I just love this blog entry from Chris Baggott’s Email Marketing Best Practices blog. Chris tells the story of how he signed up for a small internet retailer’s email newsletter and was pleasantly surprised how helpful and relevant the communique that he received was.
There’s a valuable lesson to be learned here. Email—and all internet marketing efforts— don’t have to be terribly complex. They just need to be relevant and helpful to the customer. Sometimes it’s best to step back from your marketing program and ask yourself if the email you send or the search engine ad you write address your customer’s needs.
I like Perry Marshall’s take on marketing to consumers:
“If you sell drills, you can write about how to make better holes, and you’ll get lots more sales leads than merely advertising information about your drills.
Why does that work? Because nobody who bought a drill wanted a drill. They wanted a hole. Offer information about making holes and you’ll be much more successful.”
Well said.
