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email_marketing-1Pop quiz: What is the most profitable form of marketing that an IT service company can have as part of its marketing arsenal? Hint: It’s also the one marketing strategy that is rarely used to its fullest extent.

Experts claim that this one form of marketing can generate $44 of profit for every dollar invested and that 66 percent of customers have decided to do business with a company as a direct result of this form of marketing.

The answer? Email marketing.

A strategy that works

Email marketing can be deadly if it’s not done properly, though, because it puts the power in the hands of the reader. They decide if they’ll unsubscribe from your list, report it as spam, trash it—or read it and take action.

The last two purchases I made through Ulistic resulted directly from unsolicited email messages. This proves that email marketing works—as long as it’s done correctly.

At Ulistic, we’ve started to work with our clients on deploying a lifecycle marketing approach. Lifecycle marketing starts with identifying a qualified list of prospects and then developing an education-based email marketing strategy that teaches prospects instead of offering them the deal of the day. Of course, we also incorporate the proper calls to action to offer something valuable to prospects when we attract them with our educational content.

How to do email marketing the right way

It is time for IT service companies to take their email marketing seriously. Here are five tips I can share with you from our vault of email marketing secrets:

  1. Personalize your messages. Nothing is worst that getting an email from “ABC IT Consulting Company” in some boring HTML template. People do business with people first, the company second, and the product or service third. So make sure all your marketing is personalized. Stop the sales flyer approach that you would find on the bulletin board at your local coffee shop.
  2. Make your emails relevant. Segment your lists so healthcare professionals get emails from you about healthcare issues, attorneys get emails about legal issues, and so on. Ulistic focuses our efforts on building lead magnets that attract the right audience, and then we customize messages to that audience. Doing this will increase your open rate and ultimately your overall results. Leading marketer Dan Kennedy points out, “When your message is matched to a target audience that has a high level of interest in it, not only does your responsiveness go up but your readership goes up too.”
  3. Use catchy subject lines. A full 64 percent of people say they open an email simply because of the subject line, according to research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey. Make sure you’re using catchy, intriguing subject lines in every email you’re sending out.
  4. Mix up your messages. Don’t always make your messages about BDR or security. Change it up. Talk about all aspects of how information technology can help a company. You can even have your CPA or attorney share a tidbit of information from time to time. This will make your information valuable to the reader and help keep them interested.
  5. Send messages regularly. The best email marketers connect with their audiences no less than 400 times per year. I’m not saying you need to have this frequency, but experts claim that a weekly email has a higher chance of being opened and read versus touching your clients and prospects only once a month.

Make 2016 the year that you seriously invest in your IT services marketing. Break free from the crowd and take the steps you need to implement a lifecycle email marketing strategy with your clients and prospects.

To learn more, watch the webinar Make Your IT Services Marketing Zing in 2016. This webinar will show you how to use marketing to help reach business goals, connected with interested prospects, and stand out from the competition. Watch now!

Photo Credit: Alberto G. via Flickr.com. Used under CC 2.0 License.


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Stuart Crawford

Posted by Stuart Crawford

Stuart Crawford is the CEO and Creative Director with Ulistic. Ulistic specializes in working with IT service companies globally helping them connect with their markets and achieve stratospheric success. Need help? Please feel free to reach out to Stuart and his team at Ulistic. Every day, they help managed IT services companies overcome many of the challenges they have with marketing. Learn more about Ulistic at www.ulistic.com or call 716-799-1999.

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