Email marketing for micro businesses workshop
Is email marketing dead? Absolutely not!
In fact according to the Direct Selling Association, email marketing’s return on investment (ROI) in 2018 was 'up' to £32.28 for every £1 spent, from £30.03 the previous year, despite all the fears about GDPR.
Unfortunately many micro businesses struggle to email their audience consistently, for a variety of reasons:
- They aren't sure which email marketing service is the best
- They aren't sure which content to send and how often
- They don't want to bug people
- They don't have the time OR don't see enough value in it to do it consistently
- They don't want to invest money in it
- They don't want to get into trouble (e.g. GDPR)
Helen Lindop addressed all these worries in her workshop, and gives simple, practical tips to get past them. Here's the replay:
You can download the PowerPoint presentation here.
Helen has a number of useful posts about email marketing, how to choose the right CRM for your business, the difference between CRMs and email lists, and much more at www.helenlindop.com/blog
You'll also find her on Twitter @HelenLindop
Avoiding the feast or famine sales cycle
Does your marketing stop when you get too busy?
Have you ever found yourself so busy with client work that you ease up on your marketing, only to find yourself with no clients because - you guessed it - you didn't do enough marketing while you were busy? I think we've all been there at one time or another!
Andy Bargery has been running marketing agency Klaxon, since 2006. He didn't have a sales pipeline when he started Klaxon and although the business went well, when he started his property investment business, Andy wanted the sales process to be less stressful and more predictable.
The secret is pipelining.
In Andy's words, pipelining is 'the process of systematically finding prospects and moving them through your sales cycle'.
To begin, you need to know:
- Your sales target
- Your average client value
- How many clients you need
- Your conversion rates - how many contacts do you need to generate an enquiry? How many many enquiries to get a new client?
Andy's Powerpoint presentation gives a great example of some figures on page 12:
Feast or Famine PowerPoint Slides
First decide how many sales you need to reach your target, then how many contacts you need in order to convert 10 of them to clients. E.g., to get 10 new clients you may need to contact 400 prospects.
This is your target for the year.
Then you need to
a) have a sales process and to move prospects through it, and
b) have a way to track your activity and your progress towards your target.
Andy mentioned a couple of models that help with the sales process, one is ICECAP, which you can see on page 13 of his presentation. The second is the BANT model.
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is the best way of managing and tracking progress through a sales process. Andy admitted that CRMs are a bit like marmite. Many small business owners have been put off them because they can be too complex, confusing and have too many expensive upsells. Nevertheless, do give them a chance, especially Pipedrive as recommended by Andy. Once again, his PowerPoint presentation has examples of a project in Pipedrive.