Yesterday, I decided to work late into the night and use the time to focus on “marketing my business” Ilooked at what resources I had, and I decided to do “email marketing”.
Not with Aweber, Constant Contact, Vertical Response, or Intellicontact. I sent 7 personally hand-crafted emails just from my Gmail account, asking for referrals from existing contacts and clients.
Guess what? Within 24 hours, now I have at least 5 potential deals lined up and I’ll be meeting up with some of these business owners tomorrow and on Friday to discuss their web design and SEO requirements… and that is not taking into the “broadcast” which one friend offered to help me do when he gets back from his holiday – to his colleagues, over on the other side of the world in Austin, Texas.
I was very surprised with the response and I’m so glad I have so wonderful clients and associates. I really appreciate their help!
The Money is in the List?
In the Internet Marketing arena, they always say that “the money is in the list”.While that is true to an extent, I feel that what is more important is for you to have a good relationship with the people in your “list”. Many small businesses read too much into the idea of building a massive list, and really fail to focus on building those relationships.
Then we end up with “lists” that are so void of relationships that when we email out we need to track “open rates”.
I’ve certainly fell into this trap myself, and the short marketing exercise yesterday was a good wake up call for me to focus back on relationships. This will not be easy for me, since I can really be a total woodblock when it comes to socializing.
But I think it will be worth it.
How about you? When was the last time you sent a really personalized email?
