Be More Effective in Your Communications

Use Custom Fields to Record Communication Preferences

“One of the things our business does is send out postcards or other physical advertising material to our customers. The thing is you may not want to send the promotional material to everyone in your contact list. To get by this, we created a custom field titled “Mailing List”, which has a drop-down menu with two options:

1. Mail marketing materials
2. Do not mail

This way, after the contact data is exported to a spreadsheet, I can simply delete all of the “Do not mails”. Then my mailing list is one-step closer to being ready! If you decide to use this tip, remember the power of Insightly’s “Bulk Edit“. This could expedite your implementation.”

As we mentioned on our blog last week, it’s important to know what your customers’ communication preferences are, and you may have contacts in your list who aren’t customers or prospects at all. Joshua’s tip is a great example of how you can record that information directly in Insightly and make your day-to-day marketing management easier.

We’re sending Joshua a $10 Amazon gift card, so check out our community and submit your tips for your chance to get a little thank-you from us! Thanks for the tip, Joshua!

Always Be Aware of Your Marketing Strategy

With online campaigns, you might already be using services that include email tracking or tools to measure website visits and visitor activity (for example, whether they view other pages, make a purchase, or contact you). Using promotional codes in your marketing can really help you understand what prompted a new customer to give you their business. Of course, you can always just ask them what brought them in, too. As you figure out what works to move business your way, it’s always possible the market or customer expectations may change. Always be ready to adjust your future marketing plans based on what the performance of your current campaigns tells you.

Give at Least One Compliment Every Day

Communicating something you like about someone can make a huge difference in their day as well as your own. If you’re down or having a rough day, offering a sincere compliment takes the focus off of your own mood as you let someone else know what you admire about them. It also helps to build trust with that person and strengthen the relationship. You can compliment someone on the way they do things, their efforts, their looks or style, or how they impact you in a positive way. Be specific in what it is that strikes you. As you make an effort to compliment people, you may find positive qualities that you’ve often overlooked.

Sincerity is important, here—if your feedback doesn’t ring true, it will come across as phony and won’t make you or the other person feel better. Some people set a goal of complimenting three people a day, and others will tell you try to do it in every conversation, such as ending a conversation with “It was nice to talk to you” when that fits. No matter how often you make it happen, you’ll make everyone’s day better by working this goal into your daily life.