eMail Productivity: Automate Customer Reminders

For small business owners, nurturing long term relationships is critical, so keeping in touch with past customers to encourage them to return is a worthwhile activity.

Dentists have been doing it for years with their cute cartoon postcards reminding us to book our next check-up. It's time to take that process online and use our bulk email application to automate it. And we can apply it to more than patients.

While this process can be handled exactingly by a workflow app, you don't need the expensive software to make it work for you. One of our long time clients, HealthWalks Shoe Store and Orthotic Clinic in New Glasgow, NS, has been sending reminders by email for a few years now.

Here's how it works...
  1. Initially I created the template based on a postcard HealthWalks had been mailing to customers one year after receiving their orthotics.
  2. Now, each month I receive a list of contacts who have just passed the anniversary date of when they received their orthotics. I simply add a new list in iContact, upload the contacts to it, and schedule the reminder. All of that takes me less than 10 minutes.

It's a much less costly approach to customer communication - as opposed to designing and printing postcards, addressing them, and running to the post office. Plus, it's tree-friendly.

If you're already doing some email marketing, make the most of your software to eliminate the need for paper and postage. Your bulk email app can make you more productive, aside from the marketing benefits. I bet you can think of at least one way to use this process in your business.

Click to Tweet this Article

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Don't Dilute Your Message

Image
Let’s say you own a business that sells services to the general public. And, because you are so good at what you do, you also sell different services to other businesses in your industry. This is a common scenario for successful small businesses. You want to start an enewsletter - let’s talk content . Stephanie sells financial advice. She also sells advice to other advisors about how to sell and deliver financial advice. Stephanie's approach to financial advice is unique in her industry and she is a crusader. So when it comes to Stephanie's advice, what content will appeal to both of her target markets? Be interesting or useful to both? Be of value to both? Can you write a list of potential topics? It won't be as long as you might think. The type of financial advice that appeals to you and I is not what financial advisors want. A diagram of all the possible content might look like this: If you have two distinct target markets, you need to find content that will
Keep reading »

How I Emptied My Inbox!

Image
This is what an empty inbox looks like! It's the first time I've seen mine like this in at least a couple of years, maybe longer. It looks kind of strange, doesn't it? Even a little hard to get used to. What a boost of self-gratification I got from accomplishing this (been patting myself on the back ever since). So much so that I'm now determined and motivated to keep it this way. Does this mean that I have nothing to do? That all my action items are completed? Not by a long shot - but now they're not staring me in the face all the time distracting me. My inbox will no longer be used as an ineffective to-do list. Now I realize this is a bit of psychological manipulation - it's all about my state of mind. But I've learned that my state of mind is about the most important consideration to accomplishing anything. What brought about this most awesome accomplishment? A handy little online app called Follow Up Then . It is by far the most useful ap
Keep reading »

I Love Uphill Graphs!

Image
I've been known to fixate on graphs and measurements . See, I really hate working for no reason. I like to know that my efforts make a difference. If not, I either tweak and retry, or I give it up and put my efforts elsewhere. You can imagine that I've been keeping an eagle eye on all this online stuff - blogging, social media - since I took those first tentative steps . And it's really cool that the stats get dished up for me! I was delighted when I saw this graph of our blog statistics:  Before December, the highest number of page views we'd ever had in one month was in October - 997 views. I was kind of happy when that happened. In December,  our page views more than quadrupled! We did something right... but what was it? How do I replicate it? I think this happened because 3 or 4 times a week I started posting links to older blog posts on Twitter and LinkedIn. But, well, doesn't that seem just a little too easy? I'm wondering if perhaps the
Keep reading »

Up the Value of Your Redirect Pages

Image
Many of the people connecting with you online are arriving at one of your redirect pages at some point. A redirect page is the 'thank you for signing up' page you send them to when they sign up for your newsletter, or the event registration page you send them to when they sign up for your events. Often, these pages contain minimal, basic information. A thank you message in the case of the newsletter or confirmation of event details (location, time, date, etc) in the case of event registration. But why stop there? For one moment, you have managed to connect with that person. You have them at your website and they have already let you know they are interested in what you are doing by signing up for your newsletter or registering for your event. Why not think about what value you can offer them while they are there? How can you expand on that connection? With both your target market and your marketing strategy in mind, take a fresh look at your redirect pages and con
Keep reading »

Do You Need an Editorial Calendar?

Image
An editorial calendar makes it easy for people to work together, helping them follow a plan. What if there's only you in your business? Does it make sense to create an editorial calendar? Absolutely, but for different reasons. If your plan is in your head, writing it out will reduce stress - now you don't have to remember it. Handwriting activates the creative part of your brain and your memory . More importantly, having a plan will prep your brain to be on the lookout for appropriate content. You can use fancy spreadsheets, or find a detailed editorial calendar online. You can use coloured file cards, sheets of paper, or a whiteboard. The most important thing is that it works for y-o-u . It doesn't have to be like anyone else's editorial calendar. Of course, before you create an editorial calendar, you need to generate a bunch of content ideas . If you are like me, your content ideas may not be well organized. Creating an editorial calendar forces you t
Keep reading »

It doesn't have to be About You

Image
Let’s face it: some businesses are in a better position to provide valuable information through newsletters (blogs, social media) than others. Take our own newsletter as an example. We could easily publish a newsletter about publishing newsletters. (Stay with me here.) It would have lots of tips and suggestions and advice. We could really show off our expertise and share our opinions. Now, who would that appeal to? People who are publishing their own newsletters. Perhaps even people who are publishing newsletters for others. These people aren’t our target market - not even close. Our newsletter has nothing to do with our area of specialty. But of course we have to have one. What’s an 'enewsletter boutique' without its own newsletter ? So we found something else of use to our target market:  ideas and tips for small business owners shared by other small business owners. And (big bonus here) members of our target market are the authors of our newsletter! Giving va
Keep reading »

Do You Want 1,000,000 Subscribers?

Image
Tasting Table ( www.tastingtable.com ) grew its contact list to 1,000,000 subscribers in just 3 years. That’s pretty amazing on its own but here’s the kicker - it’s a daily newsletter. (I only have to get 998,000 more subscribers to catch up.) Would I want a mailing list of 1,000,000 subscribers? Most definitely ... if I owned a marketing company that sells advertising. I don’t, and most of you don’t either. (If you do, you know this stuff better than I do.) If Daley Progress had 1,000,000 subscribers, we’d never keep up with all the work generated. Because our capacity is limited, the time and effort spent to get that many subscribers would be wasted. We try to match our efforts to our desired results. As small business owners, our email marketing goals can be quite different and distinct. Not all of us want 1,000,000 subscribers. But we do need to continually get new subscribers because, over time, our lists can drop by as much as 30% over a year through attrition (calle
Keep reading »

Here's How Writing Content Turns You Into an Expert

Image
There are many marketing benefits to regular blogging or writing for a newsletter. But other - perhaps more important - benefits may not be clear until after you've been doing it a while. Regardless of how much you know, sooner or later you're going to need to do a little online research. Does that article you just wrote really include all the important facts or items? Especially for checklist type articles, you want to make sure to include everything relevant. An item missed from a list of items to take camping in the winter could have dire consequences, not the least of which is your reputation. Does your article agree or disagree with others' advice or information? Finding other references that support your message is good - you can grab quotes or link to it. Finding others who disagree is important if there are a lot of them - you may need to justify your message in that context. Do you know the latest developments in your industry or affecting your target
Keep reading »

What to Write About

Image
Your website is about what you do and your blog is about why you love what you do. I wish I could say I made that up but I read it somewhere. It has really stuck with me though. What an easy rule to follow! For newsletters and email communication, your content will depend on your strategy and goals. Choose to send either a mostly promotional email or a mostly informational email. I recommend 80% information and 20% promotion – or vice versa. Having this focus makes it clear to your subscribers what to expect. You are better to send two separate emails than to send one email that is 50/50. Each type of email has its place. I can get just as excited about a shoe sale as I do about a new idea. What do your subscribers want to read about (or look at)? That is more important than what you want to write about. (It’s also the difference between blogs and newsletters.) Content creation is one of the big challenges for my newsletter clients. I always tell them that it gets easier
Keep reading »