Communicating with your current and past customers should be as important as getting new customers. Unfortunately many Avon Reps neglect their repeat customers by failing to stay in touch with them. One solution is to use a Direct Mailing service and send brochures out to all your customers each campaign. This solution can quickly eat into your profit margins, and it doesn’t open up a two way communication link between you and your customer. Many things can go wrong with direct mailing such as your brochure getting mixed up with junk mail then getting tossed in the garbage, your customer may move and forget to give you their new address, and your brochure may get lost in the mail all together.
A less expensive solution is to build an email list and communicate with your customers directly. Building an email list should be a top priority whether you’re an E-Rep or real world rep. The simple fact is that today a lot of people would rather be contacted via email instead of by phone, in person, or by snail mail. Emailing allows your customers to reply and communicate on their terms. Emailing allows you to showcase items that your customers may have missed because they are not promoted in that campaigns brochure.
Some of you may already be shaking your heads and saying “some of my older customers don’t even have email”. You simply deal with these customers differently and no harm done. However other customers live and work from their computers and are most comfortable with this type of communication. Avon is evolving with changing technology, and offering trendy products. Reps need to follow their lead and evolve into efficient and effective Internet sales people.
I sent out a newsletter a few weeks ago to people that opted-in from my eBook website. The newsletter explained the same email concept I am describing here. I received a reply from that newsletter by Rep that was doubtful about the process and wasn’t ready to jump into email marketing. I explained to her that because she replied to my email that we are able to build a relationship, and she could be doing this with her customers the same way. Communication builds trust and that is the most important factor in any relationship.
Internet Marketers say that you should earn about $1 every month from each person on your email list. So if you have 100 people on your email list you will get about $100 per month from your list. Now, this may not apply to Avon Reps because our customers tend to buy more than one thing per order, and your list contains customers you already know want to buy Avon. You may make a lot more than $1 per person with such a refined list. It is hard to do the math on what my email list provides me per moth because there really is no way to track sales made from my email marketing, twitter marketing, SEO, or any other form of on line sales. However if I had to guess I would say it is around $3 per person assuming that 30% of my sales are from email.
Having control over your email list is very important because it allows you to monitor what methods are working to build your email list. You can imagine that maintaining a email list of 500 people may be difficult to know exactly how you know each person. I keep a spreadsheet that details where I got each email, and what item each person was interested in. For example my list will have a field for the clients name, email address, how I know them (Twitter, Facebook, real world, Opt-In from blog, etc), and what kind of items they like. Attached is an Excel Spreadsheet that you can download and use to build your own list. Download Here
Now that you know the benefits of building an email list you are wondering how exactly to put a plan into action. I suggest you check into AWeber email marketing tools. AWeberprovides you with all the tools you need to launch and track your email marketing campaigns. If you maintain an Avon blog you can get the Opt-In sign up forms you need for your website, and set up the auto-responder to kick your communications off on the right foot. I personally use AWeber and love it. I have tried other email marketing software and always end up switching back to AWeber. It is really a terrific to tool I could not live without.
I have a lot more to say on the topic of email marketing, but I will leave it here for now so you can go sign up for AWeber and start building your email list.
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