So where is the best place to store your contacts? Is it…
A. On a sticky note
B. In a planner (from 2019)
C. On a couple of restaurant napkins
D. None of the above
If you said none of the above, you would be correct! But where exactly is the best place to store your client’s information for future marketing campaigns?
Your clients are more than just a name and phone number, and to have the most success with your email marketing, you must appeal to their individual needs. Today, let’s look at how you can successfully group, store, and manage your client’s info so you can tailor specific marketing campaigns, just for them.
Targeting Your Marketing
Why is targeted marketing important?
Think about when you get a generic flyer in the mail. You might look at it for a few seconds to determine what it’s for, and if it isn’t applicable to you, it goes into the recycling bin. This is an example of generic marketing.
Now, imagine you receive an email campaign about an event where you can connect with other industry leaders and improve your promotional products business. Sounds right up your alley, right? This would be a prime example of targeted marketing!
It sounds complicated but really, all you are doing is creating a campaign based on groups within your own client list. Let’s start simple and break down your client list by industry. Do you have multiple clients that you can group together such as schools or healthcare providers?
Once you have divided up your lists, you can easily create timely campaigns to target each specific audience at appropriate intervals throughout the year. This form of marketing opens up additional revenue streams without over-emailing and exhausting your email list.
For example, sending an email campaign with trending back-to-school products a few months prior to the start of the next new school year would be an easy way to remind your education-based clients when it is time to order.
Or, with the holidays around the corner, you can implement a campaign tailored to your corporate clients to promote end-of-the-year corporate gift giving or awards and recognition gifts.
Targeted marketing is vital in any industry but especially as a distributor when you likely have a very diverse client list. By now you shouldn’t be thinking about whether or not you need to target your marketing (because of course you do!), but instead wondering how. Here’s the good news, if you have SAGE Total Access, you have everything you need included in your subscription already.
Step 1: Organize Your Customer’s Information In One Place
If you do have your client’s info on a sticky note, we’re here to help! With SAGE’s CRM Module, you can upload your contacts from Excel or Outlook. Or, if you have those business cards and restaurant napkins handy, you can manually enter them in as well.
And if you don’t have them organized to easily export all at once, you can just get started with the first group you want to target and build your contacts in your CRM slowly over time as you create new email campaigns. That way you get the benefit of the increased revenue but entering your contacts won’t feel like a huge undertaking.
Step 2: Creating Your Groups
In the CRM Module, you can group your clients in the Account Information tab. This way, when you’re ready to send out an email campaign, the software can do the rest for you!
This is where you would group your clients based on industry. Do they work in a bank? A school? When you are ready to begin, you can easily select the group you are targeting and increase your email campaign’s sales potential.
You can even take a step further by adding where your client’s contact information came from in the Source tab. Did you meet them at a trade show? Through social media? By adding their source information, you can easily sort through your contacts to create a specialized email campaign by source as well.
One great way to utilize the source field would be to follow up after a trade show. Sending a quick note to thank them for meeting with you and including a few product ideas could inspire your next big sale!
Step 3: Making Email Campaigns the Easy Way
Now that you have your clients sorted, you’re ready to create your email campaign! SAGE Email Campaigns can do the hard work for you. We create ready-to-send email marketing solutions that are pre-populated with themed promotional products that link to your SAGE Website. Each month, we create two predesigned emails that are filled with timely promotional products for you to customize and send, keeping your business top of mind with customers. Or you can create your very own with our easy-to-use module! Plus, with SAGE Total Access, you get 25 free emails to send each month!
Step 4: Track Your Success
So, how successful was your targeted campaign? You can find out exactly how many people opened your email, unsubscribed, or didn’t receive your email (bounces) all in real-time with SAGE Email Campaigns. We’ll even handle the unsubscribed automatically, making sure you aren’t violating spam laws in the process! You can even see when your client opened the email and which products they clicked on!
As you can see, segmenting and targeting your audience with email campaigns is an easy way to increase your revenue and provide more value to your customers. And with 25 free monthly emails, you have nothing to lose!
To learn more about SAGE’s CRM, check out the cheat sheet here to get started, or for more information on SAGE Email Campaigns, and to inspire your next big order, click here!
