One of the best ways I have found to keep in touch with prospects and clients is through regular communications. In this article I will discuss a couple of ways to keep track of your clients and keep in touch.
Keeping in touch with your prospects, professional peers, and clients is one of the best ways to obtain new clients, new business from existing clients, and new clients from referrals. Using an email list makes it easy to keep in touch. When considering using email for regular communications it is important to keep in mind these items:
Who is your target audience?
Remember that not just clients are targets for your emails. Contacts you have met at networking events, peer appraisers, attorneys, IRS employees, and prospective clients you have met.
It is all about content!
Nobody likes to get an email that is pushing a product or service. The content of your emails should be informative and show that you are an expert in your field. Consider providing information that your contacts may not have known if you had not sent the email. The idea is that over time, these reciepients will come to regard you as an expert in your field and when they need an appraiser, or someone they know, they will contact you. (To Read the Rest of the article click the Read More Link below)
Timing
Send bulk emails once a month at maximum. No one likes to be bombarded with emails every few days or even once a week from the same sender. Plus this makes the content more valuable.
Compliance
Sending SPAM is illegal and will turn off clients and prospective clients very quickly. Your contacts must be able to opt-out of your emails. Make sure they are removed as soon as you are notified.
How to Create and Send Emails
One method is to keep a distribution list of your contacts in Outlook. This is very easy to do. All you do is open Outlook and open your contacts list. Then click the New - Distribution list from the toolbar at the top. Add the contacts you wish and emails of others that are not in your contacts and click save. This distribution list will be saved in your contacts and you can send an email to it quickly and easily.
An alternate method is to use a service like Constant Contact. Constant Contact is very inexpensive, handles all the compliance (opt-out, opt-in), and has great tools for building professional emails quickly and easily. If you have a web site, you can place a field on your web site to allow visitors to subscribe to your emails.
No matter which method you use, content is king. Go out there and show your clients, peers, and prospects that you know your stuff. They will remember you when they need appraising services.
Resources
Constant Contact
Compliance - Can SPAM Act
Please send me any comments or questions you have.
Brian Hiatt
Collectorpro Software Inc.
www.collectorpro.com
information@collectorpro.com
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Constant Contact in any way and receive no compensation or other consideration for this commentary.
Keeping in touch with your prospects, professional peers, and clients is one of the best ways to obtain new clients, new business from existing clients, and new clients from referrals. Using an email list makes it easy to keep in touch. When considering using email for regular communications it is important to keep in mind these items:
Who is your target audience?
Remember that not just clients are targets for your emails. Contacts you have met at networking events, peer appraisers, attorneys, IRS employees, and prospective clients you have met.
It is all about content!
Nobody likes to get an email that is pushing a product or service. The content of your emails should be informative and show that you are an expert in your field. Consider providing information that your contacts may not have known if you had not sent the email. The idea is that over time, these reciepients will come to regard you as an expert in your field and when they need an appraiser, or someone they know, they will contact you. (To Read the Rest of the article click the Read More Link below)
Timing
Send bulk emails once a month at maximum. No one likes to be bombarded with emails every few days or even once a week from the same sender. Plus this makes the content more valuable.
Compliance
Sending SPAM is illegal and will turn off clients and prospective clients very quickly. Your contacts must be able to opt-out of your emails. Make sure they are removed as soon as you are notified.
How to Create and Send Emails
One method is to keep a distribution list of your contacts in Outlook. This is very easy to do. All you do is open Outlook and open your contacts list. Then click the New - Distribution list from the toolbar at the top. Add the contacts you wish and emails of others that are not in your contacts and click save. This distribution list will be saved in your contacts and you can send an email to it quickly and easily.
An alternate method is to use a service like Constant Contact. Constant Contact is very inexpensive, handles all the compliance (opt-out, opt-in), and has great tools for building professional emails quickly and easily. If you have a web site, you can place a field on your web site to allow visitors to subscribe to your emails.
No matter which method you use, content is king. Go out there and show your clients, peers, and prospects that you know your stuff. They will remember you when they need appraising services.
Resources
Constant Contact
Compliance - Can SPAM Act
Please send me any comments or questions you have.
Brian Hiatt
Collectorpro Software Inc.
www.collectorpro.com
information@collectorpro.com
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Constant Contact in any way and receive no compensation or other consideration for this commentary.
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Tom Helms Said,
Nice idea, however, if my clients and contacts are like me, I hit delete instead of reading more "bits of information" that bombard me every day. I send out a newsletter three times a year by snail mail and believe me, I get responses to the old fashioned touch.
Posted on August 25, 2009 at 9:53 AM
Jerry Sampson Said,
Some great ideas! I've only started to advertise heavily in the past year. Mostly I garnered my business from word of mouth. That however is changing. I issue a newsletter four times a year. Recently I've found that my "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" insurnance and donation clients like my email newsletters. To the professionals I send out the hard copies of this newsletter. The servers that most banks, insurnace companies and attorneys use usually block out my stuff thinking that its spam. With a hard copy there is a chance that it will make it into someones hands other than a secretary. I keep both light stressing what I do, highlights in the fields, trivia, hints and tips. A kind of Antiques Roadshow type format (I know... I know... don't hate me). I like interesting not dull, we all read too much dull stuff. Catch the attention first.
Posted on August 25, 2009 at 12:01 PM