Fifteen stinking dollars! That was all it took for me to get in on a $24K opportunity!
If you're a P4P'er (Print4Pay Hotel) member, you're aware that once a week (Sunday nights, except in the summer), I send an update of the past weeks threads on the Print4Pay Hotel. For those that read carefully, you'll see that I use Constant Contact to deliver those emails in a neat format where I can add pictures, links and some content.
Over the years I can't tell you how many existing accounts I revisited and found out that they had purchased additional printers, and or scanners, and I wasn't included in that conversation of procurement. In addition to witnessing the additional hardware placements, I was not able to keep up with all of the technology solutions that we offered with my existing accounts. It became more of "thank you for your order", and I was off to the next opportunity. But, I knew I was losing opportunities because I was not in front of all of my accounts on a regular basis.
Thus, the question was how to keep my existing accounts informed and stay in front of them on a regular basis. Phone calls was not an option, since I have too many of them to make already, mailers is an option, however, I was already doing 20 of these a month to net new prospects. The thought of adding a few hundred per month was sheer torture! Emailing, ok that would work somewhat, but I didn't have the skills to develop something from scratch in MS Outlook.
That's when it dawned on me to use my constant contact account that I use for the Print4Pay Hotel. Brilliant!
With Constant Contact I was able to create a separate address book for existing accounts. I started off with forty-five accounts, and made sure I called each account in advance to tell them I has developed an email newsletter that was focused on technology and business process improvement. I stated I would only send one per month and needed their approval (one of constant contacts covenants when sending emails). I was pleasantly surprised that all of the accounts agreed to receive the newsletter.
Thus, with Constant Contact you can subscribe to the monthly service for $15 per month, which allows you to send to 500 email addresses. They have easy to use templates, and the ability to add pictures, links, and much more. Within a couple of hours I had first template set up for my first email campaign. I've only done two of these so far, the second one took about an hour because I had to find some content that I thought would resonate with a broad base of accounts.
About three weeks after sending my first email campaign, I had a call from an existing client to schedule an appointment in reference to Contex scanners. The account was actually interested in two high end Contex scanners that total the 24K in revenue. During our meeting, the DM stated, "I read somewhere that you have the Contex scanners", at the time I didn't give it a second thought, After leaving the appointment, I was curious about how the DM knew that. After checking, the client was in my Constant Contact address book and yes of the articles I led with was about Contex scanners!
I may have gotten lucky, but we all know the saying, "the harder you work, the luckier you get". Next week I'll be sending out number three and I'll bet that I keep on getting luckier an luckier.
If you have the time and the $15, Constant Contact is a great way to "do it yourself", instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you.
-=Good Selling=-
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