Tag: Education

Simplify Next Year’s Holiday Cards (with Insightly)

As the next holiday season approaches (or whenever you send out mailers), follow these simple steps to prepare your mailing list with greater ease:

1. Navigate to your contacts (or leads) in Insightly
2. Refine your mailing list – it might be helpful to filter only those leads possessing a city and zip code. Or, if you’ve already tagged certain records, just click on the appropriate tag link. Filtering contacts within Insightly can save a few steps of spreadsheet manipulation.
3. Select the contacts you wish to include. Then, from the “More” drop down, click “Export to CSV.”
4. In a matter of seconds (or minutes, depending on your list size), Insightly will email you a download link like this:

5. Use this sheet to build your mail merge labels.
6. Print, stick, and go!

Before you forget, set yourself an Insightly reminder for mid-November 2017. You might save yourself (or your assistant) several hours of frustration next year!

Get More from Your Marketing Newsletter

Most businesses send out email newsletters. The benefits are obvious: staying top of mind, providing thought leadership, and generating clicks are just a few compelling reasons.

However, unless you’re intentional with your newsletter, you run the risk of just being another annoyance to recipients. Consider these tips for enhancing your newsletter’s value:

Think like your recipients: Put yourself in the shoes of those on your email list. Would you really want to keep receiving your newsletters? Just because people rarely complain, it doesn’t mean that they enjoy your content. What style and content adjustments can you make to increase subscriber engagement?

Use rock-solid tracking: All of your marketing activities need to be tracked. Email marketing is no different. Most email marketing systems offer their own reporting capabilities. Some even permit integration to popular web analytic packages. Look for ways to track subscriber activity and review the data regularly.

Mix in a few CTAs: It’s OK to tastefully mix in a few call-to-actions (CTAs) for your products or services. Customers kind of expect it, so don’t be shy. Just be transparent and always give subscribers the option to opt-out.

Create a sense of exclusivity: Your blog is a great source for newsletter content. However, simply regurgitating what’s on your website into email format may not be enough. Dedicate some real estate to original content, which can only be found in your newsletter. You’re likely to see a boost in open rates!

Design a Continuing Ed Plan for Yourself

Clients appreciate your expertise.

Although much of what you know was learned through life experiences, a certain percentage of your knowledge originated from something you read online.

Stop and think about a highly impactful video that you’ve watched or article you’ve read. How did you come across it? Perhaps you saw it on social media. Or, maybe a colleague forwarded it to you. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but it’s very reactive in nature. You need to proactively seek information to stay competitive. But, how?

Perhaps it’s time you implemented a simple continuing education system for yourself. It’s really not that hard. Here are a few ideas:

• Subscribe to relevant email newsletters and blog RSS feeds. A quick web search will likely turn up dozens in your area of expertise.
• Join relevant social media groups and check them weekly.
• Set up a Zapier app to aggregate stuff you care about.
• Hire a freelancer to organize and report on best practices.

An important note here: be sure to actually make time to review the content you gather. Although you’re a busy person, setting aside a few minutes of continuing education time weekly can pay big dividends.

Set a goal of learning one new thing each week, and you might be surprised by the outcome!

Create a Sense of Urgency

What are you doing to proactively create a sense of urgency with your prospects?

If your answer is “I’m not sure,” then it’s time you took a step back and reevaluated things. As our buddy Adam Honig at the Spiro blog points out, “It’s not enough to build value for the customer if you can’t also explain why they need to move forward as soon as possible.”

So, what can you do to start making your leads feel more inclined to buy? Here are a few quick ideas:

• Develop a special offer that expires by a certain date (promo codes work well)
• Design an infographic that shows the costs associated with not moving forward today (as compared to the upfront investment)
• Understand your prospect’s budgeting cycle and time your follow up accordingly
• Send an incentivized survey (packed full of thought-provoking questions), aimed at creating an emotional need for your product or service
• Share a case study that highlights the rapid payback period experienced by another customer
• Start adding expiration dates to your proposals (30 or 45-day periods are common)
• Build a marketing automation rule that follows up with a prospect if the associated opportunity is not already marked as “won.”

Some customers simply need to be pushed. It’s not that they don’t want your products. Rather, they’re probably just too busy on other things.