Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

3 Ways to Automate Your Follow Up

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I had a call today and we ended up talking a bit about how you automate your follow up. It may sound weird that you would automate something so personal. Sure if someone downloads something from your website you should automate that process and then add them to your newsletter (right?) But what about someone you met networking? How do you “automate” that process? Here’s 3 ways you may not have thought of…

  1. Social Media – If you’ve followed your Kickass Follow up Templates then you’ve already connected with them on social media right? Right. Don’t nag them or harass them. Instead be ACTIVE on your social media. Stay on brand and make sure that if they are also active on that social media platform that they have the opportunity to see you’re alive and kicking and available to connect and be hired.
  2. Your Newsletter – I think of my newsletter as a long term drip campaign. It’s a way to get my name in your inbox and to educate you about my awesomeness. This is what it would look like to work with me. This is how my mind works. This is what you’re missing out on. If I have met with someone and sent them recommendations or a proposal for work, I consider that implied consent to add them to my newsletter list. You may decide to be more (or less) explicit about it, and that’s up to you. But don’t underestimate the power of the newsletter. It’s brought me more business than I could have expected.
  3. Networking – Yes, networking. That thing you did where you met that prospective client you don’t know how to follow up with for the 7th time. People need to see you. They need a reminder you’re alive and kicking and a REAL person. Leave your office, put pants on and go to a networking event. It may take months or even years for someone to finally realize they’re ready to hire you. If you keep showing up, it’s a visual reminder that you are alive and kicking and ready to work with them. When the time is right.

How else can you “automate” such a personal process? In your business can a more formal email automation work or does it need to be more personalized?

5 Pesky Things Your Newsletter Needs

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Creating and maintaining a monthly newsletter is HARD. And lately I’ve noticed a few things that are a glaring error to me, but that you may just have missed by not having another set of eyes (cue client responding to MY newsletter last month with a typo in it…). So, here’s 5 pesky things I think your newsletter needs…

  1. Your Social Media Should be Consistent – I love my senator, I really do. But this giant Snapchat and over-linking your social media is too much. Yes, I understand he’s featuring Snapchat as the new social media source. In that case I would move it elsewhere in the newsletter to announce it. One of the reasons I like MailChimp is because they make it easy to share your social media links in a consistent way. And I noticed yesterday that Constant Contact finally made this easier too.

2. Awkward “From” lines – My newsletter always comes from Elizabeth & Norm. People know that a real person (and real dog) are sending them a newsletter or note. Sometimes your business name is okay, but even then I’d include your name. One newsletter I get sends from their name and business (ie: Elizabeth at Yellow Dog Consulting). I want a real person showing up in my inbox, not a business name I don’t automatically recognize (or do recognize because I know them and wonder why it wouldn’t come from their NAME).

3. Inconsistent Signup Forms – This was a fantastic fail I discovered a couple of weeks ago. I received an email from a name and business I don’t recognize, so I opened it to scroll down and unsubscribe. In the process I discovered someone at the company and learned why I was signed up for this newsletter I didn’t ask to be. So, I hit the unsubscribe button and it took me to a landing page to ask why I’ve unsubscribed. I filled it out and then got this response…

unsubscribe successful

You can see why this is an issue right?

What happened? Well, they created a great signup form process and just didn’t know that it would copy over to their unsubscribe page. Take a moment and go through your signup forms to ensure that they’re properly setup and you don’t do this…

4. No Way to Share Your Message – If I read a good newsletter I want to share that with my network on social media. Include those snazzy social media sharing icons in your newsletter. You’ll always find them at the very bottom of my newsletter…

social media sharing

5. My Name – Every newsletter program makes it easy to include your subscribers name. Include it! Every newsletter I create for clients starts with some form of “Hi (Name)!” – I wanted to be greeted. I’ve invited you into my inbox and made the time to open you. The least you could do is remember my name. If your list isn’t consistent with names then make the time to clean that up.

8 Simple Ways The White House Marketing Emails Could Be Better

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Over the past few weeks I ended up on the official White House newsletter list. Despite your feelings about this presidency – they can’t write a decent email to save their lives and it’s driving me crazy!

First off, I would love to share a link so you can read the most recent email, but they don’t give you an option to view the email in your browser if it’s not displaying correctly. So, that’s a bummer for them. And means a screen shot for you…

A short and sweet email is always a good thing, and that’s the purpose of this recent email, reminding people to watch the Presidents first address to the Joint Sessions of Congress. Here’s  simple things they could have done to make this email work better for them:

  1. Link the Logo to their website – I was pretty surprised at this simple error – any time you use an image in a newsletter it should link to your website or the blog post you’re referencing or any other appropriate link.
  2. Don’t start with ALL CAPS – start by greeting. A friendly “Hi Elizabeth – ” wouldn’t hurt. But they just jump right in with TONIGHT. (No need to yell, just ask nicely, we learned this in Kindergarten)
  3. Clarify the Time -I live in Portland so the address wasn’t at 9 PM it was at 6 PM AKA 9 PM Eastern. A really easy thing to clarify. (And for an administration who claims to be inclusive of middle America this wasn’t good)
  4. That giant link – You should always properly link to what you’re talking about (see #1) but highlighting the entire sentence isn’t necessary. And if I were designing this email I’d probably have created a bright red (or blue) button for people to click on to take the survey.
  5. Say Thank you – or not, but that’s how the email ends, I didn’t cut off the closing statement, that’s where it ends. Be Sure to Tune In Tonight!
  6. Better Social Media Sharing – Mail chimp (and most newsletter programs) make it so easy to include all your social media links and accounts – writing it out wasn’t necessary and looks clunky. I’m sure this isn’t Mail Chimp but whatever program they’re using should be able to easily include social media links.
  7. Unnecessary White Space – this makes me angry because it’s lazy. Clean that up.
  8. Missed Footer Opportunity – I’ve got a privacy policy, and contact us and an unsubscribe option. Remember how rad Hillary Clinton’s footer was? Yeah, the White House could learn a few things.