I want to talk about a recent experience I had. One of my favorite restaurants in my area, Italian if you are wondering, has limited dining room seating due to COVID-19. In the past during their booking process, they obtained my email address. They sent out two email blasts for a (4 person) New Year’s Meal Kit. I called in my order, they did not have online capability, and when I picked up my family’s ready to cook meal that night, I was nosy and asked how many meals they had sold. They said just over 105 kits. That meant 420 meals. Knowing the capacity of the restaurant, I surmised this email campaign might have resulted in the establishment’s best sales day ever. The meal was great in case you were wondering, and I look forward to their next offering.

So then I thought…over $10K in revenue off sending out two emails to their list of customers in their database. Could they come up with 10 holidays a year? What would that do to the owners bottom-line?

My additional thought was…overall I was kind of on the fence about making the order until I called my significant other and they were all about us not cooking. But what if they had coupled the email offering with a cold call as well? How much more effective would this campaign have been? Would the results have been over 200 meal kits, or 300? What if after COVID-19 they continued to call and email me every Holiday? How big could this revenue stream become?

My point is, I am zero from the first email then this moved to 50/50 due to the second email. Where could an actual phone call have gotten me? I suspect they would have gone way up.

How does this relate to government marketing?

1.    I had an experience with this restaurant in the past, so they had a big advantage in selling me as I was already comfortable with their product.

2.    To build this trust without product experience, it is important to call and email a prospective government client on a routine basis, at least monthly. It generally takes six calls to the same person to eventually go over your product.

3.    Industry experts such as Fedvital help build a low-cost list of the federal buyers that utilize your product or services so that you have a starting point for putting this type of campaign together.

4.    Persistence pays off, and begin your plan now so that federal buyers can become comfortable with you for their 4th quarter which is July/August/September.

Combining cold calls with an email campaign works. Be professional, creative and diligent and you have added an alternative revenue source like my friends in the restaurant business have.

If you feel your firm would be aided by having a low-cost list of federal buyers, Fedvital is an excellent option. They specialize in helping small businesses to improve through its Low-Cost/Low-Medium Efforts in federal marketing channels so that you can get your feet wet in the federal marketplace for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. They can be reached at (859)360-1320.