by Amber Miller | May 7, 2019 | Blog, Marketing
Want to start an email campaign as part of your marketing management strategy? If so, you want to be sure it’ll be effective before sinking a bunch of time and resources into your efforts. You’re not interested in strategies that could be obsolete before you even begin.
Word-of-mouth customers or clients are the “gold standard” for businesses. That said, most need other marketing efforts to keep the desired revenue coming in over the long haul.
Should part of your business marketing strategy include email? Or, is it dead on arrival these days? Let’s take a look.
Email Marketing Isn’t Dead
Although times are constantly changing, email marketing certainly isn’t dead. Forbes communicated this much in their recent article entitled, “Email is Not Dead, It’s Evolving.”
The “evolving” part would sum up any current type of business marketing quite well. More than ever, marketing strategies are changing, sometimes at breakneck speeds.
The article also shares that 59% of business-to-business marketers consider email their best strategy for generating revenue. In other words, email marketing is working just fine and a large segment of society continues to regularly use it.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that many businesses are open to seeking help with email marketing or other email services from outside companies. The high level of response received from this form of marketing makes that a no-brainer for many.
The Future May Not Be as Email-Heavy
So, will email phase out in the near future? It’s not likely anytime soon although Generation Z displays some aversion to it. This younger crowd gravitates towards communication on social media more than any other age group. In fact, some don’t even have an email account.
While that might sound unthinkable, like when we all started ditching our landline phones years ago for cells, some of it makes a lot of sense.
First, messaging through social media (at least for now) cuts down on time spent erasing spammy or irrelevant communication. Secondly, it allows those interacting to find out more about each other through profiles and media, making it more personal than email.
It’s Always Good to Vary Your Marketing Management Efforts
While email marketing, as we’ve seen, is an integral aspect of many of today’s marketing strategies, that doesn’t mean it’s the only one. Often, the best marketing plans involve several different types working together.
That could be anything from social media marketing like LinkedIn, direct mail, email or more. Just like cross-training leads to a stronger body, a varied marketing plan will likely help to keep things stable and strong for your business.
Plus, if one marketing attempt suddenly falls flat, you’ll already be implementing other forms.
Need Some Help with Marketing Management for Your Business?
The reality is that marketing management can eat up a lot of time that your business needs for other tasks. It could be smart to outsource your marketing in that case. The best email marketing service can provide a varied repertoire of marketing possibilities.
Our team at Smart to Finish can help with email marketing and a number of other internet marketing strategies. And the good news is you won’t need to chase clients or customers anymore. Also, you’ll be able to focus more on building relationships with people who are already interested in what you have to offer.
If you’d like to learn more about our marketing management services, we’d be happy to chat with you. You can schedule a free consultation with us.
by Amber Miller | Nov 6, 2018 | Blog, Business Development, Marketing, Virtual Assisting
“You will never feel truly satisfied by work until you are satisfied by life.” – Heather Schuck
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is a crucial element to both business success and personal happiness. For entrepreneurs, this is often easier said than done. Work time tends to spill over into personal time, and the line of separation between the two becomes blurred. Surprisingly, the key to managing both can often be boiled down into two simple words of advice…
Schedule it
As a successful business owner, you likely already plan out much of your work day in advance. Whether you maintain your own schedule or delegate projects to a virtual assistant (VA), the simple act of carving out time for necessary tasks sets you up for effective time management.
Although this seems so basic to essential business functioning, it is often lost when it comes to planning our personal lives. Grocery store trips, exercise, relaxation, or time away is not treated with the same level of priority (or may feel silly to schedule on a calendar).
We make the mistake of assuming we will find the time to handle these functions as they arise. For an already stretched-thin business owner, that time can be few and far between!
“You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.”
– Charles Buxton
Creating time
For personal health, family, fun and relaxation is essential for a healthy work/life balance. Regardless of its appeal, this notion can feel intimidating (or impossible) to an entrepreneur who is already bogged down with more than they feel they have time to manage. They may wonder “how can I commit to scheduling personal time, when I am short on work time the way it is? What about the spontaneous challenges that are bound to arise?”
If you find there are simply not enough hours in the day, perhaps it’s time to consider hiring an assistant.
“You can do anything, but not everything” – David Allen
As a business owner, giving up (some) control of the reigns can be the most difficult – and most profitable – decision you make. By allowing yourself to focus on your strengths, you can increase growth and profitability while delegating everything else to your VA. A quality virtual assistant or team of virtual assistants can handle anything from marketing and growing your business, social media, SEO, administrative tasks, customer service, accounting, website design, and more. While you maintain control over all executive decisions, your VA acts as your right hand: keeping everything running smoothly.
By freeing up space on your calendar and scheduling times to focus on personal health, relaxation and family commitments, you are able to keep a properly balanced life – offering your best self to your clients, business, colleagues.
by Amber Miller | Jun 4, 2018 | Blog, Blogging, Business Development, Marketing
Content marketing is the best way to get information to your clients or customers. This is also the perfect way to gain the trust of your customers and increase your sales.
The problem is choosing the most effective type of content and presenting it in an attention getting manner.
Here are some tips on choosing the most effective content for your content marketing.
- Point out the competition’s mistakes. People, in general, want to avoid painful experiences as much as possible. Pointing out all the ways your competitors fail to make life easier for your potential customers works to your advantage. Top ten lists on this kind of thing such as “10 most common mistakes” or “10 things you don’t want to do” are especially effective in driving people to you, rather than your competitor. I’m not saying you should specify or point fingers at specific competitors here!! That’s not professional (or nice). Instead, use general statements and point out what makes your company better than others.
- Give out industry “secrets.” They are not really secrets but if you let people think they are then their trust in you grows. Create content with bulleted lists showing how to do things faster and easier or how to make something work better. People love lists about things because lists are easy to filter through and pick out those points that pertain to them specifically. They also help people retain the information.
- Organize it for them. One of the biggest hurdles for some people is the organization of certain things. Do the work for them by giving them plans and ways to organize things to make their life simpler. If you can make something straightforward and easy for someone, they will appreciate it and repay you with their business.
- Answer common questions. When you’re discussing a common problem or situation, people tend to have the same questions. By providing the answers before someone even asks the questions, you make them feel more comfortable. It gives them the impression your company truly cares about them and their needs because you’ve taken the time to learn what they want or need.
- Latest trends reports. This is a way to help your clients and customers keep up to date with the latest information from your company. This type of content lists the newest information or technologies and explains them in an easy to understand fashion.
Effective content marketing is all about continually giving the client or customer whatever information they deem useful. It demonstrates to prospects your company is paying attention to the needs of their clients and responding in an resourceful and expeditious manner. If the frequency and/or quality of information begins to slow down, your client base will begin to find another source of information, taking their sales dollars with them.
Making use of a virtual assistant writing service is a good way to fulfill the needs of consistent and effective content writing. By using writers to help create your content, you can easily continue to provide fresh, new content. Once you have the articles, reports and other documents, offer them to your customers freely through email or a blog. Not only will your customers thank you in replies and comments but, more importantly, with their continued loyalty. The Smart to Finish team can help you create content and update your blogs and newsletters. Let’s talk 🙂
by Amber Miller | Jun 30, 2017 | Blog, Infusionsoft
After using Infusionsoft for awhile, you’ll soon learn that to make the most out of the application you’ll need some additional tools. Below are just a few of the add-ons that the Smart to Finish Team recommend and can set-up for you too!
If you need better reporting and quality business metrics, this app is for you. By adding Graphly to Infusionsoft you’ll be able to make better decisions for your business. Here are just some of the reports available:
- Value reports: You can determine how much your new buyers spend and how much you spent to acquire them. You can use this data to ensure you’re getting the right new customers, the right way.
- Lead source: You can see which lead sources generated sales of a particular product and/or view the net income of each lead source. This will help you determine where to spend your time (and money!) marketing.
- Campaign email stats: Easily see the opens, clicks and conversions for every email in a campaign. How nice would it be to see at-a-glance what emails are really driving your conversions?
Imagine having your Infusionsoft dashboard look like this:
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by Amber Miller | Jun 23, 2017 | Blog, Infusionsoft
It’s that time again – the Summer slow down. Many entrepreneurs experience a business slump as their communities take time to relax and vacation with families. It’s tempting to join the lazy days of Summer but now is the perfect time to get your business ready for the busy season right around the corner. Use this time to plan your future launches, tighten your business processes and cleanup your systems. If you’re an Infusionsoft user, it’s the perfect time to tune-up your application so it’s running smoothly and working hard for you so you don’t have to! Take time to perform these 5 tasks so you’ll finish the year strong:
1. Organize Tags
The beauty of Infusionsoft is that it allows you to create as many tags as you want so that you can properly segment your list. The bad thing is that you have most likely created a TON of tags and some you may not even remember why you created them at all! Take time to run a report of all your tags and their categories. Go through the list and delete what you aren’t using. CAUTION: tags can control automation in your application; so don’t delete a tag unless you’re sure it’s not being used to trigger something. The Smart to Finish Team can review and clean-up your tags, perform this task regularly so it’s not a big job and better yet, set-up a tagging structure so your tags are always organized!
2. Update Legacy Items
If you have old follow-up sequences, web forms, and/or campaigns, take time to put those into the new campaign builder. That way your emails will be mobile-ready and you can use new features to further automate your systems. If you want to enjoy your Summer, the Smart to Finish Team can create these updated campaigns for you while you lounge by the pool!
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by Amber Miller | Jun 16, 2017 | Blog, Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft is a leading CRM and email marketing software for small business. It is one of the most popular applications on the market and more and more small business owners are using it to improve their marketing every day. Why is it so popular? Here are 5 reasons why Infusionsoft is good for your business:
1. Email Marketing that Works
Did you know that on average it can take anywhere from 5-12(!) touches from you before a lead turns into a customer? Do you have time to personally email everyone on your list this many times? Of course not! Infusionsoft does this work for you – automatically. Plus, these communications are targeted so your leads and customers are getting the information from you they actually want. This saves you time, helps you build better relationships and prevents the dreaded unsubscribe.
2. Know More About Your Leads
Infusionsoft tracks where your leads are coming from so you can leverage that information. At any time you can run a report to see where your leads originated, how many sales you have from those lead sources and more. For example you may discover the majority of your leads are from Facebook, so you can decide to place more effort on your Facebook marketing and less on a channel that isn’t performing as well. (more…)
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