Do you have a list of people you know you “should” be following up with?
Do you avoid doing it because the thought of all those phone calls just sounds so time consuming?
In this article I offer 2 examples of quick, easy & inexpensive follow-up marketing that run circles around individual telephone follow-up, in terms of efficiency. As in, 80% more efficient!
At the end, I offer 5 steps for you to get started implementing today.
Follow Up with Non-Buyers is Perhaps the Most Important
Almost all of the small business owners who come to me for coaching do nothing whatsoever to stay in touch on a regular basis with all their prospective buyers. (By prospective buyers, I mean those people who expressed at one point interest in their products and services, but who didn’t buy.)
And as a result they’re leaving thousands and thousands of dollars on the table.
Just because that person didn’t buy from you initially doesn’t mean they aren’t ever going to buy from you!
But I hear it all the time:
- If they didn’t buy, I don’t want to keep wasting my time calling them
- I’m afraid they’ll think I’m bothering them if I leave more than a message or two
- I only want to focus on the people I think are likely to buy
The problem with this line of thinking is that so often, you don’t really know what the buyer is thinking. They might be very interested in your products and services, but something small and temporary kept them from saying yes today.
The other problem is that it assumes that the only way to follow up with someone is individually – with either a phone call or an individual email. And that’s just not true!
In fact, group followup is one of the most valuable strategies in your marketing arsenal. Sending a single email to a whole group of people is the most efficient way to keep people thinking about you, especially when they’re not likely to buy in the very near future … but might at some point down the road.
Think about it: how much time do you spend making follow-up phone calls? Be sure to include in your total all the time you spend thinking about those calls, as well as the time you spend procrastinating because you dread making those calls.
By contrast, group follow-up – as in, an email sent to a whole list of people – can typically be done in half an hour.
And group follow-up doesn’t need to be hard, or expensive, or complicated.
Once a Year Can Be Enough
I used to have a bookkeeper who hosts an annual holiday party for all her clients. Even though I stopped working with this woman more than 10 years ago, she still faithfully sends me an invitation (in the mail) every year.
As a result of this one single piece of contact from her, I’ve never forgotten about this woman and what a good bookkeeper she was.
Even more important, I have never forgotten her name!
So when I ran across someone who needed a bookkeeper out in her area, it was no trouble at all for me to locate this woman online & send her the referral.
Keep in mind that this woman’s follow-up marketing strategy was easy & inexpensive for her, and didn’t take a lot of time. She didn’t call me on a regular basis or send me individual emails – both of which would have been time-consuming. Instead, she sent me a single letter once a year, which of course she had photocopied and sent to everybody else on her list as well.
The Weekly Email That Generated $25,000
My other favorite story about follow-up comes from my time as a real estate agent.
For a while I worked for a developer, selling condos in one single building. During that time, I sent a weekly email about the Chicago real estate market as a whole, financial news, and of course announcements about special events or promotions going on at my building.
Every time I met with a buyer or real estate agent, I would add them to my list & they would start getting my weekly email.
One day a realtor named Rene came in with a buyer, and happened to mention that he’d first come to the building 8 months before. In the time since, he’d been receiving my weekly emails; and they were a big part of the reason he brought this buyer in today.
In the following 3 months, Rene brought TWELVE more buyers to meet with me, for a total of more than $25,000 in commission.
If I had been relying upon phone calls rather than my weekly email newsletter to stay in touch with Rene, I probably never would have gotten him back to the building. After all, how was I to know that he was reading & enjoying my messages for 8 whole months?? If I’d been leaving him phone messages instead, I probably would have quit after 3 or 4. Wouldn’t you?
Your Turn:
The biggest lesson I hope you take away from this article is that regularly emailing your whole list – including non-buyers – should be one of your top marketing strategies.
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To get started doing more effective group email follow-up, here are your steps:
- Sign up for an email program like Mail Chimp or Constant Contact.
- Add all the names in your current database *
- Make it a habit going forward to add the names of people you have sales conversations with, even if they don’t buy. Just make sure to get their verbal permission to stay in touch via your newsletter.
Note: Do NOT just randomly start adding all the people who give you a business card! - Start sending a regular email to your whole list, offering helpful, useful or entertaining content – NOT just sales pitches!!
- Don’t get caught up in details like whether your email should be weekly vs monthly. Also don’t worry if your newsletter isn’t as regular as a German train schedule. Remember the big picture – which is to simply stay in touch in an easy, group-marketing way with the people who might someday be interested in buying from you.
* Of course you have to comply with SPAM laws. Send an initial email that announces that you’ve added them to your newsletter list, and offers them a clearly visible option to opt-out of your list. Additionally, add no more than 50-100 people per week to your list.
For help accessing your self-limiting beliefs and working through them in a supportive environment, consider hiring me for private coaching. I offer 6-month packages starting as low as $2,500, or up to $20,000.
To start the conversation, email my assistant Rosie@JuliaKline.com. She'll send you my coaching brochure, describing all that I offer.