Fax and Broadcast Fax

THREE NEW MEDIA The 1990s saw something unique in the history of communication—the use and acceptance of three new media for advertising: broadcast fax, e-mail, and the Internet. Of these, fax has become astonishingly undervalued and underused. Sent and delivered overnight, it is the message most likely to be placed on the recipient’s desk and read. It guarantees privacy and is opened without fear of virus and systemwide contamination. Whether you fax to one person or “broadcast” to a thousand, this medium is more effective than ever, because so few of your competitors recognize its worth!

WHEN TO BROADCAST YOUR FAX If you’re a travel agent or use one, you’ve received messages from tour groups offering huge discounts for not-quite-sold-out travel packages.1 Experience with broadcast fax has taught them they can still earn a commission the last practical moment offering the empty berths. Given the right list—we’ll get to lists in a moment—almost any special (and even not-so-special) event profits from the same kind of broadcast fax use. For instance:

• Announcement of overstocked inventory or older merchandise suitable for the audience receiving the message

• Newsletters (industry updates)

• Publications (renewals, introductions)

• Business and professional association meeting reminders

• Convention or trade show inducements to visit a specific booth or social event

• Favorable reviews of artistic, musical, and other cultural events sent to likely ticket buyers, especially if they have asked for the information

• Publicity releases to electronic and print media (much more about this in the article on publicity and public relations) Here are somewhat different ways to use broadcast fax:

• Invitation to a seminar or other self-improvement event important to the person being addressed.

• Fast individualized follow-up to everyone who attended the event. Thank them and offer an action-generating benefit that reinforces the main sales message of your meeting. Always remember that broadcast fax is a personalized medium. You’re sending one individual message to one man or woman. • For exhibit booth follow-up, use the same kind of benefit-filled fax. Be sure to give your convention-site visitors a reason to leave their own fax numbers (much more about this in the article on conventions and trade shows).

FINDING BROADCAST FAX FIRMS

Broadcast fax is listed in the Yellow Pages under “Fax Transmission Services” and “Fax Information and Service Bureaus.” A highly technical medium, it is best obtained from one of the companies that specialize in this field, rather that the major long-distance carriers, which consider it a side line. Someday, hopefully quite soon, every business will have its fax as well as its regular telephone number in the Yellow Pages. Until then, you must gather, collect, store, and keep current your own database. Fortunately, that’s easy to do.

• Many business, professional, and membership directories include fax numbers. Some will provide the listing on a disk. Others can be copied from the directories.

When Fax Numbers Are Not Easily Available

• For a small list, call each regular phone number and say, “May I please have your (name or department) fax number?” Few will refuse. • For larger lists, send the missing fax-number destinations a double, postage prepaid card. Two weeks after receiving the first response, you’ll have 90 percent of the likely mail answers. Use a teleservice firm to contact the rest. To increase response, put an offer on the postcard.

PERSONALIZING BROADCAST FAX Broadcast fax can be personalized with an unlimited number of fields, anywhere in your documents, using different type sizes and fonts (type styles) for emphasis. For letters, stick to a single “business” type face! It can add a name or phrase to personalize within the body of a message.

Some Guidance in Personalization Maury Kauffman, a broadcast fax pioneer,2 suggests 12 tricks of the trade to make your fax broadcasting more successful and more cost-effective. They are so.

Basic Internet Advertising It Doesn’t Have to Start on the Internet

Think Small! The first thing to do, if you are a small business, is to remember to think small. You must not begin by deciding to put everything involving your small business on a Web site. That is the absolute opposite of the tack you should take because you can advertise and sell on the Internet today without needing a Web site and make it begin to work for you. Whether you are a retailer, a manufacturer, or service provider, it is practical for just about any kind of business. You can take advantage of Internet marketing in ways you never thought possible, because whatever goods or services you sell, you can get on the Web simply by collecting people’s e-mail addresses. That is the first step for a small business: Start by collecting people’s e-addresses.

How to Collect E-Mail Addresses Ask people for their e-mail address at every point of contact. It is important to realize that e-mail is not the prospecting vehicle everyone seems to envision it to be. You can’t just send e-mail to people you don’t know and expect them to buy from you. We’ve all known for years that the best way to increase our profits is to get more business from our best customers. E-mail is a beautiful medium for that. So what you do every time someone comes in or phones is to ask for their e-mail addresses.

Start with a Plan! Because they will want to know what you’ll do with their e-mail address, you need a plan before you begin. Are you going to start a weekly or monthly e-mail special? Will they get the first chance at new items of special interest to them or at the savings when you close out older inventory? Whatever your plan, make the reason something that will benefit them. Be completely honest Deliver what you promise.

Special Interests: Your List for Success Depending on the variety of what you plan to offer, you will want a single master list or separate smaller lists by recipients’ specific interests. True, your online fee probably pays for “unlimited” e-mail usage, but if you repeatedly send to thousands of addresses, at some point your Internet service provider (ISP) will cancel your services unless you arrange for such heavy volume in advance. Even more critical from your point of view is the importance of not irritating the recipients by sending messages they do not want. Think of them as individuals whose e-mail boxes are filled with dozens of messages they do not need—the same daily joke forwarded by 14 acquaintances, phony “warnings” about things that aren’t true, chain letters, “spam” (junk e-mail) offers (about which more later), and so on. Hidden in all of this are the messages they really want, hopefully including yours, if only your message can get them to recognize it as such.

The Business-to-Business Application What is true about consumer e-mail is even more important for recipient-focused, business-to-business messages. When you get someone’s e-mail location for a smaller businesses, it is often both their personal and work e-mail address, so that 100 or 150 e-messages per day is not unusual. Not only do they get the e-mail garbage sent to their home, they get it at work too, all in the same virtual mailbox.

Cutting through the E-Mail Glut To cut through all that, whether as a consumer or business-to-business firm, you must make sure that the e-mail you send is instantly recognizable as having value to the recipient. Like in every other medium, a value that is of benefit to the specific prospect or customer is what sells. That is why, no matter how much customer and prospect information you collect, you want to divide it into specialized lists that make sense to the recipient.

The Importance of “You” The e-mail headline is its subject line. What that means for you as an e-mail sender is the need to make each headline such an obvious benefit to the recipients they will open the full message. To do this, you must make both your headline and message totally “you”-focused. One of the most powerful selling words in the English language is “you”; one of the least powerful is “I.”

Importance of the Subject Line Benefit Put the benefit to the recipients in the subject line. Tell what’s in it for them. Practically everyone looks at the subject line and sender ID first; after all, like the teaser on an envelope, it’s the only thing they see. Like that envelope, if your email teaser appears to be of no use, it won’t be opened either. They’ll simply delete it. To avoid this, remember these three important factors: 1. In the subject-line “headline” you have only 35 characters (including spacing) to get your point across. The full line may be longer, but the first 35 characters is probably all they will see. 2. E-mail readers are no different than you. Most of them read only the first two lines of the body message before they decide to read on or toss it. So get to the point! 3. Experiment with your messages. Try a variety of approaches as explained in more detail throughout this article.

The No-Secret “Secrets” No matter what you sell, how big or small your business, the two “secrets” of e-selling success are the same: • Give the recipients a reason to shop from you, rather than from a dozen other possibilities. • Give them a reason to shop now, rather than next week or next month.

Make It Easy to Get Off Your List, Too To keep your e-mail recipients happy, provide clear “opt-out” instructions from the very first message. Many times people change their minds about being on a list or have forgotten they signed up. Sometimes people will sign up others as a joke.

For all those reasons, it is important that your message makes it clear from whom the message is coming. Use an e-mail format like this: Although it may seem a poor business practice to let people off the hook so easily, studies have shown that when people know it is easy to get off an e-mail list, they are less likely to ask to be removed.

A Retailing Example Assume you sell shoes and have customers who have small feet, or especially large ones, or who want the very latest fashions. Collect all the information that might make sense to them. Then think of some benefit you can offer through this fast new medium that they will recognize could not be offered to them in any other way. For instance, men and women with especially small feet shop everywhere they suspect their size might be available. You could e-mail that group to tell them what has just come in and that you won’t put it on general sale for a week. Be sure to include your phone number so they can call and put some pairs on one- or twoday hold. Of course they could reply by e-mail, but a phone conversation lets you (and them) narrow down what they’re most likely to want.

Prepare for Instant Results With e-mail advertising, you will find out almost instantly how well your list and your message worked. Better yet, if you are a bricks-and-mortar merchant, not only will they order the particular product you advertised, many of them will visit and find other things to buy. This is the critical factor small businesses must not forget or ignore. The continuing success of small business comes from building first-time buyers into regular customers, and there is no better way to do that than by providing more and better service than the competition. Add to this the fact that if treated right, your best customers will also be your best word-of-mouth advertising. If not treated right, you invite the negative word of mouth at your peril.