IContact vs Constant Contact E-mail Marketing Review
I have been using e-mail marketing services for over 5 years to stay in contact with my brokers. Up until now I was using Constant Contact which works great but can be pricey with all the upgrades they try to sell you. They charge extra for social media links, surveys, archiving your e-mails, and photo uploads and I found myself quickly spending upwards of $35.00 a month.
I decided to give I-Contact a try after noticing that many of the most popular internet marketers were using it. It seems only a year or two ago that almost all of them were using another e-mail service named A-Weber. While I believe that A-Weber is still a great service it seems that I-Contact is much more user friendly which is very important.
Here are my favorite features:
1. It’s Cheap – You can try it for free first and prices start at $9.95 a month. I pay just under $19.00 a month for up to 1000 contacts
2. Discounts – I was able to get a 10% discount per month for signing up in the trial period. 20% discount if you pay annually
3. Deliverability – Every e-mail service claims to have the best delivery rates. I experienced this first hand by transferring my list to I-Contact and noticing higher deliverability rates over Constant Contact.
4. Surveys – You can create great looking surveys for no additional cost. Most others charge additional for this.
5. List Segmenting – This is huge if you have multiple lists or even need to segment your main list. Not all e-mails should be sent out to your entire list if you know they are not interested in a certain product.
6. Sign Up Forms – These are essential if you have your own blog or website as it allows people to automatically sign up.
7. Auto Responders – This allows you to schedule your e-mails and automate. Set and forget.
8. Tracking – You can track pretty much everything. Who opens the e-mail, what links they click, how many times the click the link.
9. I-Phone App – Not essential but cool to have nonetheless
10. Templates – There are plenty of templates to choose from. Pretty much every e-mail service has these.
Bottom line is that I-Contact is cheaper than Constant Contact, has better deliverability rates, and added features for free. I was worried about switching in the beginning but am very happy that I did. I now pay half the price and have higher deliverability rates.
click here to try I-Contact for free.
To Your Online Success,
Kelly Marsh
Follow Up Statistics
How Many Times Do You Follow Up?
McGraw Hill did a study and found those businesses that boosted their marketing and advertising during a recession grew 275% over the 5 years proceeding. However, those businesses that cut back, if they were still in business, only grew 19%.
48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect
25% of sales people make a second contact and stop
12% of sales people only make three contacts and stop
10% of sales people make more than three contacts
2% of Sales are made on the second contact
5% of sales are made on the third contact
10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact
Are you committing any of these follow up crimes? If you are, I would recommend automating your follow up with the Send Out Cards system. Use a “set it and forget it” campaign so that you don’t miss out on new business. Contact me to try this system for free.
To your success,
Kelly Marsh
Boaz Rauchwerger and The Five Questions
I have met quite a few interesting people over the last year since working as marketing director for a personal growth company. Many of these people are expert speakers ranging from referral experts to leadership gurus. I attended a Vistage meeting as a guest a few months ago and got a chance to listen to Boaz Rauchwerger present to a group of CEOs, many of whom run multimillion dollar companies. Needless to say I was lucky to be there.
5 Powerful Questions
Boaz spoke on the power of “The Five Questions”. After doing thousands of presentations to groups of CEO’s he mentioned that time and time again CEOs would attest to the power of these questions.
These are five simple questions that you can ask informally that can teach you so much about other people and make them feel important.
Start with a phrase that puts most people at ease: I’m just curious…
- Where are you from originally?
- (If not from here) What brought you here?(If from here) Have you lived here all your life?
- Do you have a family?
- What do you do?
- What did you want to be when you were growing up?
The power of these questions lies in the fact the most people like talking about their roots and their history. Once you get someone started with easy questions, they’ll usually find it easy to keep talking. This way you can refer to some of the information in a future conversation with that person. The power of using this technique with your clients could be huge!
By taking an interest in your client they will know that you care about them and if you can refer back to this information during your next interaction they will be blown away. Imagine asking for referrals from a client after you using this technique. You would have a client for life and a referral machine!
It’s very easy to forget to use this technique so Boaz recommended creating a business card with your company logo on one side and the questions on the other side. Pass these out when networking to assist in your marketing.
Give these questions a shot and see what happens.
To your success,
Kelly Marsh
3 Systems to Generate Referrals
Do you have a system to help you generate referrals and build relationships? Most of us generate referrals by word of mouth. The problem with this strategy is that it is not consistent, predictable, or repeatable. Word of mouth referrals are mainly based on chance.
Here are 3 types of Referral Systems you can implement today:
Transactional – This system is based on rewards that happen during the transaction of business. For instance you could create a flyer that says “Would you like to receive 10% off of your bill today?” or for every referral that you give us you will get a 2% discount up to 10% and include a paper with 5 slots for names.
Referral Marketing
Studies have shown that 8 out of 10 people will fill in at least 2 or more of those referral slots. The downside to this system is that it’s short term and does not provide ongoing referrals.
Joint Venture – This type of referral system is used with complementary businesses. For instance a chiropractor could partner with a sports apparel company and then with a vitamin company. All of these businesses service the same type of client. Once you have you team of put together you can create a testimonial booklet and write 1 page endorsing each one of your referral partners and at the bottom of the page that referral partner can put a coupon or some type of offering.
Once this booklet is together each partner sends this to all of their customers. This allows all the partners to leverage off the relationship that each business owner has with their clients. The main drawback with this system is that it is very hard to set up because you need the commitment of each business owner.
Relationship Based - This system is based on positive feelings between you and your customers, friends, and prospects. Benefits of this type are:
1. Last Longer -The best thing about this system is that they last a lot longer and are not transactional.
2. Higher Quality Referral – This results in a much higher quality referral because the Person giving the referral has an emotion and is excited about referring you to their friends and family.
3. Spreads Virally – Once you tell one person and they have a good experience with that vendor, they’re going to tell someone else, and so on.
This system is based on trust and requires that you provide great products and exceptional service. This system requires that you communicate with customers constantly and stay in touch. People need to be reminded constantly and feel that you care about them.
The best systems to accomplish this are an e-mail newsletter or a greeting card referral system. The main problem with e-mail newsletter is that everyone is sending them and they can easily get caught in a spam folders. It’s also very easy to hit the delete key. On the other hand hardly anybody is sending out warm and heartfelt greeting cards to the people that they want to establish a relationship with.
The best greeting card system that I have found for this type of marketing is Send Out Cards This system allows you to send out physical greeting cards through the mail in your own handwriting with your own signature.
When you push a button, it prints and sends out a physical card that gets opened 100% of the time. It allows you to customize your cards by uploading photos and designing each card. You can set up automated campaigns to drip market your clients without ever having to leave your desk.
Check out my recommends page at the top to try this system for free.
In Friendship,
Kelly Marsh
