Small Business Promotion Coach

Each piece of customer contact information that you can collect has a use in your overall marketing plan. You can’t really have too much customer information. (I am excluding confidential information such as credit card numbers which can become a liability.) Let’s explore the different types of information you should be collecting and how you might use them.

Email Address

While email isn’t the most powerful way to communicate, it is probably the cheapest. It is, and always will be, the “lowest common denominator” when it comes to electronic communication. If your customer has access to the Internet they probably have email. Most people are less protective of their email address then their street address, for instance. Because of these advantages, email address is usually the first bit of information I try to collect.

Mailing Address

Postal mail is a very powerful way to communicate with your customers. Even people, who don’t have access to the Internet, have a postal mail address. (Interesting fact: About 25% of Americans don’t have access to the Internet at home or work. – I know, I couldn’t believe it either.) It is a little harder to get people to give you their street address. Not that it’s difficult, but you will usually need to provide a reason why you need an address. Giveaways and contests work especially well for this if you don’t have a business reason for collecting this information.
Thanks to the popularity of email, the amount of mail people get in their physical mailboxes has shrunk drastically. This is great news because it means that any postal mailings are even more powerful. There is a growing movement by marketers to move back into postal mail so now is the time to jump on board.

Telephone Number

The telephone is another powerful way to communicate. New technologies provide new ways to communicate with your customers but this doesn’t mean that the old ways aren’t effective anymore.
People really don’t like to be sold to by phone. Unless you have developed a relationship with your customer don’t use the phone to do direct selling.  I prefer using an automated voice messaging service. These services (such as http://www.call-em-all.com) allow you to send voice messages to an entire group of people.
Make your messages fun and entertaining and your customers will look forward to getting your messages. This is a great opportunity to let your personality shine through. Don’t leave the same boring messages that everybody else does. Sale and special offer announcements work especially well with this medium.

Cell Phone Number

I broke out cell phone numbers separately because of their texting ability. This is also called SMS (Short Message Service) which is the actual system used to send and receive text messages on cell phones.
Text based marketing is still in its infancy but the possibilities are exciting. You can still get in “on the ground floor” so to speak since so few businesses use the system in this way.
Only time will tell if this is a technology with “legs” but for now it is worth using. And using it couldn’t be simpler. Many places including http://www.call-em-all.com allow you to mass send SMS messages.

Conclusion

Try to collect as much information as you can about your customers. The more ways you can get in touch with them the better your results will be.
Some people respond to voice messages while others prefer the written word. These different message paths are call “modalities”. To maximize the results of your marketing, you must deliver your messages in different modalities.