Yesterday morning I did a presentation to the local Chamber of Commerce.  The topic of the presentation was “Debunking the Myths of E-Mail Marketing:  It’s Really Not SPAM.”

Despite the fact that it’s the hottest month of the year in Virginia and everybody is at the Outer Banks on vacation, it was a full house.

Clearly this is a topic of interest.

E-Mail Marketing has a bad rap.  There is so much misunderstanding and misinformation about e-mail marketing.  Encouraging my clients to do an e-mail marketing campaign generally meets with either disdain or chagrin or sometimes even disbelief (“Seriously?!?”).

As I was giving this presentation I looked around the room to see if people were falling asleep or reading their email on their smart phones.  They were all just staring at me.  Hopefully I didn’t have food in my teeth.  I’m guessing they were just rapt with attention.

I doubt it’s because I’m a charismatic speaker.

E-mail marketing works.  Done correctly, i.e. ethically and with clear goals, e-mail marketing is the most successful internet marketing channel there is.  Period.

Next week I am going to start a series, which will reveal to you the eight myths I debunked during my presentation yesterday, one at a time.

I am looking forward to it!  I hope it does the same for you as it did for my audience yesterday.

Last week was great.  It was the first week of the new year and so much just went right.

One good thing that happened was that I got two requests (from completely different sources) for speaking engagements at local business association meetings.

Another good thing was that we got two last-minute sign-ups for our latest E-Marketing 101 Workshop, which started on Thursday (the next one starts in March btw).

As small business owners, we have to cast as wide a net as possible for our marketing efforts.  That’s not to say we have to try everything.  We simply need to reach our target market, regardless of what mechanisms we use to do it.

I do a lot of business networking.  I’m active in the local Chamber of Commerce, and I go to a lot of their events.  I make it a point to get my face and my name out there.  I make myself available, even when it takes me outside of my comfort zone.  This is my primary offline marketing activity, and it’s absolutely paying off.  The Chamber membership roster is filled with my potential customers.

I also do lots of online marketing activities (of course!), but there’s a core list of things I do regularly and consistently.  This core list includes local directory listing updates for maximum Google exposure, posting updates to Facebook and LinkedIn, blogging once a week, and sending out e-mail newsletters twice a month.

All these marketing activities — online and offline together — take up a lot of my time, probably somewhere around 30-40%.  That sounds like a lot, but it’s how I drive people into my sales cycle.  That’s what marketing does.  If I didn’t do these activities, nobody would know who I am or what Avarra Solutions is all about.

At any rate, the two speaking requests came from my offline networking activities, and the two new workshop registrations came from my online marketing activities.

Don’t drop your offline marketing activities, as long as they’re getting you business (I have a client who uses rack cards, and they generate loads of business).

Sure we live in a digital world, but people consume information in different ways.  If you know your customers well, you’ll know how to market to them.  Online AND offline.

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