Quantcast
Channel: Marketing
Viewing all 1252 articles
Browse latest View live

How to Craft the Perfect Email

0
0

How to Craft the Perfect Email written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Some small business owners are intimidated by email marketing. Having to write an individual email is scary enough if you don’t consider yourself a writer. The thought of sending an email out to an entire mailing list can be downright terrifying!

Fortunately, the perfect email is about more than just writing. And even for the written elements, once you’ve figured out the essential components, it’s easy for even those more timid writers among us to excel.

Here are the steps that go into crafting the perfect email.

Start with a Strong Subject Line

According to Campaign Manager, the average office worker receives 121 emails per day. That’s a lot of activity in just one inbox, and it means that you need to do something from the start to catch your readers’ eyes.

This starts with a strong subject line. There are a number of approaches you can take to make sure your subject line stands out. Consider including one of the following elements:

  • Create a sense of urgency – “Sale ends TONIGHT at 9pm”
  • Make an offer they can’t refuse – “Free shipping on orders of $25 or more”
  • Pique their interest – “What’s the secret to maintaining a healthy lawn?”
  • Provide value – “5 Tips for Hosting the Perfect July 4 BBQ”

An eye-catching subject line just might include an emoji, too. Of course, including emojis won’t be the appropriate choice for all businesses, but for some it can be a fun way to stand out in a text-heavy inbox.

Personalize the Message

There are a few steps that go into personalizing email messaging. You should begin by segmenting your lists. By breaking your customers and prospects down into groups based on demographics (like age, location, or gender) or by behavior (past purchases, most recent interaction with your brand, etc.) you can target different subsets of your population with messaging that will be most relevant to them.

This doesn’t mean you need to reinvent the wheel for each variant, but there are little steps you can take to tweak the messaging to best appeal to each group. Let’s say you own a landscaping business. You’re offering a big start of the summer promotion; anyone who schedules regular yard work appointments at the start of the summer will get 10 percent off each session.

This is great news for all of your customers, but you can tailor the messaging based on how you’ve segmented your list. Let’s say you’ve broken your list down by types of services those customers currently receive. For those who take advantage of your gardening services, make the messaging about how you’ll keep their flowers in bloom all season long, for a fraction of the price. For those who use your lawn mowing services, the email can say something like “The only thing better than the smell of fresh-cut grass is saving 10% off your lawn care services this summer.”

To further personalize the messages, take advantage of merge tags, which allow you to include the name of the recipient in the greeting, rather than a generic “Hey there.”

Write Smart Body Copy

This is where those non-writers start to get intimidated. What is good copy, anyway? Really it’s about being concise, clear, and helpful.

Keep sentences short, eliminate jargon and technical speak, and make it very clear what you’re offering in your email. Because we do all get so many emails each day, no one has time to sit down and read a thousand word email. Keep it to 250-500 words maximum, and devise ways to draw attention to the most important keywords. This can be as simple as bolding relevant text or including an image that draws the viewer’s eye to the most critical part of the message.

If you’re feeling shaky in your copywriting skills, check out this list of dos and don’ts.

Incorporate Elements Beyond Text

Creating the perfect email is all about standing out from the crowd. And what better way to do that than to add elements beyond text? A stunning photo, an informative infographic, or a quick video are all ways to add other media into your messaging.

If you’re going to go this route, set it up with a brief sentence or two, and then let the media speak for itself. If needed, include captions on images so that viewers have more context. Videos should also include subtitles, so that those viewing in a place where they can’t turn their volume up can still grasp the content (a service like Rev can help you with your transcription needs).

End with a Call to Action

Once you’ve dazzled your readers with relevant, personalized content and exciting visual elements, it’s time to bring it on home. One simple, clear call to action that’s tied in with the rest of the email is the way to do that.

If your email was about a sale going on right now, include a “Shop the sale” button that takes readers to your e-commerce site. If your email was an offer for a free ebook, end with a “Get the book” link. Whatever the case may be, make sure that the call to action flows with the rest of the email content and is set apart visually so that readers can’t possibly miss it.

And Don’t Forget the Unsubscribe Option

Last but not least, you want to give your readers a chance to unsubscribe. Not only is it the law to give folks a chance to opt-out of your marketing messaging, it can also help you maintain a clean email list. When your email is going directly to spam folders or getting deleted without being opened week after week, that puts you at risk of being punished by ISPs. A clean email list, with higher open rates and fewer people marking you as spam, ensures that your messaging is ending up in the inboxes of your most engaged subscribers.

Once you get the hang of creating compelling marketing emails, you must keep it up! Staying in regular contact with your subscribers is the best way to remain top-of-mind, so establish a cadence for your email marketing and stick to it.


The Ins and Outs of Marketing Automation

0
0

The Ins and Outs of Marketing Automation written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Jason VandeBoom
Podcast Transcript

Jason Vandeboom headshotToday on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I visit with founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign, Jason VandeBoom.

ActiveCampaign is an SaaS solution built in the cloud that is focused on marketing automation. Managing everything from email campaigns to SMS messaging to sales and CRM is possible through the platform, and their predictive technology can help you to send highly individualized content to the right customers at the right time to generate the best results.

VandeBoom and I talk all things marketing automation and personalization on this episode.

Questions I ask Jason VandeBoom:

  • How do we really ensure personalization?
  • How do we manage customized timing and content within automation?
  • What’s the best practice for getting more information about customers after they’ve initially reached out?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • How to strike the right balance between automation and human touch.
  • Why it’s important to think about content delivery method as well as the message.
  • Why the future of marketing automation is about individualization.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Jason VandeBoom:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

Gusto Logo_full berry_small

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Gusto. Everyone loves payday, but loving a payroll provider? That’s a little weird. Still, small businesses across the country love running payroll with Gusto.

Gusto is making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. You no longer have to be a big company to get great technology, great benefits, and great service to take care of your team.

To help support the show, Gusto is offering our listeners an exclusive, limited-time deal. Sign up today, and you’ll get 3 months free once you run your first payroll. Just go to Gusto.com/TAPE.

Transcript of The Ins and Outs of Marketing Automation

0
0

Transcript of The Ins and Outs of Marketing Automation written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

Gusto Logo_full berry_small

 

John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by Gusto, modern, easy payroll benefits for small businesses across the country, and because you’re a listener, you get three months free when you run your first payroll. Find out at gusto.com/tape.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jason VandeBoom. He is the CEO and founder of the CRM and marketing automation platform known as ActiveCampaign and we’re going to talk about how CRM and how relationship building and how email marketing and marketing automation have changed for the better. Jason’s going to talk about some of the things they are doing there at ActiveCampaign. So Jason, thanks for joining me.

Jason VandeBoom: Yeah, thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.

John Jantsch: So you know, marketing automation has been with us for a while and it certainly was a real boon I think for a lot of folks that were at least attempting to kind of help drive the funnel or drive people down the funnel or whatever the term that they used for it, but it’s really not that personal or at least in the traditional way. I think a lot of people have found a lot of ways to abuse it, let’s put it that way. So what is your take on marketing automation space in general right now?

Jason VandeBoom: Yeah, I think if you look in the past, it started from a good place, saving time, maybe personalizing experiences and whatnot, but ultimately the focus has been so much on kind of the time savings, replacing humans as much as possible and that leads to experiences that are less than ideal. Also, as an industry, we always talk about personalization, we talk about highly personalized to the contact level, but then when we look at what you can build within marketing automation platforms, it’s oftentimes personalization doesn’t mean personalization by the individual. It means a grouping of people or a segment of people getting these unique experiences. So that makes them not actually that unique at all because there’s so many other contacts or customers going through that same workflow.

John Jantsch: Well, and I think there’s no question that at least… You know, you go to the conferences today and everybody’s talking about personalization, personalization, and I think that for some people it’s not gone beyond, Hey, first name, here’s my email.

Jason VandeBoom: Exactly. Yeah.

John Jantsch: And I think that that’s the nut we have to crack, isn’t it? I mean, it’s great talking about personalization, but how do we do it? I started the show off talking about customer experience automation and predictive sending. So let’s just lay that out. I mean, how does that work that’s any different than designing campaigns so to speak?

Jason VandeBoom: Sure. Yeah. And I think there’s those two focuses, it’s the bringing humans in at the right time and then functionality that can be developed and predictive sending is a good example of that where instead of thinking about messaging that’s delivered at the same time for a group of individuals, really learning from the contact level when is the best time, and not just when is the best time to open, but when is the best time for someone to be willing or open to respond to the engagement from the brand.

John Jantsch: Let me stop you right there because I just want to clarify that. So how would… Let’s say we send out, we have this list, we think they all care about the same thing or they care about the same product and we send them an email or something that explains a new offering. I mean, how would then timing be changed? Would it be changed based on the behavior, how they interacted or didn’t interact or what they did would, would actually automatically sort of put them in another timing?

Jason VandeBoom: Yeah, so a couple of different things. If you don’t know a lot about them, then we have to go to baseline ideas that have been done in the past of just like overall time zone, overall characteristics, compared to other contacts that kind of follow the same attributes and whatnot. But then as you get a better understanding of that individual, the timing should change. So predictive sending is very much about a message going out, right? But where we’re going with that as well is not just like in terms of a message, but think about predictively figuring out the optimal time for a sales rep to reach out. So really finding that blend of like automation and human touch, because timing plays such a key role with most any sales process and also post-sale process of getting someone to actually see value out of whatever you’re selling.

John Jantsch: So another thing that’s very common is we’ll have an ebook. It has a great promise, a great message, and people want to get it, but just because they downloaded that, I mean doesn’t necessarily mean… I mean they were solving a different problem. They were in a different stage of their journey or searching. I mean how do we then kind of take this thinking and say, “Okay, let’s add what we think they need in terms of content”? I mean how do we actually, so not just send different timing but maybe different content altogether? Is that part of kind of the new norm?

Jason VandeBoom: Yeah. No, I think that’s something that has been talked about for years and years and years and it’s ultimately fallen into the idea of just like then use split testing or something like that. Split tests down emails is nothing new. Split testing within an automation workflow is something we’ve had for quite some time and some others have started to grow their own versions of that, but ultimately that still is trying to figure out like one solution that’s going to work well for everyone or for a group or for a segment of contacts, when in reality what we should be thinking about is within that content of the message, whether it be an email, whether it be on another channel, determining based on that individual contact what type of content would work best and not necessarily trying to find the number one winner across a variety of options.

Jason VandeBoom: So doing that for messaging is very much… that’s kind of where we’re spending a bunch of time right now and then also taking the concepts and fundamentals of like split testing actual workflows, but doing that in a way where it’s not split testing to some singular end result, but actually finding the right paths and the right content by the individual contact.

John Jantsch: And so the implication, if we’re going to use the word automation here, is that I’m not just sitting here with a giant spreadsheet of all my split tests and plugging in data and then redirecting or remessaging. The idea here is that there’s an automation aspect of that.

Jason VandeBoom: Exactly, yeah, and that there’s an intelligence built in where to try to create those, like right now it’s very static experiences that you have to try to create to create these personalized workflows. Instead of having to build out thousands, tens of thousands, of workflows to try to get that granularity and personalization, that trust can be enabled within a platform to help you get there faster.

John Jantsch: For those that aren’t familiar with the backend or workings of ActiveCampaign, they use something they call automations where you can kind of drag and drop, do this, then do that, if they do this do that. So how, with that really, really brief explanation, how has now… how has the artificial intelligence that’s being built in here and the decision making process, how does that change that kind of drag and drop approach?

Jason VandeBoom: Yeah, so the approach is still there. It just provides… That’s the general theme of a direction. Meaning a good way of thinking about automations is just thinking about a flow chart. You have a start with your flowchart, that’s typically the trigger. Something happens to create the automation and then you have a sequence of events like you said, and then the only time you have actually different experiences would be if you have like if and else, so like if an action occurs then do something, otherwise go down a different path. And that’s how you create that like tree looking situation within a flowchart.

Jason VandeBoom: So taking that but making the actual paths vary by the contact and the independent timing between those actions, whether it be sending a message or when’s the optimal time to get sales or customer success involved, and then also within the content. So you’re personalizing the paths, you’re personalizing the actual content, you’re personalizing the timing, creating a really going from a static experience that everyone sort of hits all those check boxes at the same time with the same content to something that is far more dynamic and individual to the individual contact.

John Jantsch: And so then is the software platform merely making recommendations to me as the user that hey, we’re seeing this or this format of content is getting all the play. You ought to move this direction or is it just automatically making those alterations for me?

Jason VandeBoom: Yeah, so we believe that nobody would really trust it out of the box if it was just like we’re going to make all the decisions for you. So instead of that, you still know your business more than anyone else at the end of the day. So you probably know your customer propel, you know what will probably work one way or the other. So allowing you to kind of set that up and then choose as you gain more and more confidence with the platform what you want to allow the platform to play around with, so whether it be the timing aspect or if you want to… you like the idea of personalized content, you don’t necessarily want to split test it and you want it to actually be a little bit more dynamic by the contact, allowing you to sort of enable these different pieces as you gain more and more trust.

Jason VandeBoom: Now we’re also working on ways where we can make suggestions. Things that maybe are not thought of today or maybe you have automations that are currently running and we’re seeing something with the data that just, you know, maybe you haven’t analyzed quite yet or just something that may not make sense outside of what the data actually tells and to surface some of those as recommendations, but still then allowing that business owner or that marketer to choose to opt in on some of those things. Eventually the idea is it should not… like a true platform that’s focused on CX automation shouldn’t feel like a tool. It should feel more like a business partner, it should feel like it’s actually adding value, enabling you to do more.

John Jantsch: Everyone loves payday, but loving a payroll provider? That’s a little weird. Still small businesses across the country love running payroll with Gusto. Gusto automatically files and pays your taxes. It’s super easy to use and you can add benefits and management tools to help take care of your team and keep your business safe. It’s loyal, it’s modern. You might fall in love yourself. Hey, and as a listener, you get three months free when you run your first payroll. So try a demo and test it out at gusto.com/tape that’s gusto.com/tape.

John Jantsch: So one of the things that I think a lot of business owners struggle with obviously is you hear about a platform like this and you think, “Oh this is great. This is going to do all the work for me.” But in reality, if we don’t set our businesses or our lead capture processes up on the front end right, I mean it’s probably not going to collect anything that you could do anything with. So what are some best practices for say, routing and segmenting and capturing somebody… enough data about somebody so that we can kind of understand what bucket to put them in even?

Jason VandeBoom: Yeah. So a couple things. I would say one err on capturing more data than you may even think you need right now. By having that capture and having that capture historically allows you to actually be able to do something in the future. The other thing I would spend a lot of time, not so much thinking about tactically how you’re going to cause a conversion or how you’re going to cause certain actions to take place, but what are those key pieces? What are those key conversions that you care about?

Jason VandeBoom: Sometimes it’s obvious, like it’s actually purchasing the product or whatnot, but then with your own insight and knowledge into, going back to you know your business more than anyone else or any other platform from a different vantage point, what are those influencers you think that may assist along the way? Like what are those key points where someone starts to find value and whatnot? And that isn’t always like a quantitative sort of thinking. Oftentimes it’s much more qualitative in the way of you just think something has some sort of a weight to it. Where all the sudden they start seeing the value or they become a little bit more hooked with the product or service you’re offering.

Jason VandeBoom: When you start figuring out what those are, then you can build out more tactical execution as to how do you drive more of that behavior and how do you drive ultimately to that conversion. But if you’re not thinking about those and if you’re not thinking about the key conversion events, you’re really just going to struggle quite a bit and there’s nothing that can really help, because everything has to work to some end goal.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I think one of the things that I’ve always struggled with frankly is I have a couple of very unique segments and some listeners are probably going to say, “Yeah, you’re not doing this well,” but they need very different messages, but it’s not always obvious who they are. I know that sounds really vague, but how hard is it in that kind of initial, hey, here’s a piece of content that you found really compelling. You wanted to give me your email address, but now I want to know who you are. And you know, common wisdom is, hey, just get the email address and don’t put any more friction up, but by taking that path, I’m also not learning how to serve them.

Jason VandeBoom: Yep.

John Jantsch: So help me out. What’s the best practice for should… Once somebody gives that and they get the content, should we immediately go to asking them to sort of self identify?

Jason VandeBoom: I think it’s a couple of things. One, I do believe in the less is more up front to get the process going. So maybe you just start with that email address. Based on that, ideally your first couple of pieces of content or first messages going out have some clear… like if it’s actual content that’s enabling something, there’s a couple of different varieties in there. So based on engagement with that, you can classify and don’t just treat it as like there’s a link click or something like that and now you know that someone has something. You can set maybe a tag or something to that contact so you have a general understanding, but then trying to find different ways, just basic like profiling of as they take more action over time to get something, either from their action or them to fill something out additionally in the future.

Jason VandeBoom: But it also goes back to just kind of testing overall, because there’s the what content are they interested in, which I think a lot of people focus on, and there’s the how do they actually like to consume the content, which I think more people need to focus on sooner than later. And that could be simple as like some people like to consume heavy content and versus like more of a CliffsNotes style and a bunch of different similar types of variations. But I think that piece focusing on both at the same time in small iterations, not trying to get it all at once, is probably the best path forward.

John Jantsch: So let’s outline just kind of a very typical use case. It’s really common these days to have an indoctrination series. So somebody is new to you, they come and they say, “Hey, I like what you’re doing here. I want to get this checklist. Get on your list, start getting stuff from you,” and then we kind of drip out, typically been written as an automation. Maybe we put two days or three days between each and we drip out what we think will be useful information in a sequence of maybe over 45 or 60 days. They should know, assuming they read it all, a lot more about us. How would that very common practice be changed in a CX automation predictive sending way?

Jason VandeBoom: Sure. So for one, instead of having a single piece of content each step of the way, ultimately having the ability to have multiple versions but not testing for a single source of truth. So as you have a better understanding of both what types of content they’re looking to consume but how they want to consume it, it can start personalizing to that behavior. Additionally, there’s different types of people for consuming the content and maybe different levels of maturity if you will or want for consumption in terms of timing.

Jason VandeBoom: So based on interaction, based on if we can start grouping things up based on attributes that are known prior, even if they’re anonymous attributes such as like the pages they visited, sources, things like that to possibly accelerate that entire process that you’re talking about, but to do both of those things at more of an individual level instead of just trying to get like the one overall, and I think that’s the theme of where things are going in the future is all too often in the past we’ve really tried to optimize for this one overall workflow or this one overall like drip set of emails that overall is the best. But we’re leaving a lot on the table by really having to just focus on the overall instead of thinking about it at a far more personalized level.

John Jantsch: So the typical sort of person that actually is very engaged, ready to solve their problem, they want to consume the content in five days instead of five weeks would get that experience because they demonstrated that behavior.

Jason VandeBoom: Yes. But then ultimately, you know, at the end of the day, try and get all of this to tie to like going back to those key pieces that you know that are going to be drivers for your conversions and your actual conversions as well, because at the end of the day that’s what we should all be optimizing for is those known sort of events or transformative moments where they’re actually converting.

John Jantsch: Yeah. So it’s just a matter of of how we deliver them to that event.

Jason VandeBoom: Exactly.

John Jantsch: Great. So what’s in the future then? I know we’re talking about stuff that is new and people are still wrapping their heads around, but I’m guessing that you’ve road mapped an evolution of this even.

Jason VandeBoom: Yeah, so quite a bit, and it all revolves… there’s a lot more to do with timing. When you start thinking about when humans are involved in any form of a process, the timing is so critical, whether it be a phone call or reach outs and whatnot. So really digging into that further. The content piece, we’re just sort of scratching the surface of. We’re investing quite a bit into that right now. Making a truly personalized content where we’re not just testing to a single end result, but really the best variation and trying to get predictive content across channels as well and not just stick to just email.

Jason VandeBoom: And then there’s the concept of like dynamic routing, so like we have, you know, as marketers, we create these funnels and whatnot that you’ve been describing and they’re not like normally just thought up of from nothing. They’re, to your point, it’s well thought out, been doing these for quite a while, and so allowing a marketer to create a couple of these and then dynamically placing context down them, but not necessarily testing for the single one answer, but finding the optimal one.

Jason VandeBoom: After that, it’s very much about how do we take all of these practices and provide predictions and provide ideas. So seeing all the data, so you know, all the movement doing these personalizations and whatnot, we should be able to predict more and more. So even as you start off as a marketer using the platform, you should be able to get guidance as to like, here’s something, here’s a recipe for a sequence of events that we think would improve sales by X or save Y number of hours building off how do you make more and more of these predictions and how you actually follow up with the outcome, that’s ultimately where we’re looking to go.

John Jantsch: Of course it means you have to pay attention to what’s actually going on behind the scenes doesn’t it?

Jason VandeBoom: Yeah.

John Jantsch: And I mean that sort of facetiously, but sort of not. Because it’s not a matter of setting these things up if you’re not going to analyze them and learn from them, then you know you probably won’t get nearly as much out of them.

Jason VandeBoom: Yeah.

John Jantsch: So Jason, I know people can find all they want about ActiveCampaign at activecampaign.com but are you… this is June of 2019 so dependent upon when people are listening to this, are you doing conferences or any kind of roadshow or anything that people need to know about?

Jason VandeBoom: Yeah, sure. I’m at a couple of things in the upcoming months. I think Traction is the next conference I’ll be at. Otherwise we have, we’re doing over 200 marketing events this year throughout the world where we’re really talking about marketing strategy and whatnot and helping people grow their business. That can be found at activecampaign.com/events, .com/events and then other than that, anyone wanting to reach out, I can always be reached at jason@activecampaign.com

John Jantsch: Awesome. Thanks Jason, and hopefully we’ll run into you next time I’m up in the Chicago area.

Jason VandeBoom: Sounds good. Thank you.

5 Higher-Level Optimizations You Can Make to Drive Better Amazon Ad Performance

Taking Relationship Marketing to the Next Level

0
0

Taking Relationship Marketing to the Next Level written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Zvi Band
Podcast TranscriptZvi Band headshot

Today on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I chat with Zvi Band. He is a the founder of Contactually, and a hacker and community builder.

Contactually is a smart CRM tool that can help you manage relationships in the long term. He’s also invested in growing relationships and connections in his own backyard, in the Washington, DC area. He co-founded Proudly Made in DC for local startups and the DC Tech Startups Meetup group.

His book, Success Is in Your Sphere, delves even further into the topic, providing a step-by-step approach to leveraging your existing relationships to your advantage.

On today’s episode, Band shares what he’s learned about networking and relationship building over the years, and teaches listeners best practices for getting the most out of their existing contact list.

Questions I ask Zvi Band:

  • How does technology make it harder (or easier) to have intentional relationships?
  • What is the role of social media in intentional relationships?
  • What is the difference between networking and relationship marketing?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Why your business’s most important asset might be your contact list, rather than your pipeline.
  • How to prioritize our contact efforts.
  • Why asking for help can actually help you to build relationships.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Zvi Band:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

ZeroBounce logo

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by ZeroBounce.

Email is still an important marketing channel, but it’s gotten harder to get into inboxes. ZeroBounce is an email verification system that will validate your opt-ins. They integrate with all of the major services you’re already using like MailChimp and HubSpot. Check them out at ZeroBounce.net.

Transcript of Taking Relationship Marketing to the Next Level

0
0

Transcript of Taking Relationship Marketing to the Next Level written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

ZeroBounce logo

John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by ZeroBounce, an email validation system that integrates with all the major ESPs to make sure, hey, your mail doesn’t bounce. Check it out at zerobounce.net.

John Jantsch: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Zvi Band. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of the CRM platform, Contactually. He’s also the author of a book we’re going to talk about today, Success Is in Your Sphere: Leverage the Power of Relationships to Achieve Your Business Goals.

John Jantsch: So, welcome to the show, Zvi.

Zvi Band: John, thanks so much for having me on today.

John Jantsch: So, I’m going to start with a hard question. A lot of times we just do some warm up, but I’m going right after a hard question for you.

Zvi Band: Let’s do it.

John Jantsch: Then you’re free to say the answer is both. But, would it be safe to say that you have learned a ton about networking from, you know, the power users of Contactually? Or would it be safe to say that you wrote this book, because people still don’t get how to network?

Zvi Band: Both.

John Jantsch: I thought it was going to be hard. Anytime a guest hesitates like that, I know I’ve asked a hard question.

Zvi Band: Yeah. I mean, well, I hate to say, I felt like I could pretty easily answer that. I was checking, like wait, is there a got you in there? Yeah, I mean, listen, you know, we wrote the book, you know, for those two reasons, you know? I would say it’s kind of, you know, the reverse in that, so many people, you know, in the seven half years that we’ve been running Contactually, so many people were coming to us saying, “Hey, I get how to use your software, but how do I grow my business with relationships?” Right?

Zvi Band: It’s almost like, you know, I’ve used this before. It’s almost like we’re giving a chef’s knife to someone who didn’t know how to cook. So we realized, and the purpose of the book is to essentially, you know, teach people how to cook, teach people how to grow your business leveraging relationships, how to apply strategy behind it. The content for the book came from, you know, observing how, you know, tens of thousands of professionals who have been able to successfully grow their business, you know, via relationships. So, it went hand in hand together.

John Jantsch: Yeah, yeah. I’m sure you did observe some people doing things that you hadn’t thought of that were pretty cool uses.

Zvi Band: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are things that are totally counterintuitive that even came across in the book. Like this notion of the Ben Franklin effect that, you know, in order to build rapport with someone, you know, that you actually asked them for a favor. That’s something I’d never even heard of or thought of. I didn’t realize, and it was only kind of after, again, after years and years of years of doing this, and we spent four years, you know, researching and writing the book.

Zvi Band: But the biggest blocker for people is really consistency, is like they kind of can get what to do, but they’re not able to personally act on it. So it was all of these things, and it was such a gift writing this book, and such a great journey.

John Jantsch: So, maybe for those people that aren’t familiar with Contactually, you know, I use the term generically CRM platform. But maybe you could set the table for how you feel Contactually is different than what many people might think of as a typical CRM platform.

Zvi Band: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, when most people think about CRM’s, they think about it in a sales context, usually a transactional sale, right? I’m trying to get someone from one end of the funnel to the other, to them being a customer or them being totally disqualified, and that’s it. But if you’re in a relationship-driven business, it’s not necessarily thinking about just the transaction, it’s about that overall relationship, right?

Zvi Band: You know, a real estate agent, for example, gets most of their business via people they’ve worked with in their past, or people they already know. You know, you and I as consultants, you know, and we get our most speaking opportunities from people in our sphere of influence, people in our network. So it’s important to nurture those relationships on an ongoing basis, not just kind of, you know, one time push them through a process.

Zvi Band: So, the way that we think about Contactually, is it’s everything’s about the relationship, not about the deal. So some people call us like your contact manager on steroids. Sure, you can think about it. But it’s instead of thinking like, all right, if the most important asset in your business isn’t necessarily the deals in your pipeline, but the relationships in your database, that’s what Contactually has really been focusing on.

John Jantsch: So, one of the things I think that’s been funny over the last few years is … because as you described, kind of this relationship I think, and my father was a bag carrying, you know, sales person that had his accounts. I mean, really had his relationships, because they were happy to see him. They did see him, you know, once a quarter, you know, that kind of thing.

John Jantsch: So I mean, the idea of specialty for salespeople, you know, treasuring those relationships, I think that’s always been a big deal. What I think is kind of interesting is that technology has actually made it, I think, harder in some ways, I should say the way we use technology, has actually made it harder in some ways to have what you call intentional relationships.

Zvi Band:  Oh, yeah. No, you’re absolutely spot on. I mean, I think we’re living in this absolutely amazing world where we can work with anyone around the world, but it also means that our customers, you know, and the people that would otherwise be working with us, can work with anyone around the world too. So that knowledge gap is gone, because, you know, the consumers I work with can obviously know more than us. That skills gap is gone, because, you know, we’re no longer that unique person in our industry or in our neighborhood that has that skillset.

Zvi Band: So that reputation becomes all the more important. But the problem is, is that, you know, while we can be so connected with so many people, you know, most social platforms are geared around getting us to have, you know, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 LinkedIn connections or Twitter followers, or things like that. Well, that means we’re going a mile wide and an inch deep, because the human mind can only remember so much information about so many people in there.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I see, I’m not going to point fingers at any generations or anything of that nature, but I see, you know, folks scrolling through their phone, you know, like, like, like, like, like, you know, 300 a day. It’s like, is that engagement? You know, are we really doing anything with that? I mean, so, let me ask you, in this intentional relationship game, I mean, what is the role of social media?

Zvi Band: Yeah, and you’re right. I mean, there’s a part of this book that’s kind of seemingly come out of that, you know, our intent is also just to help people rebuild those social skills, right? I don’t necessarily know my neighbor as well as I do. You know, someone who’s, you know, across the world. So it’s no surprise that Cigna released survey results. They surveyed 20,000 adults age 18 and over in the United States, and most American adults are considered lonely, which is crazy in this world where I’m surrounded by these social objects.

Zvi Band: But I see it, you know, I see it in myself, you know? Open up, you know, Facebook and I’ll flip through, and, you know, I realized like, I don’t know about any of them. It’s kind of that, you know, that test on social media of, you know, pick any random, you know, LinkedIn or Facebook contact, and really ask yourself like, “All right, do I know this person well enough that if they reached out to me and asked for $20, would I lend it to them? Or vice versa, if I were in a position where I needed $20 all of a sudden, would they be willing to give it to me, right?”

Zvi Band: So, yeah, I think the important thing with social media is to use that as a source of information, to then identify what are the relationships, or what’s going on with the people I care about, and then make sure that you’re going deep enough beyond just a like or comment here and there.

John Jantsch: So, there have been a lot of books written on networking, and I think that … well, let me ask you, how would you differentiate relationship building and typical networking?

Zvi Band: Yeah, absolutely. I think they’re definitely very closely related. What networking or what do people think of networking? You know, let’s be honest. They think about, you know, the more the act of going out and building new relationships, right? You know, whether it’s connecting with people on LinkedIn or you know, going into kind of, you know, a poorly lit room or conference CEO ballroom and trading business cards, and trying to create net new relationships.

Zvi Band: What relationship marketing is more focused on as well, how do I grow my business or achieve the goals I’m trying to hit, leveraging the relationships I already have? You know, what we oftentimes miss out on is that, you know, the best relationships and the most valuable ones, are usually the ones that we’re already connected to, you know, relate to networking.

Zvi Band: You know, one issue I had when early on in my career, and I still encounter from time to time, because I’m not perfect too, is, you know, you’ll go to a conference and you’ll do lots of networking, and you’ll exchange business cards with people, and you’re like, “Great, I have all these new connections.” You put those business cards in your back pocket, and the next time you see those business cards is when you’re fishing them out of the laundry machine, because, you know, you didn’t even take them out of your pocket, right?

Zvi Band: So that’s kind of the issue that we face these days. That’s why relationship marketing is that strategy behind leveraging the relationships that you already have in your sphere in some way.

John Jantsch: Well, and it’s interesting, you’ve used the word leverage several times, and I was gonna ask about that specifically, because, I mean, I think everybody knows this. Our existing customers, for example, are probably a greater source of new business, as long as they’re happy, than, you know, that world out there that we want to go seeking. But everybody likes the new chase, or it feels that way anyway.

John Jantsch: I mean, how do we get … because here’s the basis of my question, because it’s hard to maintain those relationships. I mean, it takes work. You can’t just, you know, phone it in. I mean, a strong relationship is built on caring, on checking in, on, you know, having a rhythm. So, how do you get the leverage to put in the work that it takes? Because, you know, it doesn’t necessarily feel like, “Oh, I’m going to get a sale or I’m not going to get a sale.” It’s like, “No, I’m doing this because some point down the road this will be important.”

Zvi Band: Yeah, no, that’s a really great question. I think, and let’s face it, you know, and if anyone were to read the book, and you look at any one particular step, this isn’t rocket science, right? We’re not doing trigonometry here. This is very basic kind of human interaction. The reason why it is so hard, per your point, is that, you know, as human beings, you know, we’re wired, you know, to look for those short term gains, right?

Zvi Band: This goes back to, you know, us as, you know, caveman, right? Where we had to think about how do we put food in our bellies now and find shelter now? Otherwise we’re dead meat, right? These are the big challenges that we face these days, is that well, you know, our needs right now are taking care of, but those longterm benefits, that’s what we’re really like, you know, need to be focusing on.

Zvi Band: So yeah, of course we’re much more interested in the lead that just came in, because that might be business tomorrow, versus a past client that may not transact with us for three or four years, therefore I’m much less likely to be interested in that. That’s why it’s no surprise, and the National Association of Realtors publishes information. They say that 88% of consumers say that they work with their agent again, but when you look at the follow up stats, only 12% of consumers will use the same agent they used before. So what’s happening in that big gap? What’s happening, is that years go by and there’s no follow up.

John Jantsch: You know, email is still a very important marketing channel, but it’s gotten harder to get in the inbox, even of people want your email. Zero Bounce is an email verification system that will validate your opt-ins. Check them out zerobounce.net. They integrate with all of the major services that you might be using already, like MailChimp or HubSpot. Check them out at zerobounce.net.

John Jantsch: Okay, here’s the … I’m trying to figure out how to word this question without it sounding as bad as it probably will. You know, I’ve got 100 contacts that I need to stay in touch with, but I just don’t have the time to stay in touch with them the way I’d like to. How do I make a decision about who’s worth spending time on? See, I told you it’s going to sound terrible.

Zvi Band: Yeah, yeah. At first, in terms of why it sounds terrible. I think, you know, we oftentimes have this icky factor. Like, oh, you know, all of a sudden if I’m treating these people as assets. Let’s face it, you know, we only have so much time on Earth and we want to make sure that we’re focusing our efforts around the people that, you know, not only can provide value to us, but the people that we can be of service to, that we believe that we can help, the people that give us lots of energy.

Zvi Band: You know, one of the ways that I sometimes categorize people is, I look at people, and if I get off the phone with them and I just can’t stand speaking with them. Well, those are people, I don’t care how important they may be, those are people that I choose not to surround myself with, you know? But, in truth, and this is something that we talk about in the book where, you know, it’s not necessarily going by, you know, whether they’re important or not, but it’s instead like taking a step back and asking ourselves, “Well, you know, what am I goals? You know, what am I really trying to achieve?” Then starting to figure out, “Okay, who are the types of people that can help me with those goals?” Then focusing on those types of people, right?

Zvi Band: For me, for example, as a CEO for Contactually, you know, for a number of years I was very focused on fundraising. So very clearly, a lot of my time was focused on, not only engaging and networking with investors, but also with founders who could give me introductions to other investors.

Zvi Band: All of a sudden, that was a goal that was deprioritized. So I was able to start phasing that out and stop engaging less and less with investors and other founders, and focus much more on my customers, because customer retention was much more important for me. So I think as long as we take a step back and try and figure out what our goals are, then of those 100 or so people, we can better identify which of those people fit into those buckets.

John Jantsch: So, you mentioned at the outset this idea of the Ben Franklin approach or theory, that actually asking for help was a great way to kind of be a bridge to relationship building. Expand on that a little bit, because I think a lot of people feel like, “Oh, if I’m asking somebody for help, you know, they don’t owe me anything. You know, how do I start there?” You’re suggesting that it’s actually the other way around.

Zvi Band: Yeah, it’s actually funny. I mean, so related to actually fundraising, one of the piece of advice that I got very early on was if you want money, ask for advice. If you want money or if you ask for money, you’re going to get advice instead. That’s definitely what I had seen as well. So, the interesting thing, yeah, if you read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, you know, rather than trying to win a political adversary over by being nice, Franklin asked him for a favor just to borrow a rare book. Then after the man invested effort in Franklin by delivering this book, the two end up becoming friends.

Zvi Band: It’s hard to figure out kind of, you know, what the real reason is for, or what the real reason behind. But it’s more thinking about … it’s also called the Ikea effect, in that if you put time and effort into doing something, you’re much more invested in that. Just like if you spend, you know, an hour walking around Ikea, you’re not gonna walk out empty handed, because you’ve done it. So, you know, that’s why asking someone for advice, something happens, right, in that like, okay, we’re showing that we appreciate that person, we appreciate the advice, we solicit their knowledge. That’s a valuable experience to that person.

John Jantsch: Well, we’re also perhaps suggesting that we believe they have that knowledge and that they are smart, and that they have that advice. So I think there are probably a lot of things in there. I can just state, and I don’t know if I’ve ever stated on the show before, I’ve never been into an Ikea, and I’m hoping to keep that streak alive.

John Jantsch: So, I get a lot of, or a number of solicitations. I wouldn’t even call them solicitations, connections, let’s say, on LinkedIn. One of the first things they suggest is, what can I do for you? You know, what can I do to help you? On the surface, that to me, somebody told them that that was a good relationship building tool, but on the surface it comes off very negative to me, because I don’t know that person. They haven’t suggested anything that specific, so I don’t even know what they could help me, you know, with.

John Jantsch: So, do you have a similar experience? I know a lot of people on LinkedIn do, because that just has become sort of a common thing for people to do. It seems like when people make connection requests. So, how could we do that better?

Zvi Band: Yeah. I struggle with this, because you’re right, I have the same visceral reaction when someone says, “Hey, how can I help you?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I could use a refill of my drink maybe, right?” What are you really trying to offer? In fact, you’re making me do more work by trying to think about what I need help on and how that person could help out.

Zvi Band: But I mean, the interesting thing is, it is rooted in good intentions, and that, you know, they are trying to be, you know, meaningful and valuable to us in some way. But you’re right. I mean, that’s where, you know, I think one of the key aspects of relationship marketing is to try and identify and be proactive, in terms of identifying what people really want and what people would benefit from, and then solving that.

Zvi Band: Now of course, you can ask, you know, very pointed questions, you know, as you’re talking with someone for their first time, you could talk about what your business challenges are. I love that [inaudible 00:19:32], you know, throws out the champagne question. You know, if we’re celebrating with a bottle of champagne a year from now, what are we celebrating? That’s kind of a good open-ended question.

Zvi Band: But, a lot of the work, you know, goes into just gaining that intelligence on someone and trying to understand how you can be helpful. For me, for example, you know, with the book coming out, you know, one thing that I’ve seen a few people reach out and do proactively is they’ll write a review online. Because they kind of know that, “Okay, that’s something that Zvi probably would benefit from.” I’ve obviously done the same thing too.

Zvi Band: So, you’re right, it’s the lazy man’s approach to be able to just kind of say, “Hey, how can I help you? And maybe I’ll be able to do something about it.” It’s come a completely different experience to figure out where you can add value, and do it for them proactively.

John Jantsch: Yeah, if I’m feeling particularly snarky, I write, “Well, send me $500.”

Zvi Band: Have you got it yet?

John Jantsch: Well, I delete it. I don’t ever send that, but I’ve attempted. I mean, a lot of what you end up talking about is, you know, staying in touch. I mean, having a, you know, a plan to make sure that you’re not completely, you know, out of mind. But, how do you develop a rhythm that makes sense? I know that that’s a, well, it depends … But, you know, is there a rhythm of staying in touch that, as a general rule you should think about as a minimum?

Zvi Band: Yeah, and you’re right. This is I would say probably the meat of what we talked about, and honestly why I wrote a book, in that there are so many scattered best practices and good ideas. So what we’ve spoken about so far in this conversation, you know, there are probably a lot of people saying, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.” Nodding your head. But it’s can you assemble that into a cohesive strategy that you can operate on a regular basis?

Zvi Band: That’s the point of the capital strategy, and that every one point, you know, nothing is groundbreaking, but it’s, can you do that consistently? So, for example, it does start off with, all right, you know, are you able to block time in your calendar? Or find some way of doing this on a repetitive basis? You know, whether it’s having reminders or triggers or something that you’re doing on a regular basis.

Zvi Band: But to answer your point around, you know, making sure that we’re staying in touch with people, you know, on a periodic basis, clearly there’s the ability to nowadays, whether it’s using LinkedIn or Google alerts, or something like that, just to kind of keep a prize of them and their business. You know, whether they’re mentioned in the news, something about their company mentioned, or maybe you see, you know, something about sailing and you find which of your contacts are interested in sailing. Of course triggers like that happen.

Zvi Band: But then, you know, one of the root questions is, “Well, how often should I follow up with people?” There’s no right or wrong answer. Going back to our point around, you know, “Hey, if I have 100 people, how often should I stay in touch with them?” Well, you know, naturally as you’re prioritizing relationships, the ones that are higher priority and hopefully fewer number, you’re able to spend more time on. The ones that are lower in priority and hopefully more of, you’re able to stay in touch less often.

Zvi Band: We’d like to say listen, you know, push come to shove, you know, say, “Hey, I want to follow up with, you know, my, you know, high priority contacts at least once a quarter and ones are lower priority once a year.” That seems to be based on, you know, just watching, you know, tens of thousands of people in Contactually, that seems to be a good general baseline, and then you can tweak from there.

John Jantsch: Zvi, it was great catching up with you, and talking about Success Is in Your Sphere. So I appreciate you dropping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Tell people where they can find out more about you and your work, and the book, of course.

Zvi Band: John, it’s always great chatting with you. Yes, you can go online, to any bookstore, or wherever books are sold, and just do a quick search for Success Is in Your Sphere, and you’ll be able to find information. Feel free to buy a copy for yourself or for someone you care about, or maybe don’t care about. All proceeds go to charity. Of course, my name is band Zvi Band, Z-V-I, B-A-N-D. Luckily I’m the only Zvi Band out there, so it’s pretty easy to find me.

John Jantsch: The URL was available too. So, Zvi, appreciate, again, you stopping by, and hopefully we will run into you soon out there on the road.

Zvi Band: Thanks so much, John.

6 Data-Backed Reasons a CEO Should Take the Time to Build a Strong Personal Brand

Peer-to-Peer Is the Next Wave of Influencer Marketing


5 Content Marketing Trends That You Can't Ignore This Year

0
0

Content marketing is a broad marketing approach for getting people interested in your products or services. So, knowing where to start can be a bit challenging. If you’re not new to this, you probably already have some strategies for attracting wider audiences and spreading the word about your…

Read the full article at: www.relevance.com


Marketing Management

The Simplest Answer to, "What Is Product Marketing?"

0
0

Product marketing can be hard to define, and yet it is so important to your business. Learn what exactly product marketing is and what product marketers do.

Read the full article at: blog.hubspot.com


Marketing Management

5 Reasons Your Enterprise Needs Agile Marketing

0
0

While startups may have an easier time adopting Agile principles, large enterprises can’t afford to be discouraged by the difficulty of introducing new processes into their organization. In fact, enterprises have an urgent need to tackle their process problems or risk disruption by emerging…

Read the full article at: marketinginsidergroup.com


Agile Marketing

To build or buy? 2019 mobile marketing buyer's guide

0
0

The mobile app market smashed through the $150 billion mark and has only grown in size and scope since. It’s no longer enough for brands to just “build an app” — they need to master mobile marketing.   By building customer relationships through mobile messaging and 1:1 customer engagement across channels, brands can ensure that their strategy delivers long-term value and ROI. However, the question remains — is it better for a brand to build their own platform, or invest in a solution? In this guide, you will learn:   Key questions every brand should consider before building their own mobile marketing platform   How analytics and action for mobile marketing can extend across email, web push and interactive TV   The importance of scalability and accessibility when it comes to making your decision   How to optimize A/B testing to find the messaging that works best for your brand   Note: By entering your information you agree to be contacted by Digiday and its partners.

Read the full article at: digiday.com


Agile Marketing Blog

Still Avoiding Online Reviews? 4 Tips to Use Them to Your Advantage.

Unfair Marketing Restrictions Are Stunting the Growth of Cannabis Brands

Why Collecting Business Cards is Not Networking


How Online Apparel Stores Succeed with Content Marketing

0
0

Online apparel sales are on the rise more than ever. According to statistics, e-commerce revenues from apparel and accessories sales amounted 102.8 billion USD and should achieve 145.7 billion USD by 2023.

Read the full article at: www.relevance.com


Marketing Consulting

Council Post: How To Provide Honest Feedback That Enables Organizational Transformation

The 4 Main Stages of the Customer Journey Map in Professional Services

Why Social Media Marketing is More Than Just a Strategy

0
0

Anything and basically everyone is on social media. Even dogs, cats and all kinds of pets have social media profiles.It is a huge and never-ending source of potential, most especially for brands and businesses…read more…

Read the full article at: socialmediaexplorer.com


Marketing Operations Management

How to Use Email Marketing to Drive In-Store Traffic

Viewing all 1252 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images