What is your business doing to have a successful holiday season and wrap up the year nicely? 

We have a few ideas that may help you think about the joyful to-dos for your business this December. 

1. Send Personalized Cards

Yes, this is a no-brainer on your holiday to-do list as a business that cares for its customers. However, the important word in this to-do is "personalized." 

Whether you send a printed card, a gift, or even just an email, the important part of the experience for customers and partners is personalization. No one wants to feel like another number in your rolodex. Make sure they know that you know who they are and that they matter. 

Yes, there are semi-automated ways of doing this (if you really cannot afford the time). However, I emplore you (specifically B2B companies) to make time to think about your customers / clients. Aim to...

This is the fifth and final article in our business and marketing automation series. If you missed the other articles, we recommend checking them out too. Here's what we've talked about so far...

1. Sales Team Automations in Your CRM offers some specific ideas for automations you can setup to help your sales team close sales faster and make them work more efficiently. 

2. Email Sequences talks about the smart ways to use email automation that help your business and how they compare with email templates. 

3. Marketing Automations in Kajabi is a unique topic for our community interested in hosting online courses and using that platform. 

4. Automating Accounting and Bookkeeping shares automation ideas (mostly in the Zoho Finance Suite) to make your life easier. 

 Invest in Nurturing Client Relationships

What if you could...

Accounting and Bookkeeping Automation Ideas

As we continue our journey through some great automation ideas, this week the focus shifts to finance.

Yes, there are things in your bookkeeping and finance software to automate and make your life easier. Since we use the Zoho Finance Suite, most of the automation ideas here will reference those apps. However, many of these can be done in other platforms or by using tools such as Zapier.

If you missed the previous articles in the automation series, you can catch up. The first article was about Automations for your Sales Team.  That one provides useful CRM Automation Ideas to help your sales team close deals faster. The second article talked about Email Sequences and Email Automations where we shared clever Email Automations to engage both prospects and customers.

Avoiding Double Data Entry

Connect...

Beckmann Collaborative needs your help! We need to hire a fantastic, lovingly honest administrative and operations specialist to support our team. Are you up to the challenge? 

Job Description

This position is ideal for someone interested in marketing and relationship management. The Administrative and Operations Specialist will be the connective tissue among the Beckmann Collaborative team. What the heck does that mean? We are each heavily focused on our tasks for individual clients and in need of someone who can keep us connected with each other through your efforts such as daily updates email.

What You'll Be Doing

• Availability Tracking: Get each team member's daily and weekly hours limit and schedule ahead (e.g. Candice is available for 30 hours per week. She cannot work on Wednesdays after 1pm). Use a calendar or other tool to track this each month.

 ...

Sell Online Courses Faster with Kajabi's Marketing Automation Tools

Beckmann Collaborative has been using Kajabi to host our online courses and resources for several years now. About two and a half years ago, we made the leap to move our entire website over to Kajabi from Wordpress. [I still love Wordpress as a website CMS].

When you need a no-code "one-stop shop" software to market and sell online courses,  membership sites, products etc, Kajabi is likely to come up in your search. 

You may already know that we really love marketing automation. And that is why we've been writing this series of articles on the topic. The first article was all about helping your sales team to automate in your CRM. In the second article, we dug into the specifics of automating emails - specific email automation sequences. And this article specifically talks about the cool, helpful...

[UPDATED JANUARY 31, 2022]

Beckmann Collaborative is a business training and marketing consulting firm based in Austin, Texas. We serve clients throughout the United States of America. Our mission is to transform teams from disorganized, fractured marketing efforts into those with a cohesive collaboration with better results.

We co-create innovative solutions with our clients around their marketing, sales, and operations. Together, we solve problems and create structures that allow each business to grow and evolve.

Our People and Credentials

Candice DeRiso, Owner

Marketing Strategist & Trainer

Candice is a marketing strategist and trainer focused on supporting growing businesses to find, attract and retain their ideal customers. Her professional journey includes marketing for Broadway shows, Carnegie Hall, high-tech companies, and a...

Clever Email Automations to Engage Prospects and Customers

Email Automation Vs. Email Templates

Before jumping into the list of CRM email automation ideas, first we should identify whether your email SHOULD be automated or not. 

Both email automation and email templates are great tools. It's important to know how to use each one based on what you need to accomplish.

As long as your CRM data is clean, you can draw upon the information you have about prospects and contacts to send customize emails and deliver highly relevant information using email automation. This means that you and your team are vigilant about keeping things up to date and entering information in the correct data fields.

One way to gather clean information from prospects and customers is to quiz or survey them. Keep it simple. A few questions you could ask are: how did they hear about your company in...

These useful CRM Automation Ideas will help your sales team close deals faster

CRM automation is all about using software to automate your sales and marketing activities. You can automate the repetitive tasks in your business such as emails. Sales teams especially need automation for efficiency as well as creating more personalized experience. 

This is the first in a series of posts about automation workflows for marketing, sales and operations. Think about the sales team members who complain about having to enter information into the CRM and track their activities. 

How do you get your Sales Team to use your CRM?

1. Mindset First.

As the leader, you have the obligation to set the tone for how your team members view your CRM. It is a tool for understanding trends, business development, and measuring success. If you can explain that value to your entire...

You Don't Need Third-Party Cookies

Let's be honest, third-party cookies have become the creepy "big brother" of the advertising world. Learning about the deprecation of cookies from yet another browser wasn't all that surprising with the rise in digital privacy. 

Finding customers without third-party cookies is easier than you think. It begins with your customer data platform.

First Party Data

If you are stressed about the change in third-party cookies, there is a glaringly obvious direction to go... first party data. 

First party data is the information your business collects directly from your customers and prospects. This is data that you own. Usually, a business will gather this data from phone calls, emails, surveys, and buying history.

Let's discuss this a little more...

A not so long time ago, marketers spent a high degree of energy on collecting data from...

[Guest Blog]

How Much Influence Do You Hold?

The phrase "Keeping up with the Jones" has long been used to describe the phenomenon that we as humans want what others have. In modern terms, we might call this F.O.M.O. (The fear of missing out). These concepts have led to the rise in Influencer Marketing.

After all, why would we want to be left out of the hot new trend and miss out on something great?

Marketers have taken this and turned it into something they can use to their advantage. Influencer Marketing.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Social media has become one of our greatest assets in marketing. You can reach people you may never have been able to reach before. This goes for the average Joe as well, who may be an influencer.

An influencer is someone who utilizes social media to grow their personal brand. An influencer has a large audience (usually on social media)...