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8 Digital Productivity Tools

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Freelancer friend, if you’re doing things right, you’re working in the zone and maintaining a steady flow, doing things like managing your client work, generating content for inbound marketing campaigns that fill your sales pipeline and invoicing clients so you’ll get paid, for example. There’s a lot on your plate and making good use of time is a must.

Maximizing productivity is the way to get through your to-do list. Recognizing where you can create operational efficiencies is integral to the process. How wonderful that there are numerous, easy to use online tools that can be of service. You are certain to find that a modest investment in digital productivity tools can pay big dividends, allowing you to save time, show clients that you’re organized and in control of project details and reduce your stress level. Here are eight online tools that can help you get more good things done and give you more time to relax as well.

1. Project management—ProProfs Project $19.99/month (solopreneur)

The right project management software can replace several of the tools you’re using now, to monitor and evaluate the progress of your project, collaborate with clients, share files and feedback, create reports and more. Here’s an online tool that will simplify planning and scheduling of your projects, allow you to quickly view your project, delegate tasks and schedule deadlines all in one dashboard. The platform is a straightforward and user-friendly software solution designed for small to medium-sized businesses across different industries. Keep clients in the loop and let them see that the project is moving forward and you are on top of things.

https://www.proprofsproject.com/

2. Time tracking and invoicing—My Hours free; or $6/user/month

Time tracking software helps employers and workers keep track of time spent on various tasks, projects and other deliverables. You can use this tool to stay organized, whether you’re working solo for a client or when you must track both your own hours and those of subcontractors you’ve brought in to help you.

  • Time tracking: You efficiently keep track of how your employees/ sub-contractors spend their time while on the job.
  • Timesheets: Timesheets calculate the work your employees/ subcontractors perform in terms of billable hours and make client billing and invoicing faster and easier.
  • Reporting: Most time tracking software creates reports on active employee/ subcontractor hours, tasks they complete and more.
  • Integrations: Seamless integrations with project management and communication tools such as Salesforce, Asana and Slack, tools your client probably uses.
  • Mobile app: With a mobile app, you (and your employees or subcontractors) can efficiently manage reporting and tallying billable hours from anywhere.

https://myhours.com/billing-invoicing

3. Digital wallets—Apple Pay 1.5 % fee applied to each transfer of funds to debit card or bank account when using Instant Transfer.

Digital wallets are apps that enable you to store and use credit cards, debit cards, passes, tickets, ID cards, gift cards, reservations, boarding passes, coupons, membership cards and whatever else that you need to store safely and access easily. So many transactions are now online, I think you’ll agree that it’s time to properly organize and safeguard your important records and receipts? Digital wallets are more secure and convenient than traditional physical wallets and can be used to make payments or transfer money directly from your smartphone.

https://www.apple.com/apple-pay/

4. Writing—Hemingway Editor free or $19.99 one-time payment

Are you producing relevant content that showcases you as a thought leader and expert in your field? Of course you are and that means you do a lot of writing. Hemingway Editor will do more than Microsoft Word grammar and spell check to correctly identify spelling and grammatical errors in your text. The software also illustrates which of your sentences are too clumsy and wordy and suggests alternative words and phrases that are simple, eloquent and make you sound like a silver tongued genius (which is the whole idea!).

You can type directly into Hemingway Editor or, if you don’t want to be bothered with its recommendations while you write, paste your draft text into the tool for edits when you’ve finished writing.

https://hemingwayapp.com/

5. Social Media Management—-Meet Edgar $29.99/ month

A social media management platform that allows you to create a library of posts that can be scheduled to appear on the accounts you choose and at a day/time you specify. In other words, if you’re creating content today that will be ideal for a campaign or occasion that will take place six weeks from now, you won’t have to remember to dig into the file (and hope you can find it), you just save and schedule and know your great content will show up where and when you like. You’ll also receive data that lets you analyze how your content performs on the various platforms you use.

https://meetedgar.com/

6. Email Management—-SaneBox $7/month

This handy tool works with every email platform and, by using Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, figures out which of your emails is important and which are not so urgent. Low priority emails are placed in a “SaneLater” folder, while important emails remain in your inbox to receive your immediate attention. Better still, you can learn which emails you’ve sent that have not received a reply, automatically save email attachments to your cloud filing platform and quickly unsubscribe from mailing lists.

https://www.sanebox.com/

7. Scheduling—Calendly free or max. $12/user/month

Regardless of your appointment-setting needs, your scheduling software should present your business in a professional light while simplifying the booking process on both ends. The best appointment scheduling apps offer the practical mix of flexibility and ease of use. They save you time (and headaches) by allowing clients to make appointments with you on their own, as well as cancel or reschedule as needed. At every touchpoint, provide a pleasantly efficient and memorable customer experience.

https://calendly.com

8. Online signatures—DocuSign $10/month (solopreneur)

Here’s an electronic signature platform that will speed-up and simplify your signature processes, all while providing better customer experience and document management. Electronic signature software allows you and your clients to quickly and easily digitally sign contracts or other documents. Whether you need to sign an IRS Form W-9 or authorize an electronic invoice payment agreement as part of client onboarding, your clients will appreciate, and be impressed by, digital signature capability.

https://www.docusign.com/plans-and-pricing

Happy Labor Day and thanks for reading,

Kim

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Marketing Automation—Give It A Try

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Can you afford to invest $50 or so each month in marketing for your business? Can you afford not to? Marketing is a hugely important business function—how else can your future customers know what you do and know where to find you? You may struggle to keep up with your marketing aspirations—it’s a common problem. Small businesses owners and Freelancers are often too busy to fully implement the marketing campaigns that they devise. Today, let’s talk about how marketing automation can create a great leap forward for your LeadGen strategy and deliver a nice increase to your sales revenue.

The most successful marketers know that automating routine marketing functions will enhance your ability to provide the most effective marketing campaign outreach and as well the best possible buyer’s journey experience for prospective customers. When marketing automation software is in place, all prospect requests for information about your products or services will receive timely follow-up. You, your team and your company will look good as a result —professional, responsive, trustworthy and reliable, all brand enhancing qualities.

As you know, marketing automation is the process of using technology and software to automate your company’s marketing activities across all of your digital channels—website and social media platforms. By using automation, you can target prospective customers easily and efficiently and launch special outreach campaigns by using automated email messaging that is peronalized to reflect the customer’s buying history or interest. BTW, according to a recent survey, 80% of prospects reported that they were more likely to do business with companies that offer a personalized buyer’s journey experience. Data from consulting giant McKinsey revealed that personalized emails sent to prospects can reduce customer acquisition costs by as much as 50 % and increase sales revenues by 5–15 %.

Consider trying these four digital marketing automation strategies. Doing so can potentially free up 10 hours/week of your valuable time and allow you to focus on other aspects of your business. Marketing automation service packages and pricing vary widely, but a basic plan offered by most companies is unlikely to take a big bite from an inflation impacted budget. Plugs, there is reason to be optimistic about adding to top line sales revenue. Spend a little money, make more back.

Build targeted email campaign lists

Despite the obituaries that have been written over the years, email marketing has shown us all that like a cat, it has nine lives. Email marketing automation is very useful for LeadGen, helping to generate sales from prospects in your sales funnel. Marketing is all about providing the right information at the right time in the buyer’s journey. Automating email outreach enables you to send that correct message to the right person at the right time and simultaneously save time and increase efficiency as you communicate with prospects.

Nurture warm leads

Encourage the process of converting prospects into clients by personalization—from correct names to accurate buying history data — and enhance prospect engagement. Help yourself and your team to respond quickly to contact forms that prospects submit when they’d like to schedule a call or meeting with you or someone from your team. Follow-up fast on calls-to-action from prospects who’d like to receive your newsletters or attend a talk that you’ll give. Marketing automation will guarantee that you’ll avoid the embarrassing occurrence of leads that get lost in the shuffle and drop off your radar screen.

Your goal is to move prospective customers through the buyer’s journey, AKA the sales funnel, to become a paying customer, Your marketing automation system can monitor consumer activity and assist you in determining where in the sales funnel your prospects are. You can select the info that your leads will receive and the frequency of emailing at each step of the buyer’s journey to help you execute an effective lead-generating strategy.

Automate social media posting

At the beginning of each month, help yourself and create a calendar by planning 30 days worth of social media content ideas. For example, every week, vary your content by type (i.e., educational, entertaining, inspiring, tips and tricks, behind-the-scenes, etc.). This will help keep your social media audiences engaged and interested in your posts while making it easier for you and your team to create the content.

Furthermore, when filming videos or taking photos for social media accounts, aim to capture a variety of content that can be reused and repurposed for various posts. This will cut down on the content creation time, as you’ll utilize one shoot for multiple pieces of content.

Analyze campaign performance

Measuring the success (or not-so-much) of marketing campaigns is often guess work. Especially for Freelancers, following the rate of client acquisition, that is, the bottom line represented by the clients you bring in or bring back, is what many of you do. More ambitious types, or those responsible for marketing in larger organizations, most likely work with spreadsheets to monitor the performance of marketing initiatives. I’ve done it before and I find spreadsheets to be very time-consuming. Plus, not everyone on the team who should regularly post updates will do that without prompting fom the team leader, which takes time.

The beauty of marketing automation is that when you program the software to perform certain functions, the results will always be accurately reported. Once you’ve categorized your leads and customers according to where they are in the buyer’s journey, you can email targeted content that’s specific to each lead, increasing your marketing and sales effectiveness. Next, the lead tracking function will automatically update the system if that lead becomes a customer or makes an important action that might signal a movement toward becoming a customer, such as downloading a price sheet or requesting a copy of a case study.

Once you customize your system, all you’ll have to do is log in, view the results and evaluate what the information tells you. Appropriate follow-up and other trust-building actions can take place every time. Potential customers do not get lost in the shuffle. You make more money!

See the best marketing automation options for 2023 here: https://www.g2.com/categories/marketing-automation

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Walter Nurnberg/Getty Images. 1960s computer technology

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Step Up to Business Tech

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Are you operating your business as if it was still the 20th century? You may do a good job and generate enough revenue to reliably pay your expenses and take the occasional vacation but we’re 20 + years into the 21st century now. It’s time to catch up! Respectfully, I suggest that a few practical concessions to the present will improve your command of business management, save time and increase revenue and profit.

You don’t have to give up everything you like about last century. You can still listen to 80s music (like me) and rollerblade (I was afraid to try that). Help yourself sustain and build on the successes you’ve already created. Step out from behind your unease with the unknown and understand that to conquer today’s business challenges you won’t win without today’s business tools and the tools are digital. Fast access to accurate, actionable data is just one of the benefits you’ll receive when you take on a digital business solution or two.

According to a 2017 survey of 2000+ small businesses in the U.S. conducted by Google on behalf of mega-consulting firm Deloitte, 80 % of small business owners underutilize digital business tools (I think that finding can be extended to include Freelancers) and 40 % feel that digital tools don’t apply to their business. The survey was pre-pandemic but other than the introduction of videoconference sales meetings not much has changed, despite the fact that even pre-pandemic it had been demonstrated that prospects and customers expect to be able to communicate and do business online, whether or not the companies are e-commerce.

Here’s the reality—-mostly, prospects launch their buyer’s journey on the internet, using key words they hope will call up websites they can browse to investigate available options. When they find providers who look promising they dig deeper and, e.g., check out case studies and testimonials. They’ll use chatbots to quickly find what they’d like to see. They might click call-to-action buttons and schedule free consultation calls with companies whose offerings look like a fit. They’ll probably also search those companies on Yelp and social media.

Does your website measure up to the buyer’s journey described above? If not, it’s time to step up your business technology. Don’t panic! Accelo, Google Analytics, Constant Contact, Block, Calendly and others are here to help you analyze and use your website stats, support your email marketing and/ or newsletter or blog, get you going with a chatbot and overall help you to build a more profitable company.

Google Analytics —-Make sense of the numbers taken from your blog, newsletter, website and social media accounts and use the data to make smart decisions that improve your company’s sales funnel/ buyer’s journey and win more new customers. Are there pages in your website that seem to frustrate visitors and cause them to exit the site? Your data will find the problem so you can consider how to improve page experiences. Click to get more info and register your website and business.

https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/small-business/

Email marketing—-promote your products and services to current and potential customers. You’ll need to invite/ persuade prospects to provide their email address. Do not spam. The link is to an overview and comparison of companies that provide the services, including prices.

https://www.quicksprout.com/best-email-marketing-services/

Time tracking & invoices—-B2B service providers need to monitor time spent on hourly work assignments, as well as invoice client work on time, in order to get paid when the bills are due. See the features and cost overview and comparison of companies at the link below.

https://timeanalyticssoftware.com/19-best-billable-hours-tracker-software-in-2021/

Call-to-Action—-Ask your website designer to create this for you or DIY with an embedded hyperlink. Use CTAs to take your website and social media visitors by the hand and 1.) tempt them with timely and valuable information and 2.) persuade them to take a quick and easy action to get it (click me!). Sort of like what I’m doing in this post when I invite you to click below and learn how to create your CTA.

https://tinkseo.com/call-to-action-button-cta-design-guide/

Chat bot—-Ask a web or app development expert to set one up because my research shows that “plug & play” is a myth. Furthermore, think carefully about how to make your chat bot useful. What questions can the bot answer? Please click the article accessed at the link.

https://www.callcentrehelper.com/chatbots-examples-160804.htm

Mobile payments—-Secure, convenient payment is an important component of good customer service as well as a component of good cash-flow. Take a look and decide which system will be most useful for you and your customers.

https://www.predictiveanalyticstoday.com/mobile-payment-providers/

Online and in-person payments—-The customers of many small businesses are a mix of e-commerce and in-person, making it necessary to find a credit /debit card processor that offers acceptable processing fees for both types of transactions. Another consideration is the number of transactions that you’ll run: some businesses have many (often small) transactions and the fee structure will be an important factor. But if a significant number of orders are typically phoned in, then the keyed-in transaction rate will be a deciding factor. Bear in mind that according to American Consumer Credit Counseling, Inc., just 14% of shoppers use cash for every day or large purchases.

https://www.usnews.com/360-reviews/business/credit-card-processing/best-small-business-credit-card-processing

Appointments and calls—-Whether you invite a client or prospect to speak by telephone, video, or face2face, by way of a CTA button or email, creating the appointment online is a given. Check out this link and evaluate free scheduling apps that allow you to indicate your availability, clients and prospects to choose a time and will send a reminder to all parties.

https://fitsmallbusiness.com/best-free-appointment-scheduling-software/

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Leonard Nimoy as First Officer Spock in Star Trek (NBC-TV 1966-1969)

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So What’s Your Lead Magnet?

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As Freelance consultants and owners /leaders of businesses of every size work to attract and retain customers and convert leads into sales obtaining contact information, particularly email addresses, is of paramount importance. Email addresses are a foundational resource and govern your ability to communicate with current and prospective clients. A healthy email list is remarkably valuable and building and maintaining a good list is something you want to do.

The challenge is, how can you obtain email addresses quickly and efficiently? You can buy email lists; you can use online services such as Contactout, Clearbit connect, Finder.io, Discoverly, or even Google, to help you find the email addresses of decision-makers you’d like to reach. The problem is that contacting those individuals would constitute spamming because they have not agreed to share contact information with you. Blindly sending promotional emails, or even your newsletter, to those who you assume are prospects, but who have never engaged with your company in any way, is a turn-off. Delete.

Building a money-making email list takes time, effort and ingenuity. To successfully obtain email addresses, it is necessary to create conditions that motivate potential prospects to surrender them. The original method by which email lists were built was through teaching or other speaking engagements. If pre-registration was required, voila, you harvest email addresses. Sign-in sheets that request emails were/ are another harvesting method. It’s a slow process, but the leads are authentic.

More common now and in theory, a faster and easier leadgen method, is to somehow attract prospects to your website and social media platforms. Bringing inbound leads to one of your sites is a victory, but you still need a hook to persuade visitors to remain onsite and engage. To create that bit of magic, you need an appealing offer, a lead magnet. You also need to call attention to and sell your lead magnet with a persuasive call-to-action. See the link to review our CTA conversation.

. https://wordpress.com/post/freelancetheconsultantsdiary.wordpress.com/21655

A lead magnet is often content given away to someone in exchange for their email address. Instead of asking website visitors to buy your e-book, for example, tell them they can have it at no charge, if they kindly provide their name, email address and maybe also the name of the company for whom they work (or own) and their job title. You can do the same with other resources that may be considered valuable and desirable.

You must give customers a compelling reason to provide you with their contact information. Most people today are inundated with emails, so your lead magnet and CTA must be stellar to convince people to add yet another email to their inbox. Simply inviting people to add their names to your mailing list no longer generates the results it once did. You must give something of value in order to receive something of value.

What type of lead magnet should you create? Other than an e-book, you might also offer the results of a comprehensive survey that examined a hot topic, or a live taping of a webinar or podcast in which an interesting subject was discussed (and perhaps in which you participated). Other possibilities include:

  • A content marketing calendar
  • Your newsletter
  • A case study
  • You invite a client to tell the story of how you solved a problem and provided a solution that worked especially well
  • A white paper
  • The purpose of a white paper is to promote a certain product, service, technology or process that your company offers or plans to offer soon. The writer aims to (you) discuss and in so doing persuade current and prospective clients that the solution is highly effective and may be useful for their organization when certain circumstances, problems, or goals exist. A white paper is intended to provide compelling and factual or technical evidence that your offering (the product or service) is a superior method of achieving the goal or solving the problem. In general, white papers are written in an academic style and they’re often about 2,500 words in length.

Just remember that you’ll have to do more than dangle an alluring treat before your visitor’s eyes. it’s not just about the lead magnet. You’ll want to create a persuasive, come-hither CTA pitch that motivates readers to covet your lead magnet and hand over some personal information to posses it.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: The magic hand of Steve Spangler, the Science Guy on KUSA-9News in Denver, CO on February 25, 2019

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Trendspotting: 5 Sales and Marketing Benchmarks

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Your prospects are continuing to increase their control over the buyer’s journey, enabled by the internet and the work from home culture. That said, it makes sense for marketers to confirm our understanding of how buyers respond to your marketing activities. A few key data points, culled from a large and well-selected cohort, can provide to Freelancers and others who oversee marketing or sales functions valid insights into how buyers are responding to commonly used inbound and outbound marketing tactics in the post-COVID marketplace.

The content marketing company HubSpot, based near Boston, MA, began collecting marketing and sales outcomes data from its 100,000 + customers in January 2020 which was, as it turned out, a most interesting time to begin. Barely three months later the world would change radically. Billion dollar industries, most notably travel, hotel, restaurant and fitness, would crater. Those enterprises lucky enough to have survived, or thrived, have entered a changed business environment.

Benchmark data can provide guide posts that help you to get your bearings in the new business environment. The post-shutdown business climate demands a recalibrated understanding of customer expectations. How do prospects and customers want to experience the buyer’s journey now? How do they want to be sold? Find answers here in May 2021 data.

  • Sales meetings. The number of sales meetings in May 2021 (overwhelmingly made by videoconference call) was 21% higher than what was done last May and have risen 18% since March of this year. Knees were buckling in March 2020 and nearly every company was reeling, including those that were emerging as winners, such as grocery and liquor stores. Small business owners and leaders tended to reach out to customers sooner than larger companies. It is theorized that small business owners immediately realized that if they wanted their venture to survive, it was imperative that a plan to generate revenue had to be put into action, which usually meant figuring out a polite way to contact customers (I did the same). May 2020 was not the time to pursue new business, but rather to offer empathy and reinforce relationships that one hoped could be leveraged at some point, including relationships with those who cancelled contracts just 60 days previously.
  • Prospecting. Small business (1-25 employees) got busy prospecting at a frequency that was 31% higher in May 2021 compared to May 2020 and up 26% as compared to March 2021. Companies with 26-200 employees also saw an increase in prospecting activity of 18% as compared to May 2020, with a 17% increase as compared to March 2021.
  • Website traffic. Perfect your landing page! Website traffic was 34% higher in May 2021 than it was in May 2020. Further, website traffic increased by 25% between March and May 2021. Online shopping of various kinds, from home decor at Wayfair to the take-out dinner you’ll pick up in 20 minutes at a favorite local restaurant seems to have accounted for a big chunk of the increase. Software companies accounted for 51% of website traffic seen by HubSpot customers.
  • Chat bot. Speaking of your website’s landing page, a useful tool to add there would be a chat bot. Business moved online in a big way in March 2020, but the trend has been building for 20 years. Business owners and marketers are stepping up the functionality of company websites and adding a chat bot is a leading upgrade. Customers appreciate them because through chat, they’re able to get basic questions answered quickly and without paging through the website, which can be time-consuming. The volume of chat conversations rose 16% year-over-year May 2021 compared to May 2020.
  • Marketing emails. Reports of the death of email marketing have been greatly exaggerated and marketers are reinvesting in the genre (again!). Since the start of the pandemic shutdown in mid-March 2020, marketing email volume has increased 49% through May 2021 and is 52% higher pre-COVID volume. The open rate hovers at around 15% and that is 10% – 20% higher than April 2021.
  • Sales outcomes. U.S. Businesses adapted extremely well to the numerous protocols required by the shutdown, most dramatically demonstrated by the quick and often well- executed pivot to working from home. America means business! However, unreliable cash-flow prevented many customers from buying and that resulted in sluggish sales revenue in many organizations. In April 2020, sales outcomes bottomed out at 36% lower than 1Q20 benchmarks. Positive sales outcomes rose gradually throughout 2020 and May 2021 finished with a 10% increase in deals done (national or international companies). Deal creation (proposals) climbed 35% above benchmark.

So how do these statistics apply to you? They definitively show that the shutdown has ended, that money is being made agin and that you can make money again, too. Reboot your operation by using what have become standard marketing and sales strategies and actions.

Develop a powerful digital presence for your company. Employ Inbound and Outbound marketing and sales tactics. Optimize your website to help prospects easily find information about your products and services. Post and distribute relevant marketing content to confirm your expertise. Send emails to promote engagement with customers and prospects. Work hard, work smart.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: A young lady gets serious about researching benchmark data.

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The Do’s and Don’ts of Email Sign-offs

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As often noted by myself and countless other bloggers and journalists, the care and feeding of one’s brand is forever at top of mind.  Every touch point with a client, prospect, potential referral source, the public, or the media and every form of communication, whether verbal, visual, or print, must present a flattering portrayal of the brand. Even our ubiquitous, plebeian emails are now brand ambassadors.

Remember that admonition when you next compose an important email to a current or prospective client.  As you carefully evaluate the potential impact of every word, ensure that your valuable brand carries through to the sign-off. The brand is always on the line and it must be curated, even in emails, from the salutation to the sign-off.

For guidance in the matter of etiquette and branding I’ve consulted the writings of Suzanne Bates, executive coach, President and CEO of Bates Communication in Wellesley, MA (just west of Boston) and author of Speak Like a CEO: Secrets for Commanding Attention and Getting Results (2005).

Regarding written communications remember that as always, context is everything.  What is the purpose of your email and with whom are you corresponding? Are you and a client with whom you work regularly discussing a project or are you writing to a business colleague whom you’ve recently met? Then again, are replying with a proposal that a prospective client has invited you to submit? Each of these circumstances will impact the style of your email sign-off.  Let’s look at a few common closing words and phrases and examine their potential impact on the recipient.

Thanks

Use this term when you are actually thanking the person you’ve written, or asked for something to be done or said on your behalf. Thanks as a sign-off is business-like, but casual. Thank you is a better choice if you don’t have a familiar relationship with the other party.

Best

A borderline casual sign-off, but acceptable to use for a business associate whom you know.  BTW, I use this closing most of the time (I may need to re-think this choice).

Regards

Somewhat perfunctory and a little distant, but this closing generally works well.

Cordially

An old-fashioned sign-off that portrays the writer as well-mannered and formal, perhaps too formal. Nevertheless, this choice is safe and pleasant.

Sincerely

Here’s a tried and true business attire sign-off that will offend no one. However, this closing is more appropriate for a letter, rather than an email.

Cheers

You can use this to close an email with someone you know well, but if you’re trying to make a good impression in a business setting, it’s not a wise choice. Save this breezy term for after a bond has been established, for friends and colleagues you sometimes meet for coffee.

Talk soon

This term is usually used among friends and familiar business associates. The intention of quick follow-up is communicated clearly and that may be desirable. I like to use “To be continued.”

Yours truly

We’re a little too formal for an email here, as this term is closely associated with closing a letter. If your email is written for a very important person, you may use this sign-off with confidence.

Kind regards

Here is my favorite business sign-off and when I need to present my self and my brand in the best light, this is my go-to salutation. This term is warm, friendly and professional.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Artist unknown. Courtesy of the British Library, London.                                      Born in Venice and educated at the University of Bologna (Italy), Christine de Pizan (1364 – 1430) was among the best known writers in medieval Europe, in spite of her gender.  A prominent political thinker, novelist and poet, she authored the feminist treatise The Book of the City of Ladies, among other works. Pizan was the wife of Etienne du Castel and a mother of three.

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Email Writing Perfected

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Now that you’ve completed your business plan, you’re ready to put it in motion. Here’s the guide that will make sure you know how to get your entrepreneurial groove on! In Be Your Own Boss, Part 2: The Implementation and Beyond, you’ll learn to recognize the strengths or weaknesses in your proposed business model and develop an effective customer acquisition plan. You’ll get insight into what you should consider when choosing the right legal entity for your venture. Learn to implement savvy marketing, branding and social media strategies, get real about business financing options and build a solid financial strategy that will sustain your dream. Thursdays April 18 & 25 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM. Register here.

Every day, the typical professionally employed adult sends and receives an avalanche of emails. In response, dozens of articles that address the challenge of email management have appeared in business targeted media outlets. Those articles are all somewhat helpful but my feeling is, when emails are effectively written fewer of them are written, because writers express themselves clearly and recipients understand how to respond.

As luck would have it, an amazing and highly organized polymath named Kabir Seghal, who is a U.S. Navy veteran, former Vice President at J.P. Morgan, Grammy Award-winning producer (Afro-Latin Jazz) and author of seven books in both the children and adult genres including Coined: The Rich Life of Money and How its History Has Shaped Us (2015) has stepped up to guide mere mortals in the fine art of email writing. Seghal applies lessons he learned while in the military when advising us on how to write the ideal email communication.

Subject line

Subject lines are crucial. They can determine when or even if your email is opened. The wrong subject line can result in your email being ignored or deleted. A powerful subject line communicates the purpose of the email and the action the writer would like the recipient to take. A sampling of subject line verbs include:

Action                                 Meet

Decision                             Request

FYI                                      Sign

ACTION:  The recipient must do something, usually within a certain time frame.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         frame.

DECISION: A decision must be made by the recipient, or a decision that impacts the recipient has been made.

FYI: For Your Information messages keep the recipient in the loop. Action is not required (choice of the recipient).

MEET: Consult your calendar and reserve time.

REQUEST: The writer seeks approval or permission from the recipient.

SIGN: The recipient must read and sign a document and return it with a certain time frame.

Bottom line up front (BLUF)

Begin the body of the email with a short statement that concisely answers Who, What, When, Where and Why to explain the purpose of your email and what you’d like the recipient to do. The BLUF distills the message and allows the recipient to easily digest the information you share and how s/he will be impacted. Seghal suggests that the writer lead with the heading Bottom Line to call attention to your email’s core messages.

Active voice

Seghal recommends that we use the active, rather than passive, voice when composing emails. It’s important to be clear about who has or is taking action, or who will be required to take action (and when) and the impact of that action.

Cut to the chase

Short emails are preferred by military personnel, but sometimes longer communications are unavoidable. Should your email exceed three paragraphs, follow-up your Bottom Line (BLUF) statement with bullet points, so the recipient can quickly focus on critical information.  Rather than adding files as attachments to the email, embed hyperlinks to the files and enable faster access.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: Typist, circa 1930s.

 

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Contacting the Prospect: Phone or Email?

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Email is the preferred business communication format for most of us and the choice usually makes sense.  An email provides a written record of what the parties have discussed and any agreements that have been proposed and accepted (or not).

However, certain nuances of meaning may not be effectively transmitted in an email and for that reason, it is useful to understand when it might be advantageous to discuss certain subjects by telephone.  It is also useful to recognize when a face-to-face meeting will most likely be the ideal communication method.  Much depends upon your purpose, message and relationship with the other party, whether the topic pertains to a business matter or your personal life.

Furthermore, be sensitive to the time you choose to reach out, whether by telephone or email.  Your request for contact may get lost in the shuffle if you email or telephone on Monday morning, late afternoon on Friday, or on the day before a big holiday. 

Telephone when you would like to:

  • Build a relationship
  • Explain a complicated matter
  • Apologize for a product or service failure
  • Close a sale quickly and successfully

On the telephone, you will more easily convey your authenticity, express concerns, telegraph empathy and build trust as compared to what is usually possible through email exchanges, which can sometimes cause the writer to seem cold and can therefore lead to misunderstanding of intent.

For important goals, be advised that it’s sometimes easier for a prospect to say no when communicating by email, so if you’re hoping to get the green-light for a project or sale, pick of the phone and wager that speaking with you personally will persuade your decision-maker prospect to say yes.

When you must contact someone whom you do not know in order to jump-start a sale, picking up the telephone is what you do. A cold-call prospect who receives an email from an unknown party is almost guaranteed to interpret the outreach as spamming and no ethical sales professional wants that ugly slur attached to his/her name and reputation.  Over the telephone, you’ll be positioned to demonstrate that you are both legitimate and trustworthy.

Cold-calling takes considerable resolve and reliable sales data report that it’s effective only about 5% of the time, but you’ll improve your chance of success when you telephone the probable decision-maker.  If you encounter difficulty in reaching the prospect, experiment with the time frame; call at 7:30 – 8:30 AM (except on Mondays) or 4:30 – 6:00 PM (not on Fridays or the eve of a holiday).  When the prospect answers (s/he will!), ask if it’s a good time to speak. 

Choose email when you’d like to:

  • Simultaneously communicate with several people
  • Generate a written record of the discussion and resulting agreements
  • Follow-up
  • Ask a quick question

Should your cold-call prospect agree to evaluate information beyond what you’ve shared in the phone call, follow-up with an email in which you document the highlights of the conversation, especially time-sensitive action items. Remember to thank the prospect for taking time to speak with you and assess the usefulness of your product or service in his/her organization.

When evaluating which communication method might be most effective when planning to approach a sales prospect, consider first his/her rank within the company and probable decision-making authority, along with what you can learn or infer about his/her priorities, concerns, schedule and even age.  Younger and less senior staff members may respond more favorably to email or even SMS (text).

Both the telephone and email have their advantages throughout the sales process.  Know the preferences of whom you are communicating with (ask), remember your objectives and use the communication format that will bring to you the preferred outcome.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: Natalie Wood in Sex and the Single Girl  (1964)

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21st Century Email Marketing Tactics

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Email marketing is dead.  Long live email marketing.  The pervasiveness of spamming has forever damaged the reputation of email marketing and yet the practice refuses to quietly fade away.  I’ll say that’s because email marketing remains a useful B2B communication platform.  It’s just that marketers need to be smart about how to utilize this valuable resource.  Email marketing in the 21st century means content marketing that addresses topics that interests your clients and delivers value to them and to you.  When planning an email marketing campaign, content is king.

Content does not mean sending out a stream of tweets that describe banal banter such as what’s going on in your office today, accompanied by an image of your morning coffee and pastry sitting next to your laptop.  Your clients are not interested in “fake news” that results in a slew of annoying emails that feature revelations about your perspectives only and are filled with links to Instagram photos of what you found to be amusing as you walked to the post office.

Content marketing means sharing relevant information that will make your clients  become better informed and help them do their jobs better.  You accomplish that by producing original material that addresses topics that your clients feel are useful and distributing it on a consistent basis through your weekly blog or monthly newsletter,

The logistics of that distribution are up to you, whether you develop an opt-in email list and distribute content through a marketing service like Constant Contact or Mail Chimp, or if you post your blog or newsletter on a site like WordPress, that is visited by numerous readers, some of whom may be your clients.  In the latter scenario, there is usually an opportunity to subscribe to your content through alerts, individual emails or an RSS feed.

Regardless of your distribution platform, readers and clients appreciate an email /content marketing strategy that is customized and therefore more personal.  Developing an editorial calendar adds seasonal relevance to the topics that you present, for example, as does occasionally letting your content be influenced by the news or changes in government or tax policy.  It’s time-consuming, but the content that your organization provides weekly or monthly demonstrates your authority as evidenced by your expertise and judgment, as well as your opinions (don’t hesitate to have them!).  Freelance consulting specialists must always enhance the perception of our bona rides and content marketing plays a significant role.

As you write, learn to occasionally weave one or two of your products or services into the narrative because after all, the real purpose of producing and distributing content in B2B emails is to create billable hours (sales).  This could take the form of a client success story or news that you’ll appear on a panel, with a link to register embedded in your post.

If your email/ content marketing is sent through a marketing service as an individual email addressed to each subscriber, you are advised to pay particular attention to the subject line.  According to Silverpop’s 2016 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study, the mean open rate of emails sent is merely 20 %, meaning that four out of five email marketing communications are deleted.  A 2015 analysis of over 40 million emails  conducted by Mail Chimp revealed that some of the most effective subject lines are (60 – 87% open rate) :

1. (Insert business name) Sales and Marketing Newsletter

2. Eye on the (insert business name) Update (insert the week or month time frame)

3. (Insert business name and date) News Bulletin

4. (Insert business name) Newsletter, with date

5. (Insert business name) Invites You!

6. Happy Holidays From (insert business name)

In 2014, Digital Marketer analyzed 125 million emails that the company sent that year and found that your business name, along with the words urgent, upgrade, alert, new, available, free delivery and newsletter are among the most persuasive. Oh, and what’s the secret to writing a good email subject line, along with using the key words that charm readers? Make the subject line describe the email topic!

So the moral of the story is, don’t dismiss email marketing as being hopelessly retro and inferior to social media posts.  Instead, think about how to update and adapt its use to fit your needs and the interests of your clients.  If your clients are among your Facebook friends on your Fan Page or they follow your tweets, then by all means continue.  You might consider how some of that content and images might be repurposed to become part of long-form content in a blog or newsletter.  Several recent studies have found that clients respond well to long-form content.  You’ll figure it out and reap the benefits,

Thanks for reading,

kim

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10 Ways To Reboot Your Email Marketing List

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E-newsletters,  webinars,  Slide Share info-graphics and other email marketing content can go as flat as an open bottle of champagne after a while.  Business in the 21st century is sort of like show business,  folks.  Gypsy Rose Lee said it best,  “You’ve gotta have a gimmick”.  You need to know how to hold your audience.  For that matter,   you’d better know your audience well enough to recognize when they stop paying attention.

Assuming that the content you provide is relevant to potential readers and not just a 3 page sales pitch about you,  wonderful you,  there may eventually be a drop-off in the email open rate.  Attention spans are short and email in-boxes are filled to the brim with all manner of messages.  But you can’t afford to lose control of your “room”,  your list members.  Presumably,  that list is populated with clients,  prospects and referral sources.  They are the life blood of your business.  How do you win them back? Try these tactics:

1.   Examine your stats and identify who is not opening your emails.  Studies show that 60% of email marketing communications are never opened.

2.   Prune the list.  Facing up to audience members who have fallen out of love with you takes courage but like any love affair that’s over,  it is best to move on.  Resolve to remove the non-readers.  Carol Tice, who founded the Freelance Writer’s Den and maintains a formidable email list,  sends her non-readers an email and asks if they would like to remain on the list.  The overwhelming majority do not respond and their names are removed.  A handful ask to continue.  You will feel better when you do the purge.  You’ll have an open rate that makes you smile.  You will know that the creative energy and hard work invested in your content marketing will be appreciated.

3.   Ask list members to update their email information.  Your open rate could improve just by allowing readers to have communications sent to an alternate email address.  Those who don’t respond after a second or third reminder to update their info are clearly not interested and can be removed from the list.

4.   To maintain the interest of readers who remain,  especially if your open rate is dropping,  take a look at your subject line.  A well-written subject line is a siren song to potential readers.  See  headline hooks that reel in readers

5.   Include a tempting call to action and name it in the subject line.   A Survey,  free webinar (hosted by you or someone whose expertise you trust),  or a white paper on a subject of interest to your readers re-establishes your relevance and will persuade a certain percentage of non-readers and infrequent readers to click and engage.

6.   Think mobile.  In July 2014,  Forrester Research reported that 42% of emails from B2C retailers are opened on smartphones and 17% are opened on tablets.  Customize your email communications for responsive design,  so that reading will be easy on mobile devices.  Make it convenient for all potential readers to open your communications.

7.   Send on a regular schedule.  Frequent readers of this blog know that Tuesday is publish day,  even if Christmas or the 4th of July fall on that day of the week.  You may prefer to publish on a given date.   Whatever you do,  establish and adhere to a predictable publishing schedule.  Readers appreciate it more than you may realize.  Make readers anticipate receiving and reading your communications.

8.   Build your list.  Organically and with permission,  build your email marketing list.  You should have met each person on your list at least once.   At the email campaign launch,  send to all business contacts along with an introductory message that announces the debut,  explains the benefits to readers,  reveals the frequency (weekly or monthly)  and provides an easy and effective opt-out.  Resist the temptation to add to your list the names of everyone who hands you a business card.  When speaking with people,  do mention your email marketing campaign,  give examples of the subjects covered and how often you send.  Ask if they would like to receive at least one and let them know that if they choose to opt out,  that can be easily and quickly done.

9.   Personalize.  Whatever service sends out your emails should include a greeting to the individual recipient.

10.  Sign me up!  On your website and social media,  allow interested parties to sign up to receive selected email marketing communications,  register for webinars or receive a copy of any white papers.

Content marketing is the new advertising and emailing your content is the best way to reach clients and prospects who no longer answer the phone.  Create a viable list by continually adding and purging members to enable your campaigns to deliver optimal ROI.  Draw in readers with relevant content and intriguing subject lines.  Format in responsive design to include those who prefer to read on mobile device.  Fulfill expectations by publishing on a regular schedule.

Thanks for reading,

Kim