and experience to help your organization as well!

I’d like to share a few things that I’ve learned about trade shows over the years. I have a number of clients who regularly attend these shows and provide me with feedback. Cox eLearning believes there is value in attending trade shows; however, calculating ROI is not always easy. The reality is, companies do a poor job of tracking leads they get from a traditional show and moving them into their sales funnel.

The issue is not a lack of attendees or leads obtained. People are supposedly going to trade shows to get the latest education on the latest resources. The reality, however, is that when they come to your booth, interest seems to shift more to what is being given away than what you have to offer.

To a trade shows’ credit, they do serve a purpose. You can mingle with other companies that could potentially partner with you. As such, you maintain your footprint in the industry. And, you may walk away with a couple hundred folks to follow up with. But how many of them will be qualified opportunities?

What Cox eLearning Consultants has recommended to clients is a varied approach to marketing. In other words, do not put all your eggs into one basket. We suggest attending 1 – 2 trade shows each year and then also do some email marketing to generate leads. With email marketing you can:

• Build your brand over 12 months – For nearly the same cost as a 2 – 3 day trade show, you can market to 50,000 decision makers and/or influencers up to 2 times or more a month for an ENTIRE year.
• Choose your target audience – You never know who will be attending a trade show. You can select your audience by industry, title, geography and company size.

Once you’ve got a good number of steady leads being pumped into your sales funnel, consider hosting a webinar or offering a white paper as a way to further brand your company and provide something of value to prospective clients.

By Diana Monier

If we were to send a survey to our clients and asked them about their toughest sales challenge based on our industry knowledge and experience we know it would deal with finding qualified leads. Sales representatives today are extremely busy with their day to day tasks, meetings and reports. Prospecting for new leads seems to fall short on the priority list with their daily items and motivation to do the work. We have also learned that lead lists and databases are inaccurate and again this poses a problem with researching further to obtain the correct name and information.
One of Cox eLearning Consultants’ core competencies is lead generation. We leverage a portion of our database, creating email content, sending out emails and then follow up with a phone call to further qualify the opportunity. Phone based lead development is a unique skill and our sales consultants are highly trained experts in the field of cultivating new prospects that will ultimately lead to the sale.

By Kerry Williams – April 23, 2013

Everybody is busy these days, and when dealing with today’s busy buyers you need to have a strategy in place in order to make the best use of your time and theirs. When leaving voicemail messages you want to quickly establish credibility, pique their curiosity and get them to call you back.

Follow these 10 tips to get the best results:

1. Get down to business – skip the phony friendliness; be professional and firmly state your name and phone number. No need for your company, title and other irrelevant details.
2. Reference referrals upfront – referencing the name of a respected colleague will keep them listening.
3. Display your level of knowledge of their company – familiarize yourself with the company prior to calling and briefly state something indicating you’ve done your homework….i.e. “I’ve worked with other architectural firms and found they often struggle with….”
4. Mention a current event – bring up a recent event that creates a need that is relevant to your offering and tell them that is what prompted the call.
5. State a strong value proposition – rather than tell them about your offering, use meaningful metrics such as “we help companies like yours increase sales revenues by an average of 20%.”
6. Share some fresh and exciting new perspectives – share your insights or ideas to help eliminate problems or achieve objectives.
7. Do not use self-serving verbiage – avoid words that promote your product or service. Save the sales talk for the phone or face-to-face meeting.
8. Sound like a trusted peer – don’t sound like you are desperate to meet with your prospect. Buyers want to work with savvy sellers that bring value to the relationship. Try to sound like you are having a conversation with a friend or relative.
9. Have a script handy – it’s always a good idea to have a script to refer to so you don’t ramble on. Be sure your message is less than 20 seconds.
10. Relax – you want to sound comfortable in your message. If you are talking too fast or sound nervous, a prospect will pick up on that and possibly not want to have that uncomfortable conversation with you.

Email marketing is effective in both retaining new customers as it is in obtaining new ones. Did you know
it costs up to 9 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one?

Repeat customers also spend more than a new customer. But don’t forget that if you want to grow, as most companies do, you need to always be searching for those new customers. For every dollar spent on email marketing in recent years, an estimated $40 in ROI was generated. That’s quite a return!

If you are like most of us, we receive hundreds, if not thousands, of emails each year promoting some type of product or service. If you are also like most of us, we hit the delete button pretty often. What may surprise you, however, is that over 80% of consumers say email marketing has impacted their purchasing decisions. So the next time you click the delete button, think of how many others made a purchase. The number may surprise you.

While email marketing should not use up your entire budget, it should be considered in your overall marketing plans.

By Kim Densberger

A successful email marketing campaign relies on a vast customer database, so attracting new signups is a high priority for many businesses. Research indicates that almost half of customers have opted to receive promotional emails of some kind.

Tactics that can be utilized to encourage customers to sign up for email newsletters and promotions include adding testimonials regarding the value of the emails or statements conveying subscription benefits along with using a straight-forward signup procedure.

Here are some tips to improve email signups:
• Offer something in return for signing up. Just asking isn’t always enough. Offer discounts or relevant up-to-date news.
• Offer multiple signup locations, such as one at the top and one at the bottom.
• Place the email capture field on the same page as opposed to it being a link to yet another page.
• Inform customers what the delivery frequency is of newsletter mailings to alleviate the fear of their mailbox being flooded.
• Provide a hyperlink to the privacy policy that defines how the email address will be used.
• Make the signup process quick and simple by only asking for the email address. Save any questions you have for the ‘Welcome’ email sent after signup.

Contact Cox eLearning Consultants for more insights and tips into email marketing to help your business grow and succeed.

At Cox elearning Consultants we tell our clients that creating a successful email campaign takes “a dash of science and a pinch of magic.” It also takes some patience and a realization of expectations.

During one of my late night reading junkets, I ran across a document put together by Return Path that sums up in a matrix format, many of the things our clients rely on us for when creating their email marketing campaigns.

Questions like: “what kind of click-through rate can I expect” or “what is the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce” are just some of the questions we get each and every day. You might see some things you’ve encountered with your own email campaigns in the matrix.

COX has been helping our clients for over 10 years construct successful email campaigns. We’d like to help you too!

By Kathleen Schrempp

There are so many LMS companies out there. So how will you know which one is “just right” for your training solutions needs? You could begin to sift through the hundreds of LMS companies out there and spend countless hours researching these solutions. Or, you could select a few of the “top dogs” in the industry and only research them and make your selection. But are either of these the best way?

Researching the 100s of options out there is time consuming. Most HR and Training professionals do not have the time to do this. But if you only limit yourself to the top LMS companies, then you run the risk of not finding a solution that 1. best fits your needs and 2. is the best solution for the price.

You could consider hiring a company who could assist you with this. There are several out there. OR, you might consider talking with Cox eLearning Consultants. We are the preferred marketing company in the industry. Through our years of working with many LMS companies, we’ve come to know most all of them. Thus, we provide needs assessment for many HR and Training people. The best part is that we do this at no cost. How do we do this you might ask? We benefit in several ways from learning more about our industry and “keeping in the know”, to writing industry reports we then put up for sale on our website. And, since we work with and for so many LMS companies, they are happy that we can bring them people they know they will be able to help. So it’s a win/win for everyone involved. Whatever direction you choose, we wish you the best in your search.

Email marketing is the most cost efficient and fastest way to reach a large, targeted audience in a short period of time. Three crucial components of successful email marketing campaigns is effective message writing, a good contact list, and proper email distribution. But if you’ve never done any email marketing, you may not know where to begin.

First, if you don’t already have a good contact list to market to you’ll need to acquire or build a targeted list of prospects. Next, you’ll need to sign up for an email marketing system to create, design and launch your email campaign. Finally, you’ll need to write the content of the promotional emails. Writing effective email messages is where many people could use some assistance.

Writing Tips

• Keep your message focused and simple – you only have a few seconds to grab your prospects’ attention so do it with a simple, powerful message that clearly states what you’re selling and how it will benefit the reader.
• Include a clear call to action – tell the reader exactly what you want them to do. Do you want them to schedule a meeting, call you, visit your website, or respond to the email? Whatever you choose, make the action clear and easy to follow.
• Motivate them with a clear and compelling offer – an offer can be found in many things such as a discount, free trial, educational information relevant to the reader – you name it! Entice your reader to respond to you and your offer
• Repetition is critical – you must consistently and frequently broadcast your message to build name recognition and stay in front of your prospects so they don’t forget about you.
• Give your email a strong subject line – The content of your subject line will drive prospects to open your email, delete it, ignore it, file it, report it, or filter it as spam. Also, a poorly written subject line may not even reach your contact’s inbox

Need More Help?

Whether you choose to do it yourself or enlist the services of a marketing specialist for your email marketing, you should take into consideration your resources, budget and time you have available to spend on email marketing. Much of your email marketing can be outsourced very cost effectively. Consider Cox eLearning Consultants (COX), for example. COX can:

• Provide Contact Lists – COX has an established history of trust with our email vendors for contact lists that we load into our accounts. As a result, these vendors also trust that future contact lists we use will be high quality. By partnering with COX, that trust umbrella would cover you as well.

• Provide an Email Marketing System – Due to the high volume use by COX, we get very attractive pricing from our email vendors and pass the savings on to you.

• Help with your Campaigns and Message Writing – COX offers you assistance with any portion of your email marketing – from design to distribution to analysis. Because we already know the system, our assistance will be efficient and economical.

• Fit within Your Budget – With many payment plan options such as month-to-month, six month and 12 month plans, COX can fit into any budget.

What is ‘The Fold?’

The Fold is the bottom of your readers’ browser window; the point they can’t see beyond unless they scroll down.

Originating from newspaper publishing, the term referred to the literal fold in the paper itself and the objective was to put attention-getting content there to catch the eye of potential readers, enticing them to buy the paper and read more.

The same objective could be applied to your promotional emails. Keep key elements above the fold such as:

• Call-To-Action
• Primary Subject Matter
• Logo

Having your call-to-actions above the fold can give your email a greater number of click-throughs. If your reader has to scroll down to search for it, they may close the email before ever seeing the call-to-action. Also, make sure you include enough information above the fold so that readers understand what is being asked of them.

Whether you design your own promotional emails or enlist the services of a marketing specialist such as Cox eLearning Consultants, remember the importance of the content you place in ‘the fold’ of your next email.