Relationship Building with Emails
Relationship building with emails is an easy way to grow your customer or client list.
Do you have a website?
Do you invite current or potential customers/clients to contact you by email?
Is relationship building important to you?
Replying to email inquiries seems like such a simple concept to put into practice but may be challenging to implement consistently. Your relationship may begin, or end here, so pay attention to email inquiries.
A while back, I emailed a local roofer using the email address on the company’s website. I wanted to ask the company to quote on replacing our roof. A few weeks went by with no reply. Knowing that sometimes an email is missed, I re-sent my original email with the message “Perhaps you missed my earlier email.”
After a few more weeks with no reply, I came across someone who works for the roofer and told him my odyssey to connect with the company. He mentioned that the company was very busy and the owner likely hasn’t had time to reply. I’m glad the roofer is busy, but it only takes only two minutes to hit [Reply] to let me know they are booked several months out and don’t have time to quote. While this answer wouldn’t have been the reply I hoped for, it would have stopped my follow-ups and perhaps motivated me to look elsewhere or to connect with the roofer next spring.
A reply to my inquiry is also an opportunity to build a relationship with me either by stating when they expect to quote my roof and/or advise me on other roofers they recommend.
Not replying to my inquiry tells me the roofer doesn’t care about my business, helping to solve my need, or my time.
All websites should have a way for folks to connect with them. I don’t recommend having an email address published on a website as email harvesters will collect it and either do their own spamming and/or sell the address to others for spamming. Ideally, a visitor to your website will click on a Contact Me link and be taken to a form to fill out and [Send].
Also, set up an auto-responding message such as "Thank you for email. We'll reply within X days.
Relationship building is essential for your business' success.