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)...

[Guest Blog]

Blogs are amazing tools for boosting your authority in the industry, generating leads, communicating the values that are important to you and creating a community around your business. However, merely posting content isn’t enough to attract visitors and make your blog thrive.

When you adopt blog-friendly strategies, it will boost your efforts and get the most out of your writing. In this post, we’ll be talking about five simple strategies you should use to attract more visitors to your blog.

Attracting Visitors by Publishing More Often and Consistently

Posting new articles often and on a consistent frequency can be a simple and effective way of attracting new visitors to your blog.

Since Google’s search algorithm loves websites that are updated often, frequent posting can improve your blog’s SEO. When frequent updates to your blog become...

Accepting the Decline of the Big Social Platforms

Remember when having a Facebook business page meant that all of your page followers would see your posts? Or maybe you remember the days when anyone could Tweet anything, as long as it wasn't pornographic? Those were the good ole days.

The big social media platforms are no longer happy places for businesses and some users. Some people claim this is a shift in society. Us marketers know that it all comes back to using the algorithm to control content - forcing businesses to spend money on ads to participate. The Pay-to-Play Model does not serve small businesses. 

ZDNet said it well: Social media has become the stock exchange for public opinion. Investors seeking to capitalize on their association with the most active issues, buy low and sell high.

Niche Social Media Platforms

They have been popping up for years and...

[Guest Blog]

When reaching out to clients on social media, you have more avenues than ever to engage your target audience. Over 246 million Americans use at least one form of social media, including some lesser-known niche social media platforms according to Entrepreneur.com.

These smaller "niche" social media platforms attract individuals who wish to socialize around a particular interest, demographic, or topic. Similarly, some may be in search of smaller, more consumer-conscious platforms that they find more closely aligned with their social concerns than large players like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter may be. Many businesses are curious as to where else their target audiences are spending their time online. Where are they flocking to outside of large, worldwide social media outlets? These are some of the niche platforms with which businesses should familiarize...

Each May, the Small Business Association (SBA), hosts National Small Business Week to highlight the vital role that small businesses play in America's economy.

The goal of Small Business Week (SBW) is to celebrate and support the small businesses in our communities and beyond. While the emphasis is on shopping with these small businesses, it is also an opportunity for professional development. This year's SBW is May 2 - May 8, 2021. 

I'm a small business owner, what should I do for Small Business Week?

The SBA goes out of its way to promote the importance of your business and existence. 

Take advantage of the spotlight! 

1. Remember to use #SmallBusinessWeek in social posts

2. Check in with your local SCORE chapter to see if there are any workshops you can attend.

3. Partner with other small business owners to cross-promote each other....

[Guest Blog]

Conducting sales training is challenging no matter how experienced you are or how long you’ve been doing it. Why? Because according to studies, the attention span of an average person only lasts for about 20 minutes. After that, you will notice that some people in your audience will begin to check their mobile phones, look at their watches, look outside the window, or become restless in their seats. You need more than just professionally-prepared slide decks and engaging icebreakers to prevent any of any of that from happening.

Customizing your sales training essentials is the key to attention-grabbing training. Generic materials will bore your participants. The best way is to incorporate plenty of opportunities for your audience to share their thoughts, experiences, and best practices. Spice up your presentation with engaging activities that will help you...

[Guest Blog]

As a small business owner, you probably don’t have the same size budget or marketing team of a large enterprise. That doesn’t prevent you from reaching your customers and connecting with them on a deeper level. In fact, smaller companies have a unique opportunity to build relationships with loyal customers through more personalized and specific campaigns.

One excellent way to create memorable moments as a small company is to apply an account-based marketing strategy. This approach aligns sales and marketing processes to focus on improving your emotional connection with a specific set of customers.

Account-based marketing is often an appealing choice for smaller companies because we can’t afford to throw money at the wall with broad targeting strategies to see what might stick.

So, how can you use that kind of marketing effectively?

...