Email marketing can target specific markets within an industry, for example within the steel supply industry there is structural, automotive, electrical, fashion etc.  Email software can separate each industry so you can target each current and/or potential customer with reading material specific to their needs.

I’ve chosen to focus on the steel industry as I have previous experience in this industry as a creator and manager of a successful email marketing campaign for a South African steel company. What I noticed was; for a supplier to have the competitive edge of it’s competition (and any other industry for that matter), they needed to have a good pricing system, excellent communication between customer and supplier; and of course efficient lead times. Before the email campaign began the steel company was struggling with communication between themselves and their customers. By having over 350 plus customers countrywide and still ensuring that sales increased by 25% year on year, it became a struggle to keep the communication lines open and efficient. With minimal infrastructure and a determination to keep employee numbers down, the supplier was looking for a cost effective marketing tool to increase sales with current customers as well as attract new customers.

The email campaign put forward to management was the most cost efficient and customer focused tool possible. It offered voting polls, request quote forms, material query forms amongst others which together formed a value added service for their customers.

The email campaign set about to enhance services required by the customers, good communication, price negotiations and delivery times.

It must be said that effective communication was the catalyst for price negotiations and delivering material on expected due dates. If material was late, internal sales would communicate this with the customer and an alternative plan was arranged maintaining customer satisfaction. The email created the platform for effective communication and reminded potential customers about the steel company’s presence in the market, not only in a marketing sense but also to follow up on material delivery dates. Sometimes the steel supplier could not give every customer a material delivery update because there was just not enough hours in a day to do so. What the email did do though was trigger the customer to call the supplier call centre. This way both supplier and customer were communicating freely. It was of a team effort to ensure that the steel arrived in time and the customers admired the ingenuity of the steel supplier as no other supplier in the industry was doing anything similar.

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My summary as to why an email campaign remains a good marketing model:

Low cost while the range of receivers (potential consumers) is quite wide.

Nowadays the email sending is the cheapest way of communication.

This is a timesaving way of communication.

It is easy to track. An advertiser can do it via web bugs, bounce messages, unsubscribes, read-receipts, click-throughs, etc.

It is easy for marketers to administrate the target-group dividing and send them only information they are interested in.

The advertiser plays an active role while the web-site only waits for customers to come in, which presupposes a passive role in marketing process.

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The key to the success of this email campaign is it’s efficiency, non evasive communication with customers and the fact that it was a first in the industry. The steel supplier was prepared to take the lead within the steel industry and benefited as it solved a major problem.. communication..

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 10:17 am and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.