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magic4u02 Eternal Order Philadelphia, PA 15110 Posts |
Effective E-mail Marketing:
I would like to bring up what I feel is a very interesting topic for discussion and one that is of great importance to me in my own marketing I do every year consistently. This is the effective use of e-mail in your marketing of your magic shows. I will try and share some of my own thoughts and ideas on the topic in hopes that it might be of interest to others or spark further conversation. There are actually two ideas here that are worth exploring and talking about. 1) How can you use faxes or e-mail to work for you in regards to lead generation to change suspects into prospects and then ultimately into paying clients? 2) How can you use e-mail and faxing to your best advantage for when you have a public performance and you want to promote this to others? I use both all the time but both do different things and are should be handled quite differently from one another as they bring about different results for different purposes. Let me first talk briefly about how I personally use faxing and e-mailing for lead generation and ultimately using it to change a prospects into a paying client. The first thing I want to mention is that I continue to market year round. I also market myself and make sure that what I say, how I say it and what goes out to people is consistent and of a top quality. This in an essence is the art of creating a successful brand and brand identity. Let me start by saying that a brand is a visual and emotional image or feeling that one person associates with a company or service. A magician who has a consistent brand message is one that people will remember when it comes time to make the important decision of who to hire for entertainment. The prospect associates good feelings with the magician and that can often influence their buying decisions. You can think of your own brand as an investment. It does not happen over night. The brand must be developed, used consistently and then matured in the minds of your customers before you can really reap the rewards. But is it worth it? YES! Many companies spend a lot of effort developing their brand and making sure that every marketing material conveys the same consistent look, impression and message. This consistent look in their materials helps build the perception of the brand in the minds of the individuals their services are trying to target. Now that you understand what a brand is and the importance it can have on the success of your marketing, we can also safely say that it does not often take or have to take a lot of money to be able to successfully use this branding principle. E-mail marketing is one way where you can keep costs down but ultimately have a very good return on Investment (R.O.I) I always start to market for my entire festival season sometime in January and all of February. This is the time that most of my "target market" is making their decisions on entertainment and I want to market effectively to them at this time by being the best "solutions provider" that I can be for them. I first will send out my promotional packet to a "qualified lead". Once this promotional packet has been mailed, that is when my e-mail marketing kicks into effect and really works strongly for me. After my initial packet has been mailed out to a person whom I know is a "decision maker" at the event I am targeting, I then do a 2 step e-mail follow up process. In the course of obtaining my leads list and qualifying the leads I have on the list, I also obtain the e-mail of the person I am mailing the kits out to. I will always wait 5 business days before I actually send out my first e-mail follow up to them. Now I always make sure to never send the e-mail on a Monday or a Friday and try my best to stick with sending it to them Tuesday - Thursday. The reason for this is that I have tracked e-mail results and realized that on Monday people are so swamped with getting caught up with things and they also tend to be in a mood that is not as eager to receiving a good response from them. Often times an e-mail sent on a Monday will not get read or will be forgotten. Likewise sending on a Friday sometimes tends to get people thinking too much about the weekend and not enough about what you are trying to tell them. When I send my first e-mail follow up, I try to keep it short and to the point and really making sure I have a nice "call to action" at the end of it. I also make sure that my e-mails are always personalized to the individual and I never send out a form letter and CC others on it. I want this person to realize they are receiving a personalized response directly from me and that is tailored to them and their needs. The first follow up e-mail I send out first thanks them for their interest in my services and what I can provide to them. It also talks about the fact that by now they should have received my packet in the mail and I hope they have had time to go over it. It goes on to mention that I would be eager and willing to answer any questions that they have and also directs and points them to my website for further information. It ends with a nice call to action and an incentive to get them really wanting to take action upon what I e-mailed to them. Now the above short follow up e-mail works well for me. It is personalized to the person so tends to get read more often. It is tailored to their direct needs and mentions their direct venue and event I am trying to get into. It reminds them of my packet incase they have not read it yet and gives them direct incentive to take further action to contact me. I make it easy for them to do so through a call to action that mentions my website, e-mail, fax and phone. This gives them as many avenues for them to reach me as I can and to do so easily. After this is sent out, I wait 2 business weeks before sending my last follow up e-mail. now in the course of doing this, if I get a response back from them, and I often do, I stop the e-mails and make a direct call to them to discuss their ideas and answer their questions to land the gig. In the event that I do not hear back, 2 weeks from the 1st follow up e-mail is enough time to send your last one that has the same approach but is worded slightly different. The main thing to remember here is that I do 2 e-mail follow ups and no more. The 2 follow ups are talking about selling to them in an effective way that calls them to take action. any more then 2 tends to get you more into the spamming realm. After the 2nd e-mail, if I do not hear back from the, I immediately stop my direct e-mail selling approach. However I do not stop marketing to them. This leads me to part two of how I use e-mail effectively to market myself and my magic business. Even though I do not want to hard sell to my suspects week after week or month after month, I can still use e-mail marketing effectively by taking a different angle with it. I always keep a contact database at home. This database has every suspect, prospect or client I have ever worked for or sent any information to. I use this database and the e-mails in it to my advantage. Even though I do not want to hard sell to these folks all the time, I do want to keep my name fresh in their minds through out the year. It is very important to me to keep marketing effectively to these people by staying in front of their eyes. I do this also through e-mail marketing. The difference here though is that I am not hard selling to them at this stage. at this stage I use e-mail marketing as a means of keeping my name fresh in their mind so that maybe I hit them at the right time where they really are in more need for the services I can provide to them. How do I do this? Let me explain and list a few ways in which I use e-mail marketing in this fashion. 1) Holiday greetings e-mails: These e-mails are sent out at every major holiday and sent to my e-mail group. It simply is saying happy holidays to you and your family and may give them a nice message about the holidays and is simply signed with my name and have my contact and website on it. The e-mail is kept simple and sincere and does not mention selling to them at all. the idea here is to simply send them a nice holiday style e-mail that is a nice gesture on my part and gets my name kept in their mind. 2) Exciting news e-mails: Any time I have exciting news, or landed a major client or won an award or landed an article in the paper, I send out an e-mail to my list letting them know of this exciting news. It gets them excited, shows them I am professional and keeps my name fresh without a hard sell to them. 3) Invites to public shows: Anytime I have a public show that is open to anyone to attend, I send out an e-mail to my entire group personally inviting them to see the show. Once again I am not hard selling to the person. I am simply inviting them to come out for a fun time for them and their family. it is a nice gesture that many of my suspects have taking me up on and in turn landed into a paid gig down the road. There are many more ways I can list, but these 3 give you the idea of how you can use e-mail marketing effectively year round without coming across as spamming a person and not also hard selling to them as well. E-mail should be viewed as another tool in your marketing tool box. It is free and can be used very effectively for some wonderful results. The key is to understand it is a tool and how best to use this tool to your advantage. Use it for follow up direct marketing and then use it year round in a non-selling fashion to keep your name fresh in their minds. If used in this fashion, e-mail can be a great tool that will reward you with a very happy return on investment. I hope this is of some help to you and that it may get you thinking how you can use e-mail to your own best advantage. I would love to hear how you personally have and use e-mail to market your shows to new leads or how you use it to publicize your public performances. I hope this gtes you thinking and may spark some good conversation. Kyle
Kyle Peron
http://www.kylekellymagic.com Entertainers Product Site http://kpmagicproducts.com Join Our Facebook Fan Page at http://facebook.com/perondesign |
Dannydoyle Eternal Order 21219 Posts |
Kyle I love the thought and analysis you put into this.
BUT to be my wet blanket self, the VAST majority of people who buy magic fall into a few catagories. 1) Impulse buyers. Show me the yellow pages or the first 10 ads on the internet. By far the largest catagory. 2) Bargan shoppers. Nuff said. 3)People who work through agents. Prety simple to understand 4) Return customers. Branding yourself to "strangers" is expensive and time consuming. No matter what you do a HUGE percentage of the email and fax will be thrown away without a second look. This is a fact and is not in dispute. You need to be known as a good act, a fine business man, and a person people want to do business with. You do this through working. Branding can be done sure, and your right it dosn't happen over night. As for getting the word out to public shows, go for it. NOTHING does branding better than a full house. Heck if some can be turned away even better for you. To find prospects, maybe not worth it really, but to show those you already work for where you are, well it is great. I don't believe clients give a rats patootie you win awards, or land big clients. Does it matter to them in the end? Here is the funny thing. You said "I don't want to hard sell these folks all the time." What exactly do you think such a campaign will be viewed as? Almost a constant hard sell. Especially to corporate clients. At some point enough is enough. Believe it or not I keep quite busy just booking work from work. No hard sell ever. But it takes 20 years to build that up. See I absolutly hate sales pitches, especially hard ones. I hate to feel manipulated. So do a lot of people. Since so many people just "impulse buy" magic maybe it is a good place to concentrate. I would rather be the candy box at the check out aisle, than a great slick marketed candy box in the center of the store. Just the way I look at things, I can be WAY wrong mind you.
Danny Doyle
<BR>Semper Occultus <BR>In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act....George Orwell |
RobertBloor Inner circle The Socialist Republic of the USA. 1051 Posts |
If I didn't ask for your fax, it goes in the garbage immediately. No questions asked.
Robert
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,"
-The Declaration of Independence |
magic4u02 Eternal Order Philadelphia, PA 15110 Posts |
Robert,
Good question and a great statement. The only time I will ever fax is with an already established client who I have built a relationship up with. They get accustomed to my simple greetings and well wishes to them. I do not fax much at all and use e-mail and regular mailings more often. The mention of fax is to say you can do this if you have already an established relationship with a client as I have with my festival patrons over the years. Some have actually asked me and prefer to receive fax greetings and messages and I make note of this in my ACT database management software. There certainly is no right one way to do this or go about it. You simply have to try it for yourself and know what works for you, your markets and the suspects, prospects and clients you are sending to. I have found e-mail marketing very effective for me over the years when handed right and going about it in the way that I do. Danny: Thank you for your kind words and for your deep thought and comments here. I greatly appreciate them as you always give me great food for thought. I appreciate that. One thing that I may not have been that clear on (my mistake) is that I do not use this mainly as the very first step I take to a potential suspect. I always will use this as a follow up process to a mailing that has already gone out to a suspect that has been already 'qualified". What I do is have and establish my leads list. I then qualify each lead and after the lead is qualified, then I send out my promotional packet to them. In the qualification process, I always obtain an e-mail from the decision maker. I then use this e-mail to do a 2 step e-mail follow-up process with them that starts 5 business days after the mailing has gone out. In this way I find I get a substantial return on my investment of time. In this fashion I am not hard-selling to them at all. The suspect has already been qualified and I have already made direct contact with them. I ask specifically if it would be ok for me to send them a promotional kit for consideration for said event. This asking is them giving me permission to mail to them. Many times they are overjoyed with receiving it. The e-mails I then do are only 2 to them at 5 business days after the mailing and then 2 weeks after that. It stops after that point and it also stops if at any point during this process, the prospect wants to book the show. Because I have asked permission, they know to expect the kit and to expect the e-mail. The e-mail I send as a first follow-up is a simple one that simply states that I hope by now they have received the packet in the mail that they had requested and that it may have answered any questions that they may have had. If they have any additional questions, I would be happy to answer them for them. It is that simple and a nice way to keep your name fresh in their mind right at the time they should be receiving my packet. I hope this clarifys things a bit better. Thanks guys for your thoughts. It is always appreciated. Kyle
Kyle Peron
http://www.kylekellymagic.com Entertainers Product Site http://kpmagicproducts.com Join Our Facebook Fan Page at http://facebook.com/perondesign |
jamesbond Loyal user 249 Posts |
I too think that branding in our business can be very expensive... Now that I am thinking of it how many magicians' logos do you I really recognize? 2 - D.C. with his eyes and the mindfreak logo. I think that says a lot... these guys have hundreds of thousands of $$$ so try to do something like this on regular guy's fees is very very hard...
Bond...James Bond |
magic4u02 Eternal Order Philadelphia, PA 15110 Posts |
Well the topic here was not so much branding as it was utilizing e-mail for effective marketing. However, since I am also a graphic designer, I would be happy to help answer some of your questions on branding. It would be my pleasure to do so.
The main problem is that people do not see or realize the importance of a strong brand and how it is a major investment that pays itself off very very easily. How many folks do you see personally spending a lot on their act, on their equipment on their costuming to make themselves and their act or show as good as it can be? The answer = Many. But here is the one fact I find that bothers me the most. They spend the money and invest in their show but they forget that the very first impression of you and what the prospect thinks of you is almost always from the promotional materials you send out. If this is the first impression you are giving to them, do you want something that looks cheap or do you want something that says that you are as professional as you know your show is? And, you can brand yourself professionally without breaking your bank either. effective branding does not have to cost a fortune. It can be done right and done well and will work for you for many years to some. an effective logo or effective brabding should only have to be done once. Once it is done, you use it consistently to brand yourself to your client and your markets. It pays itself off ten times over. Just my thoughts is all. Kyle
Kyle Peron
http://www.kylekellymagic.com Entertainers Product Site http://kpmagicproducts.com Join Our Facebook Fan Page at http://facebook.com/perondesign |
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