The number one rule in marketing to tradesmen is to do more listening than talking.
Once you stop talking and start listening, they will tell you what’s on their minds and what you can do for them.
In a one-on-one meeting, an aggressive salesman can do all the talking or interrupt a customer in the middle of a thought. They can’t do that in an e-mail which helps you get good feedback.
This same rule applies to the use of e-mail when marketing to tradesmen.
Karen Bannan of BtoB Magazine interviews Loren McDonald of Silverpop who said,
“E-mail is a two-way medium. If you don’t solicit feedback or ignore it when you get it, you miss the chance to improve your programs, solve problems, expand to meet needs or retain customers.”
Here are a few of his suggestions:
- Provide plenty of ways for them to contact you. Other than your e-mail address, you can use a “contact link” and a visible link on your home page.
- Survey your readers. From asking new subscribers if they’d like to see something specific, to doing a formal survey a few times a year about how the company or its products are doing.
- Watch for responses. If you go to the trouble of asking, you should also make sure someone is in charge of getting back to them with at least an acknowledgement that you’re working on an answer.
This all seems like common sense, but sometimes we’re so busy trying to get the message out that we lose site of the big picture.
E-mail marketing gives you a unique and easy way to have your customers talk with you. What a novel idea!
To read the enire post: How to use email to get your customers talking to you.