Our experience is proving this theory - the internet can work for any business. Over the last few months we have seen the following categories of business successfully use our system.
lawyers - mortgage brokers - marketing firms - business coaches - accountants - design fitout specialists - accommodation providers - government departments - business consultants - service industries
The reason for this simple - using the net enables you to do two things effectively. First - to keep in touch with your clients through announcements, newsletters, updates and so on.
Second - to develop leads with potential clients. The tracking facility shows you who is really interested in what you are saying or offering and who is worth a follow up as a hot lead

Accounting Comes Alive works in the traditional "Accounting for Non-Accountants" market but in a completely non-traditional way. Many of their clients - business owners, directors, managers, professionals and other key decision-makers - need increased accounting literacy because it is they (not the Accountants) who influence the bottom line as a result of the business decisions that they make each day.

Accounting Comes Alive has offices all over the world but only recently commenced operations in the Asia Pacific region. Mark Robilliard, Accounting Comes Alive's Co-Founder and Managing Director comments "We have been particularly pleased with the marketing kick-start provided by our association with Using The Net. Being non-technical, we really appreciated the friendly help provided to us by Using The Net. We were able to construct our first newsletter with a minimum of fuss and contacted our mailing list with one click. Using the statistics provided by Using The Net we were then able to see exactly who was opening our newsletter and at what point they accessed our website.
We found this information to be extremely useful in analysing our client activity and targeting future newsletters. Using The Net also provided us with a sign up function for our newsletter directly from our website. The result : we realised an almost immediate return on our investment when an international law firm contacted us for assistance as a result of reading our newsletter and accessing our website.

E-newsletters, particularly in combination with companion Web sites, can deliver a 30-50% response - dwarfing the average 10-15% rate produced by text-based e-mail, and the 1-2% rate for traditional direct mail.
If you already send printed material out to your contact list -whether as a newsletter or in some other format - one of the quickest, most tangible benefits you will see, is a saving in printing and mailing costs. There are other benefits (listed below) that may not be quite as obvious

You can send out low cost promotions, updates and messages as frequently as you wish. An e-newsletter allows your customers/clients to easily and immediately interact with you.

Keeps you before your customers and prospects, and provides an ongoing mechanism for highlighting your full range of products and services.
Your newsletter leverages your website, print newsletter and existing marketing materials. Every time we send out our newsletter the number of visits to our website over the next few days increases by 50%.

Competitors can buy their way into your market by matching your pricing, matching your products and even matching the look and feel of your company.
What they can't buy are your relationships. Every newsletter that you send serves to solidify the connection between your company and your customers

Look at other ways you spend time marketing your business. You take clients to lunch, you send holiday cards, you attend trade shows, you ask for referrals, you make cold calls and you attend business meetings. All of this you do with the hope of gaining visibility, meeting potential clients and reinforcing existing relationships. It's a necessary part of running a small business, but if you think about it, it's very much a hit or miss approach. An e-newsletter on the other hand, offers all the benefits of these other approaches, but in a much more cost effective and targeted way.

Why wander around business meetings hoping to stumble on a new client, when you've got existing relationships with customers and others that you're not really nurturing? Taking one day per month to connect with your universe of contacts is well worth your time, and in terms of ROI, your e-newsletter may quickly become the most systematic, most effective marketing activity your small business is engaged in. Talk to us about how you can get started