Why does everyone like to send letters by mail?
In the foreign trade industry, from the time when mail marketing was first adopted to many years now, foreign trade mail opening has always been something that foreign trade salesmen cannot get around. Even today, in all major forums and foreign trade platforms, foreign trade mail opening is still a key word with very high search rate and reading rate.
1. Super high return on investment Foreign trade letter-issuing has always been a means for foreign trade people to attach great importance to developing customers, because in the absence of exhibitions, advertising budgets and other development channels, foreign trade letter-issuing has become a very high Return of Investment, ROI) method, especially for foreign trade newcomers.
We assume that under the condition of almost zero cost, if a foreign trade newcomer finds the contact information of a potential customer, sends a high-quality foreign trade letter, then contacts the customer, and finally orders a deal, such ROI can be said to be very high (but this is not a casual occurrence indeed).
The ROI of mail marketing in the world is also the highest among many marketing methods, but don’t think that you can get such a high ROI by casually writing a foreign trade letter. The dividend period has already passed.
* According to VentureBeat, email is the channel generating the highest ROI for marketers 2. The technical threshold is relatively low and the operation is relatively easy.
Compared with cold call, push/visit and exhibition, the ability required for foreign trade to open letters is relatively minimal, and the operation is also minimal.
For SOHO, a newly established small foreign trade company, the biggest difficulty and challenge is customer development. Customer development can be divided into two modes from the general direction: inbound mode and outbound mode. Simply put, Inbound Marketing is pulling your customers in to let customers find you. Outbound Marketing is a pushing your message out proactive mode.
Inbound mode Independent foreign trade website: inbound mode, which uses SEO or Google AdWords bidding to promote such a way to attract customers to their own websites to inquire. Early investment is large and technical threshold is high.
B2B platform: the most traditional way to develop customers for foreign trade, 85% of factories and foreign trade companies are doing it.
Outbound mode Push: Go to the potential customer’s country and have face-to-face communication. It is difficult to control the effect due to large investment.
Customs data: large capital investment may eventually require the use of letters to contact customers.
Cold call: the requirement for language ability is relatively high.
Search engine: use Google, Yahoo, Yandex and other search engines to find the email of potential customers, and then open letters for development through foreign trade.
List of Yellow Pages Inbound Outbound mode Attending the exhibition: a traditional and effective way, but the cost is very high.
Social media platforms: customers can be found on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Easily sealed.
In the above modes related to Outbound, all you can finally get is the email address, phone number, IM account (instant messaging account) and address of the potential customer. For China’s foreign trade salesmen, in the face of these contact methods, foreign trade letters are actually the easiest to operate.
3. Mail is still the first way of business communication By the end of 2019, there will be 2.9 billion e-mail users worldwide (accounting for more than one third of the global population). Regarding the daily e-mails sent around the world, according to a survey by Statista, the number of e-mails sent and received per day in 2017 will be about 269 billion, which is expected to increase to nearly 320 billion e-mails per day in 2021.
Radicati breaks down daily email traffic in more detail. The data set shows that by 2018, the number of commercial emails sent and received per day was 124.5 billion, while the number of consumer emails sent and received per day was 111.1 billion.
Although e-mail has existed since the early 1970s, there is no sign of slowing down until now, especially in B2B marketing, it is still regarded as the first communication channel. In fact, 87% of B2B marketers use email marketing to generate new leads, while 31% of B2B marketers admit that email marketing is the channel that has the greatest impact on revenue.
Summary It is precisely because of these characteristics and advantages that the development of foreign trade letters has become an enduring development mode. However, it is precisely because of these characteristics and advantages that the development of foreign trade mail has become a development method with the lowest threshold. In addition, many people use large-scale mass spam, which eventually makes the development method worse and worse.
Therefore, when we discuss the question of “is it still useful to open a letter for foreign trade” today, we need to know that there is not a problem with this method of opening a letter, but whether the letter we send is a qualified letter for foreign trade. Red brick will be discussed in detail in the following chapters.
Problems and Challenges Faced by Foreign Trade Letters Many years ago, when the Chinese started to use letters to develop overseas customers, it was a blue sea. Basically, you can receive a reply to any letter you write, and then you will make inquiries and orders.
However, it is completely different now. If your comprehensive strength in developing letters is not strong enough in this extremely competitive Red Sea, it is basically a dead end. Because with 1) The competition in foreign trade industry is becoming more and more fierce; 2) Foreign customers have been developed several times, and their discrimination is getting stronger and stronger. 3) Update and iteration of technologies in the mail field and other factors.
Nowadays, the time when a foreign trader casually searches for a so-called gold medal foreign trade letter template, changes the company name and product name, and sends a group of customers with a reply is long gone.
In today’s e-mail marketing field, everyone talks more about “fine development”. Many people say that the opening of foreign trade letters is dead and it is useless. We think this sentence is true if what we know is that the foreign trade with garbage group hair style is sending letters. However, if we change our minds and adopt more advanced “refined development ideas”, then the development of foreign trade letters is still a very low-cost and effective means of commercial communication.
What is the biggest problem for Chinese foreign traders in writing letters in English?
English is not our mother tongue.
This is the most obvious, when we write email in a second language, it is a very difficult thing. To put it more deeply, the English education we received in our school was largely for examination scores, not for practical application. So we need to accept this fact.
But the good news is that the focus of Business English is not to get high marks or write papers. We just need to make the meaning accurate, clear and brief. Smooth communication is the core of Business English.
Writing itself is a technical activity.
Let’s not talk about writing an open letter in English. Now suppose you write an open letter in Chinese, you will be absolutely sure that you can write it very well. Will the response rate be very high? In fact, as you know, it is very difficult to write in Chinese, so the difficulty lies not only in English, but also in writing skills. Furthermore, it also involves many communication skills in psychology.
Red brick foreign trade letter will tell you in the following chapters in great detail how to improve your writing skills.
Cultural differences Everyone knows that there are many and varied differences between Chinese foreign traders and potential customers (recipients), including: reading habits, expression habits, business operation differences, etc. However, not everyone can understand these differences and reflect them in foreign trade letters.
Writing letters for foreign trade is one of the abilities of business English.
You don’t think English native speakers can write a good opening letter naturally. They shouldn’t be too happy too early. They will make the same mistakes as us, no less than us. You can look at this video. A foreigner commented on and criticized many of the mistakes made by native speakers in opening letters.
Business English is not something you can easily learn by saying that you can write English e-mail, because in such a specific environment as business English, there are many matters needing attention and skills, which need us to learn and practice.
Summary Foreign trade letters are dead? In fact, what is dead is the mindless mode of copying and pasting foreign trade opening and mailing templates and sending out mass rubbish. Real quality foreign trade letters will continue to bring very rich returns to foreign traders.
However, if we face the reality, we have to say that it is actually quite difficult to write a high-quality and refined letter. If we do not take the initiative to make changes and do not have our own core values and secret weapons, then foreign trade letters will only sink in the Red Sea forever.
Original Artical，Author：China Trade Agent，if repost，please give references ：https://offers-bg.com/people-like-foreign-trade-letters/
