Help with marketing our new product

Hello,

We are looking for ways to get our information about our Customer
Christmas Gift offering to marketing people in small and midsize
companies and people who sell services to all size companies, like
service reps --- inexpensively. Please share your thoughts about doing
an email blast with one of the opt-in email services. We spoke to one
this past friday and they want $1000.00 to send out the email
announcement to 20,000 opt-in companies. Do you think it is worth
while or a waste of money? Any suggestion would be greatly
appreciated.

"SayThankYouWithCoffee" <leighscoffee@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:cnboag0jbi@enews2.newsguy.com...
>
> Hello,
>
> We are looking for ways to get our information about our Customer
> Christmas Gift offering to marketing people in small and midsize
> companies and people who sell services to all size companies, like
> service reps --- inexpensively. Please share your thoughts about doing
> an email blast with one of the opt-in email services. We spoke to one
> this past friday and they want $1000.00 to send out the email
> announcement to 20,000 opt-in companies. Do you think it is worth
> while or a waste of money? Any suggestion would be greatly
> appreciated.

Unless you have collected the 20000 opt-in's yourself, you should be _very_
sceptical about it being actually opt-ins. It will most likely cause more
harm than good. Maybe some of your existing customers are on the spam-list.
They will most likely be unhappy about your marketing. Pay some student 1000
dollar for making a lot of phonecalls to likely targets. It will most likely
gain you a lot more.....

"SayThankYouWithCoffee" <leighscoffee@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:cnboag0jbi@enews2.newsguy.com...
>
> Hello,
>
> We are looking for ways to get our information about our Customer
> Christmas Gift offering to marketing people in small and midsize
> companies and people who sell services to all size companies, like
> service reps --- inexpensively. Please share your thoughts about doing
> an email blast with one of the opt-in email services. We spoke to one
> this past friday and they want $1000.00 to send out the email
> announcement to 20,000 opt-in companies. Do you think it is worth
> while or a waste of money? Any suggestion would be greatly
> appreciated.
>

Check their references very carefully. Who at these companies is getting
your email? Who else have they done such a mailing for? If they're not
really opt-in, you could find yourself up the creek.

--
McWebber
No email replies read
If someone tells you to forward an email to all your friends
please forget that I'm your friend.

Well, that price is a fair price for the service. I deal with a company
that is pretty close to the same price at 450.00 per 10,000 emails. But
again, to reitterate an earlier reply, you should be careful about adhearing
to the CanSpam laws and that your list was generated by yourself. I suggest
creating an simple opt-in page on your site, and perhaps create a small
contest for people to submit their email address to be part of the contest.
provide a check-box for them to opt in for future email from your company.
That way, they have given you permission to send info.

The service I use is Viral Communique. The design the piece, and send it
out, and track the results for up to three months. The reports are pretty
good and they also generate warm lead sheets based on recipient activity.
It has helped me quite a bit by simply making it seamless. they are at
www.viralcommunique.com. But there are many others out there.

Another idea is to inquire through marketing associations for
recommendations of their membership. When you get to a service provider
site, be sure to read the policy page for anti-spam compliance.

Hope that helps. Best of Business.

simon

"SayThankYouWithCoffee" <leighscoffee@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:cnboag0jbi@enews2.newsguy.com...
>
> Hello,
>
> We are looking for ways to get our information about our Customer
> Christmas Gift offering to marketing people in small and midsize
> companies and people who sell services to all size companies, like
> service reps --- inexpensively. Please share your thoughts about doing
> an email blast with one of the opt-in email services. We spoke to one
> this past friday and they want $1000.00 to send out the email
> announcement to 20,000 opt-in companies. Do you think it is worth
> while or a waste of money? Any suggestion would be greatly
> appreciated.
>

>Hello,
>
>We are looking for ways to get our information about our Customer
>Christmas Gift offering to marketing people in small and midsize
>companies and people who sell services to all size companies, like
>service reps --- inexpensively. Please share your thoughts about doing
>an email blast with one of the opt-in email services. We spoke to one
>this past friday and they want $1000.00 to send out the email
>announcement to 20,000 opt-in companies. Do you think it is worth
>while or a waste of money? Any suggestion would be greatly
>appreciated.
Seems like a waste to me. Very expensive, plus I would take a very
sketpical eye towards anyone selling "opt-in" email lists. How were
they collected and why dd they "opt-in?" It wasn't to get spammed.

Hmmm..

Opt in... Don't think I would risk that one since you have no money to
burn. You may get caught up in all the holiday season spam storms...

If I may...
What's your budget, the general price per Item and the profit (after
advertising) per Item sold (approx.)?

I'm thinking that you might do your own research and select targets on a
rifle type campaign, highly targeting select targets. Going with a
shotgun pattern is more costly than direct advertising when funds are
tight.

If you are putting 2,500.00 into a worthwhile product promo, you should
be able to reach and close maybe 7-14 Deals (And near-miss on 40-50
Deals and never even get a good hello with 35-40 of them.).


If your product is worth 5.00 profit to you and you sell 200 to each of
10 companies, then 5.00 x 10 x 100 = $10,000.

This $10,000. was generated with a... say.. oh.. $20.00+ expenditure on
each Target. This means VERY efficient marketing .. meaning VERY
targeted list... BUT.. you were able to create the list yourself because
it was only 100 deep (Chamber of commerce sources for example).

So you would have to go highly targeted to volume selling clients using
only with very efficient means for this to work.

In theory a self created List, a basic, modest but clean online
brochure, a simple bright two color post card, and a fast follow up call
introducing yourself and seeing if they saw your brochure yet (pointing
then to your site) and a FAX Agreement should get the results above...
if you have a good product.

There would be nothing left to go wrong though. And this has to be
targeted , otherwise, a mere two contacts per client won't close the
deal for a client incoming order after a site visit. But with TARGETED
list, good possibility. It's "Skinny Marketing", but it should not miss
if your promo designs, price, and voice and guarantee are basically
good.

These numbers were just given as an example.. please adjust
accordingly... you could double them all if you like... (if so, you can
add another maybe 2% to your projections) but I sure wouldn't cut them
in half. your campaign would be too thin to work. My hunch would be cut
your anticipated results by an extra 50% after all math if you cut the
budget in half.. and that's with big luck.

Main point.. go DEEP not broad or the budget will probably prove
insufficient to the task at hand.

So... what's your budget?

~zion~

"SayThankYouWithCoffee" <leighscoffee@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:cnboag0jbi@enews2.newsguy.com...
>
> Hello,
>
> We are looking for ways to get our information about our Customer
> Christmas Gift offering to marketing people in small and midsize
> companies and people who sell services to all size companies, like
> service reps --- inexpensively. Please share your thoughts about doing
> an email blast with one of the opt-in email services. We spoke to one
> this past friday and they want $1000.00 to send out the email
> announcement to 20,000 opt-in companies. Do you think it is worth
> while or a waste of money? Any suggestion would be greatly
> appreciated.
>

Besides all the problems that others have mentioned, how many xmus cards do
you have to sell to break even?

There are other forms of online advertising that might work better for you,
but you probably need a web page to approach those methods. Do you have a
web page? If so, take a look at adwords.google.com first.

Its a little late in the season to get started, no?

Mike