I own a wholesale business that buys assorted lines of overstock brand new products from a major retailer in the US carrying recognized brands. We have more than 51000 items in stock and I need to start an email marketing asap. Our website was designed and implemented by the people at Quick Books Pro and its is very simple and directed to the end user of 1-2 products, but very inefficient for the wholesale/retail buyer and that’s what I need to aim now. My budget is very limited and I’m looking for the best possible and efficient way to develop and deploy the best email marketing plan under my circumstances.

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Jay’s Answer: It sounds like you have 2 problems: your website and a marketing plan to attract people to it.

If your website is inefficient now, then no matter how much traffic you get from your email campaign, you’re not going to be able to sell your products efficiently. So, I’d focus on your website first ensuring that the people who do visit have a high rate of conversion (to purchase or at least inquiry).

Secondly, you’ve asked about how to do an email marketing plan. The key to this is first narrowly defining your target market:

• Who specifically is interested in your products? What gender? Age? Location?
• Why are they interested in your products? Price? Service?
• What makes your product offering better than your competition?
• Why should people trust that you’ve got the best offer?

While you’re probably tempted to say: “Since we have 51,000 items in stock, so everyone in the whole world would be interested in what we’re selling. We have the best selection, price, and service.” But the problem is, it’s impossible to target the whole world for an email campaign. You need to target a slice of the population that’s more likely to want to purchase from you. So you need to put your thinking cap on and analyze previous sales and/or your competition.