History
ABG Affiliated Business Group, Inc., owned by Frank Bentley and doing business as ABG Marketing, has been in business for the past 25 years in the Southern Dallas area. ABG has published and mailed magazines, developed and hosted websites, and is currently promoting local businesses with Internet Advertising, Email Marketing, and other related services.
Frank is a retiree of Sears where he spent 27 years on the local, district, regional, and national levels in management, marketing, and store planning. He was also a consultant/contractor for Sears the past 25 years in store planning, including hosting and maintaining a national website the past 16 years.
Community/Civic involvement:
- Oak Cliff Chamber - past Board of Directors and Executive Board member.
- Leadership Southwest – class participant in 2003, Board member from 2004-2008. Co-chair of Board 2004-2005, 2005-2006, helped form the Leadership Southwest Alumni Association in 2003, co-recipient of the Distinguished Leadership Award in 2007.
- Recipient of Member of the Year award from Oak Cliff Chamber, Small Business of the Year award from DeSoto Chamber,and Small Business of the Year award from Lancaster Chamber.
- Served on the Board of Directors of the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce.
Family Information: Married with two children, three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren.
Education: BBA in Business Administration from Southern Arkansas University.
Local Internet Services
ABG Marketing owns and manages a popular website, www.bestsouthwestguide.com, that provides information to the Southern Dallas and Northern Ellis counties in various formats.
While the primary mission of the Best Southwest Guide website is to gather and post News Articles, Events, Announcements, Business Information and other interesting information regarding the area, we want our website to be a real Business Resource for the area.
We want our viewers to be able to find a local business service they need, regardless if it is a “Handy Man” to fix a problem in their homes, or a fine restaurant to dine.
Therefore, we have created a “Business Directory” Section that includes businesses in the area.
Online Advertising Packages
We offer several online advertising formats for local businesses on this website:
If you are interested in any one of the above advertising formats for your Business, Click on Contact Us, send us your information, and Frank will contact you.
E-Mail Marketing
Email Marketing and Communication
We partner with Constant Contact to send up to 500,000 emails at one time to recipients of companies, churches, or other organizations. This can include merchandising marketing, company newsletters, surveys, event notifications, or other communication information. We also help clients set up programs to secure customer email addresses.
Our E-mail services include:
- Helping clients to produce and gather Email Information.
- Managing confidential email lists.
- Sending emails, approved by clients, to designed recipients on lists.
- Hosting temporary newsletter articles and information on this website, www.bestsouthwestguide.com to link back from emails so the size of the newsletter can be reduced.
- Tracking, managing, and forwarding email results to clients.
Sending periodic emails to your friends, customers, and other groups to keep them informed is an inexpensive form of communication.
What is Email Marketing? Email marketing is the use of email to promote products and/or services. But a better definition of email marketing definition is the use of email to develop relationships with potential customers and/or clients.
Particular groups of customers can be targeted or even individuals. Offering individual customer’s special deals on merchandise and/or services on the customer's birthday, for instance, is one example of email marketing personalization. Email marketing helps a business develop and maintain a
relationship with a customer over time that hopefully results in increased sales and increased customer loyalty. At its best, email marketing allows businesses to keep their customers informed and tailor their marketing messages to their customers.
Developing Email Lists
Developing one's own email list rather than buying an email list(s), and making participation in your email list opt-in rather than opt-out (using permission-based email marketing).
There are many ways to build these “permission” lists from asking customers for their email address when closing sales to those you've built from the people who provided the necessary information on your website, for instance, providing these potential customers with news updates about your company, upcoming events and/or special offers – and, of course, reminding them that your business exists and that maybe it's time for another visit.
The Advantages of Email Marketing
The two big advantages of email marketing are price and ease. Emailing is an inexpensive way to advertise your company and its products and/or services compared to many other types of marketing. It's also extremely easy to set up and track an email marketing campaign, making it a very accessible type of marketing for small businesses.
Email Marketing Is Still Relevant
In an age of increasing usage of Social Media for advertising, email marketing still rules the roost, according to a study conducted by HostPapa:
- 94% of Internet users use email, while only 61% use social media
- 75% of adult online users say that email marketing is their preferred marketing method
- The "opt-in" feature of email allows marketing by consent
- Email marketing allows targeting by demographics (age, income, etc.)
- Email messages have a much wider range of formatting possibilities than social media messages
- email offers more reporting and analytics capability, such as click-through rates, open rates, bounce rates, and conversions
Ideally, email marketing should go hand-in-hand with social media. Adding social media "Like" or "Share" buttons to your marketing emails gives an additional way for customers to connect with your brand
Email marketing for Non-Profits
Email marketing is also a good way to send newsletters to communicate events and other pertinent information regarding an organization. “Permission” email addresses can be collected from the organization’s membership. Emails can then be directed to the organizations membership as a whole or segmented.
Hours
Monday thru Saturday - 9:00 am to 5:00 pm
Payment Methods
- Visa
- Discover
- Master Card
- American Express
- Pay Pal
Social Media Marketing
We offer services to help businesses create or improve their websites and social media sites:
Contact Us for more information.