In direct sales, it’s critical to have continuous communication with distributors and customers.
Most companies use email as their main communication channel, however, sending emails is a double edge sword.
Let me explain:
Do you have a big promotion you need to communicate to your distributors or customers?
You send an email.
Did you add an important training to their backoffice you need them to complete?
You send another email.
Did you launch a new product or a new holiday line?
Again, you send another email.
What about the new opportunity presentation you created for your distributors to use?
Guess what? You send another email.
Does all of this sound familiar?
Sending email is great, but statistics show only 10-20% are opened on average. How can you have only 10-20% of your field receiving and reviewing important updates?
At the end of this article, I will show you how you can increase 10-20% open rate to a 90-95% open rate!
First, let me share 3 tips to improve your email marketing strategy.
Tip #1: The $0.45 Rule
Review the content of your email, then, ask yourself the following question:
Would you pay $0.45 cents for every person receiving your email?
If your database is 10,000 distributors, would you really pay $4,500 to send them ONE email?
If your answer is no, you need to re-write the content or don’t send it at all.
Some companies get scared when they haven’t send emails to the field and try to email anything just to stay top of mind.
They send an email about the weather. Or maybe just an announcement that the company will be close early.
If you had to pay $0.45 cents per each subscriber, would you send that email?
Tip #2 Emails Should Be Informative
If you only send promotional emails you are training your distributors to not open future important announcements.
I remember one company, the only time they send emails was to offer distributors something to sell. Its no wonder their open rates were less than 5%. Meaning that only 50 people out of 1,000 opened the email.
Your emails should delight
you customers and distributors.
Yes, maybe you are sending an email that the company will close two hours early on Friday, but is it possible to add a bit more information?
What about a re-cap of last month trainings?
What about a link to the newest online presentation?
You have to train your people to open your emails.
If they know, that every email you send has value, they will open it.
Tip #3 Watch Your Open Rate
This is the percentage of people opening your emails.
If you have anything below a 10% open rate, you have to rethink your email strategy.
Imagine, you send an email to 10,000 people but only 1,000 will open. What happens to the other 9,000 that didn’t open it?
If your open rate is low check the quality of the previous emails you’ve sent.
Pay attention to how often they are receiving communications from you. You don’t want to hammer your distributors with 5 emails a week. Test sending at different time.
Or…
Try a new strategy
App Notifications For Direct Sales Companies
See, it’s a bit complex to create an app in house, but you can afford to have your own mobile app with providers like Krato (krato.com).
Here’s why:
There are 897 million mobile email users worldwide, including both business and consumer users. (Source: The Radicati Group)
If you have an app, you can send app notifications which will pop on your distributors phone.
Let say, out of 10,000 distributors only 5,000 have downloaded your app.
When you send an app notification to those 5,000 on average let say that 95% will see that message.
5,000 distributors x 95% = 4,500 distributors that saw your announcement.
Can you see how app notifications for direct sales can transform forever, the way you interact with your team?
You have two options:
Build your custom mobile app that can cost 100’s of thousands of dollars.
Or,
You can have a company like krato, to provide an app for a fraction of that cost.
Whatever decision you take, you cannot afford not to have your own mobile app.
If you want to find out more about Krato, visit https://krato.com/
