Fax may be old-school, but it’s still relevant in the modern business world. While emails, social media, and video may dominate today’s marketing and communication industry, fax remains a favored medium to exchange essential documents between companies.
Although most people think that fax is only suitable for sending and receiving documents between associated companies, it can be used for purposes such as marketing and advertising. In this article, you’ll learn the basics of fax marketing and the essential steps to creating a successful campaign using fax.
Understanding fax marketing
Also known as blast fax, fax marketing is a marketing strategy that involves sending marketing materials via fax. Using modern technology, businesses can streamline their fax marketing campaign to be more productive and efficient.
Email inboxes are flooded with promotional and marketing emails every day, so the humble fax machines are often left empty and neglected. You can take advantage of this medium to set your business apart from competitors. Furthermore, fax marketing has a high open rate since the page must be removed from the fax machine.
Fax software and services like eFax help you easily create documents and quickly send these promotional materials to several fax numbers.
Create a successful fax marketing campaign
If you’re ready to use fax in your overall marketing strategy, here are essential steps to ensure success.
1) Set actionable objectives
Any marketing campaign should start with a plan. Thus, you first need to outline your marketing goals before building a fax marketing strategy.
Having a clear set of goals can help you make well-informed decisions on other components of the plan, including your budget and strategy. Always create SMART marketing goals.
Don’t forget to assess and revise your plan as you proceed with the implementation. In particular, review and adjust your plan when your marketing priorities change.
2) Determine your operating budget
Understanding your marketing budget is critical for your strategy. Without allocating funds for using the right software, hiring the right talent, or creating the right fax content, your fax marketing strategy won’t have a favorable impact.
You can always start small. Focus your budget on one or two efforts, then build upon them once you generate a good return on investment.
3) Abide with existing marketing policies
Did you know that sending an unsolicited fax to a business or individual in some states is illegal? So, if you want to be on the good side of the law, you need to find ways of getting your customers and prospects to opt into your fax marketing campaigns willingly. You can provide your fax marketing opt-in via websites, blogs, email campaigns, or live chats.
You also need to provide an opt-out option. This helps prevent customer frustration that can damage your reputation while keeping your contact list organized.
You can add a clear opt-out option on the first page. Make sure to provide them with contact information, including a phone number, website, or email where they can send a request to opt out of your fax marketing campaign. And when you receive such a request, you should honor it within 30 days.
4) Design appealing fax materials
Here’s an exciting part—designing your fax marketing materials. Note that these materials may slightly differ from the content you create for emails or blogs.
Here are some of the best fax design practices:
a) Remove the cover sheets
When planning your fax content, you want to keep it short. To do that, you should ditch the cover sheets. Be as straightforward as possible and get to the point right from the first page.
Generally, the more pages you fax, the lower the chances that your customer or prospect will read it entirely. Moreover, if your prospect uses a traditional fax machine, each print means more paper and ink, which can cost and possibly annoy them.
b) Use the ‘above the fold’ spot wisely
‘Above the fold’ is a newspaper terminology that refers to the main article of a paper. This area allows readers to easily view the topic without opening the paper. The same is true with fax marketing material.
As such, you should leverage this spot carefully to catch your prospect’s attention. Include your core marketing message in this section of your fax document. What you say in this ‘above the fold’ spot may be the only thing your prospect reads, so make it count.
c) Rethink your images
Images may look rich and sharp on your computer screen, but they may not be the same when printed at your customer’s fax machine. Since there are varying fax machines, you have little control over how your fax document will look on the other side.
Thus, you should keep your design simple. Avoid complex graphics and images. Any image you use should be readable and look good, even in black-and-white format.
5) Run tests before sending them to prospects
Testing is essential to ensure that your fax marketing material looks precisely as you want it. When doing fax testing, send the materials to an actual fax machine to see what your marketing material looks like when a prospect receives it. Correct any issues and mistakes before sending them to your prospects.
Takeaway
Ultimately, creating the right fax marketing strategy doesn’t happen overnight. It takes careful planning and hard work to ensure significant results. That said, following the above steps can help you move in the right direction. Over time, you can tweak your fax marketing to perfection, enhancing your product and service offering, increasing lead generation and conversion, and ultimately improving revenues.
