Email Marketing – what should I use???

Mailchimp, Aweber, Convertkit, ActiveCampaign…. The list goes on.  CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and autoresponders abound with wildly varying price points and feature lists.

So What Should You Use?!?!

I DON’T KNOW

Here’s a better question, what do you want to do with your contact list? Here’s another pertinent factor – How old is your business? / How big is your list? / How quickly do you want to grow?

Sorry, that was three in one, but they affect the ultimate outcome of your decision, so actually not sorry. I can’t tell you what software you should use, not without getting to understand you and your business. But here’s a list of questions you should be asking yourself.

• What’s your budget?

• Do you want to grow your list through contact forms and social media marketing?

• Are you emailing out blog posts?

• Are you mainly contacting customers who’ve already paid?

• Do you have somebody who can administer the system, internal or otherwise?

• Do you like manually sending emails? /Do you need automated email sequences?

• Will you use reporting? (Are you using it now?)

• Do you need form building?

• Do you want site & event tracking?

• Lots of integrations?

If you’re a new business, have a low budget and are mostly sending emails manually – you could just use Mailchimp. It’s cheap and should have most of the features you need.

If you’re looking to grow quickly you should look for a solution with solid contact forms, site & event tracking and good automation systems. Convertkit, ActiveCampaign, and Aweber might fit the bill.

All of these solutions – ALL OF THEM will need maintenance.

Can you do that? Are you prepared to learn?

Or is this the one thing you might be better off handing over to a T-VA?

You can always contact me if you need help answering those questions.

Read more from the Blog

Why you shouldn’t complete that project.

You know the one I’m talking about. The one that seems like a such great idea, that your mentor told you to do, that definitely works for everybody else but… you just keep putting it off.

Here’s what to do about that.

Get old school and do an old fashioned full business case with a SWOT analysis, a competitor analysis, and every other kind of analysis you can think of.

We, as small business entrepreneurs, don’t do those kinds of business cases very much. They’re clunky and take a lot of time and are mostly unnecessary when you’re not trying to communicate a business idea to anyone other than perhaps a partner.

So why do one now?

Well, a full business case report will help you identify where you’re stuck with getting the project off the ground. Maybe you don’t want to accept the risks, or the potential client isn’t what you want for your business or… any number of other reasons.

Once you’ve written it all down, the project itself should be clear; then you can decide finally, do you want to do it?

Don’t do a project just because you have the idea, or your mentor told you to or because everyone else is doing it. Do it because the business case fits your business.

And if it doesn’t, now you know why. Put the project down, archive whatever you’ve already done and focus your efforts on what does fit your business and you.

Keep the business case though. Review it in 12 months time or 5 years time, it might work in the future even if it doesn’t work for right now.

If you want more information on how to write a business case, there’s a pretty good article about that by Adobe Workfront.

Sometimes you might need specific advice to really understand the risks and costs of an IT project, so if that’s what you’re struggling with, perhaps I could help you out.

The Too Long: Didn’t Read of Pop Ups

This article on Pop Ups by Lauren Minning of ActiveCampaign is worth a read but it is pretty long so here’s a summary with the main points. I encourage you read the full article to find out more but I know we don’t all have the time for that.

TL:DR

• Pop Ups are annoying

• But Good Pop ups convert really really well compared to other placements

• Pop ups need context, they work best when they show after a relevant action

• No Pop up should come up as soon as you enter a website, nobody goes to a website to see their pop ups

• Good Email sign up forms should be Prominent, Promise useful benefit and provide Proof of benefit.

• Entrance and Exit Intent Pop-ups, Overlay/Modal/Lightbox pop ups, Slide-in boxes and sticky forms are all good types of pop ups that can work for you.

The How to on Group/Subreddit start up and moderation

“One tip I like, is to offer your early subscribers the chance of becoming a mod in exchange for making regular submissions”

— u/Raerth

Starting a facebook group can be hard, how do you find content and keep it moderated? As it turns out the same question has been asked about creating subreddits and answered a long time ago by Reddit user u/Raerth. Obviously some of this advice is tailored for reddit, but other advice like using RSS feeds to grab relevant content from a variety of sources works for any group you’re running. Well worth the read . You can find the full article here