Fifteen stinking dollars! That was all it took for me to get in on a $24K opportunity!
If you’re a P4P’er (Print4Pay Hotel) member, you’re aware that once a week (Sunday nights, except in the summer), I send an update of the past weeks threads on the Print4Pay Hotel. For those that read carefully, you’ll see that I use Constant Contact to deliver those e-mails in a neat format where I can add pictures, links, and some content.
Over the years I can’t tell you how many existing accounts I revisited and found out that they had purchased additional printers, and scanners, and I wasn’t included in that conversation of procurement. In addition to witnessing the additional hardware placements, I was not able to keep up with all of the technology solutions that we offered with my existing accounts. It became more of “thank you for your order,” and I was off to the next opportunity. But I knew I was losing opportunities because I was not in front of all of my accounts on a regular basis.
Thus, the question was how to keep my existing accounts informed and stay in front of them on a regular basis. Phone calls were not an option because I have too many of them to make already. Mailers is an option, however, I was already doing 20 of these a month to net new prospects. The thought of adding a few hundred per month was sheer torture. E-mailing, okay, that would work somewhat, but I didn’t have the skills to develop something from scratch in MS Outlook.
That’s when it dawned on me to use my Constant Contact account that I use for the Print4Pay Hotel. Brilliant!
With Constant Contact I was able to create a separate address book for existing accounts. I started off with 45 accounts and made sure I called each account in advance to tell them I had developed an e-mail newsletter that was focused on technology and business process improvement. I stated I would only send one per month and needed their approval (one of Constant Contacts covenants when sending e-mails). I was pleasantly surprised that all of the accounts agreed to receive the newsletter.
With Constant Contact you can subscribe to the monthly service for $15 per month, which allows you to send to 500 e-mail addresses. They have easy to use templates, and the ability to add pictures, links, and much more. Within a couple of hours I had the first template set up for my first e-mail campaign. I’ve only done two of these so far; the second one took about an hour because I had to find some content that I thought would resonate with a broad base of accounts.
About three weeks after sending my first e-mail campaign, I received a call from an existing client to schedule an appointment in reference to Contex scanners. The account was actually interested in two high-end Contex scanners totaling $24K in revenue. During our meeting, the decision maker stated, “I read somewhere that you have the Contex scanners?”
At the time I didn’t give it a second thought. After leaving the appointment, I was curious how the decision maker knew that. After checking, I found the client was in my Constant Contact address book, and yes one of the articles I included in the newsletter was about Contex scanners.
I may have gotten lucky, but we all know the saying, “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Next week I’ll be sending out number three and I’ll bet that I keep on getting luckier and luckier.
If you have the time and the $15, Constant Contact is a great way to do it yourself, instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you.
Good selling!
