Dr. Misner is joined on this episode by Eric Groves, Senior Vice President, Global Market Development at Constant Contact. Eric has four tips for e-mail marketing:

1. Build a quality list of people who know and trust you: they’re the ones who open your mail.
2. Take the time out of your day to create a strategy for your e-mail. What do you want to have happen when people read your message?
3. Execute on your strategy by writing content that’s not about you, but shares what you know. People will forward messages that make them seem smart.
4. Ask for feedback and engage your customers in the process. Recognize people who give you insight.

To summarize the secret of great e-zine content, “Be brief, be bright, and be gone.”

To see the service Constant Contact provides, just sign up where it says “Podcast Email Alerts.” You can sign up for a 60-day free trial at www.ConstantContact.com.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

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Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 094 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan, and how are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great, Priscilla, and I’m really pleased to say we have with in today’s podcast the Senior VP of Global Market Development for Constant Contact, and that is Eric Gross. Eric is our guest today, and he’s going to be talking a little bit about How to Market in a Tough Economy and, of course, how to use Constant Contact as a way to do that. And I want to talk about our experience with the organization, because we’ve had a great experience with the organization when we get to the end of the podcast.

First, Eric, you’ve got some great material that I think will help BNI members in their marketing efforts, and it begins with what you call the Lifeboat Test. Tell us about that, and then I know you have four points that you want to hit upon.

Eric:
Fantastic. Well, first of all, thanks for inviting me. Yes, that Lifeboat exercise is something that we suggest to folks when you’re thinking about how to do business in a down economy, and that’s really the act of selecting those things that are most important for your survival and putting them in the boat first. And when it comes to a business, very often, the answer to the first thing going into that lifeboat is the customers and clients that you already have.

Why is that important? Well, because they’re your source of revenue, and they’re your source of great referrals. It’s your business engine, and email marketing is really about how do you fuel that engine. By communicating valuable information that builds trust over time and brings your customers back time after time. And that’s what email marketing is all about.

We really have four primary tips for success. The first tip is really about building a quality list. It’s not quantity that matters; it’s quality. Because what you want to have happen is that person, when your email lands in their In box, you want them to open it up, and if they know you and they trust you, then they’ll open it up. Just have a bunch of lists of people that don’t know you, they’re just going to delete it or, worse, call you a spammer.

The second point is really to take the time out of your day to create a strategy. You want to ask yourself: What do you want to have happen when that email lands in someone’s email box? Do you want them to come to your store? Do you want to just have them remember your brand? Because when you know what you want to have happen, then you can determine what it is that you can share in your email communication that will provide value and get that act to happen. So that’s the second tip is taking the time to create a strategy.

The third tip, not surprisingly, is to actually execute on that strategy once you have it figured out. And that’s all about really writing content for your audience that’s not about you. It’s about sharing what you know. And the interesting thing about when you flip that bed, many of us, at the end of last year, remember when the ‘big box” retailers were at a difficult situation. They were sending us emails every day; one day it was 10 percent off and the next day, 20 percent and 30 percent. It was all about them. It was nothing about they can do for you.

And when you talk about what you can do for your customers in your communication, it builds trust. So if I’m a restaurant, I could send an email that has “If you add too much lemon to a recipe, how do you counter that?” I’m sharing my knowledge and making you recognize me as an expert, and that builds trust.

So what happens when you send a communication that’s about what you know? Well, people like to be smart, and what they do is they forward it on to others. And you know, BNI is all about referrals. Well, that’s the best way to get a referral, sending an email campaign is to share your knowledge and have your customers forward it off to their friends, because they, too, want to look smart.

It’s also important to ask for feedback from your customers and engage them in the content generation process. So with your communications, put a link in there that says “Tell us what you think,” “Tell us what you’d like to learn about.” And then recognize people that do give you great insight for your content in your next communication. So that’s a great way to execute on your strategy.

I guess, if there were three words that I would say to someone when they’re trying to think about their email marketing, they would be: be brief, be bright, and be gone. And what you’re really trying to do with an email communication –

Ivan:
You know that’s six words, though, right?!

Eric:
Yeah, well, the “be’s” we can get right of, right?

Ivan:
Brief, bright, and gone. Got it!

Eric:
Brief, bright, and gone.

In an email communication is really just about flicking somebody on the forehead and saying “Remember me. And here’s a nugget of knowledge that tells you how I’m an expert in the field that I work in. And if you need what I have, I’m here for you.” And if you do those things, email marketing will be a great way for you to bring your customers from that lifeboat right into your store and start generating business and revenue for you.

Ivan:
I love this. This is a great strategy. And let’s talk for a moment about how this incorporates into what we do in BNI.

Two things that really jump out at me that I’ve been teaching for many, many years that your material integrates into extremely well. One is whole idea of Touch Points, that you’ve got to touch your clients and prospective clients. You’ve got to connect with them on a regular basis, but you do it in a way that resonates with them.

So the second part becomes really the most important, and that is what I’ve talked about a lot, the VCP process of networking. Visibility, credibility, profitability. People have to go through all three stages. They have to be visible. They have to create credibility. And then only when you’ve gone from visibility to credibility can you push them over to profitability.

And so you communicate. You may communicate differently with some people in your data base than you do with others. And so I love the idea of having custom connections, custom content that you might send to one group of people that you might not send to another. And you can do that with the Constant Contact program, correct?

Eric:
That’s correct. You can have as many different groups as you’d like, and you can actually use the survey product right in there to survey your customers, ask them what they’re interested in. And then take their responses and target your mailings based on the feedback that they’ve given you. So you can really get targeted in your messaging.

Ivan:
Right. And so for any BNI member, if you want to communicate with your clients and prospective clients, you’d want to set up a few different categories. Maybe these people I’m at visibility with; I’m not really at credibility yet. And so I want to have a different kind of communication with them than those I’m at credibility with. These people know me and trust me, and there, it might be a different kind of communication with. And those who you are at profitability with will be a completely different kind of communication where you can send email to somebody you’re at profitability with that they’ll accept that, where somebody else might think it’s spam, because you’re going right to the heart of the issue with those people that you’ve got a strong relationship with.

So different kinds of communication to different people, and the Touch Point is really important.

Anything else you want to add, Eric?

Eric:
That’s a great way to characterize it. Do you mind if I use that?

Ivan:
Please feel free to use that.

Eric:
Wonderful.

Ivan:
And we love Constant Contact, and we appreciate all of the effort that the organization has made to support BNI Podcast and the emails that we send out. So let me tell you what I did. When I knew we were going to do this podcast today, I went down and saw Mary, here at my office. And Mary is the keeper of the list.

Now, for those of you listening to the podcast, if you want to see the kind of thing you’d be getting, the kind of service that Constant Contact provides, what you want to do is, where it says Podcast Email Alerts, sign up to receive weekly announcements. And you just punch in your email address there and hit Sign Up. And every week, once a week, I swear to you, I promise you will not get more emails than one a week, and it simply says, “Here’s this week’s podcast. Click here if you’d like to listen to it.” And if you want to see the kind of quality email that they put together, sign up and get that one email a week, so that you can see the podcast and know what’s going on.

But I went down to Mary, who’s the keeper of the list, and she sends this out. I said, “Tell me what you like about” – and I knew she liked it, so I knew there was no problem. “Tell me what you like about Constant Contact.”

And she said three things. I mean, she just shot them right off. She said three things. “It is really user friendly. I love the template. And it’s really simple to import emails.” Now, those have to be three things that most people would be concerned about, in terms of using any product. And to have an employee of mine say, “I love this about Constant Contact; it’s user friendly; love the templates, and easy to import email,” I was impressed.

And we’re real pleased to have this kind of relationship with your organization, and we thank you for all of the support you’ve done with BNI podcasts.

Eric:
Well, it’s been our pleasure. We really appreciate what you do for small business, and it’s just a great relationship that we have. And we thank you for all of your support and welcome the opportunity to continue to educate your members. If they have any questions, they can certainly turn to Constant Contact, and we provide free 800 support, so if you ever need us, we’re here for you.

Ivan:
Just to review your recommendations today:
Quality Customer Lists;
Really important, Communication Strategy, number two;
Execute That Strategy, number three;
And then, Be Brief, Be Bright, Be Gone; I love that concept.

If the listeners of the BNI podcast have some interest in trying out your service, where would they go to do that?

Eric:
They can go directly to ConstantContact.com and they can sign up for our free 60 day trial for up to 100 email addresses. You can do everything within the product. Check it out. We also have a learning center where there are daily, live Webinars. You can become an expert in 45 minutes. And there’s that 800 number right on the front page. If you have any questions, just call, and we’ll be happy to take good care of you.

Ivan:
ConstantContact.com or if you’re getting the email list from us, there’s also a spot where you can click on to sign up for an account there as well.

Again, Eric, thank you so much. Great content. I’m sure this will really help our BNI members, and we thank you for everything you’re doing for the podcasts.

Eric:
Well, thanks. And thanks so much for having me.

Ivan:
Back to you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
Okay, that’s great. I happen to be a Constant Contact user, and I also really enjoy using it. Thanks so much.

Well, I think that’s it for this week. Thank you, Dr. Misner.

I’d like to just remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you’ll join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.

BNI has had a newsletter since 1985. SuccessNet started quarterly and now appears monthly online. It’s free to subscribe by e-mail, even if you’re not a BNI member yet.

If you want to create your own newsletter, ask yourself these 10 questions.

1. What is the purpose of the newsletter?
2. Who is your target audience?
3. Why would my target audience want to read the newsletter?
4. How will it benefit my audience?
5. What features will it contain?
6. Who will write the text?
7. Will I use a professional to design the layout?
8. How often will it go out?
9. How will it be distributed?
10. How do people sign up for it?

Two more things to remember:

• Your newsletter should be informative and educational, to motivate people to read it.
• Consider outsourcing production to a professional, unless you work in this area yourself.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 091 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables.

I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I am joined on the phone today by the founder and the chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.

Hello, Ivan. How are you?

Ivan:
I’m doing great. Thanks.

Priscilla:
And where are you today?

Ivan:
Well, I’m back at BNI headquarters again, and we are doing director training this week. And I mention that because I think it’s important for BNI members around the world to know that we’ve got over a thousand BNI directors around the world, and BNI directors have to go through three eight-hour days of training, 24 hours of training with a 900 page set of manuals. So becoming a BNI director, there’s a lot of work involved, and sometimes you have an opportunity to ask your director, take a look at the manuals, because there’s really a lot that goes behind the scenes. Many times the members just see the tip of the iceberg, and there’s a lot behind the scenes.

We’re working here today with BNI directors all around the world, going through BNI director training.

Priscilla:
Wow. Okay, great. What are you going to share with us?

Ivan:
I want to talk about creating an informative newsletter. BNI has had a newsletter now for the 24 years we’ve been operating, since 1985, we started our first newsletter. At that time, it was every other month, or it might have been quarterly at that point, a quarterly newsletter. Then it went to every other month, bi-monthly; and now we have a newsletter that comes out every month. It is called SuccessNet online.

If you, as a listener, are not getting SuccessNet, you should get an e-mail every month that gives you a link to the articles. You can go to a Web site and take a look at it at any time, and you can also subscribe and get an e-mail. The newsletter Web site is BNISuccessNet.com. BNI, the word “Success”, the word “Net”, all one word, BNISuccessNet.com. Got there and you can subscribe; it’s free. We now have 160,000 subscribers worldwide. It is free. I’ll mention it again; doesn’t cost anything. And you will not get spammed. We don’t send out any e-mails other than “Here is this month’s issue.” Actually, we did send out two other e-mails over the last 20 years, and those were relating to disasters that were done in the world, and we created a fund to help support those, and so we just sent out an e-mail. That’s it. Other than that, you’ll never get any other e-mails.

So newsletters are important. We’ve been highly committed to them for a long time, and I want to give BNI members some ideas on what they can do to create their own newsletters.

Think about people you consider to be experts. They’re known for sharing their knowledge through books, research papers, columns, articles, newsletters. Experts write. If you want to be an expert, you want to do an informative newsletter. Of course, you can’t just sit down and crank out a good newsletter overnight. You need to really think it through and plan it out in advance. If you like the idea of a newsletter and you want to use it to network your business, here are ten questions to ask yourself to help you in producing the newsletter.

One, what will be the purpose of the newsletter? What do you want to focus on? In BNI, our purpose primarily is two things. One, to provide educational content to BNI members; and two, to have some news content. Here’s what’s going on around the world, to show the global nature of the organization.

Two, who is your target audience? You need to ask yourself that. Who is your target audience? Is your target audience clients as well as prospective clients? Or is it just clients? For BNI, it is members as well was prospective members. We include both.

Three, why would my target audience want to read my newsletter? Why would my target audience want to read the newsletter? That’s an important thing to ask yourself. You want to make it informational so that they want to actually read something, not just a sales pitch.

Four, how will it benefit my audience?

Five, what features will it contain? Now, that’s easier than it may sound. You want to take a look at a number of newsletters and see which features of other peoples’ newsletters would work for you. Certainly go to BNISuccessNet.com to get some ideas of the kinds of features we use, and try other peoples’ newsletters to get some sense of what you can do.

Number six, who will write the text? That’s a big one. And one of the things you can do is maybe get some people to be regular contributors, but still, if it’s your business, you’re going to need to do a contribution with every issue. So I recommend you don’t start off monthly. Start of quarterly or every other month until you really feel comfortable with punching out content. Because a lot of people start a newsletter, and six month into it, they go, “Ohhhh. I had no idea it was this much work.” And they stop doing it. So who’s going to write the material?

Seven, will I use a professional to design the layout? We have almost always done that. We did it in-house for a while. It was just too much work. We have, for many years now, used professionals to design the layout of our newsletter.

Eight, how often will it go out? Well, as I recommended, I’d start off quarterly or every other month just to get it started before you try and make a monthly commitment. I can’t emphasis enough how much work it can be, but the benefits are great, but you want to start off easy and work your way into it.

Nine, how will it be distributed? We used to do newsletters through the mail; now the headquarter newsletter is online, and it’s the only way to go. I would never go back to anything else. But that’s just for us. That’s my experience. You may, especially if you’re a local business with a local newsletter, you might want to mail that.

And number ten, how do people sign up for it? How do they get it? With us, as people joined, we put them in the list, and then we have an ability for people to sign up as well.

A couple of other comments. Your newsletter should be informative and educational so that it brings in value to your audience and motivates people to read it. Also, unless you have a publishing or Web design expert on staff, you should seriously consider outsourcing the production of your newsletter to a professional. BNI uses CustomZine. If you go to SuccessNet, at the bottom, you’ll see a link, a BNI member, and they have produced our newsletter for many years.

Remember your newsletter is an extension of your business. It’s often the first thing that a prospect sees of you. Publishing newsletter week after week or month after month or quarter after quarter it time consuming, it requires a big commitment, but it can be a powerful networking and marketing tool. You want your audience to come to expect it, indeed, to look forward to receiving it. And that means you have to deliver it on time and deliver top notch quality. An expert produces nothing short of the best.

So those are my suggestions for creating a newsletter. I hope the BNI members can benefit from that.

Priscilla:
That sounds great. It also increases your standing, I think, if you link it to your Web site, right, sort of like a blog might. Is that true?

Ivan:
Yes. It does, yeah. And that’s where I started the conversation with. By writing, it makes you the local or regional expert in the field, and the more expertise you can show in your business, the more credibility that you have. And it’s a long-term, cumulative impact. But believe me, it has an impact.

Priscilla:
Great. Can I ask you one more question?

Ivan:
Sure, absolutely.

Priscilla:
Is it expensive?

Ivan:
Well, it doesn’t have to be, no. When you are doing a newsletter that – if you print it out, the BNI newsletter, it’s, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 or 50 pages of content, total content and a lot of graphics, and it goes out to 160,000. So yeah, it’s several thousand dollars an issue to do something like that.

But you don’t need to start there. We certainly didn’t. We started with something very simple, two page printed document that was mailed. The mailing it cost more than producing it. That’s one of the reasons I think online works really well.

So shop around, find people that will do something at a reasonable price. It does not have to be expensive.

Priscilla:
Okay, great. Well, thank you, Dr. Misner.

Ivan:
Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla:
It’s a great suggestion.

I’d like to just remind the listeners that this podcast has been brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the Net for networking downloadables. Thanks so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope you will join us next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.