Just got off a Blab with Virtual Assistant Denice Whiteley. She’s a powerhouse of information on using CRM’s (Customer Relationship Management) software and integrating it with your marketing.
In it, she shared tips growing your email list, tagging your potential clients and the one thing she wish she’d done earlier in her business.
In case you’re not familiar with what a CRM does it’s a database of all your contacts. You can import your LinkedIn contacts and your Gmail contacts as well as from other sources.
Once all your contacts are in one place, you can tag them as to their interests, how you met them and whether or not they’re a potential lead or referral source for you.
I love this because one of things that bog people down in their businesses is not having a clear idea of who their ideal client is and where they hang out.
In your CRM you can make notes as to if they’re in a specific Facebook Group or if you met them at a networking event, etc. That way, you know where to find them.
A CRM Builds the Know, Like, and Trust Factor
As you know, people do business with those they “know, like, and trust.” A CRM combined with email marketing accelerates that truism.
One useful tip Denice gave during our chat was when you send your follow up email to people you meet at events, invite them to join your email list.
She shared a short template:
“Dear …
Nice to meet you at the xyz recent event. Please let me know your ideal customer so I can pass along any referrals to you.
If you’d like to receive monthly updates on xyz topic, please sign up here for regular updates. Link
Best wishes,
Your name”
Frankly, I think that’s gold.
The other great tip she gave if you’re looking to build your email list (and who isn’t)? Is to reach out to 10 people a day and invite them to join your list. If you do this for 30 days and you get 2 people a day to sign up that’s 60 new people!
Better yet, those are better qualified leads because you’ve already met them somewhere and now invited them to sign up and they actually did. Yay!
One of the questions asked if there was a CRM we recommended. Personally, I use Nimble and Denice has worked with Highrise, Contactually, Hubspot, and many others. The big daddy of course is Infusionsoft which also handles your email marketing but that can be pretty overwhelming if you’re just getting started.
If you want to catch the replay or review the comment thread on our CRM + Email Marketing Blab you can do that here.
You can meet up with Denice at denicewhitely.com.
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