Using Email Marketing to Support All of Our Business Deliverables

Lately, I’ve been in “clean out” mode – both physically and digitally. Maybe it’s because we’re all spending more time at home and partly a little because, like many of you, I’m taking the time to make sure I’m not double-spending in categories where it doesn’t make sense. Although we’ve loved Dropbox for our organization, we’re a G Suite email customer and after recently upgrading to give our team the full suite of features available, we also have a ton of storage space via Google Drive, so I’m migrating all of our cloud files over.

I stumbled upon the notes I made preparing for a speech delivered on August 5, 2011, at iContact‘s Q3 kickoff event. (Y’all, time FLIES!)

HUGE thank you to @edwinjeffords @JKennedy93 @ncsulilwolf for sharing their customer success stories at our Q3 kickoff today!!!

— iContact (@iContact) August 5, 2011

As I quickly read through this TXT file (yep, it was the quickest way I scribbled my thoughts in preparation for that brief moment in front of the microphone and what felt like hundreds of marketing and sales professionals), I’m amazed at how still incredibly relevant these thoughts are nearly nine years later. For those of you marketing forecasters who say email is dead, I still shake my fist at you. 😜

Here’s that speech so you can share in my reflection with me:

My business card says that we provide brand management, public relations, and event planning services for businesses, organizations, and individuals. We use email marketing, and more specifically, iContact, to support each of these deliverables.

Specializing in the restaurant, retail, and professional services industries, every brand that we represent is ultimately successful due to the high level of service that they provide to their audience, which includes customers, clients, and stakeholders.

Email marketing and the iContact platform help us ensure that each marketing message crafted and delivered on behalf of our clients is not only sent with industry-leading deliverability but also in a professional, easy-to-interact-with manner.

What has iContact done for our business and the business of those we represent? Let me give you an profit-based example.

Swagger is a specialty gifts, decorative accessories, and clothing boutique based in Cary, NC, that is a click-and-mortar business with both storefront and e-commerce business models.
iContact allows Swagger to effortlessly deploy welcome messages, monthly correspondence, trigger offers, and loyalty program fulfillment to its customers not only here in the
Triangle, but across the nation, as well.

In terms of sales, store owner Mandy Becker estimates that her stores realizes a 20-25% increase in sales on merchandise featured in their email marketing campaigns within a week of publication.

In terms of cost reducation, Swagger has eliminated over $1,000 in annual printing costs by moving their loyalty program fulfillment from direct mail to iContact.

And in terms of industry leadership, Swagger was named a 2010 Gifts & Decorative Accessories “Retailing Excellence Award” winner in the area of Marketing Achievement,
due to the brand’s integrated marketing communications plan, which is heavily supported by our use of iContact.

In many industries, image is everything and even on days when we may not have it all together, iContact helps us deliver the impression that we do.

Many thanks to iContact for inviting me (as a young agency pup in those days) to share my thoughts with your team!

• Category: Communication, Digital Marketing
• Tag: Email Marketing, iContact