Turning Contacts into Relationships, Part III

Previous posts, here and here,  talked about making initial contact and identifying something shared – a person, place, passion, experience, etc.  That “shared something” serves to connect you for your initial conversation, and helps them remember you later on.

Once you’ve made that initial contact, followup is your next challenge.  It is the step that is most frequently not completed,  due to lack of tools, process, and time.   But no followup = no return, so take a few minutes to protect the investment of time you’ve already made in networking.   Select a system, set up a process and stick to it.

System considerations first – you’re using some system now to save the information about your contacts even if it’s only keeping it in your head (not recommended, by the way).   Outlook is by far the most frequently used, followed by Gmail, Yahoo and then a plethora of other email, webmail and database – desktop or hosted – alternatives.

It’s no surprise that the first three alternatives mentioned are email and webmail because contact management has been largely subsumed into those systems and their address books.     All three offer users the ability to store limited information on contacts and integrate with a calendar.  Outlook supports more data, but it’s time-consuming to enter and hard to organize.

Factors to consider in selecting a system include accessibility, flexibility, complexity, ease of use,  how much and what kind of data you need, the size of your network and what you want to accomplish with the system.

As a longtime consumer of contact management software, I  migrated from Teamup to Goldmine to ACT, and finally to Outlook.   I found all of them lacking in flexibility, accessibility and – most of all – too complicated and time consuming to use.   That’s when and why WeMeUs came to be.  WeMeUs is designed to organize and track  people, not companies and relationships rather than business processes.    It also has a unique focus on automating and streamlining at multiple points to save users’ time.  Because it is web-based, I can access my data can be accessed anywhere, and I no longer have to worry about Outlook crashing and losing my contact information.

Building your own solution is extreme, I’ll admit!  What software or system are you using, why and how has it helped you?

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Use Email Assistant for Fast, Effective Networking Followup

You go to a business meeting or networking event and come back with a bunch of business cards. Now what? Use WeMeUs Email Assistant for fast followup!

Here is a quick How To guide.

1. Create a unique tag for the event, such as Oct29Party. This makes the attendees easy to find later.
2. If you obtained a file of attendees through scanning, from the organizers, or a group directory, import it with the event tag.
3. If you know some of the attendees, search for them using a unique part of their name or email address. Click on their name in the search results to display their contact record. Edit the record to add the tag, any notes, and Save.
4. If you’re manually adding people from business cards, click Add Contact. Enter their name, email address, company, tag, and any notes while they’re fresh in your mind. Click Save and add another contact to repeat.
5. After you’ve added everyone, search for the tag to display the attendees.
6. Click the first box on the left at the top of the results to select all the displayed contacts. Click the Action pulldown list and select Email selected to start the Email Assistant.
7. The Email form will display. If you click the To: button, you’ll see all of the attendees in the address box. Select Mail Type of Individual to send a direct email to each person. If you have just a few more minutes, select Mail Type of Customized to write a separate personal note for each recipient.
8. Write a quick followup email (“Hi =FN=, I really enjoyed talking with you at the XYZ event earlier this evening…)”. Use the Greeting and Personalize listboxes to insert mail-merge commands like =FN= that are replaced by the recipient’s name, company, or other field. Click Send.
9. If you selected Customized mail, the system will pause between each email to let you edit the message for each person

Read more about Networking after the event.

Email is the First Social Media

MarketingSherpa reminds us that email is here to stay with the survey Email is Social, and it’s not Going Anywhere.  78% of Internet users still share interesting news and sites via email, as opposed to social media or other means.  They conclude:

We see a pattern of aggregation and adoption rather than replacement. Some media suffer in the exchange, but none are eliminated entirely. More commonly, their uses become more refined.

For example, we may find that Twitter and Facebook gradually reduce our use of email to convey quick messages and content to social groups, but it’s far less likely that social media will replace email for commercial transactions, receipts and the like.

The survey didn’t share demographics.  I’m sure the percentage using email for business is much higher and over 90%.  New social media services like LinkedIn are a terrific discovery tool for finding and making initial contact with business executives and professionals. But email is and will continue to be the dominant communications channel.

Indeed tools like WeMeUs that feature deep contact management catapult email past social networks.  WeMeUs enables business users to to send targeted, personal emails, which social services can’t.   Such custom messages are ideal for building relationships and generating business.

Email Marketing III: Building referrals

Previous posts in this series discussed how email marketing for consultants and small businesses is relationship marketing-based.  It demands a service like WeMeUs that is different from typical group email marketing. This final entry looks at all the ways you can use email marketing to build referrals.

When you move to relationship marketing you broaden your email communications.  You still publish product announcements, special offers, surveys, and your regular newsletter.  You can build on that to do much more when you also start targeting and personalizing your email.

• Periodically reach out to customers and close contacts to say hello and see how their business is doing.
• Add highly personal messages to emails from asking about the spouse and kids to mentioning a shared experience or interest to congratulating a contact on their latest business launch or other success.

• Solicit ideas and feedback

• Cross promote other media such as blog and video postings.

• Reconnect with contacts you haven’t spoken to recently.

• Share articles, white papers, industry news, or a web site of interest.

• Update contacts with a new feature or testimonial
• Celebrate news that is personal or a shared interest
• Remind people how you can help them as an industry or business expert

Email marketing for consultants and small businesses goes beyond the direct mail mantra of direct sales and having your email stand out to get noticed. It serves the critical role of high-touch personalization in relationship marketing.

Email Marketing II: Relationship marketing

Services like Constant Contact and iContact provide a great solution for businesses with established lists and a formal opt-in and out relationship with clientele. But it misses the mark for consultants and small businesses that operate on a personal basis and don’t have formal lists.

Most solopreneurs and many small businesses generate revenues through their existing contacts. Their primary asset is their network of contacts, which they leverage for repeat, referral, and new business. This is relationship marketing.

Relationship marketing use of email differs from standard email marketing in several ways.

• It’s personal. Email contact is not with a anonymous subscriber but a professional contact.
• Distribution lists are small. Emails may be individuals or small groups.
• Messages are highly personalized. While groups emails use a common template, each email is often customized with a personal note from the sender to recipient.
• Email is highly targeted. Some messages may general for your business, such as a new product announcement, special offer, or a regular newsletter.  Other mail is occasional, such as to pass on an article, industry news, or web site of interest.

Consultants and small businesses need a relationship management service that integrates contact management, referral marketing, and email like WeMeUs. A deep contact manager contains a wide range of contact fields make it easy to form small groups by tag, keyword, and other criteria, and facilitates email personalization. Contact reminders allow users to stay in touch with current and important contacts and build relationships. Robust tagging and groups enable contacts to be assigned to ad hoc or permanent groups for group email. A contact log that stores communications, including sent email, gives the user a single glance at personal contact.

Our next entry in this series will look at the ways that email marketing can be used for relationship marketing.

Email Marketing I: Is your current provider building your business?

Group email companies like Constant Contact and iContact have popularized email marketing. The technology is helpful with automated email management and opt-in and out processing.  But is it working for you?

Review the following checklist.

• Are your email recipients primarily anonymous … or people who personally know you?
• Are your group mailings typically to hundreds or thousands of subscribers … or fewer?
• Are your messages the same from person to person with the name changing… or highly personalized?

• Are your mailing groups fixed and general … or ad hoc and topic-based?

If you answered by selecting the first choices, then group email services have the right solution for you. If you chose the latter choices, then you’re likely a consultant or small business that uses email not just for direct sales or branding, but also for relationship marketing.  We’ll explore using the right email tool like WeMeUs in future blog posts.

Supercharge Relationship Marketing with an Offer

All outbound marketing communications, including relationship marketing email, have an offer. Whether it’s a company or product update, new feature, industry news, product or use tip, or even personal info, that message has three parts:

1. Who – Relationship.  Your relationship with your audience dictates the nature of your offer and its communication.
2. What – Giveaway.  You are providing something.  It may be information, an actual product, or an opportunity to learn or buy.
3. Why – Action. Sure, you want the recipient to be informed.  But even better, what do you want him to do?  Update you on his plans? Think of you on his next buying decision?  Refer a lead?  Take some action that moves him to the next step in the sales process?

Read our tips on planning and executing offers in You Got to Give to Get.

The next time you send a business email to a small group, don’t click Send automatically.  Take a few minutes.  Improve your offer.  You’ll communicate more clearly, improve responsiveness, and supercharge your relationships.

Beyond the Lead, Or The Pareto Fallacy

The Pareto principle is the name for the famous 80-20 rule, where for example, 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers.

I came across a marketing version on Marketing Sherpa that was another version of this rule. Their conclusion on secondary marketing tactics was “Anywhere from 5%-20% of respondents … will report that these normally under-performing tactics were a home run.” So that’s Pareto squared. You take one cut at marketing, get some customers, and then take a second cut at what’s left.

That works fine if you have a million dollar marketing budget. But what about consultants and small businesses? You have no budget. In this recession you don’t have an abundance of leads to keep you busy, much less focus on the top 20%.

The answer is not to reprocess stale leads, but to improve your operations and establish a process that generates quality leads.  It’s Demand Generation, a system of best practices (learned from the Pareto principle) throughout your company that improve the entire sales chain.

It starts in customer service and every day messaging. Build your relationships with existing clients and your business contacts to earn their trust. Personal and targeted communications, just like this blog, give you an ongoing voice in their business. That sets the stage for recurring contacts, new business, and referrals. This relationship marketing results in more and better business.

And you don’t have to resort to sloppy seconds.

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