Create The Right First Impression

There’s few things in life less embarrassing than getting someone’s name wrong only for them to point it out and then wait for the ground to open up and swallow you. And if you’re trying to sell them something then this is absolute sales suicide.

You might be thinking that it is a pretty extreme statement to make but we’ve taken a look at why it’s so important to make sure you know who you’re contacting.

Take the final of Australia’s Next Top model for example, when the presenter read out the wrong name, accidentally crowning the runner up only to publicly humiliate the poor girl and immediately strip her of her title after realising her mistake! Or Dennis Rodman, who was ruthlessly fired from The USA’s version of The Apprentice for spelling Donald Trump’s wife’s name wrong.

As we can see its important to look like you’ve done your research and gone to the effort of finding out who you’re talking to. This applies to email marketing too, marketeers have realised that emails need to be not only personalised but targeted to really capture the attention of the recipient.

It’s not just about using the recipients first name in the opening sentence, anyone with basic HTML software can do that, real personalisation comes from knowing your customers likely needs in anticipation of sending the email. This can be achieved through knowing the industry they’re in, how many customers or employees they have, their turnover and therefore likely budgets and any criteria that you can use to determine whether they’re suitable candidates for your product or service and whether they fall into your target market. This means you’ll avoid wasting time and effort contacting those that your offering may be irrelevant too and you’re more likely to catch the right people at the right time.

Recipients are becoming ever more frustrated by over personal emails over-using their first name, “Hi Lauren, we remember that you, Lauren, recently…” and offering a product that makes no sense to them and their needs. So by using specific criteria you can tailor your message to specific audiences helping to build brand loyalty and engage target customers.

It’s also important to make sure you’re sending the email to the right person in the first place. You might have got their name right but if you send an engineer an email about switching suppliers then it’s likely that they’re not the actual decision maker for this type of enquiry. By making sure you know the title of the contact, you can make sure your efforts aren’t wasted and fall into the inboxes of those that bear no weight over the purchasing decisions. But, this is easier said than done. Many receptionists and switchboard operators  are trained in the art of dodging sales calls. They’re now adept at fielding enquiries to find out contact’s information to avoid them being bombarded by sales calls. Things have certainly moved on since the times of Dad’s Army and “Don’t tell them your name Pike”. With so many different departments and employees in some of the larger organisations it’s difficult to find out who might be the right contact.

We’ve established that its important to not only get people’s names right but also to make sure they’re the decision maker too. By using a data broker (shameless plus) the hard work’s already been done for you and you’ll get not only the contact name, but job title as well as other important and useful information about the company. This will dramatically reduce the amount of time you need to spend researching contacts adding anyone and everyone on LinkedIn in the hope that one of them might be the right person. Plus it’ll help combat those embarrassing blunders of sending poor Sally the office Manager an email that says “Dear Julie. We know that you like…”

So if you’re looking for your target customers’ contact information based on tried and tested criteria then give us a shout today for more information.