Month: December 2016

Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 4 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, a tip on improving your sales, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

 

	Convert Opportunities to Projects
	Did you know that Insightly makes it easy to convert your sales opportunities into projects? Doing so can be especially handy when your company wins a deal that requires post-sale coordination. For example, let’s assume you own a growing consulting firm that serves the technology sector. Your sales pipeline is primarily focused on winning initial consults, each of which is unique to the given client. Once the ink dries on the contract, your team moves into hyper speed to deliver on your promises. In this example, it may be helpful to convert the original opportunity into an Insightly project. From the opportunity’s “actions” dropdown, simply click on “convert to project” and follow the prompts. Now, all of the sales information that you worked so hard to collect is conveniently accessible from the newly created project. As your team works through milestones or project pipelines, they can see the whole story without aimlessly searching through archived records. Insightly achieves this by: Automatically linking the opportunity to the project Linking existing contacts and other records Giving you the option to copy files, notes, and emails Pushing custom field data to the project Stop reinventing the wheel. Keep your team organized by letting Insightly do the administrative work. Convert your first opportunity to a project today.
	Engage New Customers With Marketing Automation
	In addition to aligning your human capital with customer needs, it’s also wise to leverage your IT resources accordingly. With the advent of marketing automation, your company can easily (and affordably) engage new customers through email. Unlike traditional email marketing, which requires your staff to remember to do something, marketing automation allows you to build rule-based campaigns. As new customers meet certain criteria in your CRM, they can be added to a nurture sequence that automatically emails them important information. A car dealership, for example, might use marketing automation to pass along important warranty and service information. After a customer drives a new vehicle off the lot, he or she could be added to a personalized campaign that looks like this: 24 hours later: Send a congratulatory email, “Congratulations on Your New {Vehicle Name} 1 week later: Send a reminder email, “{Name}, Be Sure to Call Your Insurance Company” 2 weeks later: Send an informative email, “Owner’s Manual for Your {Vehicle Name}” 3 weeks later: Send an informative email, “Your Warranty for {Vehicle Name}” 4 months later: Send a reminder email, “Schedule Your First Routine Maintenance” Just think about the cost to manually send each of these customer emails. Now, consider the cost savings by automating the entire process. How can your company leverage the power of marketing automation? To get started, think like a new customer (or prospective one), evaluate what information could be helpful, and then implement a plan to communicate in a more automated way.
	Don’t Be Shy About Unsubscribing
	Speaking of marketing automation, you’re probably on a few email lists yourself. Some lists you may have subscribed to, while others you can’t recall for sure. Needless to say, your inbox is overflowing. Perhaps it’s time you hit the “unsubscribe” button. Some people are hesitant to unsubscribe, as they’re worried it might get the sender in trouble. Actually, the unsubscribe button is there as a courtesy to you, the recipient. Senders realize that you’re not a static entity, and their messages may not always appeal to you. Marketers operating in good faith would prefer that you unsubscribe now, rather than continuing to receive content you’re not interested in. From a practical standpoint, each unwanted email consumes a fraction of your day. Even if you never click on most messages in your inbox, you still have to delete them. The simple act of deleting an email takes at least a second or two. Now, multiply this by the dozens of other unwanted messages that you receive. Over the course of a year, the simple act of deleting emails can turn into hours of time – time that you could be doing something more productive. So, before you delete another unwanted message, consider a better option – click unsubscribe once, and you’ll instantly get seconds of your life back!
	Develop a Post-Sale Servicing Strategy
	As your deal flow increases, it becomes easier to identify product (or service) delivery bottlenecks. Without the right approach, your sales team’s actions can actually accelerate the problems you seek to correct. Strategic organizations are very definitive about how and when sales representatives are involved in the customer lifecycle. Should a sales rep be the point person for receiving customer service issues? How are reorders to be processed? Should the sales team prepare quotes, or should that be done from a central office? While there’s no magic answer to questions like these, it may be a worthwhile exercise to at least consider limiting your sales department’s involvement for certain customer activities. Of course, with any business decision, there are tradeoffs to change. These might include: Pros of Limiting Sales Team Involvement: Sales reps can stay more focused on closing new deals Customer acquisition and fulfillment costs are easier to quantify Post-sale customer inquiries are less likely to get lost Cons of Limiting Sales Team Involvement: Your customer support department will need to pick up the slack, which has a tangible cost (salaries, benefits, etc.) Sales reps may become less informed about customer issues Upsell opportunities might be overlooked Whether you decide to keep your sales team focused on the entire customer lifecycle or shake things up, it’s important to develop a plan and measure success. The ultimate goal is to create happier customers, which results in more predictable sales revenue for your company.

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Send Us Your Tips. Would you like to share your tips with Insightly customers? Send them to us! If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card! Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

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About the author: Matt Keener is a marketing consultant and President of Keener Marketing Solutions, LLC. Matt specializes in content marketing and strategic planning, having helped numerous Saas (software as a service) companies and other small businesses worldwide. Read more of Matt’s work, check out his book, or connect with him on Linkedin.

Never mind the fact that we’re living in a digital age. The pockets and purses of every serious professional are lined with that most essential staple of the business world: business cards.

Little scraps of cardboard have been essential tools of the trade for some 400 years, when the first “visiting cards” and “trade cards” appeared in Europe. The idea then was exactly the same as it is today: To remind a social contact, colleague, or business prospect who you were and provide them a means to reach you should they wish to continue the engagement.

While they’re still as critical as ever, in the 2000s, small pieces of paper have given way to myriad other ideas in the world of business cards. From unexpected materials to unique shapes and sizes to new approaches to messaging, the business card has lately received a modern upgrade that many professionals are putting to impressive use.

Here are ten examples of avant garde business cards that may help inspire a revolution in your own pocket.

1. Representational

The Recla Group is the publisher of The CLEAR Business Directory, a directory of businesses which have been screened for fraud and other problems. To reinforce the directory’s transparency-focused vision, COO Justin Recla prints his business cards on transparent plastic, with the company logo front and center – “clear” being indicated in two separate ways. Says Recla, “The cards are definitely ‘door knockers’ and get an immediate response. Our referral rates and new clients have increased threefold since using the cards. I believe it is working because of the congruency of the branding of the business with the look of the card.”

Recla says he pays $115 for 1000 of the cards at Morning Print.

2. High-Tech

Rebecca Rausch of Neon Lizard Creative works heavily in the world of technology, and as such it makes sense to showcase her company’s high-tech chops, however subtly, via the company’s business card. Solution: Neon Lizard’s cards are printed on thermal-sensitive card stock, which change color with heat or cold, cycling through shades of gold, blue, rust, black and green. Says Rauscuh, “‘Neon Lizard’ plays off the chameleon, which changes color. It shows that I can change my design style to suit the client.”

3. Upcycled

“I run an extremely eco-friendly bath and body company,” says Kristie Garduño of GivingSoaps.com. “We sell mainly online, and all orders are shipped in reclaimed boxes filled with shredded junk mail. The boxes that we can’t use for orders (too far gone, odd sizes, etc.) are chopped up in small squares and then stamped with our contact information and a short explanation of ‘Why am I being handed a piece of cardboard?’ As soon as people read the text explaining it, they think we’re brilliant.”

Not only does Garduño’s card reinforce its earth-conscious messaging and corporate values, the cards are also virtually free to produce.

4. Informational

A great business card doesn’t just provide contact information, it can also work as a miniature brochure for your company, or as a brief primer to the major issues in your industry. Gregg Steiner, president and founder of Cabinet Garden, is a producer of custom cabinets and closets for indoor gardeners, primarily of the cannabinoid kind. This type of agriculture requires a very specific and complex setup of lighting, water measurement, and ventilation – and Steiner knows that amateurs may well be oblivious to the specific needs of growing plants in an enclosed, indoor space. Solution: A business card that not only looks like one of his cabinets, it works like one too, opening on a fold like the hinge of a door, to reveal the “interior” of the cabinet inside. “People love the design and they always read it because they find the card intriguing and very informative,” he says. As a bonus, the card itself is made out of hemp-based paper.

5. Personal

Corporate attorneys come with a reputation of stuffiness and stodginess, which was exactly what lawyer Radiance Harris wanted to avoid when she came up with the idea for her calling cards. “My business card is square shaped and incorporates the colors yellow, black, and white, my eye-catching logo, nontraditional headshot photo (in which I am smiling and wearing a bright pink sleeveless dress), and a modern, yet minimalist layout,” she says. “When I launched my law firm, I knew that I did not want to come across as your typical stuffy suit-wearing attorney, and my business card is just one aspect of my unique, authentic, and honest brand as an attorney. I’ve been told that my unique business card makes me stand out from other lawyers because it conveys that I am approachable, trustworthy, and different.”

6. Functional (Related)

How do you ensure your card isn’t immediately thrown away? By giving it purpose well beyond its intention. “I write books and have done away with traditional business cards in favor of bookmarks,” says Pamela Danziger. “They are distinctive in design, allow for more room to tell my story, and most of all they are functional.” Danziger prints a different card/bookmark for each book she publishes, so she can either include the corresponding bookmark when she sells or gives away a copy of a book – or, better yet, can include a different book’s bookmark in order to cross-promote another title. Either way, the new owner of the book gets Danziger’s contact information and will likely keep it around as long as the book is being read.

7. Functional (Unrelated)

Functionality doesn’t necessarily have to have anything to do with the business you’re in. An accountant may find it too frivolous to give away pencils, for example. That said, you don’t have to resort to that age-old trick of giving away annual calendars in the hopes they’ll be pinned to the bulletin board.

David Jacobson is the founder of TrivWorks, a corporate entertainment production company specializing in trivia events. In lieu of traditional business cards, for a year now Jacobson has been handing out customized tubes of lip balm. “They are professionally made, with a label displaying my logo, contact info, and a cheery catch phrase,” says Jacobson. “Many of my potential clients or business contacts are women, and they love to carry lip balm around in their purses. It’s far more memorable than just a card, as well as practical – and delicious!” While it’s hardly an inexpensive option (Jacobson pays about $1 per tube, in bulk), the staying power of a lip balm is far beyond that of a scrap of cardboard. A typical tube of the stuff is likely to roll around in a pocket or purse for months – reinforcing your brand messaging every time it’s used.

8. One-of-a-Kind

“I think our business cards straddle the line,” says Jennifer Boaro, COO of The Cat Ball, LLC. “I don’t find them terribly unusual, yet over and over I see people handle them with a curious look because they aren’t typical and do stand out. Customers play with the paper, comment on the thickness and quality, and then I start to hear the comments about our images. We are always asked where we get them.”

Boaro says “images” because her cards feature hundreds of different cats, courtesy of Moo.com’s Printfinity program, which lets you print a different image on every card in your pack. Whether you want to customize the outgoing card to each recipient or turn your cards into a “collect ‘em all” game, having a pocketful of cards where no two are alike gives you tons of options that otherwise wouldn’t be available. “I’ve seen people paw through a stack of cards, trying to decide which one to take,” says Boaro.

9. Artisanal

Kathy Marcelle is a designer and the owner of Sugar Pear Design, a stationer in the Midwest. “I do my own letterpress printing and of course my cards are letterpress printed. My press, a Craftsmen press from the 1940s, is 100 percent manual. I also hand mix my own printing inks. Each card has slight variations from the one before – giving them each their own unique personality. But what makes them have that unexpectedness to them is their thickness. The paper stock that I choose is 100 percent cotton, which allows the impression of the printing plate to really go into the paper stock, giving it an awesome texture and indicating superior quality.”

For a stationery company, your business card isn’t just a repository for contact information, it’s perhaps the most important sample of your work you have. Remember that in some cases, your business card may not be only about who you are – it can also be used to showcase exactly what it is you do.

10. Virtual

We live in a digital age, so why not give out a digital card? Swapping phone numbers or email addresses is a nice start, but simple digits are impersonal and easily lost in the morass of your phone’s address book. Ted Jenkin, founder and co-CEO of oXYGen Financial, upgrades the number swapping dance with his “mobile card,” which contacts receive by texting “Ted” to 89800. (Feel free to try it.) Sending the text gets you back a link to Jenkin’s personal page and one to the business, the former full of contact information and even a video introduction to the company. “It’s the best card I have ever used and I’ve made tons of money with it,” says Jenkin. “I can drip text people on an ongoing basis because the software allows you to capture the mobile number of the other person when they take your card.” Find out more about the technology, which costs $18/month, at Ditch the Nametag.

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At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a huge variety of verticals. Learn about all of Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

 

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About the Author: Christopher Null is an award-winning business and technology journalist. His work frequently appears on Wired, PC World, and TechBeacon. Follow him on Twitter @christophernull.

Is Facebook part of your holiday marketing plan? Discover 10 Facebook tips to widen your visibility and reach during the holiday season.

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Choosing the right CRM for your small business can be a daunting task. You don’t know whether a service that fits your business and budget right now will still be the best choice six months from now. Rest assured that Insightly will grow right along with your business. We continually evolve our service to ensure our features meet all your needs.

Perfect Plans

You need a CRM plan that fits your budget and the size of your business. Nothing too big, but nothing you’ll grow out of too quickly. You also need to be able to change the size of your plan as your business grows. Insightly offers a completely free starter plan plus four premium plans that increase in size incrementally.

You can start as small as necessary and scale up as your business grows. The free plan even allows two users, so you and a partner can access the best of Insightly without spending one cent. It includes 2,500 records so you can build up quite a lot of leads before you’re ready to upgrade.

Features You Need

Is there anything quite as frustrating as finding a product that’s just about perfect, but lacks one or two features you absolutely need? Or using a product for a year or two, then having to switch to something else when it can’t keep up with your growth? Insightly listens to your suggestions. We are constantly improving and adding features that make it easier on you to convert those leads to sales.

• Lead assignment rules. You require flexible rules to assign leads effectively. We’re always fine-tuning features like this one. One new addition is the ability to assign leads by geographic area.
• Xero Accounting Software Integration. Your solution should work with the software you’re already using, which is why we added the Insightly Xero integration, which gives you a complete picture of your business from early prospect communication, through the sales process to invoicing and payments.
• Goodbye dupes. You need a great way to handle duplicate entries, so we stepped up. Duplicate detection alerts you to duplicates as you create a new entry, displaying an instant list of possible dupes. SmartMerge will help you organize multiple entries on one page.
• Custom fields. You don’t want to be trapped with only a few fields that don’t perfectly fit your needs. How about checkbox, number, hyperlink, and multi-line custom fields? We even added new settings options, such as the ability to make a custom field invisible in the user interface.
• More power. You have the power to delete duplicate leads and activity sets, opportunities, and projects. When a milestone date is changed, you can shift all the associated tasks and events.
• Help Center updates. When you need help, being able to find it quickly is a huge plus. We updated the help center to add the ability to search from every page. The front page is streamlined to help you get straight to the content you want right away.
• Business card scanner. You can use your smartphone to scan a business card and import the contact straight into Insightly. They image is verified and the information transcribed by a real person, so you can be sure the contact information is imported without errors.
• Gmail sidebar. Now you can use Gmail without leaving your current tab, so when you’ve got a contact on the phone, you can search for that important message you want to reference without navigating away from the contact’s information.

This list is just a glimpse at some of the changes we’ve made over time. As you collect leads and nurture sales, you can be sure that Insightly is growing and evolving right along with you.

 

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At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

Social Media Marketing Podcast 226. In this episode Sunny Lenarduzzi explores how to grow a business with YouTube.

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Discover what Australia marketers are saying and doing in the Content Marketing Institute’s latest research on the country’s benchmarks, budgets, and trends.

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In order for your business to thrive, it needs customers. Nurturing relationships with potential sales contacts is the bread and butter of every successful marketing campaign. But, where do you find leads? On the Web you probably leverage social media and SEO to populate your contact lists. Well, you can already find everything you need to know about those platforms with a few Google searches.

What you really want to know about are the lead generation channels that not everyone is talking about. These avenues are not trade secrets – you see them every day. Still, you are likely passing right over them instead of using them as fuel delivery channels for your sales rocket.

4. Mobile Advertising

Paid search advertising is an extremely popular online lead generation solution. But, mobile advertising is becoming more and more important for business campaigns, and is all too often ignored. The 23% growth in mobile advertising is a tell-tale sign that you should be phasing mobile into your marketing strategy.

Facebook advertising and local mobile paid search are two popular options for integrating mobile into your campaigns. The creative control and pinpointed audience targeting are what make Facebook ads so appealing. Local business might benefit more from local mobile paid search. Try out each of these methods, and use them in combination with one another to fully enhance your mobile campaigns.

How to Optimize Facebook Advertising for Mobile Users

Mobile users on Facebook won’t be able to see ads in the right column of their browsers, so make sure that your campaigns will show up in a user’s newsfeed. Running a “page post ad” is the easiest way to ensure that mobile users see your message. This can be done by choosing “boost post” from your business Facebook page posts. Simply choose your target audience, your budget, and run the campaign.

 

How to Optimize Google Local Advertising for Mobile Viewers

When you set up a local advertising campaign with Google, you will want to make sure that your information is optimized for mobile viewers. Follow these best practices for the ultimate mobile experience with Google Advertising:

• Use mobile friendly ad extensions.
• Include mobile-preferred sitelinks.
• Put mobile-specific calls to action in your headline and description.
• Use display-friendly URL to indicate that your page is set up for mobile.
• Use mobile-specific ad sizes for the Google Display Network.
• Track your campaigns to make sure the ads are working.

3. Text Messaging

Though it is a very effective method of promotion for all types of business, text message marketing is ignored by many. The time-sensitive nature of SMS campaigns makes them an excellent option for contests, promotions, and events. And sharing opt-in instructions for text campaigns across different platforms is easy.

 

If you want to run a successful text message marketing campaign, pay attention to crafting your messages. It’s not a rocket science, just follow basic rules for writing effective SMS messages for marketing campaigns. Here is a brief checklist:

• Use call-to-action buttons to increase conversions.
• Leverage shortened URLs.
• Keep your message brief.
• Be specific with your data (dates, times, discounts, etc.).
• Speak professionally, avoid slang.
• Personalize your message with the recipient’s name.
• Target your message with list segmentation.

2. Pinterest Advertising

Advertising on Pinterest is a newer option for lead generation, hence somewhat untapped. The visual nature of Pinterest, and the fact that Pinterest leads are more likely to buy than those from any other social media platforms, indicates that you should at least look into it. This could be the big break you’ve been looking for.

Promoted pins are the same as regular pins on Pinterest, besides the fact that you can have them seen by more people. Like Facebook page post ads, you can take your favorite existing content, and pay to get it in front of more eyes. So, you don’t really need to know any “advertising secrets,” just how to create great pins.

Ask yourself, “What is my goal?” This should be the foundation of your Pinterest strategy. Are you looking to create awareness, intent, or action?

 

Pins for Awareness

Pins created with the intent to drive awareness should contain certain elements. Among these elements are a compelling image, text overlay, a detailed description, a vertical aspect ratio, novelty, and tasteful branding. Cinematic pins are the exception to the vertical aspect ratio – video pins have higher engagement when presented horizontally.

Pins for Engagement

Many of the same elements used in awareness-building pins are effective when driving engagement (compelling image, text overlay, a detailed description, a vertical aspect ratio). Additionally, lists and how-to pins work well when your goal is engagement. Showcasing an image of your product in a real-life environment is a great method to use here.

Pins for Clicks

When your goal is to get people to click through your pins, the above elements will all be helpful. In addition, you need to include a call-to-action. By instructing a viewer on what to do next, you provide what is needed for clicks through to your landing page/ web content. In the description of pins designed for clicks, include text like, “see this helpful resource,” or, “find out more.”

1. Gated Content

If you’re not using gated content yet, now is the time to try it. Limiting access to a video or mini-course until the viewer has provided you with their contact information is a great way to generate leads that are super-targeted for your niche. The idea is that if a contact finds your information intriguing, they may also find your products and services helpful.

How to Make Sure You’re Using Gated Content Correctly

For gating to work, your content has to be super-relevant to your products and services. Otherwise, you can simply increase your page’s bounce rate, and be unsuccessful in your lead funneling efforts.

Here are the steps to execute gated content successfully:

1. Map content to the stages of your sales funnel.
2. Identify where leads are in your sales funnel.
3. Decide whether or not gating is appropriate at this time.

Gated content may be appropriate for your content if it has at least one of the following elements:

• It addresses product implementation.
• It answers a question that you generally hear when addressing sales prospects.
• It answers a question that you receive from current customers.
• The lead will benefit from having a direct conversation about it.
• It earns you the right to have a direct conversation with your contact about your products.
• A/B testing shows a stronger contact acquisition rate with gating vs without.

Though you’ve already seen these lead generation channels, you are likely to have overlooked them. Now that you know more about mobile advertising, text messaging, Pinterest advertising, and gated content, you can try these strategies in your lead funnel. What do you think about these sometimes ignored channels for gaining leads? Take some time to explore the above options, and tell us your findings in the comments.

 

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At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

 

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Alexa Lemzy is the customer service specialist and content manager at TextMagic. She writes about small business, mobile marketing tactics and customer service best practices. Reach out to her on Twitter.

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