Tag Archives: relationship

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for Your Business: What You Need To Know About

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To do that you have to know what your customers really want and really think about your business and then use that to deliver better products and services, improve customer service and increase sales opportunities yes CRM has a purpose it is not just a concept!

Customer Relationship Management (CRM). To do that you have to know what your customers really want and really think about your business and then use that to deliver better products and services, improve customer service and increase sales opportunities yes CRM has a purpose it is not just a concept!

Companies that invest in CRM systems can learn even more about their customers and offer more personalized products and services because they receive relevant information daily in a way that allows them to spot trends.

Implementing new business strategies always includes an element of risk but proper change management practices can reduce this dramatically. The reason many projects fail lies with poor project execution. Many companies have made the mistake of rushing headlong into CRM without a well thought out plan. So when investing in better CRM:

1. Have a CRM strategy because CRM initiatives launched without a strategy invariably cause pain. Do not think of CRM as a project separate from your overall business plan. CRM only works when there is clear understanding of why the organisation is doing it and how it will improve service and loyalty, cut costs or increase revenue.

2. Choose the right CRM partner. The best CRM solutions are flexible and have a full integration capability with any other systems in your business.

3. Understand the technology. Far too often CRM is considered an IT project not a business initiative and it should not be thought of like this; but this means that the business has to understand the technology and what and how it can do for them and what it cannot do for them. The greatest success will come from the coordinated efforts business users, IT and supplier.

4. Focus more on business processes than technology. CRM is about an organizations internal and external business processes becoming more customer-centric. Understand your “customer flow”. The systems are merely the enablers, not an end in themselves.

5. Dont try and design the perfect CRM system that will meet 100% of each and every persons wish list and do not expect the new CRM solution to just mirror current business processes. Instead, accept that not everyone can have everything they say they want and use the new systems as an opportunity to invent and use new processes that improve customer service, reduce costs and provide better customer service.

6. Do not try to change the whole organization overnight. Go for the highest priority and highest return areas first. Take small, manageable steps not giant leaps and bring the whole organization along with you.

7. Think about the user interface and plan it carefully. For people to use the system, it must be useful to them and easy to use. Every extra field you ask the people to complete, especially mandatory ones, the greater the chance that they will enter garbage or only use the system under duress.

8. Especially if you havent implemented a CRM system before get help and expect to pay for it even if it is just a day of a suppliers time to go through the issues. They’ll see the pitfalls that you cant and you will not waste time and money on trying to do things that cant be done, expecting them to happen in a certain way and then be disappointed or miss out on crucial issues that are essential to successful implementation.

9. Make it somebodys responsibility to own the data, and to make sure that it is correct and complete. Sounds obvious but so many projects just ignore this central detail and CRM systems stand or fall by their data integrity and data quality.

10. User acceptance is the single most important success factor for a CRM system so invest in training. Training is essential to ensuring user acceptance. Never let an untrained employee have customer contact.

Affiliate Marketing and Email List: How to Increase Your Sales

Affiliate Marketing and Email List: How to Increase Your Sales

If you are a new affiliate marketer you have probably already realized that in order to make money you will have to not only drive as much traffic as possible to your website but also to capture your visitors contact information so that you can build a relationship with them. This is where email affiliate marketing comes in.

It might be depressing but it’s true, upwards of 98% of the visitors you drive to your website aren’t going to buy anything and most likely won’t ever come back. That means a lot of extra work for you when it comes to getting traffic. How much better would it be if you could somehow have multiple contacts with these website visitors so that you could build trust with them and they would eventually buy from you?

When you install a simple opt in form on your website you have the ability to encourage your visitors to sign up to receive your email messages. If you use this tool properly you will be able to turn many more of these visitors into customers.

You’ve probably heard that it can take anywhere from 7 – 10 contacts with someone before they’re comfortable enough with you to buy from you. In order to get them to open and read your emails so that you can build a relationship with them you have to always offer them something of value. you cannot just use your emails as a chance to make a sales presentation. If you do, they will opt out of your list and you will have lost them forever.

Make sure that you step outside of yourself and offer your email list something that will truly benefit them, not you. By providing them great and helpful information you are proving to them that you are not only an expert in your field but also that you can be a trusted resource who can provide them with what they need in order to accomplish whatever it is they want to accomplish.

To get them to sign up for your list you can offer them a report or a short mini course. No matter what you offer as an incentive the same rules apply: make it something of real value that will help your subscriber in some way.

There is a lot of free information floating around the internet. It isn’t enough anymore to just offer someone something for free. It has got to be something unique that offers a lot of perceived value.

This same principle applies when you are preparing your follow up email messages. Whatever you include make sure it offers your subscribers useful information that isn’t readily available elsewhere.

The best way to monetize your email list is to include a post script at the end of each of your messages that includes a link to a product or service that will help them further.

Most of us want to make more money and when it comes to email affiliate marketing the biggest thing you can do to increase your income is to take the time and effort to build a trusting relationship with your email list subscribers. People are always much more likely to buy from a friend that they trust than they will from a stranger.
3 Tips for Effective email Marketing
1. Do not make all of your emails one sales pitch after another, if you do your subscribers will opt out of your list and you will lose that potential customer forever. Instead offer them useful information in every email and either send out one sales pitch for every 5 or so informational emails, or you can add a P.S. at the end of your email message suggesting a product or service that can help them accomplish some goal.

2. When offering them an ebook or a newsletter as encouragement to sign up to your list, make sure that it is something that has a lot of truly beneficial information in it. People are overwhelmed with free offers these days and more often than not the free things really don’t offer that much value. This is a great way to set yourself apart from the others, if you offer some unique and valuable information for free instead of the same old recycled junk that everyone else gives away, you will show your visitors that they can trust you which will make them much more likely to buy from you in the future.

Email promotion internet marketing is the only real way to establish a long term relationship with your website visitors. It’s much easier for you to make another sale to an existing customer than it is to constantly find new customers to sell to, use email to leverage all of your website visitors.

The Benefits of Relationship Marketing for Your Business

The Benefits of Relationship Marketing for Your Business

Relationship Marketing is a great tool for your online business. The main role is targeted at building stronger and long lasting relationships with clients. The business is done with a strategic plan, where the relationship is improved with existing customers rather than finding new customers. Its major part involves studying the need of the customer and how it changes in different circumstances.

Relationship marketing applies techniques like marketing, sales, customer care and communication. The relationship is not only enhanced but its life period is increased by these strategies. And as the customer realizes the value of relationship, they are drawn closer. This marketing not only focuses on building relationship and attracting customers to their products and services but also how to retain them.

Relationship marketing is applicable where the customers have many options in the market for the same product or service and the customer is entitled to make a selection decision. In such a kind of market, businesses try to maintain their clients by providing comparatively better products and good service and achieving customer loyalty. And once it is achieved it becomes difficult for competitors to do well in the market. The customer turnover wasn’t paid attention on as the main attention was on customer satisfaction. This kind of marketing was initially named as defensive marketing. Offensive marketing is the marketing strategy where not only new customers are attracted, but also the sales are stepped up by increasing the purchase frequency. This kind of marketing concentrates on freeing dissatisfied customers and acquiring new customers.

According to a research, the cost of retaining an old customer is only ten percent of the cost of getting a new customer, which makes sense to not to run around to get new customers in relationship marketing. And according to another research done by cross-sectional analysis, says that, a five percent improvement in customer retention is responsible for twenty-five to eighty-five percent of the profit. Usually high cost is incurred when getting new customers, so if sufficient number of existing customers is retained, there will be no need of acquiring new customers.

Once the customer trust is gained his chances of switching to other company becomes relatively less, he buys goods in bulk, he buys other supplementary goods and he starts neglecting average price variation. This maintains the unit sales volume and there is an increase in dollar-sales volume. The existing customers will be like a living advertisement. If he is satisfied with the company he will recommend it to his friends and acquaintances.

Since the existing customers are familiar with the process, it will take less time and money to educate them about the procedures putting fewer burdens on employees also and making them feel more satisfied with their jobs. The customers are divided into groups based on their loyalty. This procedure is known as relationship ladder of customer loyalty. The groups in ascending order are prospects, customer, client, supporter, advocate and partner.

Due to the advancement in computers and Internet, software has been developed to facilitate customer relationship management. With the help of this software the tastes, activities, preferences, and complaints of customers are tracked. Almost all the companies have this software in their marketing strategy, which benefits the customer as well as the company.

Thus the main aim of relationship marketing is to construct and maintain relationship with committed clients who are meant to bring profit to the company. The other benefits achieved are confidence building and social benefits.

3 Tips For A Healthy Relationship With Your Subscribers

3 Tips For A Healthy Relationship With Your Subscribers

When you decide to create an opt-in list, it is not just a matter of sending your subscribers your promotional newsletters or catalogs. There are many things to consider in avoiding many complications. While there are so many ways you can make people subscribe to your list, there are also some things you must do to avoid subscribers from wanting to get off from your list. This way you will have a healthy relationship with your subscribers and a profitable e-mail list.

Also, you want to avoid any problems with the law and your internet service provider or ISP. There are now many laws and rules that are applied to help protect the privacy of the internet users from spamming and unwanted mails. With the popularity of the e-mail as a medium for marketing because of the low cost, many company’s have seized the opportunity and have flooded many people’s e-mail accounts with promotional mail.

But, with an opt-in list, you avoid this annoyance because people subscribe to the list; they want to receive the newsletters and promotional materials. They have consented to being on the list by subscribing themselves, just don’t forget to put an unsubscribe feature everytime in your opt-in list so that you avoid any confusion. There may be times when an email account was provided when the real owner didn’t want to subscribe.

It is essential that you keep your list clean and manageable. Arrange it by using the many tools (Autoresponders) available for your opt-in list. Do not worry; your investment in this marketing strategy is well worth it with all the coverage you will get which will likely be converted into sales then to profit.

Keep yourself and your business out of trouble and potential troubles with the law and the internet service providers. Keep your operation legit and clean. Your reputation as a legitimate businessman and a legitimate site depends on your being a straight and true marketing strategist. As a tip, here are three things to avoid when emailing your list.

1) Take notice of your unsuccessful sends. These are the e-mails that bounce. Bounced emails, also known as undeliverable messages, are those messages that, for whatever reason, were not successfully received by your subscribers.

There are bounces that happen or occur because the server was busy at that time but can still be delivered in another time. There are also bounces because the inbox of the recipient is full at that time. There are those bounce messages that are simply undeliverable ever. The reason for this is that it may be an invalid email address, a misspelled email address, or an email address that was abandoned and erased already.

Manage your list by putting markings on those that bounce. Erase an email account from your list so that you have an accurate statistics and records as to how many are actually receiving your mail. You may also want to check the spellings of your email addresses in your list.

2) Always provide an unsubscribe feature in your site and an unsubscribe link in your mails. When someone in your list files a request to be unsubscribed, always take that request seriously. If you don’t take them off your list and keep sending them your e-mails, you are now sending them spam mail.

When you are reported as a spammer, you and your business can get into a lot of trouble. You can be reported to the authorities and maybe blacklisted by many internet service providers. You will lose a lot of subscribers this way and many more in potential subscribers.

3) Do not provide pornographic or shocking and disturbing content in your newsletters. It is hard to decipher the age of the recipient and many complaints may stem from these. Controversial issues also are to be avoided to not be branded by your subscribers. Stick to the nature of your site and business.

Always remember these tips. So that you can have a healthy relationship with your subscribers as well as be kept within the boundaries of what is allowed in sending mails to an opt-in list.

SMS Marketing. Why You Must Use It

SMS Marketing. Why You Must Use It

Since text messaging first became available in 1996 it has a mass market communication platform and a cultural phenomenon of the 21st Century.

The use of SMS will continue to grow as companies turn the service into a critical business function. Text messaging’s ability to immediately reach a customer anywhere and its low cost offer the ability to reach customers (external and internal) with a personally targeted message delivered “into their pocket in real time”.

Used properly SMS marketing is really effective Customer Relationship Management as it goes a long way to giving information, knowledge and empowerment to customers and the understanding that “my supplier is really looking out for me”. For example: an insurer or broker sending details of local emergency numbers such as hospitals and consulates.

It’s not all about ring tones and logos. There are many different uses for SMS including notification, emergency advisories, scheduling, news and information and staff collaboration.

SMS can generate very high levels of response, but a campaign must leverage the medium’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses. The key element of a successful campaign is value and entertainment. To market to someone effectively you must provide them value and / or entertainment in each SMS message.

It is also important that your campaign targets recipients who have expressly given their consent to receive messages from you. You must also provide them with a simple and free method of opting out from further messaging.

Successful SMS marketing is about:

– Saying the right thing.

– To the right person.

– At the right time.

The greatest strength of SMS is its immediacy. Examples of how to use it are:

Voting

Voting is an exciting way to engage your audience and let them have their say. Big Brother 3 created 3 million votes.

Instant Win

Instant win prizes where customers can find out if they have won a prize straight away really work.

Timed Vouchers

Timed vouchers drive footfall into your store, bar, club, theatre, cinema, petrol station etc and if you want user interaction then using a viral campaign where vouchers can be sent onto friends and family increases response. The SMS advises time the voucher becomes invalid.

Customer Service

Daily recipe ideas, special promotion alerts, diet tips, cocktail recipe ideas, music reviews, release dates, Top 10 charts, in store promotion alerts.

You are only limited by your imagination!