Posted by Jackie Ewing on February 14, 2010
Join Our Mailing List
Do you send a newsletter to your clients and prospects? It could be an email newsletter or a print newsletter, but you SHOULD be sending one or the other, if not both.
Most businesses are unaware that their customer list is their most valuable asset. Communicating with them on a very regular basis is key to you being at the forefront of their minds when they are ready to buy whatever product or service it is that you offer. As mentioned in a previous blog called Mining for Gold,
You also need to communicate with your customers on a regular basis through email and print. If you don’t have an email newsletter, you are losing out on the potential of building really lasting, long-term relationships with your customers. Your communication to them is not a bother, if they don’t unsubscribe. They may not react immediately because they are not ready to buy. But when they are, because you communicate with them regularly, you are at the forefront of their mind when a particular need arises. Some will respond better to print so you should also use direct mail as part of your mining process. Continue to “mine” your list and communicate with them very regularly.
There are many options for you once you’ve made the decision to begin a newsletter. I’ve narrowed them down to three basic approaches:
- Create your own email newsletter for next-to-nothing using your email software.
- Use a service like Constant Contact, Vertical Response or MadMimi that has a minimal cost but gives you pre-made templates to use.
- Delegate it or outsource it.
1. Create your own:
I don’t recommend creating your own unless you have the skills, talent and time to do it. Believe me, it is not an easy task! It may not end up looking like you want it to and you will be limited by your email service as to how many you can send out at one time.
2. Use an email service:
Using one of the sources mentioned above (or choose from a myriad of others) is a great way to get started. It means you can take an existing template, customize it to your business in a few easy steps, add your interesting content (always the most time-consuming and difficult part, I say!), import your customer data and email out your newsletter. Easy to follow instructions allow you to focus on the content that will most interest your customers.
3. Delegate or Outsource:
While this may cost a little more to get going and keep going, it allows you the freedom to continue doing what you do best -working on your business so you can make more money! Pay someone else to develop the newsletter format, find the content – interesting text, photos and video – prepare the customer database and get it emailed out on a regular basis. Once the process has been started, you’ll be amazed at how smoothly it runs – you may only have to input a little article to personalize the newsletter – proof it, and give the OK to email it out on schedule.
Our recommendation for this type of service? Ewing Enterprises of course! This is one of the services that we provide to our clients. If you are ready to take the plunge and have someone do this for you – someone who LOVES to do this!! – take a look at what some of our clients have to say about our newsletters and service:
Kim Williams
With Jackie’s help & support we finally got around to sending out newsletters to our past guests. I never seemed to find the time to do it myself but it’s has been fun working with Jackie as she does all the hard work! Jackie’s encouragement to write my ‘piece’ each month has provoked a new interest! And the past guests have been delighted to receive our communication – it’s like a continuation of the holiday time they spent with us. Working with Jackie at Ewing Enterprises has made it all so easy.
Kim Williams, Clermont, Florida. VILLASFANTAZMIC
Jackie has proved to be totally reliable & trustworthy – she meets the deadlines set and is the sole of discretion.
David Leather
She has taken on the onerous task of categorizing our data base, which is at least 7 years old, and writing monthly newsletters which are both factual and easy to read.
David Leather, St. Cloud, Florida. HAYES VACATION HOMES
I learnt that Jackie Ewing does this as part of her consulting services and I asked her to explain to me how it worked. She visited my
Joanne Kjolsen
office and the only effort was in the formation of the names database which was just a matter of data entry – not difficult at all by any standards and now I have a created list in the correct format to now receive monthly newsletters.However I had no idea about what to say/what to write/format etc, and once again, Jackie has this down to a fine art. She comes up with the topical news snippets which are of interest to my client base both potential and existing and creates a newsletter for me and all I have to do is provide a couple of photos of things done during my month and a few words about one or two topics and she does the rest,.I proof read it before it goes out and voila! I know my customers are reading it as I see them mention something in it during correspondence with me, it might be something that I did or something that was mentioned in the newsletter. Either way, it’s a very simple and informative way of keeping me in touch with my clients on a monthly basis without it appearing as a direct selling piece. It totally is, but they see it as a fun thing to read about the place they love, Orlando!
Joanne Kjolsen, Kissimmee, Florida. BELLA VACATION HOMES
Posted by Jackie Ewing on November 24, 2009
I left Orlando early on November 6th for a drive up to Atlanta for the Glazer-Kennedy Inner Circle (GKIC) Infosummit. This was my first time to one of these esteemed events and I was well-armed with fresh notebooks and pens, and a mind ready to soak up all kinds of information. Oh yeah, I was also the proud owner of an Acer Netbook so I could tweet and facebook as I learned!
There were quite a few speakers that I wanted to see and learn from – Mari Smith, Christ Cardell, George Foreman, Mike Koenigs, Sonia Simone – to name but a few! I was particularly looking forward to some presentations by Dan Kennedy – his no BS style of delivery and succinct points make it easy for me to understand what he’s talking about… most of the time anyway! He did not disappoint and I wrote a TON of notes. I had been told that Frank Kern was someone to behold and listen to. What I hadn’t been told was that I should have brought my own booze so I could REALLY enjoy Frank Kern at his best!
Jackie Ewing & Dan Kennedy
Leading up to this infosummit and all the way throughout, I heard from different people that I should hunt for the 2 or 3 things that I could learn at this conference that would change me and my business. “All that way and all that time just for 2 or 3 things?” I asked myself, thinking I must have heard wrong. But no, that was the clear message. So, for whatever they are worth to you, here are the 3 main lessons that I learned at this GKIC Information Summit.
- Think more about the WHO you are marketing to as opposed to what you are trying to sell. Care about people.
- Use social media to supplement what is already working – blog, email, direct mail, etc. – create a loyal following by delivering great content to them.
- Your ultimate goal should be profitability. If you remain invisible to your customers, you will not bring in any revenue.
Not major revelations by any stretch, but these 3 messages resonate throughout my notes from various speakers and presentations.
1. Think more about the WHO you are marketing to as opposed to what you are trying to sell. Care about people.
We know that the bulk of our business has been done with the people in our lists – every business should be tracking the people that buy stuff from them. If you’re not doing this, shame on you! You are leaving a ton of money on the table that you should be putting in your pocket.
If you know enough about the folks that have already purchased from you, you are armed to sell them something else – if you do it right. We should no longer be thinking about our database as a wall that we throw a ton of crap at and hope something sticks. We should be educating ourselves about our customers, our herd, our people. We should know what they like, what they don’t like, when their birthday is, what their dog’s name is… and on and on. The more you know, the more you know!
Frank Kern
The overriding theme from this conference was the relationships you should have with your “herd”. Frank Kern himself admitted that he simply did NOT like his customers before. When he changed his attitude about his business, what he wanted from it and how it should provide him with the lifestyle he wanted, he also changed his attitude about his customers. He got rid of the ones he didn’t like and went after more of the ones he DID like – what a concept! Doing business with people he liked became the fun he wanted it to be. Of course, he wants you and I to do the same!
Jackie Ewing & Mari Smith
2. Use Social Media to supplement or augment what is already working for you.
The constant roar about social media – what it is, how to use it, what NOT to do – is downright deafening at times! How on earth is anyone supposed to make sense of it all? Well, listening to those who have already drowned out the noise, found what works and emulating them is as as good a place to start as any! Many of the speakers gave actual examples of how Twitter, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, or YouTube, or a combination of some or all of these, helped springboard their businesses from mediocre to money-making in a relatively short space of time. Of course, hearing their stories with all the hindsight available to them sort of condenses it into a great story, but bottom line is – they still managed to do what you and I really want to do!
Instead of getting overwhelmed by everything that’s out there, it was recommended that we pick three or four of the main social media mediums that we feel comfortable with and use them all the time. Communication is what it is all about and social media simply allows you to communicate with a whole lot of different folks in a whole lot of different ways! Learn a few of them and learn them well. When you have mastered those, start adding one or two more to the mix. No one medium will be the immediate answer, so work as many of them as you can make work well.
Thanks to Mari Smith, I have a far better understanding of how to use both Facebook and Twitter to connect with my target audience. And the really good news was that I get to be me while doing it! A little zany is allowed.
3. Your ultimate goal should be profitability.
Jackie Ewing & Chris Cardell
It is still very true to say that it doesn’t matter if you have built a better mousetrap if nobody knows about it. This message was very clear from ALL the speakers. You can’t just wave a magic wand and have your business suddenly be ultra profitable; you actually have to do some work and then tell everybody and anybody that will listen that you have the better mousetrap and it will solve some problem of theirs that has been haunting them forever!
Most of us have information on all kinds of subjects. If we have chosen our niche and can impart information on that niche in various mediums – writing, pictures, video – then we have a product to sell. The goal is to make money from what we know. Part of that is finding the cultivating the people who need to know what you know and will be willing to part with their hard-earned cash to do it.
I didn’t really understand why so many folks GIVE so much of their content away. It just seemed to go against the grain of making money. Well, I now consider myself re-educated and reformed! Chris Cardell spoke a great deal about how he built his online business. He started out giving stuff away and people just loved his content. So, when he was ready to give them even more fabulous content – his people were ready to buy.
George Foreman
To sum up the Infosummit (if that’s even possible, given the HUGE amount of information that was available all day, everyday!) George Foreman put it very simply – in the three things that he instills in his children:
1. Get up early in the morning. Things happen early, be a part of them!
2. Learn from older folks (or in our case, people who have what we want). Listen to their stories and learn from them.
3. Strive to be the nicest human being you can be. Truly, honesty is always the best policy and nothing comes across better than a genuine person.
So, here I go armed with all this new, old stuff. The ultimate key for me now is implementation. The rest of it is only as good as the action that I take.
If you like what you read here, or not, and have comments to make, errors to point out to me, whatever – please feel free to comment below.
