You’re in business. You either get why you must use customer database software or you don’t. Let’s find out which. Take this 10-question quiz and give yourself 5 points for each *yes* answer. 50 points total…easy schmeazy.
1. You send hand-written notes to people you meet for the first time (because you’ve got one finger on the mouse, but you still know that a snail mail thank you card shows you’re a mensch.)
2. You have a drip marketing autoresponder with at least 5 messages in place for people who opt in on your website or fill out your Contact Us page.
3. You live and die by your customer database software. The 2 questions you ask every new prospect without fail are 1) How did you find us? and 2) May I have your email address to send you our [your product/service] tips? (Clincher: Excel, Outlook and your PDA do not count as a customer database!) [click to continue…]
List segmentation is like making a bunch of “custom order buttons.” But first this food story.
This week I had lunch with life coach and friend Patty Cook at Yia Yia’s, a very nice local restaurant known for its business lunches, great food and exceptional customer service.
When our server came to take our order, Patty and I did the typical menu reinterpretation. Patty’s a vegan and I’m doing the low-carb thing. She patiently explained each of our individual menu options, making sure to offer suggestions on items we could add, as well as dishes that would work for us if we removed a few things (chicken for Patty, croutons for me). [click to continue…]
In my last post I gave you mistakes 1 – 3. In this post I’ll continue with mistakes 4 and 5.
Mistake #4: Treating everyone on your database the same. Bill Cosby allegedly said, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” If you can’t identify your most important contacts, you can’t give them the special handling they deserve. Other than “customer” or “prospect,” “A-B-C” or “Hot-Warm-Cold,” most salespeople have no database segmentation system. (Read my 14 Ways To Segment Your Database.)
Mistake #5: Not investing in yourself. Knowledge actually doubles every 18 months (not surprisingly, that’s the product launch life cycle of a new laptop). A million websites are launched everyday. In fact, more information has been produced in the last 20 years than in the previous 2,000. To be a valuable go-to resource for customers, you must continually expand your knowledgebase. Develop a passion for learning, and schedule a recurring time on your calendar to do it. Here’s a few tips: [click to continue…]
I’m often asked about the technology I use to keep track of my busy day. Because I’m a Social CRM consultant (formerly known as a Database Marketing Consultant), I’m expected to be “up” on the latest hardware, sofware, gadget and widget silver-bullet du jour.
Actually, I’m an old-fashioned girl in this department. I believe “less is more.” On the “adopter” bell-shaped curve, I’m definitely a “Missouri Show-Me” late majority. There are too many time-suck temptations already. If I forget this lesson, all I have to do is look at my 16-year-old niece who hasn’t made eye contact with another human since acquiring her iPhone six months ago. But for those of us who manage a monthly sales quota and have jobs that require us to be social networkers, business is no longer sustainable without at least a database.
These are the 5 critical sales lead management mistakes I see most often: [click to continue…]
This month “google,” the verb, (not Google, the company) was chosen as Word of the Decade by the American Dialect Society. Not surprising when you consider that more than 90% of all buyers start the process by “googling” their object of desire–even if they use Yahoo or Bing to search for it.
One of the final frontiers in search engine optimization (SEO) is local search. That’s how retailers, service businesses, local consultants and sales teams can level the playing field with everyone else on the planet who sells what they do by mastering local search, “even if they don’t have a website,” says Will Hanke. Will is a local SEO practitioner and founder of MarketSTL, a local conference designed specifically for teaching local businesses the fundamentals of managing their own SEO. [click to continue…]
Drip marketing is not something I just talk about, it’s the primary marketing strategy I’ve integrated into my business for the past 6 years. (I’ve actually relied on drip marketing for more than 20 years, but it’s only been recently that drip marketing automation software has scaled to desktop use for SMBs, small sales teams and consultants. Cost is no longer a barrier to entry; for under a few hundred dollars a month, any size company can compete digitally for more business with drip marketing automation.)
I’d like to share one of my personal drip marketing success stories with you. It’s a great example of why it’s so important to implement a drip marketing strategy sooner rather than later.
This is Part 2 of my article outlining a get-started drip-marketing checklist. You can read Part 1 here.
Like any complex, overwhelming task, launching your first drip marketing campaign is easier if you break down big concepts into discreet, do-able action items. Here’s the second half of the checklist. [click to continue…]
Most businesses don’t communicate with their customer base enough, and miss sales because of their inability to “clone” their salespeople. So it’s not hard to see the benefits of adding drip marketing to your marketing plan, which automates the follow-up process and identifies the *hot* prospects from the ones who are only “half-baked.”
The roadblock to implementing is the execution. Drip marketing is inherently overwhelming, with its multiple steps, if/then processes and prolific copywriting requirements. It can morph into a never-ending project.
In the late 80s, I was Regional Sales Manager for a national database company that sold business intelligence and mailing lists primarily through onsite seminars and inbound marketing (pre-Internet marketing!) The company invested more than $50,000 in a contact management system that was programmed to spit out follow-up drip marketing letters every 7 days once a prospect identified himself.
Every year the week before Thanksgiving, I call my mother to tell her I’m baking the pumpkin and apple pies for our Thanksgiving dessert. And every year she says, “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’ll just pick up pies at the market.”
Q - I just changed companies and have more than 100 Swiftpage email marketing templates with my old company info. Do I have to change them all manually to the updated info?
Give a man a hammer, and everything looks like a nail. Email marketing campaign software often has the same effect on novice email marketers. They forget how much they hate advertising mail when they start sending it out themselves. Business email marketing can be a force for good or it can be a force for evil. You [...]
ACT! Contact Management Tip:
One of our ACT! users asked: How can I get a list of contacts that do not belong to a specific group? I can lookup a specific group, which I did for a mailing. Now I want to lookup all other contacts who don’t belong to a group in ACT! I can’t [...]
Ann Clarke cracked the code on maximizing IGAs (Income Generating Activities) when she discovered ACT! Sage Software.
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In a recent “Ask the Expert” column on www.btobonline.com, John Wechsler, president of FormSpring, asks this question: “What is the best way to connect e-mail marketing and data gathered in online forms?,” and then answers it by stating, “Your online form data should go directly to your email service provider (ESP).”
No, no, no John! I [...]
Are you an ACT! 6.0 die-hard fanatic who cries, “You’ll have to pull ACT! 6.0 from my cold, dead hands!”?
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There’s gold in them thar rejected email addresses, and most businesses don’t mine for it.
List clean up is never fun, so it gets deferred to the bottom of the to-do list. But cleaning up your email list after each marketing email gives you additional insight into your customers and the kinds of information you should [...]
You’re in business. You either get why you must use customer database software or you don’t. Let’s find out which. Take this 10-question quiz and give yourself 5 points for each *yes* answer. 50 points total…easy schmeazy.
