What’s In A List?

As a small business owner or entrepreneur, you know that the more leads you have, the more likely you are to get more customers and sustain your business. In fact, when you think about, you literally can’t grow and scale your business without the interest that leads generate!

At Seybienne, we’re in business too, and we totally get that you can never have enough leads.

The Cold Hard Truth

Unfortunately, we see one particular scenario all too often: businesses that have a heap of leads already at their fingertips (in the form of their email list), but don’t maximise their potential. Life and business happen, your contacts were no longer being actively marketed to and – no surprise – they dropped off because they weren’t being engaged.

Think that wouldn’t happen to you? Really? Are you sure?

Let’s talk about Katie who owns a small flower business. Every time a customer orders from her, their email gets added to her email marketing list. She’s been building it slowly over time, but things got a little crazy since Mother’s Day and she hasn’t sent out anything to her list in over 3 months.

See, it’s great that Katie has built her email list, but unfortunately for her, many of these leads have now gone cold… and now she’s considering running paid advertising to get some more customers.

Warming Up Your Leads

You have probably heard before that saying, “The Money is in the List”. Well, truth be told that isn’t quite correct, the money is in the “RELATIONSHIP” you have with the contact on the list.

Ugh – we totally get it. After a few months of non-contact you get to that cringeworthy feeling where you think, “Will they even remember me after all this time? I may as well start from scratch.”

Just remember, a contact has typically entered your database as they originally signed up for something or – as in Katie’s case – they bought a product or service from you. Imagine if you had a list of 3,000 contacts and you were not contacting 60% of them on a regular basis (way more common than you might think!). That’s 1,800 potential sales or referrals that you’re missing out on. Not only that – every single one of them is a potential sale you don’t have to pay to get!

Before spending a heap of money on new customers, follow these steps to warm up unengaged contacts you already have!

Assess Your List

Do you know what percentage of your list is unengaged?

If you have Infusionsoft this status is calculated automatically for you; you just have to run the report or add the stat to your dashboard. (NB: Don’t have Infusionsoft? You should. Contact us here to chat about why you need it!) If not, follow these steps.

Step 1: Work out when you last engaged a contact.

Engagement is defined as when they last opened an email, clicked a link in an email or submitted a landing page or web form. Categorise your contacts into 1 Month, 3 months and over 3 months.

Step 2: Reach out and say “Hi!” (<3 months)

For those contacts who have not been engaged for 3 months, reach out to them ASAP and start the conversation. Try:

An email with some free information that you know they will love.
Some special offers “just for them”.
Then reach out and make the offer.

Step 3: Be Humble (>3 months)

For those contacts which are 3-6 months or even more, you are moving into the danger zone of freezing cold leads. Depending on how they came to you in the first place and what relationship they had with you, they may not remember you. Eek! This means you need to remind them of your relationship otherwise they will likely unsubscribe from your list without reading your offer or even worse: mark your email as SPAM. This can have ramifications for your future email deliverability. Reach out to them and give them a link to re-subscribe which, if they do, will re-engage them and get them off your Unengaged Marketable list. Make sure you humbly apologise for not being in contact sooner. We’re all busy and, if you are upfront about your lack of communication, people can usually relate.

Step 4: Leave no person behind

Keep on top of your Unengaged Marketable Stats, and remember, it takes 5-12 touch points with a contact to convert them to a client or customer, so make sure you follow them up an appropriate period of time after your offer email. So, if you are thinking of paid advertising to boost your list, make sure you first investigate how engaged your current list is because you may just find hidden sales just waiting for you to find. Need more business tips? Want to talk to us about automation? Get in Touch with us today!