How to Get the Existing Business Front Line Involved In adding e-commerce to your business, you must get your front line involved. Your clerks, your sales force, your phone order and service personnel are all critical

to your success. They must be trained not only to ask for e-mail addresses (which they may consider an extra pain) but to make the asking a service to the customer. To make this easier, have a short written form that your personnel can follow or the customers can fill out. Be helpful here, too. In addition to some specific interest options, ask customers what else they would like to be notified about. Explain that if they want to be removed from the list at any time, their name will be removed with no hassle. You’ll be wise to get help from a public relations person to create that message. Be sure that PR person spends time at your business to learn about your employees and your customers. Here, as elsewhere in your e-mail messaging, empathy is everything!

Fish Bowl Do’s and Don’ts Many businesses and organizations have a prominently displayed “fish bowl” with a sign something like this: The e-mail list from that bowl is essentially worthless as an advertising medium. Practically no one drops in their card because they want your future e-mails; they want a chance at your free whatever. So do something like this: Give them a reason to want to hear from you, something that offers a selfselected benefit, and you will have a golden winner. To discover what that is, change the offer monthly to learn what customers consider worthwhile. As in all direct response, you can’t know what works best until you test the options. Periodically repeat the benefit—which may change over time—but not so often visitors will stop checking your offer.

The Importance of Blind “Carbon Copies” Blind carbon copy (BCC) systems let you send the same personalized note to any or all of the e-mail addresses without their knowing who else got your message. Without such a system, every message will include the entire list, no matter how long! What is the likelihood of your ever opening that person’s or company’s message in the future? There are many such systems. Check out a few and see which works best for you.

Some Fundamental Rules When Going after New Business Every business is a neighborhood concern, whether that “neighborhood” is within a few blocks, a few miles, or a few continents. In advertising terminology, your business neighborhood is the universe that contains your customers and prospects. For consumer businesses, if you are not getting business across town without e-mail, you are unlikely to get business from there with e-mail. Even if you might do so, usually it is too costly and too much work. Almost always, the small business is better off adding value for the 20 percent of the customers who make up 80 percent of the sales. Nevertheless, getting sales from outside your universe is possible, but has to be weighed against at least four factors: 1

. Your cost for the additional advertising and promotion.

2. Your cost for the benefits that gets customers to you.

3. Your cost for providing the goods and services, if those must be delivered.

4. The cost of the first three against your cost for doing nothing, should competition threaten your present sales universe.

E-Mail as a Customer Service Tool There may be companies and businesses that do not need a Web site, but everyone can profit from having e-mail. In addition to its use in selling, e-mail can be unequaled as a customer service tool. Think of the person trying to assemble a tent . . . a machine . . . a bridge at 2 A.M. If you are not there to provide answers, they can send an e-mail, explain the problem, and ask when to expect the solution. Respond at the first possible moment and tell them what to do or how long it will take you to send the answer. Most important, whatever you promise, be sure it’s done, and better and faster, if possible. Make all your surprises pleasant ones. There is no faster way to lose a prospect or customer that the failure to live up to your promise. Of course having a Web site is an even better customer service tool, and we will turn to that shortly.

E-MAIL SUMMARY Five “Secrets” of Successful E-Mail The secrets of successful e-mail are essentially the same as they are for successful faxes:

1. Give recipients an immediate reason to read it. Make the subject headline a benefit to the recipient—preferably in six words or fewer.

2. Remember, your headline has only 35 characters. So keep it short.

3. When making more than one point, as in this section, use bulleted or number copy. It makes transitions easy and obvious.

4. No misspellings. No glaring errors in grammar. How can prospective customers trust you to deliver what you promise when you can’t even deliver a short, literate message?

5. Note this major difference from other direct response: Do not use “free” in the subject headline.

Why Not to Use “Free” in Your E-Mail Headline E-mail recipients won’t believe the word “free.” They know nothing is really free. Save that for the message itself, where you can explain the conditions. There have been so many phony free or get-rich-quick spam campaigns that many ISPs will not send a message using those words in the subject line, though they may be used in the text. Check your ISP for other forbidden headline words and phrases.

MOVING ONTO THE WORLD WIDE WEB The mechanics of getting on and using the World Wide Web are covered in the instructions that are built into your computer and in literally thousands of articles, articles, and community college classes. But before you start, you will want an Internet plan detailing why you want a Web site and what to do with it once you have it.

What to Put in Your Internet Plan A surprisingly large number of business and nonbusiness men and women now search on the Internet, rather than use the printed Yellow Pages. That is reason enough to establish a Web presence. In fact, for many businesses, their Web site is exactly like a Yellow Pages ad, limited to a home page telling who they are and giving contact information. Frequently this approach results from someone having applied for a site, then not having the least idea how to make it work effectively. You are not going to do that!

Your Home Page “Billboard” The first thing anyone sees when they reach your site is your home page, the most critical billboard for the small and medium-size business. As with a highway billboard, you have a very few seconds to get attention and move to action. Nationally known businesses and organizations with established brand recognition may get away with poor home pages—as many of them have proven. You can’t afford this. So be sure to put all of the following in an easy-to-use, “click here” home page Index.