The Database Diva — Drip Marketing, Swiftpage, Sage ACT — Page 2

Two Email Marketers Walk into a Bar…

March 26, 2010

“My email marketing template’s better than yours,” says the first one. I’m gonna knock it outta the park.” The second email marketer says, “Are you frackin kidding me? No way is that POS graphic of yours going to produce a respectable open rate. And that subject line..? Fuggedaboutit.” “Oh yeah?” says the first email marketer. “I [...]

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Fear the Creative Process, Then Do It Anyway

March 24, 2010

Sometimes a diva needs her own personalized silver soldered tiara. That was the mission on my recent vacation to beautiful San Diego where I was fortunate enough to land a spot in Portland artist Sally Jean’s workshop, “Totally Tiara.” I’ve been designing and creating jewelry for the past five or six years as a hobby. [...]

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Pass or Fail this Customer Database Pop Quiz

March 3, 2010

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 [...]

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Thanks for Your 615-Name Customer Email List. Love, Your Competitor

February 15, 2010

Email Marketing Best Practices Don’t: Don’t send your entire Outlook address book Redundant Wake Up Call: It’s the 21st Century. Get an email service provider (ESP) to do email marketing. Exhibit A: I made Golda forward this email message to me because we couldn’t believe there are still “marketers” who think this kind of mass email is… Appreciated [...]

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Give Customer Segments Their Own “Order Buttons”

February 10, 2010

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 [...]

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5 Critical Sales Lead Management Mistakes – Part 2

January 25, 2010

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 [...]

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5 Critical Sales Lead Management Mistakes

January 13, 2010

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 [...]

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Drip Marketing Success Story

January 7, 2010

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. [...]

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How To Start a Drip Marketing Campaign – Part 2

January 5, 2010

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.

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Checklist: How To Start a Drip Marketing Campaign – Part 1

January 4, 2010

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 [...]

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Before You Launch Drip Marketing, Nail Your Message

November 17, 2009

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 [...]

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Lori’s Famous Sour Cream Apple Pie

November 16, 2009

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.”

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Drip Marketing FAQ

October 26, 2009

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?

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Ditch Me-Me-Itis with Business Email Marketing

October 21, 2009

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 [...]

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How To Find Un-Grouped Contacts your ACT! Database

October 20, 2009

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 [...]

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How a Professional Speaker Uses ACT! Sage 2010 as a Contact Manager To Simplify the Business of Speaking

October 19, 2009

Ann Clarke cracked the code on maximizing IGAs (Income Generating Activities) when she discovered ACT! Sage Software. As a long-time professional speaker plus acting chief cook and bottle washer on the business side of www.Gr8IdeasAtWork.com, Ann knew the importance of simplifying her business processes so she could book more speaking gigs and do what she [...]

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Customers Who Want Something for Nothing

September 28, 2009

This has been a tough year for salespeople in all industries–no doubt about it! But here’s another trend that’s gaining momentum: Customers who want something for nothing. It’s not just reality–it’s ACTUALITY!!

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What’s the Best Way To Connect e-Marketing and Data Gathered in Online Forms – A Rebuttal

August 29, 2009

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! [...]

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Attention ACT! 6.0 Lovers

August 12, 2009

Are you an ACT! 6.0 die-hard fanatic who cries, “You’ll have to pull ACT! 6.0 from my cold, dead hands!”? We feel your pain. We loved that version, too. It was “solid.” It was snappy when you went from screen to screen (ahh, the good old days of DBF files…before SQL turned everything into a [...]

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