Special offers via fax

[Elky]

Thanks for all your comments on my previous 2 topics. We are looking in to new ways of getting our offers across to schools without annoying them. Email seems a good one and is something we currently do using an opt-in database. We'll also be sending a brochure to 40000 schools around March.

In the mean-time, we are thinking of sending a fax. I know a lot of schools dont like this method as it wastes time and ink, paper etc so they are signed up to the FPS (Fax Preference Service). We would obviously use a list that has been FPS approved and all of this numbers removed.

Is fax a good way to reach you with offers? I see a few people in my previous topics said they would prefer a fax or brochure. Do many of you object to this?

Cheers

Dan Whittaker

[Geoff]

Dead trees don't interest me. Email is the prefered method. Also when you do send out emails, please make a text only version alongside your normal HTML one.

[Elky]

Dead trees don't interest me. Email is the prefered method. Also when you do send out emails, please make a text only version alongside your normal HTML one.

Believe me, email is our preferred method too but to have this as a main method, you need a good quality email database with opt-in email addresses only and these take time to build up. We need get peoples attention, get them on to our site and get them signing up to our special offer email but to do this, we need another advertising method or we need to make a hell of a lot of phone calls. It's catch 22 really.

[DMcCoy]

1) I will not buy from suppliers who Fax me "Deals"
2) I will not buy from suppliers who email me "Deals"
3) I will not buy from suppliers who phone me with a sales call, EVER (unless it is regular supplier - of my choice).

[russdev]

Just been thinking about this maybe an idea send a message to all your exisiting customers saying "we know you like our great prices so how about telling a friend" and encourge them to reccomend them to other people..

Russell

[StewartKnight]

Come on give the salesmen a break, how else can they contact us!

[plexer]

Most fax offers we get are junk and go straight in the bin same with most print advertising in the post what a waste of paper at least we get paid per tonne to recycle it.

Ben

[DMcCoy]

Come on give the salesmen a break, how else can they contact us!

They don't. If *I* want to buy something, then they will know. If I don't then there is absolutely no point in just annoying me. I spend lots of money with my suppliers, but I am quite a difficult customer. I always know exactly what I want, with a part number - and I won't accept a close match unless I have researched the difference.

[john]

I tend to find faxes annoying, and TBH my office team tend to junk a lot of them as we get so many its silly! Also the fax is dead as are the trees that go through it, I would stick to paper and e-mail.

[russdev]

I tend to find faxes annoying, and TBH my office team tend to junk a lot of them as we get so many its silly! Also the fax is dead as are the trees that go through it, I would stick to paper and e-mail.

errm dosn't paper use trees

[john]

True, but its not out of my paper allocation so it does slip my mind It does get recycled though.

[_Bat_]

I understand it's hard for the sales people, but companies going to the customer as opposed to the original plan of the other way around has a really bad name.

Everytime a colleague of mine forwards a 'deal' from a company through e-mail or any other method, I usually trash it immediately. If I was looking for it, I would most likely have already purchased it.

Occasionally I think the product they are offering is a good idea (I was given one the other day regarding the creation of a school tour to put on our website) but then i'll either take the idea (with possible modifications) and do it myself or find another company to buy it from.

I had another one recently that offered to built a website for the school for about £600. I've never actually been involved with purchasing a website as I always do them myself, but is this a normal price or is it expensive? I didn't realise websites cost that much to build. Most of their examples of previously built websites consisted of just HTML, snippets of javascript and the occasional small flash animation. There was no server side scripts involved at all.

[Dos_Box]

Dan, I believe I sent you details on how to advertise with us yesterday. One advantage of advertising here is that:

a. Your target audience is in one place and....

b. You hae full access to the 'Our advertisers' forum where you can announce any deals you want when they are available. This saves you the time in conatcting schools directly and we can see offers that we may not have otherwise seen.

[Elky]

Dan, I believe I sent you details on how to advertise with us yesterday. One advantage of advertising here is that:

a. Your target audience is in one place and....

b. You hae full access to the 'Our advertisers' forum where you can announce any deals you want when they are available. This saves you the time in conatcting schools directly and we can see offers that we may not have otherwise seen.

I did indeed and I've just responded to your last email. We'd like to go ahead with this so please get back to me when you can so we can get this sorted.

Thanks for your help

Dan