The right email marketing software helps The Missourian Publishing Company meet its monthly email newsletter deadlines.
How long does it take to publish a monthly company email newsletter? 10 hours? A hundred hours?
Well, if it really takes that long, it’s no wonder more companies have good intentions, but don’t actually do them.
With the right email marketing software and a simple newsletter template, an email newsletter should take only an hour or two each month to research, compose, post and send. Here’s how Stephen Trentmann, sales manager of the commercial print division of The Missourian Publishing Company, gained momentum with his email newsletter marketing.
The Missourian Publishing Company is a family-owned and -operated newspaper and publishing company. It has two production facilities in Washington, MO, and satellite offices in Union and St. Clair, MO. The Missourian is also a full-service graphics communication company that provides a wide range of creative printing solutions for our business and publishing clients.
Stephen’s goal was to start leveraging the nearly 3,000 contacts in his ACT! Software, which he had been building for more than two years. “I needed to create marketing campaigns that consistently reached out to our customers and did not take 100 hours per month to do so,” Stephen says.
Stephen followed The Database Diva’s email newsletter template suggestion, which included 3-4 recurring topics, each with the goal of educating, entertaining and compelling his contacts to use The Missourian as its communications resource. “Lori showed me the logical steps to create a professional looking email newsletter and good techniques for gathering story ideas that could be used when it was time to assemble the next scheduled newsletter.”
Stephen distributes his newsletter using the email marketing software Swiftpage, which works with his ACT! Software. The integration allows him to update his email newsletter template and then send it to current contacts right out of his database. “The result has been just what I wanted. Our customers remember we are here when they receive the newsletter, and it sparks ideas to help them with their business. And the time it takes to publish the newsletter has been reduced to under a manageable few hours.
After successfully meeting his monthly newsletter deadlines for more than a year, Stephen’s goal is to utilize ACT!’s dynamic groups better and send more focused email campaigns to specific markets.
But he believes his real success comes from using his ACT! database everyday to follow up consistently. “I would not be able to be able to keep in contact and document activity without ACT!,” he says. “In the first 3 months of 2010 I documented communication with 729 different people in our database.
“I was surprised at the amount of reporting Swiftpage feeds back after a campaign is sent. There’s a lot of info in the call lists and other email reports.”
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Hi Lori,
This is great stuff…what would one write about a video production company?
Results? Maybe talk about the increase in video usage on the internet in the last twelve months?
Can we talk about how old folks homes are right into this way of promoting their products now?
Ian