"[H]ow many of us do one-to-one marketing?" asks Elaine Fogel at MarketingProfs. "I don't mean sending out personalized mass communication. I mean marketing to one person at a time." It takes a lot of time, but it can be remarkably effective—especially when your marketing budget is, essentially, zero. Fogel discovered this firsthand while promoting the AMA's 2011 Nonprofit Marketing Conference. "Though registration was steady," she says, "I wanted more."

To achieve this goal, she:

• Identified appropriate prospects with member lists for LinkedIn groups. Fogel sent personal invitations to the conference, and to join her network. She received a variety of responses. Some accepted one or both invitations, some asked questions and some sent "thank you" messages. In the process, she began a conversation that prospects were likely to continue with others. "What I was hoping for was to generate word-of-mouth from this group of influencers to their colleagues," she notes.
• Promoted the conference with an event hashtag via Twitter. At first, Fogel mentioned the conference only occasionally; after a few months, however, she upped the frequency, and began sending personal tweets to her followers. "Many of my followers retweeted my tweets, increasing exposure for the conference—and providing the opportunity for me to follow up with their retweeters."
• Used Google to research organizations within a 30-mile radius of the conference. Two weeks before the conference, she emailed personal invitations to strong prospects at local nonprofits. "[T]he highlight," she says, "was a telephone call from one organization's vice-president of marketing inquiring how his company's nine-member marketing team could register for the conference at the member rate."

The Po!nt: If you have more time than money, one-to-one marketing might yield exceptional ROI.

Source: MarketingProfs.

→ end article preview
Read the Full Article