Database marketing is the gathering of specific information about your prospects or customers. The information stored in such system can then be used to market and advertise as well as to increase awareness about your products or services. The specific information you collect will depend upon the product or service you are selling. Basic information needs to contain contact details and purchase history.

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I’ve recently attended a great webinar where I learned a lot about newsletter trends for 2010 and beyond. So I thought I’d share my learning with you and here are some points that you can implement now to get more business throughout the rest of 2010!

Testing is important

Use your open and click rates to determine the potential strengths and weaknesses of your own campaigns. From the results you can identify areas to test to improve performance. Try split-testing subject lines, FROM name, newsletter title. Research and surveys show that email marketing spend is expected to grow and expand to $2 billion in the US by 2014. The other increase in Marketers’ budgets was in Social Media. This means that if you are not using newsletters yet – don’t miss a chance to get started before it’s no longer a “purple cow” of marketing. continue

Guest post by Barry James, Angel Revolutions.

Are newsletters a waste of time? Yes and no!

But if they take too much time to write and too much time to read then they do just waste everyone’s time.

The pace of life is such these days that it’s difficult to find the time to read a full newsletter – even if most of it is interesting. (Let’s face it the ‘filler’ articles that make up the bulk rarely are).

How much more difficult to find the time to write the stuff – especially if hardly anyone’s going to read it! continue

We often come across small business owners without a definite plan to follow up on their leads. They keep a collection of business cards from networking events, and have address books where they record contact details. But these are often used at random, if at all, and are sometimes simply forgotten. So what is a database, how does it differ from the card collection and why should a small business have one?

The answer is simple. Would you use a typewriter to prepare a proposal for your customer? Probably not. Same reasoning applies to managing your customer data. The business database is one of the most important assets in your business and, if used properly, it can generate a steady stream of income each time you turn to it.

A database is essentially a collection of information about something, in this case – about your customers and prospects. The main benefits over collecting paper cards are:

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Every time you attend a networking event you will collect between 5 and 20 business cards. Over a few months it can become more than 100. Over 100 little cards with names of people you’ve once met. They can be your potential customers, suppliers, referrers – or they can just stay as cards. It’s what you do with cards that makes all the difference.

You need to have a system in place where you can add new contacts, follow up, diarise actions, record information you obtained via calls and meetings. A system that is easy to use and that can be synchronised with your email and mobile device. After each event you attend you need to schedule time to add new contacts to the system and schedule your first action – call to arrange a meeting or send an email with the information you’ve agreed to send.

Sounds easy and obvious but are you actually doing this?

Now if you look at your pile of business cards on the desk and in various drawers – you may feel like giving up. But don’t despair – our help is always at hand. We can help you choose the right system, set it up and enter details from cards you have already. We will then train you to use it and move forward. Why?

So that you can start collecting people (and building relationships) rather than collecting cards.