Email Marketing For Finding Offline Clients

michael,
i like the titles. can you give us an example of the bodies that have worked well?

Following-up on the email via a phone call is a great way to make contact.

Ok here is my email body (one of them):

"I was wondering if you would be open to looking at new ways to make sales for your business? I am not selling anything, I am just looking for a few local clients to help out for no cost (as future references). If interested just visit yourwebsite.com"

Note: the website has a video presentation that offers free advice and/or information for them to download. It can be about getting listed on Google Places, SEO, email marketing, PPC, etc. As long as you have a good follow up system this method will work to get you a constant flow of leads.

Internet Sweetie,

You can check the sites I listed in this thread: http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-...-business.html

You can google "@websitename.com" to look for various email addresses.

You can purchase a list from a place like Sales Genie or infoUSA, with email addresses.

You can do a WHOIS lookup for the owner of the domain. This may or may not be the right person.

Or, you can go ahead and use the contact form.

-Scott

I think the best email marketing technique that I've been using is this:

Subject: Re: Enquiry

This makes it look like I'm making an enquiry into their business - always an opener!

Once they're in I'm literally going:

Hi,

It's (your name) from (your company name).

What are you doing right now to make more sales/leads from Facebook?

Facebook is red hot right now and with more than 500,000 global users, companies all over the world are putting their message in front of their target audience with huge success.

Is your business on Facebook yet?

Let me know if you need help setting up your business page the right way.

Regards,

Your Name

I've been getting a 1-2% reponse rate frorm this exact email and I charge $250 to set up a Facebook Fan Page.

Guess what, I then upsell my other services.

Hope that helps.

Russ

Lots of good ideas here. Have you had success WITHOUT the follow up call?

By that I mean, how many businesses contact without you calling them?

Millard

I don't like to pussyfoot around. My attitude is like, "Hey, I'm giving you the chance to work with a real marketing pro, do you want to increase your profits this week? If not your competitor surely will". Now I don't actually say that but that's what I'm thinking.

I like to use specific testimonials subject lines, THAT gets their attention.
"Joe's Plumbing Made an Extra $9,846 Profit Last Week, Would you Like to Also?

Does anyone know the laws regarding b2b automated dialers? I saw a post from another forum about how this guy used to use automated dialers to contact the answering machines/VM of clients and left a stammering message about how he had a client interested in buying his property.

He was just drumming up leads for a Realtor, but says he received a ton of call backs. His trick, he said, was stammering with "ers and uhs" on purpose to make the recorded message sound more natural and less canned.

haven't heard much about automated b2b dialers, but always had success calling after hours with a message.

Cheers,

Millard

Scott,

I usually call professional offices late because there is nobody there. If I try to call someone and they are in the office or the shop (As long as it isn't the person), I ask to be sent to voicemail. In fact, when I call in the daytime, I use one of my scripts specifically so that will be placed in voicemail.

Cheers,

Millard

Great info here!
Just have another question - what service do you use for mass mailing?
Any tips on that?

thanks

Ive been tryitng to send an email from my hotmail account to drum up business but it keeps getting filtered as a potential spam message. I think it might have something to do with some of the words in my email like profits, revenue, and business etc but I only just got my copy perfect so I don't want to change anything.

Are their any other free email alternatives that work well?

Cam,
If you are insistent on using a free email provider, then I would go with Google's gmail.

However, I don't think you will be too happy with the results even if you end up finding that 'perfect' free email account. Because once you get past the spam filters, you now need to get past the prospect's mental spam filter.

The free accounts just don't do as well as a dedicated email account for your business. If you are truly serious about doing offline marketing consulting using email, I would scrape the cash to buy a URL and hosting. Then you can set up an email account from that and look the part.

If you don't have the cash to do that, then try to drum up business through face-to-face contacts.

Good luck!
-Scott

Following-up on the email via a phone call is a great way to make contact.

I tend to source all of my email marketing leads from local business directories, trade directories, chambers of commerce and (most hated) google searches. These are either sourced by myself, or outsourced with specific instructions on the data required and business niches.

One thing I absolutely hate doing is sending a single email that is not personally addressed to the business owner. I've found that with around 90% of the businesses, the owner's name is either on the website or on the directory page where their business was sourced from. If it's impossible to get a name, then I will call ahead and ask to speak to the business owner directly - doesn't always work but it can be fun.

Sending personalised emails increased the reply rates I was getting to my emails by around 20-25% on average. As an example, the last campaign I sent out on Wednesday involved a free marketing offer for local businesses. The email was sent to 125 businesses, of which 21 replied saying yes please, 3 asked if it was a scam (rebutted with 2 saying yes) and 1 person gave an unprofessional and sarcastic response. So total of 23 from 125 emails - I think that's a pretty good response rate!

I've been looking back at old statistics from when my emails were sent generically (Feb 2010), on one day I sent 150 emails and received 7 replies. That was a pretty good day too... lol.

So my biggest tip is to use a personal approach, creating empathy and trust with the business owner. Using their name in the subject and mail copy seems to work brilliantly

Hope that helps in some way!

I just posted this email in anouther thread, but it applies here as well.. Micheal is absolutely right, the more you can make it seem like you just sat down and jotted them a quick note the better.

Everyone tends to crap on emails, but I've actually had decent luck with the following approach.

Here is a variation of what I posted earlier, this version is more to the point:


Subj: Chiropractor needed (of course this will get opened!)

Hello,

This is (your name) and I'm looking for a Chiropractor in the (town) area that could take on some more clients.

If this sounds like something you may be interested in, please contact me by (email, phone, website)

(Your signature)

Spare them the details. The only point is to just get them to contact you. That puts you in the power position. A warm lead is 500% more valuable than cold lead.

When you at hand one of these start-ups, just realize that they are being targeted by lots of other businesses since they are on these lists.