Tinkers,Evers,Chance,Chicago,C marketing Tinkers to Evers to Chance
Automation technologies represent a fundamental aspect of any modern industry. The major types of industrial automation solutions, such as DCS, PLC, SCADA, and MES, are used on a large-scale in process and discrete industries.DCS technologie Awhile ago, I got an email from one of the "gurus" I follow and it shocked me. The gist of it was this person wanted to trade services for a household item.To say it floored me would be an understatement.What was worse was a few days later t
Chicago Cubs infielders Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and FrankChance formed the most memorable double-play combination in thehistory of baseball. In our marketing efforts, we can learn avaluable lesson from this "double-play" concept.While email is nice to use in your ads, it is not structured, andyou may not get the information you really need. You can havethem reply to a specific email address or to an email with aspecial address such as: [email protected]?subject=BOB1234this will allow you to act upon that email. If you use a mailreader such as Eudora, you can automatically send a response toany mail with the subject BOB1234. Of course, you can havedifferent offers with different subjects work the same way. Thiscan also work wonders for tracking purposes so you know whereyour leads are coming from.Another way, is to have your contact information point to yourweb site where you have a form they can fill out.The form will allow them to send you an email in a preciseformat. Example - When someone subscribes to one of ourNewsletters, we get the information in exactly the same formatfrom everyone who subscribes.Will you lose an occasional customer who won't visit your website? Sure, but they're probably "tire kickers" anyway. If youprovide a link in your ad to the precise page to fill out theform, the loss will be minimal, and the benefits will faroutweigh any potential loss.Since the information is now in an exact format when received asan email, there are things that can be done that would beextremely difficult to do with regular email. When fielded byyour email system, the first thing done is to immediately send aconfirmation notice that it was received. This is your firstcontact back, and it lets them know they have made contact.Various email programs allow you to filter messages and act uponthe keywords you select. When an email is received that matchesthe keywords, the next player in this double-play combinationautomatically stores the message in a special mailbox that willbe used in the third part of this process.When the email has been transferred to this mailbox, you can thencapture the information you wish, and place it in a file or database. Once there, you can use this for follow up purposes. Youcan do this final step manually, depending upon your timeavailable and the volume received. If you get a large numberevery day however, you may wish to invest in some software thatcan do this for you.Sure, you can use autoresponders that automatically follow upwith multiple emails for you, but for the most part, they arebecoming passe. I call these "nag notices". Many times, theycreate the opposite effect of what you hoped for, and some peoplesimply block all email from the domain that sends them.To follow up yourself, you must have an email account that allowstrue "Post Office Protocol" (POP). If your ISP doesn't supportthis, you can get one for about $5 per month. Combine this withsome free software from Eudora, and you are in business.Anyone will tell you that "follow up" is one of the mostimportant things you must do when trying to do business on theweb. This "double-play" can be the difference you need to win themarketing game.
Tinkers,Evers,Chance,Chicago,C