We’re extremely fortunate as a full-service marketing company that we get to work with many different clients; big and small, b2b and b2c, across many sectors.
Marketing isn’t a one size fits all approach – some markets, including international market sectors, aren’t as advanced and far along in the technological curve as others.
One dominating channel, however, which spans all sectors, is email marketing. There is absolutely no doubt that email marketing can potentially yield a much higher return on investment across all markets than other channels such as Adwords and SEO.
A contributing factor of such email marketing, compared to other ‘ad’ type channels, is that it is a widely accepted channel. Another is that it is proactive rather than reactive. However, there are challenges to overcome regardless of the market.
The most obvious of these challenges is that people have now become somewhat cynical towards email marketing and thereby less responsive to this type of advertising.
Think about your own inbox for a moment and the marketing messages and spam that you never open. You likely cringe every time you have to give out your email address because you know it opens you up to more clutter in your inbox, and there’s a good chance you’ll have never bought anything yourself through email marketing.
But while that may all be true, this doesn’t mean that email marketing can’t be a highly effective method for reaching anyone; from a new untapped target audience to a loyal customer.
The simple fact is that you need to approach the process with the right communication contact strategy and employ the right techniques to really make the process effective.
a1-cbiss is one particular client who has recently commissioned Studiowide on an International Marketing campaign. Our brief is to introduce a1-cbiss for Gas Detection products into 5 new international markets. In order to attract and gain momentum in each market, we created 5 micro-websites to be used as a hub [As per images above].
The first step to securing new distributorships in International Markets is to thoroughly research each market in order to identify potential targets, and then engage with those target distributors.
There are a number of ways to approach this task. One way of finding target customers in today’s digital space is by identifying prospects based on particular online behaviours and signals.
All digital activity is traceable. The goal, in this case, is to find the right activity that will identify a target distributor.
As we are targeting new markets with a product range that facilitates Gas Detection, one idea is to use a specific tool like NerdyData.com to obtain a list of websites that have Gas Detection Tubes listed for sale, defined by specific geographic regions. The purpose of this stage of the process is to identify potential distributors.
To do this we can identify a unique piece of code that is specific to a competitor product. NerdyData.com can then be used to pinpoint that distributor. Just by pasting in the code it will show all of the websites/domains in any geolocation that lists Gas Detection Tubes. These will be potential distributors of the a1-cbiss product range.
Another method is to use a reverse pixel picture lookup tool like Tin Eye. This tool can identify websites that list particular images. It does this through pixel-by-pixel recognition and is not dependant on file names.
Competitor product images can be identified and then a reverse look-up conducted to find distributor websites that host those types of images. Again, these will be potential customers for a distributorship.
Once a target list of potential distributors has been identified the process of finding email address information associated with the distributor domain name can begin. When we have obtained contact information for the target distributors, the communication process to these prospects begins.
To do this we use our own Studiowide Lead Generation platform to set up, facilitate, manage and measure communications to potential distributors. It is important to note that all communications to prospective or current customers must conform to the relevant spam email legislation, per country.
We are currently undertaking these type of communication contact strategies on a daily basis for various clients in all sectors. All of whom are experiencing positive results. If you would like to discuss your own programme of activity with our team, then please get in touch!
“When done correctly, email marketing campaigns can provide real value to the point that recipients actually appreciate getting inboxed with an introduction or message. What’s more, the campaign can be so precisely targeted to the audience that every email appears to have been written specifically for them.”