Effective e-mail marketing is not just about sending an e-mail to a prospect. After creating your letter and sending it to your recipients, an e-mail marketer has the responsibility to give a response when necessary.

Customers Don’t Want to Wait

When a prospective client writes back, it is a must to respond right away. Failing to give immediate response can cause you to lose a prospective customer. In fact, surveys reveal that most clients prefer to do business somewhere else if they do not receive a response within 24 hours. Customers simply don’t have the time and patience to wait until they receive a response from the merchant.

If you own a business, part of your e-mail marketing campaign should also focus on providing customer response. Here are some e-mail marketing tips that focus on giving an effective response immediately.

Send a reply immediately no matter what happens. If the customer is making an inquiry or is requesting information that requires more time for you to answer, you can still send a note that acknowledges their question or request. Tell your customer that you are already looking into their concern and that they can expect another e-mail from you that contains the information they’ve requested.

Sometimes a customer may request for information that you cannot respond to right away because of lack of customer details. To avoid this, give clear instructions in your first e-mail on how they can get more information.

Give instructions on where to send their e-mails. If your business is made up of different departments, make sure that you indicate in all your marketing e-mails the specific departments they should send their e-mail to if they need to inquire about sales, orders or general information.

Let your customers know how to reach you by phone. Provide a telephone number where customers can contact you if they have complaints. For instance, if they don’t have the time to write, they should be able to call a certain number where they can talk to a representative of your company.

Follow-up if you were able to provide what your customer requested. After sending a reply to a customer’s inquiry, it will be better to send another e-mail that asks if they received the email you sent or if they have additional inquiries.

Make a follow-up call. Some customers prefer to communicate over the phone. If a customer has provided his/her telephone number in the e-mail inquiry, it is also a good idea to call them and talk to them aside from sending a reply through their inbox.

Proofread your response. Check your spelling and grammar. Check it your punctuation marks are used correctly. Make it a habit to proofread your e-mail before sending it out.

Respond accordingly. Of course, it is important to respond to your customer’s e-mail accordingly. See to it that your email contains exactly what they were asking. Don’t make the mistake of sending them the wrong response because you did not pay attention to the inquiry or you were in a hurry to write back.

About the Author

Luie De Von is a marketing consultant with Easy Postcard Marketing and has been providing consumers and business owners with marketing strategies. For years he has helped businesses to have more and growing clients through home based internet businesses, campaign internet marketing and business post card.