All posts by Alex Johnson

Ninety three percent of adults own a mobile phone, and by utilizing mobile marketing, this could be your portal into connecting with your customers. Your customers may be receptive to text messaging deals and use their smartphones to look up new businesses and discounts. When clients browse the web for different stores, the first turn-off is a website that isn’t cell phone compatible. Make sure your website is optimized for mobile navigation. Keep your site simple so it’s easier to use, especially on a phone. This will make customers more likely to continue browsing or shopping. It’s important to grab your customers’ attention right away and make a good impression before they decide to move onto a competitor’s site. Offering personalized online or mobile promotions have potential for a great response. QR codes should be utilized so you can provide a discount for your customers to easily pull up on their phone for you to scan. Text messaging deals can set up a communication chain that your customers will receive quickly and have accessible most of the time. Keep in mind the frequency of your mobile messages so as not to be bothersome. Be sure to keep messages short yet creative. Create a sense of urgency to act on your deals by a certain deadline to get your customers out to your business. Most importantly, respect your customers who are willing to share their mobile information with you. You can create a sense of trust and dependability through mobile messages. People are always using their phones, so they can be a captive audience for your advertising or Internet outreach. Small businesses can start by communicating with their customers and asking permission to interact with through their phone number. From there, with moderation, mobile advertising can be highly effective. Sources: http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/08/small-business-mobile-marketing.html http://www.score.org/resources/why-small-businesses-are-embracing-mobile-marketing The 2013 Digital Marketer - Experian

Small businesses who send direct mail advertisements to their customers find this to be a highly effective marketing strategy. Where emails can be deleted immediately or never even looked at, people still head to their mailboxes daily. According to the United States Postal Service, 98 percent of people retrieve their mail daily, and 77 percent of people sort it immediately. This gives companies access to an audience who could potentially seek out their business right away. With direct mail marketing, there is a high potential Return on Investment because this type of advertising is extremely targeted. Small businesses can market just to the consumers they think will be most likely to purchase from them - rather than mass advertising through television on email campaigns. Direct mail proves to be a more personal way to reach potential and existing customers, and it encourages businesses to build a relationship with their customers. There is measurable feedback on direct mailing campaigns because businesses can directly count how many responses they see to their advertisements or how many people use their coupons, for instance. To make the best use of direct mail marketing, businesses can purchases data append services to update and provide more information to their existing prospect or customer lists. They also can purchase mailing lists relevant to the types of people they are looking to sell to in order to best target prospects in the area. Sources http://www.delivermagazine.com/2012/01/outside-the-box-direct-mail-continues-to-prove-its-worth/ http://oneims.com/blog/2010/03/22/6-benefits-of-direct-mail-marketing-campaigns/ https://www.usps.com/business/direct-mail-benefits.htm

In order to get the most bang for your buck, it is important to know all as much as possible about your customers’ demographics, behavior, interests and preferences. Blindly sending out advertisements to all prospects and customers is expensive and ineffective. More than 80 percent of organizations have incomplete databases, and appending you data is the most cost-effective way to discover new prospects and learn more about existing customers’ needs. With Experian’s Custom Append service, consumer and prospect lists can be uploaded, and Experian® will match the file to ConsumerView, our industry leading database of more than 235 million consumers and 113 million households. This will enhance the file by adding demographics based on the Bundle Package chosen or Custom Bundle created. You can pick the type of information you want of the following offerings: Demographics: zip code, gender, age range, income range, marital status, presence of children, home ownership, home value, length of residence, business owner, home business, net worth ranges, education, occupation Behavioral data: pet enthusiast, do-it-yourself enthusiast, gives to charities, active and inactive military, purchase through mail, active investors, interest in fitness Mosaic® Lifestyle segments: More than 70 different classifications, including categories like Picture Perfect Families and Fast Track Couples Appending your data provides you with the most comprehensive and complete dataset to help you target customers most specifically and effectively based off their needs. Sources: http://biznik.com/members/sunday-richardson/articles/why-data-appending-is-important-for-your-business-database

Property managers, real estate agents, banks and credit unions can find great benefit from Experian’s Mortgage Database to help them find leads and better understand their customers and prospects in the area. The list makes it easier to target prospects for refinancing, home-equity products or second mortgages before competitors. Experian® gathers the most commonly requested mortgage data from public records to help reach this highly-targetable market. The Mortgage Database provides access to information about home purchases and mortgage transactions. Experian uses data models to provide information useful for predicting prospects’ behavior. For example, we can predict how much the monthly mortgage payment for a living unit is, or how much equity is in a home. Information from this database includes mortgage, geographic and investment selects, ranging from providing data on prospects’ counties, prevailing interest rates, investment loan types and investment refinance terms- to name a few. This wide variety of data on refinancing and mortgages can be merged in order to provide a comprehensive picture of what the homeowners in the area look like. Experian® does all the work necessary to organize data in order to make better loan decisions. Looking for second mortgage and refinance prospects is easy through the Mortgage Database, especially combined with our refinancing information in order to help banks and credit unions find the most targetable and responsive audiences. This list provides the best chance for successful marketing from call centers to online leads and helps banks, savings and loans, credit unions and mortgage originators maximize the return on their investment and make the best loan choices. Source: https://www.experian.com/small-business/mortgage-leads.jsp