I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to go on a bit of a rant here. You see, Dayton’s small business owners are not following up correctly with their contacts. If you aren’t following up, shame on you! If you have read any business books at all, you already know that it costs much more money to attract new customers than it does to keep up with existing contacts. Yet, most people don’t follow this simple advice.
Even more shocking, the vast majority of my competitors here in the Dayton market who are “internet marketing experts” don’t even follow up either! Geez!!! At least they should know better. Oh well, more business for me.
I’ve been networking in the Dayton area for a little over 3 years now and have met hundreds of local business owners in the process. Guess how many online newsletters I get? It’s about 3! Guess how many cards I get on a regular basis? Not too many (and most of those are only because I signed them up for SendOutCards).
So, what are some of the methods to use email and card marketing in your business and why aren’t you using them?
The first thing that I want to go over with you are autoreponders. An autoresponder is simply a service that sends out email newsletters for you. This is NOT spam as the people on your autoresponder list have requested the information. You simply log into your autoresponder account and send out your newsletter whenever you want to send updates. You can even post date your newsletter into the future so you are only working on the newsletter when you don’t have other things to work on.
There are several good companies out there that offer autoresponder services. I personally use Get Response. They have a free starter account, but I recommend that you upgrade to the basic package that runs $17.95 a month. Get Response is great for text based follow up emails and the vast majority will get delivered.
If you want to do the fancy looking html emails, Constant Contact
is going to be your best bet for both ease of use and deliverability.
As for your physical cards, I highly recommend that you use SendOutCards. Here’s a quick video that explains why you should use SendOutCards in your business.
By the way, on the SendOutCards website, you can get a free trial and send out 2 cards on my dime with no obligation whatsoever.
So, lets go over some reasons (excuses) why you still aren’t following up even though you know you need to:
- You didn’t know that an autoresponder exists
—-I solved that one for you today. That excuse is out the window! - You think it’s too expensive to follow up
—-It’s a lot cheaper than buying ads or doing more direct mail - You don’t think you have anything to say
—-That’s bull! If you aren’t a writer, find articles related to your field and send those. One way is to go to a site like EzineArticles.com and you will find hundreds of articles with free reprint rights. - You don’t want to “spam” your contacts
—-With an autoresponder, your contacts have to subscribe and can opt out at any time - You don’t know the technical details of how to get it done.
—-If this is the case, contact me and I can get you set up or even send it for you if needed.
So, there you have it. No more excuses. Now, go follow up!
Dayton SEO Services is owned and operated by Carlos Scarpero, a West Carrollton, Ohio based internet marketer. Carlos has over 10 years experience in building websites, blogs and pay per click campaigns. Put his internet marketing expertise to work for you today!
