There's a New Way to Think About List-building


Having a discussion with a friend recently about Messenger chatbots for delivering newsletters, she was perturbed there would be no way to download a list of subscribers. My response was, "Why would you want to?" These contacts have only opted in to receive communication via Messenger. By downloading them, all you'd have is a spreadsheet. (Which is OK, if you like spreadsheets.)

As a small business owner, how many times have you been chided to have a database, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) app, even a spreadsheet, with all of your contacts in one place?

Now, imagine the colossal task of putting all of your contacts into one place. I'm talking ALL of your contacts - email contacts, phone contacts, Twitter fans, LinkedIn contacts, Messenger subscribers, and so on. And what would you do with them when they're all nicely entered? I sure won't be adding my 4500 Twitter followers to my email list. (Can you imagine the response?!)

Engage people where they are. Not everyone wants to find us in their email inbox. While that is a very effective way for us to maintain contact, it isn't for all of our contacts. Make it easy for people to receive your information where and how they want. Perhaps we need to start calling it audience-building instead of list-building.

Click to Tweet this Article

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

7 Out Of 12 Small Business Bloggers Agree On This

Image
When I teach marketing courses, the group eventually tires of seeing this list come up on the screen in every class: Build relationships, community Grow your reputation, sphere of influence Be seen as an expert Share valuable info, products, services Increase your social media following Give value to your customers, prospects and colleagues on a regular basis Get found - SEO The items on this list are key reasons for publishing a blog or newsletter . Yes, of course, the ultimate goal is sometimes - but not always - an increase in sales. The problem is, you (and me) can't meet all the goals on that list at the same time. We'd become unfocused and demotivated. So I 'force' these small business folk to pick only two goals  to focus on. Last week I noted the two goals each person called out as we went around the room. I added my own two goals, as well, to round the group off at a dozen. Seven of us chose #2 - growing our reputation - as one of our two ...
Keep reading »

Quick Tip - Avoid Hidden Format Problems

Image
When you're inserting content into your newsletter, website or blog, you're often copying it from other documents.  I suggest you always compose in Word (or similar) to take advantage of its spelling and grammar-checking functionality. Your formatting in Word may not be the same as your default formatting in these various applications.  While there are a raft of applications that make it easy now to do your own newsletter, website and blog, most of them are converting your content to html code in the background.  When you copy in text that is already formatted, you're possibly creating problems behind the scenes .  As well, you'll end up with differing fonts and sizes that all have to be corrected before you publish. You can avoid the potential for problems by stripping off all formatting before you paste into the application.  An easy way to do this is to use Notepad (or similar).  You simply open a blank notepad document, paste your con...
Keep reading »

A Marketing Strategy Gone Wrong

Image
The first thing I said when he answered the phone was, "Josh, I really feel sorry for you today!" Josh is a pleasant fellow who answered the phone last Thursday when I called the Centre for Arts and Technology in Halifax. I was just a little upset. I was pretty sure that mine wasn't the first call of this sort that he had received, and it wouldn't be the last. It started when I received 17 identical promotional emails to 17 imaginary Daley Progress employees from the Centre for Arts and Technology back on April 17th. ( Click here to get the back story on our imaginary staff.) That's the footer of an email addressed to mikehopkins@daleyprogress.com. (There is no Mike Hopkins.) At the time I replied and asked for all email addresses ending in my domain name to be deleted from their mailing list. Of course, I also took the time to preach a little about the dangers of buying mailing lists. I was disappointed that a reputable organization had been duped . ...
Keep reading »

3 Questions That Need Answering: Lessons Learned From My Lunch and Learn

Image
(Guest post by Mike Tanner) I recently (like, earlier today) had the pleasure of speaking to a room full of close to 50 people on a topic near and dear to my heart: podcasting. Now I’m not going to sit here and give you a recap of that talk. If you want the VERY basic details you can find them on my website but you’ll never recapture the magic that we all shared in that room that day... Instead, I’d like to talk about three questions that I was asked during the talk and how they relate to running your own business, podcasting or otherwise. How Much Do You Charge Someone To Sponsor a Podcast? Pricing is complicated. It’s a fact. Ask anyone who does consulting or coaching or training or anything where there’s not a defined cost or supply and demand issue, and they will tell you that pricing is one of the most difficult things to figure out. Whether you’re trying to figure out how to price your course or how much to charge for web copy or how much to charge a sponsor to be a...
Keep reading »

3 Reasons Why Businesses Should Be Podcasting

Image
(guest post by Mike Tanner) To suggest that I’m a big fan of podcasts would be… a bit of an understatement. In addition to being the host of 3.5 podcasts (it’s a long story), I provide podcasting consulting, speak on podcasting panels and once had a dream that I was the host of a potato chip podcast called “Chip Off The Old Block” (That podcast should be coming out in the fall.) I started podcasting because I enjoyed it. But what I’ve discovered about podcasting as it relates to business has left me realizing that I made the absolute right decision when I decided to start broadcasting my thoughts on an audio medium. So here are three reasons why businesses should be podcasting. Passive Advertising I am a big fan of social media advertising. The targeting options available on major platforms are outstanding and things like analytics and retargeting make it a no-brainer to use social to promote your business, whether that’s through the use of paid ads or just a solid soc...
Keep reading »

Why is List Building so Important for Small Businesses?

Image
Your contact list should be the most valuable asset your small business has, like a privately owned gold mine . Once you have added someone to your contact list, you can create more chances to get them as a client or fan, sell them a product or service, and get a referral or testimonial. The possibilities open up. How many times have you stifled a good idea because you didn't have an interested audience waiting to hear from you? photo by Merlijn Hoek / Flickr Click to Tweet this Article
Keep reading »

Use Linked In to keep your Contact List Up-to-date

Image
You can export your connections from Linked In and import them into your Outlook address book or other contact list database.  On the MY CONNECTIONS page, in the bottom right corner, click on EXPORT CONNECTIONS.  Follow the directions to easily create a spreadsheet of all your Linked In connections.   Click to Tweet this Article
Keep reading »

Successful Surveys: How to Ask for Information

Image
You really want to know what your clients think about your business. And getting suggestions and feedback from your subscribers would be a bonus. An electronic survey seems like the perfect solution. The reality is that only some of your close friends and fans will complete a survey because there is something in it for them (helping you). But you likely already know what they think. What's in it for everyone else? Stop and answer that question before you go any further. Ask for only what you absolutely need . The inclination will be to ask a lot of questions. But the more questions you ask, the less likely someone will be to complete your survey. For each question, think about what you will do with the result. If there is no action you will take, don't ask the question. To help whittle down your questions, consider what you would be comfortable asking if you were to do the survey by phone with your best customer. Offer an incentive. Expect to pay to get ...
Keep reading »

7 Tips for Communicating Details by eMail

Image
Email is an ideal way to communicate details , such as meeting minutes, action lists, project updates, instructions, reference data, decisions, event info, checklists and much more. Sending previously prepared information is a snap - just attach, or copy and paste. When I started specializing in enewsletters, I quickly discovered that there are a lot of details to discuss and make decisions about. Some clients like communicating by phone and others by email. But for some of this detailed communication, email is definitely the best method regardless of preference. It allows me to standardize the process, provide checklists, track action items, explain complex ideas, show examples, and document decisions. Here are some tips for communicating detailed information by email: Strive for clarity. Be brief, but not to the point of leaving out relevant information.   Use point-form numbered or bullet lists. This makes it easy for your reader to mentally check things off, or to ...
Keep reading »

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

OK, so you might need 34 letters to say "I feel good!" in some circumstances. But I can't ever imagine needing 340 words to say "expect glitches". A client of mine received this email below from an online service provider. No, you won't want to read it anymore than she did. Want to know the short version? Scroll down. Salesforce.com is committed to providing a highly available service to our customers. We are committed to continued investments to increase the overall uptime of our service, to deliver optimal value to our customers. With that, we are excited to announce a major advancement in this area for our major releases, effective with our Spring '12 release. W hat is the change? We are happy to inform you that we are improving our major release upgrade process. This improvement means that your organization will be generally available during our major release upgrade windows. Note: The term "Generally Available" means that we are...
Keep reading »