As a newbie like me being engaged in international trading for less than 5 month, the only trading platform my boss could provide me is the trading fair which held once a year. I beat my brain out for the best way to source customers, what I can think of to do is using my online searching ability to search all foreign companies involved in this business field, find out their emial address and send my catalogue to them.
I’ve done about 200 emails now in the last 3 month, most of them are Australian/ Asian importers, retailers, even online E-shop and manufacturers. Almost fruitless, I got only one enquiry requesting our full product catalogues and that’s all.
I understand the rate is 1/1,000, even nobody will read that kind of email but remove it as spam mail as soon as they receive it. Just see, most of those email add. are like info@XXX.com or sales@XXX.com
It must be too hard for me to do international business, I don't have a large relationship network, and my company cannot provide other resource to support my work. But I still think sending massive email could be of some use, and I will keep going sending emial to those strangers and maintaining them like updating cost and inform new product development. What do you do for this as an trader, green and senior? Besides trading fair, is there any other helpful way? If B2B really works in such economy crisis, I would persuade my boss to invest on this part.
E-mail sales letters are certainly a valid method, since they are very cheap and easy to do. However, exactly for these reasons, many companies send out huge m of e-mails to potential customers. To have efficient sales letters, you should make sure to include relevant information, but more important is to make your letter stand out of the many other e-mails your competitors and other companies send.
While it is OK to send out e-mails to virtually anybody, you are better off if you send your offers to a selected group of partners and combine it with some personal follow-up (phone calls to check if they received your offer and to see what is their opinion about it). This is a lot of work but gives you more valid results, and this is still less costly than paying personal visits to your partners. While direct sales has been the most efficient method up to date, we understand that this method requires the biggest cost investment (for travel, business appointments and sample collections) and workload (you must actively go and negotiate with partners). In the ideal case you should be able to visit all your clients, but being in foreign trade it is physically/geographically very difficult and costly.
In marketing communications a 0,4-0,5% response rate of e-mail campaigns is considered a success. E-mail marketing has a very huge reach (with rather low response) so it is definitely an important and cost efficient method. In order to enhance the response rate you are supposed to improve the quality of your message and select among target clients for the same goal.
c[ ]
Replying To [grimacekid]:Although I agree with Gabor above, to a certain extent, many companies just do not have the time to read through piles of non-solicited emails that arrive every day, and treaty them as Spam. This will give you and your company a bad name to start. Besides that, many receivers of such emails may not be interested in the product or products you are trying to sell. I get many emails every day now, that try to sell me anything from Plastic Moulds to Farm machinery. They always start off with saying something like "We found you on the Internet and undertsand that you deal in Products that we manufacture."
My suggestion is that you click on the yellow button at the top of this page called "Buy Now" and do a search for Buyers that are actually looking for the products you sell. Then, by all means, ANSWER THOSE BUYERS and tell them that besides what they are looking for, which you can supply, you also supply many other items.
That way, you WILL reach the Buyers who ARE interested in your products.
Good luck
![[em3]](http://img.alibaba.com/images/eng/style/icon/emoticons_grin.gif){kind=icon}
Quoting from [grimacekid]:As a newbie like me being engaged in international trading for less than 5 month, the only trading platform my boss could provide me is the trading fair which held once a year. I beat my brain out for the best way to source customers, what I can think of to do is using my online searching ability to search all foreign companies involved in this business field, find out their emial address and send my catalogue to them.
I’ve done about 200 emails now in the last 3 month, most of them are Australian/ Asian importers, retailers, even online E-shop and manufacturers. Almost fruitless, I got only one enquiry requesting our full product catalogues and that’s all.
I understand the rate is 1/1,000, even nobody will read that kind of email but remove it as spam mail as soon as they receive it. Just see, most of those email add. are like info@XXX.com or sales@XXX.com
It must be too hard for me to do international business, I don't have a large relationship network, and my company cannot provide other resource to support my work. But I still think sending massive email could be of some use, and I will keep going sending emial to those strangers and maintaining them like updating cost and inform new product development.
What do you do for this as an trader, green and senior? Besides trading fair, is there any other helpful way? If B2B really works in such economy crisis, I would persuade my boss to invest on this part.
As far as I know, the professional fairs or big international fairs(like Canton fairs) are still the main platforms to know the big importers. Most of the orders for those big suppliers are from the fairs.
But the B2B websites, especially the famous ones, like alibaba, global source, made in china are the subsidiary platforms besides fairs. You can still get some business from these B2B websites.
Find some ways, insist on and good luck!
Actually, while visiting in person is the best, if you do not have the chance for that you can always ask for a catalog of exhibitors from the organizers.
c[ ]
Thanks for all replies. Now I have confidence with it and I just sent out 100+ invitation letters for the fair next month, I stick a gif pic with our products in to catch people’s eyes, lol
I understand sometimes sales people can be very annoying, for example, I constantly get calls from shipping agents or reucitment sites for promoting their service, those calls can sometimes drive me crazy cuz they are too much, they seems never give up if you have good temper to those salers. ‘I understand your product and service, if I want more, I will contact you in person, please stop harrassing me’ I am sure my customers are in the same feeling.
To grigo:
I am a free member here, sending message to inquirers in many B2B site is charged. But thanks for the idea though.
As many of you point out trade fair is still the main platform for international sales, I will do full preperation for the trading fair next month. I am a little bit fuzz up for this ‘will be first time’ trade fair experience, my boss told me in last year’s fair, they were too busy getting cards from those intested in our products but ended up no orders, he pointed out we should try to deal at site this time, not only get cards and contact after the fair.
Loads of things need to be learnt…
Quoting from [susan198707012009]
You are lucky as a gold supplier,admire you, lol