New: Service Roundtable Money Mail

The Service Roundtable just introduced a new, turnkey, email marketing program for contractors called Service Roundtable Money Mail.

It's the fastest, easiest way for contractors to market to their target audience. The Service Roundtable Money Mail Program takes the hassle out of email marketing. We do it all, so you can concentrate on running your business. Click to learn more about how you can grow your company through the power of email marketing.

Email Marketing 101

My latest CB Hotmail column...

The most basic form of “New Media” marketing and digital marketing is email marketing. In a nutshell, it’s using email to communicate with your customers. Aside from effectiveness, the obvious advantages are cost and speed. Compared to snail mail, email is virtually free and practically instantaneous.


Still, email marketing is not a slam dunk. It has its own protocol. Violate it and you tarnish your company’s reputation at the least and break the law (i.e., the CAN-SPAM act) at the worst. If you are going to communicate with people by email, you need their permission and you need to deliver useful information. Content is king in the digital world. You cannot simply shill.

Read More at Contracting Business

The Fundamentals of Coupon Design

You can create your own coupons for use in the newspaper, direct mail, flyers, email, and digital media like your website and Facebook. This chart identifies the fundamentals of basic coupon design. If you're a member of the Service Roundtable and want a specific coupon, contact Bob Viering with your request.

The chart is found on the Free Stuff section of the Service Roundtable. Click HERE to download the chart.

Coupon Marketing is Up 27%... Are You Offering Coupons?

Are you looking for a marketing strategy that works in the current economy, try the tried and true coupon. In fact, coupon use is up 27% according to the nation's leading coupon processor, Inmar.

2009 was first year in the last 17 where coupon redemption increased. Part of the increase may result from marketers' increased use of coupons as a promotional vehicle to drive sales during the downturn. Manufacturers increased the number of coupons by 30%.

According to Inmar's Matthew Tilley, “Brands saw coupons as a key to maintaining brand strength. If they reduced their promotional presence, they stood to lose sales to lower priced competitors and store brands – so they doubled down hoping to create brand loyalty once the economic dust settles.”

Jesse Aversano from News America Marketing, a coupon book publisher, notes, “manufacturers understand that in a tough economy, coupons are an effective and efficient way to spend their advertising dollar.”

In short, market more during a downturn, not less, When customers are harder to find, increase efforts to market to new and existing customers.

Coupons represent an effective tactic because people are looking for value and savings and marketers are looking or results.

Not surprisingly, given their lower costs, digital coupons usage is up dramatically. Coupons Inc reports an increase of 170% in the printed value of coupons.

Citing Simmons Market Research studies, Coupons Inc notes that "more than 45 million American consumers are now using online coupons, up from 38 million in 2008. Of the 45 million online coupon users, almost one third (13.1 million) does not clip coupons from their Sunday newspaper, a 140 percent increase over 9.4 million in 2008."

What does the digital coupon redeemer look like? Here are a couple of characteristics...

• Higher income ($97,000 household income, which is 23% higher than average)
  
• Better educated (34% have a college degree, compared to 27% of the general population)

When was the last time you advertised, mailed, or emailed a coupon?

Email Deliverability: It's Worse Than You Think

According to Return Path's "Global Deliverability Benchmark" of 600,000 email compaigns, one email out of five sent in the U.S. and Canada is not delivered.

What happens to the mail? Three percent ends up in junk mail folders and 16% goes poof. It simply disappears.

Europe does a little better with 4% junk and 11% disappearing. Asia/Pacific delivery rates are highest with 3% getting junked and 10% vanishing.

If you think your results are better because you get reports with a high "delivered" metric, guess again.

According to Return Path president, George Bilbrey, "This is not the Inbox Placement Rate - the percentage of mail that actually arrives in the inbox. Rather it is simply a reporting of the number of messages sent minus the number that returned a hard-bounce message. This creates a false impression that nearly 100% of email messages arrive as intended."

Bilbrey says senders can improve deliverability by focusing on good email practices like clear and simple opt-out methods, welcome messages, cleaning lists, and so on. Reputation matters when it comes to email delivery.

You can check your company's reputation at SenderScore.org. You need to know your IP address. Here's how to find it if you use Microsoft Outlook...

• Find an email from someone in your company or send one to yourself.
• Right click on the email in Outlook and select Options.
• In the Internet Header box you will see something like the following...

Received: from AspEmail [216.167.118.180] by serviceroundtable.com (SMTPD-9.20) id AC310694; Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:30:41 -0500 From: "The Service Roundtable" To: "##### #######" Subject: [Mgmt] SR New User Signup Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:30:41 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html Message-Id: <201002081130125.SM07316@AspEmail> Precedence: bulk Sender: Mgmt-owner@serviceroundtable.com Reply-To: Mgmt@serviceroundtable.com X-RCPT-TO: Status: X-UIDL: 565604625 X-IMail-ThreadID: 3c3100001e8064b5

The IP address is the series of numbers on the top line of the header: 216.167.118.180. Simply copy this and paste it into the IP box at SenderScore.org. It will give you a score from 0 to 100. You can also check to see if your IP address is blacklisted by any of the myriad of blacklisting services.

"When we take a look at senders with good reputations (Sender Score of 90-100)," says Bilbrey, "inbox placement rates are over 50% higher at Yahoo!, Hotmail and Google than senders with mediocre reputations (Sender Scores of 40-60)."

I checked the Service Roundtable. We score 95 out of 100, which is pretty good, though not perfect (obviously). We were also absent from any blacklists, which is also good. Of course, we work hard on deliverability and keeping off blacklists. So should you.