A Simple Email Marketing Plan for your Service or Consultancy Business |blogs.constantcontact.com/product-blogs/… via @constantcontact
— Annette Iafrate (@annette_iafrate) March 1, 2013
You may have noticed that at Constant Contact we give you a LOT of information—from tips, to product how-tos, to best practices and strategic guides—there’s all sorts of free information that we want you to take advantage of.
However, I still get the same question over and over again from customers and event attendees, and that question is “how do I make this work for me” (with a bit of variety on the wording!).
I believe that there is a simple process which everyone can go through, and that works ESPECIALLY well for service and consultancy-based businesses.
Here’s what you do:
1. Sign up for an Email Marketing account
Our service is easy to use and we have all the free coaching and support that you can eat.
2. Set up a list-building incentive
Encourage people to join your email list by offering free information or training programme. This will not just encourage sign ups but also help you to build rapport with your subscribers, fast!
The simplest approach is to use our built-in autoresponder feature and have a series of useful and information-rich emails go out to your new subscribers over a week or two.
Some good title ideas for your incentive are:
- Getting started with…
- Top tips for…
- Mistakes to avoid with…
- 7-day kick-starter
- 5 secrets of…
All you have to do is pick one of the above, fill in the title for an issue relevant to your subscribers, and create your autoresponder series.
Bonus tip—the individual autoresponder emails can actually be quite short!
3. Start your regular email newsletter
Your email newsletter is separate to your set of incentive emails, and gives you ongoing engagement with your subscribers. The fastest way to get started is to use our Website Match service, and have one of our templates customised to match your website.
Next, decide how often you are going to send (newbies can start with monthly as it’s easiest to manage at the beginning), and in each issue focus on one key thing. Shorter is better than longer (easier to read and easier to write!), and write as if you’re speaking to one person to make the strongest connection.
4. Create a sending plan for your email newsletter
A sending plan is a simple calendar, where you note what topic you will address in your newsletter on a specific date. This saves you from panicking when your send date rolls around because you already know what you are going to write about.
You also need to know your send day and time (you can do some simple testing to find out the best time and day of the week for your list).
5. Build your email list EVERYWHERE
Now that you have a great incentive for people to join your list and an email newsletter to keep the conversation going, you can focus on building your email contact list. Here are eight of my favourite ways to get signups:
- Your email signature: Add a newsletter sign-up link to every email that you send from your personal email account. An easy way to do this is using the WiseStamp integration with Constant Contact.
- QR code: With the Scan-to-Join feature in your Constant Contact account we generate a QR code for you that links to your mailing list sign-up form. You can put this on your business cards, flyers, brochures, report covers, packaging, and just about anywhere it will fit!
- Your website: Add a Join My Mailing List sign-up box or button to EVERY page of your website, and keep it top left or top right on the page. You don’t know where someone will be on your website when they decide that they want to receive your emails so give them as much opportunity to sign up as possible (and tell them why they should do so!).
- Articles: When you write for your own website, guest blog for someone else, or have an article appearing in a magazine, include sign-up information at the end of each piece. If a person reading the articles gets all the way through it, the likelihood is that they will be interested in hearing more from you, so don’t waste the opportunity to get them on your email contact list.
- Social media: Your social media connections are a great source of potential email subscribers, so take advantage of that by telling people when your newsletter is coming out (you can use our Simple Share feature to do this automatically), and then also make it easy for your readers to share with THEIR social networks (the Social Share Bar works great for that).
- Events: When you run or speak at an event, encourage people to join your email list. You can do that when they register (especially easy if you use EventSpot from Constant Contact), when they sign in (with a simple sign-up sheet), or through a follow-up email.
- Networking: if you meet someone whilst networking, ask them if they’d like to receive your newsletter or incentive (tell them why), take their business card and you’re done!
- On the phone: If someone calls you, they are interested in you in some way, shape, or form, so take advantage of that and ask if they want to receive your emails (always explain the benefit to them and tell them that they can unsubscribe at any time).
Just implement this simple plan and you’re on your way
Don’t over-think it or you’ll stall and get stuck on step 1 or 2! Just keep it simple, give your subscribers some snippets of useful and engaging information, and build the conversation from there!
