You want to "turn-up" your marketing efforts. You know the basics about your target customers and prospects... at least their names and postal- or e-mail addresses. You put together an email piece to your new opted-in list of current customers and prospects. You fine tune the heck out of it and, at last, off she goes into the world like a glorious golden boomerang, returning with happy customers eager to buy!... ... ... OK, days go by and your phone isnt ring off the hook. Customers arent breaking down your door. One lady did stop in to point out the typo in the mailing however. Your mailing is a total failure... or is it?

Relationships take hard work... and patience. Results don't just happen. Every business needs to establish a dialog with its customers, one which solidifies its credibility, relevancy, and value within the confines of its marketing efforts. Of course, this differs from company to company and industry to industry. Each business needs to find the customer touch points that are hot for them and communicate these points in some way in every contact... every communication... until its brand equity has built to "critical mass" in the mind of that customer to where they think "Hey, I get it! I need to do business with those guys."

How many times does a business need to reach out to their target market before they are really trusted? Studies have shown that what used to take on average 3-5 "touches" now takes 7-9. Why is this? Think about the growing message "clutter" we sift through every day via postal mail, email, television, radio, billboards, etc. It is simply overwhelming to most people.

So how do we cut through all that clutter? One solution is to increase the number of times you touch each prospect. A touch could be an email, a post card, a phone call, a letter or in-store attention. Each time you touch the prospect you build rapport. People do business with people they like and trust. If you increase your touches you will increase your sales.

Of course simply "touching" them is not enough - the more these touches are relevant, timely, and personalized, the more effective they will be.

A Denver-based airline regularly sends emails to me with their last-minute specials. But why do they waste my time... and their money... telling me about a special that flies from Detroit to Chicago when they know that I live in DENVER?! It should be a simple, reasonable assumption that if the flight doesnt originate in Denver, where they know I live, Im not likely to be able to take advantage of it. This message is not relevant to me. So why should I bother to receive their messages if they clearly dont think enough of me or my time to offer a dialog that is of value to me?

Know your audience. Leverage what you know about them and never stop trying to gather more information. Dont waste those valuable opportunities by filling up their mail boxes with anything that isnt RELEVANT, PERSONALIZED, and TIMELY.

Dont expect immediate results. Depending of the interest levels of your audience, response can take time. Consider the world-at-large, economic factors and the competition. If the economy is strong - people may be more apt to buy. If your competition is accused of bad business practices - it could reflect badly on your industry as a whole. Everything impacts everything else in some way... and it can all show up on your response rates.

Your task as a smart marketer is NOT to target response rates initially - but to target the nurturing of top-of-mind, positive predisposition to each and every prospect out there to have a good impression of you and your business so that when they need what you offer... you will be the first one they think of.

Focus efforts on gathering information and then using it to build a knowledge-base of valuable nuggets about each and every customer and prospect - then apply that knowledge to better target information to deliver value to them. By getting the most out of every customer touch point, the positive results will follow.