Your Email List and the Value Exchange

Your name has value. Your email has value. As business owners we need to respect the high value of those two pieces of information and how we do that is by providing something of equal value in exchange.  Too often, we make the mistake of approaching how we build our email list by making it all about increasing our numbers.  Oh, don’t get me wrong; numbers are good.  You want numbers.  However, I challenge you to approach your email list building with a different mindset.  Think about: What kind of value can I offer to my community that SHOWS them how much I value them sharing their name and email?

Here’s the thing: it’s getting more and more competitive in the value space.  It used to be good enough to call your newsletter ‘valuable.’  Your newsletter probably is valuable.  It’s not the value of the newsletter that’s changed (hopefully).  What has changed is the expectation of how immediate that value exchange is.  Thus the reason why you see so much “enter your name and email and you will get INSTANT access to….” People want you to immediately show them how much you value them and then they expect you to keep showing them.  So, you give them an e-book, a free video, a white paper, a template---let your imagination run wild.  We have different value propositions tucked in a variety of places in our website. No neon signs. Just an offer of our value for yours.

Then, once you make that initial exchange, check in with them. Ask them how they are. Invite them to engage. Let them know that you care about their issues, their insights, their contribution.  Give them more value—something unexpected. Continuing along this value path will lead them through to where they become not just a number in your email list but they become part of your email community. Through this value exchange, you develop a relationship that you keep building.  Your trust keeps building and before you know it…your business is building right along with it.

Hmm. Funny how that happens.

Holly Kile is President and Chief Business Strategist of HJK Global Solutions, parent company of A2I Business Consulting and Pixie Dust University. Using her extensive background in operations management, systems analysis/implementation and strategic business marketing, Holly works with business owners and entrepreneurs who struggle with figuring out how to effectively achieve their vision for their business. As a result of working with Holly individually or participating in one of her many specialized training programs, her clients are able to access multiple opportunities for growth in their organizations and realize potential they didn’t previously know existed. To learn more about Holly and HJK Global Solutions visit www.hjkglobal.biz.

One Fun Way to Boost Your Social Media List

Sitting around wondering what email content I should post in our September Monthly News letter was taking me forever.  So what did I do?  I went and surfed around Facebook for a little while trying to come up with a topic for my headline story.  After about an hour of getting lost in Social Media it hit me, I could use a boost of fans on our AddressTwo Facebook Fan Page.    Here is a picture from my main story in our monthly newsletter.

Guess what, it worked!  Over the next few days we gained 77 new facebook fans of AddressTwo.

So what did I learn?

• Sometimes the most random ideas are the best ideas.
• When you "like" another company's fan page with your fan page, it doesn't count for a "like."  Check out the story on Social Media Travelers.
• A good idea is worth repeating.

Social Media List Building #2

With my facebook idea going well in September, I’m going to try it again this month….

Follow us on Twitter and we’ll follow you back – It’s that easy!  - Read our October newsletter for more details.
Subscribe Here

The Failure of Outlook as a CRM System

I expect there may be a few more objections to this premise from some who have successfully used Outlook as their CRM for years. To that end, I would say that it's also true that people have successfully used their car keys as box cutters, but it's less than ideal. Truly, what it boils down to is the fact that the box cutter was all the way in the garage and your keys were already in your pocket.

For a one-off job, this is acceptable. But in your business, we're not talking about a one-off job. We're talking about the lifeblood of a small business: your contacts and your relationship with those contacts. You wouldn't think it too wise to walk into a warehouse where all the workers have their keys out cutting box after box, would you? I didn't think so. So, without further adieux: the failure of Outlook as a CRM...

1. Easily corrupted PST files. Currently, I can no longer access the address book function in my Outlook because after 5 years of emails the storage file known as a PST where all messages, contacts, and settings are stored became corrupted. I was able to recover emails thanks to a slick $30 program, but contacts are gone.
2. Limited search capabilities. I could title this point, "reliance on manual grouping" because the basic point is that in order to build collections of contacts that have some commonality, you have to manually create distribution groups. This plagues business people so terribly that when they finally migrate to a true CRM system like AddressTwo, users often struggle to grasp the idea of queriable data as a means for building target groups.
3. Lack of history record. Sure, you can see any email history (in fact, to a fault... do you really need to see all email history when what you really want to know is, "have I quoted them once before or not.") but there is in fact no way to easily track date-stamped activities such as calls, appointments, etc.
4. The plague of standalone software. If you have a sophisticated network using Microsoft's cost-prohibitive server solutions, then you can finally take control as manager and see what your employees are up to, share calendars, pass data back and forth, etc. But if not, the discontinuity of data can become very aggravating as your company grows to that intermediate size where you cannot justify purchasing and implementing Exchange, but you can't stand that each user is a veritable data island unto themselves.
5. The singular focus on email. CRM should help you automate multiple aspects of your sales and marketing. Try giving an Outlook CSV file to your printer for a direct mail campaign and you'll likely end up paying for clean-up, or having to spend time cleaning it up yourself.

The bottom line is that Outlook was an email tool that then added an address book... and then bolted on a calendar... and then stuck in a notes tool. Before you know it you're driving 59,60,61... automobile (for all you Johnny Cash fans out there). It's great for what it does. In fact, I still use it for email and for my daily calendar. But CRM... c'mon, take control of your data and market smarter!