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In my November 4th post, I offered up 3 e-mail tips to help entrepreneurs better connect with their prospects. Here’s the remaining 4 tips from this two-part story….

Mining for New Business Tip #4: Move Past the Techie Language to Demonstrate Tangible Business Benefits
Gone are the days when people would jump on the latest technology “just because.”

Technology is now just the means to the end. You’ll go far if you can move beyond the so (e.g. we offer virtualization technology services) to discuss the so what (i.e. the real, underlying benefits Sally can realize by leveraging this technology).

Then, back up your claims with tangible proof. The original letter claims that technology was used to “drive significant savings,” but there’s nothing tangible to back it up, making it sound like meaningless dribble.

Numbers, specific examples, and before-after comparisons will help drive your point home.

Mining for New Business Tip #5: Ease into your Offer, but Don’t Try to Go Straight for the Sale
After you’ve connected with the reader and established some level of credibility, go ahead and subtly pitch your services… but tread lightly.

Most B2B products and services are complex sales, which unfortunately translates to a long sales cycle. At this point your only goal with an introductory e-mail is to pique their interest so they’ll want to “learn more.”

Mining for New Business Tip #6: Don’t Forget to Include a P.S.
Believe it or not, studies have shown that the P.S. portion of an e-mail is the most read and recalled.

I understand this can be an especially hard concept to grasp, and I’ve even had some techies react to this advice with cries of “cheesy.”

But this is a case where you need to abandon what you “think you know,” relying instead on the marketing experts who have proven out this theory time and again.

The advice is simple: Add a P.S. to your e-mail, reiterating the primary message you want the reader to retain.

Mining for New Business Tip #7: Don’t Forget to Build in a Way to Measure Response to your Solicitation
Once your e-mail hits the ether, how do you know when you’ve struck a nerve with the reader?

List hosting providers (e.g. SparkList, Constant Contact) offer valuable e-mail marketing statistics such as open rate and click thrus, but for the new business owner who’s generating a handful of e-mails at most, a landing page is a practical alternative.

Set up a landing page where the reader can go to learn more about something that was highlighted in your letter (e.g. Joe can give Sally a link where she can learn more about how virtualization helped the two companies mentioned in his e-mail).

Be sure to install a web analytics program (Google Analytics, WebTrends, etc.), or embed your own code in the landing page, so you can count the number of times the landing page was viewed.

Then, direct the reader to your page in the P.S. portion of your e-mail. Why there? Because the P.S. portion of any e-mail is the most frequently read and recalled.

Putting it all Together
Putting all these suggestions to work, here’s a mock-up of Joe’s revised introductory letter:

Would you like to have your own high-tech marketing collateral featured in a future story? Sign up online at http://www.marketinglure.com/marketinglure-cc-landingpage.html.

Sue Anderson
Marketing Lure, Inc.

This is the first of a two-part series where I’ll dissect an actual e-mail solicitation crafted by a corporate-VP-turned-entrepreneur. Only the names have been changed. This e-mail I believe is highly representative: i.e. it’s a plain vanilla marketing message that falls flat in its attempt to land an introductory meeting with a busy IT executive. Watch for the second of this two-parter which I’ll  post on Nov. 18th.

When Joe Entrepreneur founded his IT services business, he brought with him strong technical skills, high ambition, but little-to-no marketing expertise.

To uncover opportunities for new business, he networked with friends and business associates, building an entirely new list of contacts: friends’ friends who may have a need for his services.

What seemed like an easy next step proved harder than he ever imagined: writing that first letter of introduction. Joe and his tech-focused partner labored over the content below. As you read it, ask yourself: ‘How much time would I invest in this e-mail if it landed in my mailbox?’

What’s the overall problem with this e-mail?

It does nothing to make Joe’s company stand out from the crowd.

To compete with the likes of IBM and Accenture, Joe needs to connect with his reader, establish credibility, and measure response to his solicitation. Here’s seven simple tips to accomplish these three goals.

Mining for New Business Tip #1: Be Specific About your Relationship to the Recipient
After first recommending that Joe become well-versed with the FTC’s CAN-SPAM Act (a whopping 109 pages long!), the first recommendation to Joe is “Don’t look like spam!”

An obvious statement, but how do you do it? By being very specific about the connection you have with your reader.

In this particular case, Joe and Sally share a mutual acquaintance, and it was this person who recommended that they meet.

By leaving out this very important detail, Joe’s message looks and smells like spam, giving Sally every reason to send his e-mail to the trash.

Mining for New Business Tip #2: Don’t Make your E-Mail Sound like a Corporate Marketing Message
Yes, e-mail has evolved to become an extremely effective vehicle for marketing, but when you get down to it, e-mails are still a form of personalized communication: one sender, one receiver.

A “mining for new business” e-mail will be more effective if it sounds like it’s coming from a real person, rather than from a corporate marcom group inside a faceless corporation.

My advice?

Don’t jump right into your sales pitch, and avoid the proverbial “we” language. Instead establish a rapport with the reader through a conversational tone and direct (“I” and “you”) communication style.

Mining for New Business Tip #3: Raise your Level of Credibility by Letting Them Know it’s about Them, not You
More importantly, all that “we, we, we” language makes Joe sound self-absorbed and boorish.
When Joe’s e-mail hits Sally’s inbox, she’ll be juggling a slew of requirements from competing business units, urgent IT problems, and a laundry list of ongoing maintenance activities. Sally has no time for Joe (nor does she care) because frankly, she’s got her own problems to worry about.

So how do you attract the attention of an overworked IT executive?
Approach your e-mail like you would any first date. Talk about the reader, their business, and their acute pains; not you.

Joe has one big advantage: he lived and breathed the corporate IT world for 20+ years. By relating to Sally’s pains, Joe will effectively demonstrate that he’s not just another schmuck trying to sell Sally a product he knows nothing about.

This alternate approach can reap two huge benefits: 1) it earns you credibility points with your reader, and 2) it starts a conversation which (hopefully) will continue during a subsequent face-to-face meeting.

Sue Anderson
Marketing Lure, Inc.

Here’s the kind of marketing mistake that really makes you wonder “what are they thinking”.

It should come as no surprise to anyone in marketing – especially not the people at Cisco – that email marketing messages MUST include a way for the recipient to unsubscribe from the list. And it doesn’t take a whole lot of thinking to realize that unsubscribing should be easy. One click and you’re off the list. Anything more and people just might get angry enough to report you as a spammer.

So why then does Cisco make it so hard? Why would you want to keep someone on your list who doesn’t want to be there?

Yesterday I received an email from someone at NexusIS inviting me to a Cisco Technology Open House at the Cisco office in Los Angeles. I don’t know how I ever got on this list but I’m not interested so I clicked the button at the bottom of the page that says “Unsubscribe from Cisco”.

So far so good. But it takes me to a page that makes me check all the things I want to unsubscribe from and then provide my first and last name. Well that’s annoying enough but I did it anyway.

And then it takes me to yet another page that wants me to provide (get this):
•    My complete mailing address
•    Country
•    Phone Number (including area code)
•    Email address
•    And the reason why I am unsubscribing.

Are they kidding? I never wanted to be on this list – why should I jump through hoops to get off of it.

In case you’re thinking – as I was – that maybe it’s NexusIS and not Cisco that’s so annoying, it’s Cisco. The logo and copyright info is all over the forms.

Anyway, the reason I’m telling you this is not to bash Cisco but to make the point that email marketing is only as good as your list – how qualified and happy the people are to be on it. If you don’t make it easy to unsubscribe, you might end up with a list of people who hate you.

Make it easy.

Technorati Tags: email marketing, spam, unsubscribe