Unpolitically correct but happy

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ernest Hemingway

Today is the first step on our journey (I fear there may be a time when I use the word “journey” and don’t cringe but thankfully we aren’t there yet) and we are considering our 5 touches. Apparently, according to sales folklore, you have to touch a client 5 times for them to recognise your brand. If I worked in a politically correct, mature environment the words “touch a client 5 times” would not raise a smile but in an office where we have all worked together for a long time there is a 5 minute delay in our marketing meeting where we all make very obvious jokes. Note to self, when we have mastered “Sales” we should probably book some “acting like a grown-up” training.

These 5 touches can be anything and should be, if possible, all be different. Emails, post, social media, print media advertising, online banner adverts and blogs. We need the client to recognise who we are, know that we are experts in our field and to think of us when they have a need. What one of these 5 touches shouldn’t be, and certainly not as a first touch, is be a telephone call. By the time we call them we want them to have an idea of who we are and what we do.

So, who are we going to touch first (sorry, couldn’t resist one joke)? We can’t hit everyone with the same message because we have lapsed clients who have used us but for unknown reasons have disappeared, existing clients who use some but not all of our products and companies who we have identified as people who may benefit from our service. All of these people will need to be told very different things and in different ways.

We’ll start with a general email – that should be a quick one. Remember our training – not too much information, a visual, a testimonial and benefits. Easy???

The visual is the easy part, we had our website redesigned last year and we really like it. No stock images of cheesy people standing in a group or a woman smiling, wearing a headset – I worked in a call centre and I never saw anyone smiling whilst working. Our website has illustrations we can use and if we are struggling there’s always Frank to fall back on (for those who don’t know who Frank is he’s the man you see on most of our advertising and not surprisingly, someone our clients have taken into their hearts, and their workplace).

Testimonials, we have plenty of these so we easily identify one that’s relevant. We try and make life easier for the clients when we ask for testimonials by offering to make a few notes for them and then it’s not so time-consuming for clients to sit down and write about how wonderful we are.

So, last part, the wording – how difficult is this? Never have I questioned the written word so much as the 50 words we have on these emails!   “Don’t use the word just, it undervalues what we are saying”, ““Your” needs to be used as it’s talking directly to the reader” and my favourite “talk benefits not features”.   I never realised how hard it is to talk benefits rather than features until we sat down to write a list. Surely the benefit is the same for every feature – the recruiter gets paid commission because they filled a vacancy? I have to keep reminding myself of some training I was given as a new recruit when I worked for the Halifax:

You’re looking to buy a TV that comes with a remote control (I’m very old and this training was at a time when not all TVs came with a remote!!), is the remote a benefit of the TV? No, it’s not – the remote control is a feature, the fact that I don’t have to get up and change channels is a benefit (the fact that I can never find the remote when I’m looking to change channels is a hindrance and was never a problem when the buttons were on the front of the television).  

But finally, we have a list of what we believe to be benefits and not features, some wording, a visual and a testimonial. We are going to use Mailchimp to send out the emails. There is a cost to this and some patience is required to set it all up but the benefits (see, I’m getting the idea of benefits) far outweigh the time and cost. We can’t measure our success purely on sales, especially as this is only our first of 5 client touches (restraint, no jokes). Mailchimp will tell us how many emails were sent, how many were delivered (so we can get new contacts for those email addresses that are no longer valid), how many were opened (the more opened the more we know the subject line was right), how many times each person opened them (if they are opening it more than once they must be reading it?) and if they clicked on any of the links through to our website (and now we know they have an interest). All of these things allow us to measure our success and give the sales team some quick wins, it also tells us if we have got our marketing message right. (and for the more shrewd of you reading this I’m sure you’ll have noticed that this paragraph is a list of features and benefits of Mailchimp. Look at me, I’m learning)

We have three emails, targeted at the three different groups, they are loaded on Mailchimp and we are ready to hit the send button……….. here goes the first step on our journey.

– Chelle