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Chicago Cubs infielders Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance formed the most memorable double-play combination in the history of baseball. In our marketing efforts, we can learn a valuable lesson from this "double-play" concept.
While email is nice to use in your ads, it is not structured, and you may not get the information you really need. You can have them reply to a specific email address or to an email with a special address such as: bob@adv-marketing.com?subject=BOB1234 this will allow you to act upon that email. If you use a mail reader such as Eudora, you can automatically send a response to any mail with the subject BOB1234. Of course, you can have different offers with different subjects work the same way. This can also work wonders for tracking purposes so you know where your leads are coming from.
Another way, is to have your contact information point to your web site where you have a form they can fill out.
The form will allow them to send you an email in a precise format. Example - When someone subscribes to one of our Newsletters, we get the information in exactly the same format from everyone who subscribes.
Will you lose an occasional customer who won't visit your web site? Sure, but they're probably "tire kickers" anyway. If you provide a link in your ad to the precise page to fill out the form, the loss will be minimal, and the benefits will far outweigh any potential loss.
Since the information is now in an exact format when received as an email, there are things that can be done that would be extremely difficult to do with regular email. When fielded by your email system, the first thing done is to immediately send a confirmation notice that it was received. This is your first contact back, and it lets them know they have made contact.
Various email programs allow you to filter messages and act upon the keywords you select. When an email is received that matches the keywords, the next player in this double-play combination automatically stores the message in a special mailbox that will be used in the third part of this process.
When the email has been transferred to this mailbox, you can then capture the information you wish, and place it in a file or data base. Once there, you can use this for follow up purposes. You can do this final step manually, depending upon your time available and the volume received. If you get a large number every day however, you may wish to invest in some software that can do this for you.
Sure, you can use autoresponders that automatically follow up with multiple emails for you, but for the most part, they are becoming passe. I call these "nag notices". Many times, they create the opposite effect of what you hoped for, and some people simply block all email from the domain that sends them.
To follow up yourself, you must have an email account that allows true "Post Office Protocol" (POP). If your ISP doesn't support this, you can get one for about $5 per month. Combine this with some free software from Eudora, and you are in business.
Anyone will tell you that "follow up" is one of the most important things you must do when trying to do business on the web. This "double-play" can be the difference you need to win the marketing game.
