Full Sail Partners Blog | Marketing (4)

Attending a professional conference is a great way to learn solutions to obstacles you currently face, new ways to challenge yourself, and learn about trends in your industry. Additionally, you should never hesitate to ask your employer to allow you to attend a good and relevant conference on their dollar. Furthermore, managers should require employees to go to professional conferences to get out of the office and learn new things they can bring back to share with their coworkers. So, what are the benefits of attending a professional conference?

Network with Likeminded People

Sure, your LinkedIn network is huge. However, when was the last time you spoke to someone in your network face to face, or have you ever met them face to face? Professional conferences attract people from all different geographies from different continents to regional or smaller local conferences. In other words, conferences bring people together in one place in an environment that promotes talking to others. So, don’t be shy! Get out there and meet new people.

Get Fresh Ideas

In reality, you sit in our workspace and either not talk to coworkers about your ideas and their ideas because you are the only person in that role, or you’re talking to the same people about the same ideas every day. As a result, you tend to grow stale on the subject that you’re respected as an authority upon. Therefore, this is probably the number one reason to attend a professional conference.

When attending a conference, you get to attend seminars and panel discussions led by respected industry leaders and take part in roundtable sessions. Here you can get fresh ideas on challenges others are facing industry trends. Remember, you’re going to be inundated with a lot of information, so make sure to stay attentive and take notes.

Present Your Ideas to Others

In today’s age, your company’s brand is built on the brand of its employees. Prospects and clients are more likely to make a purchase from a company that they know, and trust employs thought leaders in their respected industry. This means employees must build their personal brand by showing they are a thought leader in their industry.

Becoming a thought leader requires making presentations about your ideas to peers to develop your “authority” reputation. It will also give you confidence in your work. Here’s a tip, make your presentation fun and interactive to keep the audience’s attention.  

Meet an Expert

You read their blogs and books, and if they have a television show or podcast, you probably tune into that too. Even more, their a mentor to you, but you’ve never talked or corresponded. However, that doesn’t have to be the case anymore.

Industry experts attend the conferences you should want to attend. They give presentations about their ideas, you know…the ones you read about, but now you can easily interact with your mentor and ask questions while attending a conference. Most importantly, experts also attend the conference social events, giving you a chance to have a face to face conversation. Keep in mind, they’re humans too. So, don’t get nervous when having your one on one time.

Make the Most of Every Professional Conference You Attend

Last tip! Keep a pen handy and remember your business cards at all times! Conferences are short, and you’ll be having a lot of fun. Remembering what you talked to someone about and having them remember you isn’t easy. With your pen, write notes other people’s business cards about what you talked about and make sure you have your cards, so they can do the same. There are so many benefits to attending a conference, but it’s up to you to make the most out of it.

Technically, business intelligence or BI has been around for centuries. It is simply the review/analysis of business data. Traditionally, this review had been focused on the past performance of financial data which was easiest to access. As this was financial data, the only people who had access were senior management teams and lower level employees were provided little, if any information. Fortunately, we have come a long way since the old days.

Old Days No More

Financial trends have become easier to access and report against, and we have gotten better at creating and using tools to let us peer into the murky future. Solutions such as resource (people) planning, project planning and CRM (client relationship management) now allow us to track what we see on our immediate horizons. With a combination of these past-looking and forward-looking tools, we can provide a comprehensive view of our performance and where we see upcoming opportunities.

New Problem with Amount of Available Data

So, here’s the new problem. We have access to so much information that it is easy to get overwhelmed. There needs to be a way to draw our eye to a potential “opportunity.” We have also restructured enough that simply having a team who looks at the information and communicates the “opportunity” down the channels isn’t enough. We now require everyone in the company to see the potential and act on it. 

Power of Modern BI Tools

Modern BI tools are the solution to this problem. They allow for consolidation of information into a single data warehouse, so management can see the trends, but this information can also be maintained ‘real-time’ or very close to it depending on the situation. The information can then be presented in a cohesive format that provides an easy view of how the company is performing against its goals.

Furthermore, this information can be disseminated through all the employees (as appropriate) so they can then make informed decisions about their day to day priorities. Additionally, with our mobile workforce, modern BI provides people access to what they need when they need it. Ultimately, the best BI will offer a visual that will call out an issue (or opportunity to improve) and then allow direct access to the data to see what the detail is. 

Example of How Modern BI Works

Below is an actual Division Manager view that shows her the team’s utilization, backlog and outstanding AR. She might look at the AR third column (with the big past due amount) and want to see the specifics:

A simple click of a button will drill down to the clients and let her know there really is only one problem:

She can even go down further to the detail level and see more:

This information will be available to her at the job site, the soccer match or while she grabs a coffee on the way to work. Modern BI tools are very convenient and effective.

Ensuring Successful Firm Performance with Modern BI Tools

Today’s BI is the best way to stay in touch with your company’s performance. A responsive, well thought out BI tool will allow the company to focus on performance metrics that can easily be drilled down to the individual and rolled up to the management team. This modern BI will enable everyone on the team to pull in the same direction and ensure success for the entire company.

Acquiring and maintaining accurate client data is absolutely necessary for both marketers and business developers. Marketers need it to provide valuable content to clients and business developers for a successful sales pipeline. Additionally, as with any other firm department, both marketers and business developers need a way to track their efficiency and effectiveness. With iAccess, this all can be achieved. Here are five things you probably weren’t aware of that iAccess can do for marketing and business development:

Business developers and marketers spend lots of time on the go rather than at their desks. With iAccess, you can use the web browser in your mobile devices to update your CRM and keep data current. We recommend saving it as a bookmark or using the “Add to Home Screen” option for even quicker access on the go. 

Furthermore, the iAccess Business Development workspace enables you to contribute and maintain key pipeline information wherever you are as long as you have an internet connection. 

2. Enter and Edit Contacts, Opportunities, and Touch Points

Using iAccess, you can work with Contacts and Opportunities as well as set up touch points. Under the Contacts tab, you can perform basic searches and add contacts. The contact area provides quick access to key information for your contacts such as title, phone numbers, company, location and email address. You can even add image links into contact records.

From the Opportunities tab, you can view all your current opportunities as well as add new opportunities. You can easily change and view data such as the opportunity stage or see what client you are working on. Additionally, you can view and update the touch points as well as quickly add a touch point within any of the tabs by clicking on add touchpoint under the Touchpoint tab.

If the standard saved searches don’t provide the information you need, you can create a custom search. When you create a custom search, you can save it for the future, so you do not have to continually recreate the search parameters. 

3. Easily Sort, Filter, and Export Opportunity Reports

Opportunities are found within the Business Development workspace of iAccess. Here you have critical information at your fingertips. You have the option to sort opportunities by active opportunities, all opportunities or just those that you are associated with as part of the team. See the opportunities instantly as you filter and organize. These reports can then be exported to wherever you want them to go.

4. Track Your Department Spending

Another nice feature of iAccess is that you can use it to track department spending and can make sure you are being effective and efficient with your resources. If you set up budgets for Promotional Projects, you can easily see where you are Job to Date (JTD) and Year to Date (YTD) for that project. In that project record using the Project Management workspace, iAccess provides visuals to  see the labor and expenses that have been charged to the promo number and what budget is left.

5. Update Contact Notes Using Talk to Text 

A final iAccess benefit is that you can use “talk to text” to update Contact and Opportunity records. When you open iAccess using your mobile devices (explained above), you can use the talk to text feature to update any field. We like to update touch points and notes using this talk to text method. There couldn’t be an easier way to provide a meeting summary after visiting a contact. 

Let iAccess Work for Marketing and Business Development 

Now that you have discovered five things that iAccess can do for marketing and business development, are you ready to try it out? For more information, check out these past webinars to get an introduction to iAccess for business developers and to learn how to connect to Vision from anywhere with iAccess. Lastly, if you’re attending the SMPS Southwest Regional Conference, make sure to attend Lindsay Diven’s pre-conference Vision CRM workshop.

You’ve just spent hours creating a clever email with an enticing subject line to send your clients and prospects. As you prepare to push the button to send this email, you hope for a positive outcome of your campaign. Over the next 24 to 72 hours, you will log into your email marketing platform, such as Constant Contact or MailChimp, to check the performance of this email. But, which numbers really determine the success of an email marketing campaign? Let’s take a look.

The open rate is simple to understand but quite important. This is the percentage of the recipients that opened the email. Knowing how many people opened your email is significant because it will show you if your subject line drew enough attention to make opening it worth their time. Of course, the higher the open rate, the better.

Click-through Rate

Here’s probably the most important metric that allows you to know how successful your email marketing campaign has been. The click-through rate lets you know who actually read your email and took action by clicking on the included link. Seeing who clicked on the email allows you to know who’s interested in your content. This tells you who to target in the next stage of your marketing campaign. In other words, the more click- throughs, the more potential leads that have moved further into your marketing funnel.  

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate tells you how many of the intended recipients did not receive the email at all. There are two types of bounces, a soft bounce and a hard bounce. A soft bounce happens when the recipient’s mailbox is full, the server is down, or the email is too large for the inbox. On the other hand, a hard bounce means the message is permanently rejected because the email address is invalid or doesn’t exist. Obviously, the more bounces, the less potential for exposure to the email content.    

Unsubscribes

Like click-through rates, unsubscribes allow you to assess the quality of your content. If a person signs up to receive your emails and newsletters but unsubscribes, it is usually because the content is not what they expected. So, unsubscribes can show you how many recipients have determined that the content is not valuable or interesting.

Spam Reports

While unsubscribes are bad, being reported as spam is worse. This usually happens for one of two reasons. Either you send emails to people that never signed up to receive them or you send emails to people with irrelevant content. Email marketing platforms can and will suspend accounts that have a high spam rate. Therefore, not spamming is a priority in your email marketing campaign.

Refining Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Using A/B testing is a great way to improve your email marketing campaigns. This is a controlled experiment that compares two versions of the same content to determine which messaging improves your email marketing success rates. There can be a variation of the subject lines, the messaging in the email and the verbiage used in the call-to-action. Remember, in the end, the main goal is to get your email marketing campaign through to its intended audience and have it be well received. How you accomplish this is up to you.

Now that I have your attention, I must admit I totally hijacked that title from my good friend and fellow Full Sailor Rana Blair. In January, she presented a webinar on using Deltek Vision’s iAccess features to enhance the project management function of your firm. It was such a big hit, that we decided to continue the conversation in February. We’ll shift the focus to iAccess’ capabilities for enhancing client/contact management, tracking your pipeline of new work, and preparing for Vision’s future.

I’m convinced Rana was right. We’re at a point where there truly are NO MORE EXCUSES. Now is the time for all good client-facing associates in professional services firms to have immediate access to critical client information. If you don’t, no big deal, your competition will figure it out for you.

Commit to Using Deltek Vision as Your Corporate Contact Manager

It still boggles my mind how many Deltek Vision users don’t do this, sometimes even with the CRM module in place. One of my favorite parts of the module is the remote access to Vision CRM through iAccess. You can roll out access to critical client and contact information to anyone with a license and a data connection. While we typically refer to the CRM module as more of a marketing and BD toolset, contact information is used across the entire firm.

While iAccess screens possess many of the same fields and functions as the traditional “smart client” for Vision, you can easily arrange for custom tabs and fields to appear as well. None of this works, of course, unless you’ve done a decent job at migrating existing critical data and launched a good process for capturing additional information as it comes into your firm.

Gain Clear Insight into the Next 6 to 12 Months of New Work

Pipelines do not have to be complicated, but at a minimum, they should allow your firm to pull from existing client information and maintain a weighted list of future revenue estimates. The basic information required to do this (client, name of pursuit, estimated revenue, start date, and finish date) is typically best-known by the individuals closest to the client. iAccess can assist you by minimizing the distance between those individuals and the fields where you house the information.

If you’re already well-versed at managing Opportunities in Vision, consider iAccess as a tool in your bag to help key rainmakers maintain and update information they typically receive first. Dictating updated information about an opportunity directly into a Vision record using your iPad isn’t all that far-fetched anymore. It can also be used for basic reporting to help the same people avoid stepping on each other’s toes with large clients. Distributed pipeline information in iAccess, built on Vision’s core foundation of clients and contacts, could give your business development team a great boost.

The Future of Deltek Vision Looks Like iAccess

If you’ve not heard of Deltek for Professional Services (DPS), the “reimagined” next iteration of the Vision platform, now’s the time to start thinking about when and how your transition will take place. While thinking ahead with your software vendor’s developing capabilities in mind is always a good idea, this transition is particularly important for Vision users. Many key characteristics of DPS are already present in Vision’s iAccess screens. With iAccess in Vision 7.6, you can start getting users comfortable with the browser-neutral and device-agnostic features that will eventually be pervasive throughout the DPS platform.

Not Quite Convinced Yet About iAccess?

Feeling a little uncomfortable with all this new stuff in the Deltek environment? Join me for some more discussion on iAccess and we’ll do our best to help you get there. We believe taking advantage of these capabilities will help you get the most value from your system and allow you to enhance your clients’ experiences with your firm!

Ironically enough, despite the advances of 21^st century technology, everyone is now busier than ever, and time is a precious commodity. It used to be commonplace to reach out to prospects and clients by phone, but these days it is time consuming and often an annoyance to the people you are contacting. So, what’s a more efficient way to share information on a regular basis with your clients and prospects? There is social media, but it warrants its own blog, and direct mail is slightly archaic. Email marketing, however, is an ideal way to capture your audience’s attention and build more business. Here are some ways your firm can use email marketing to build business.

Newsletters

Whether monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly, an email newsletter to your clients and prospects greatly benefits your marketing plan. For starters, you likely create informative material for your target audience such as blogs, webinars and whitepapers. This information is only helpful if people actually see it, so a regular email newsletter provides the perfect avenue to share your content with your target audience.

But wait, there’s more! Newsletters can also contain pertinent announcements like industry events and conferences your firm is attending or the hiring of new employees because of increased service offerings. Marketing via an emailed newsletter to your audience is a fantastic way to draw attention to your firm and build business.

Generate Brand Awareness With a Soft Touch

Building business requires building brand awareness. Email marketing allows firms to reach out to their clients and prospects in less intrusive ways than making a call or stopping in at the office. One way to look at email marketing is to consider it a soft touch technique to connect with your audience. 

There are endless opportunities that allow you to reach out to your clients and prospects via email. It’s a simple method to stay “top of mind” with your audience. Receiving something of interest this way will resonate well with your audience, and when a need comes up, your brand will be remembered.

General Promotion

Email marketing can also be used for general promotion. In this area, there are unlimited emails you can send. Is your firm attending an industry event? Is your firm hosting a webinar? Let your clients and prospects know with an email.

Your firm is already investing in attending an event or creating an informative webinar, so why not make sure you get the most out of it? With email marketing, your firm can promote these events to generate more participation which will increase the overall return on investment. Additionally, from the email marketing promotion of webinars or events, more business can ultimately be gained.

Be Smart With Your Email Marketing

As with phone calls and stopping by offices, emails can become an annoyance to your audience if not used wisely. You should consider some things before you start emailing away. First, you should segment the list of people that receive emails based on role in the firm. Next, you should use an email automation system, like Constant Contact or MailChimp, that allows you to track the performance of your email. You can see who opens your email, what they click on, and who unsubscribes. So, now that you have the basics for email marketing, start using it to build business for your firm.

After the ball drops every New Year’s Eve, the song “Auld Lang Syne” triggers everyone to begin a personal reflection of the past. Similarly, at the end of a year and on a professional level, business development and marketing professionals should look back at the previous year and evaluate the results of their efforts. How they use this information will help them strategize for the following year and improve upon performance. Here are some New Year’s resolutions that business development and marketing professionals should make to get the most out of next year.

New Year’s Resolutions for Business Development 

Improving client relationships is essential to generating more sales and revenue. Here are five ways to help nurture better client relationships.   

1. Streamline your client engagement/touchpoint activities. Distill your activities to the essentials to shorten sales cycles while providing high-value interactions with clients and prospects.
2. Get to know your clients better. Ask the right questions and actively listen to the client’s answers.
3. Coordinate and collaborate with the marketing team on a regular basis.
4. Embrace new technology. Communicate with prospects and clients and record information gained. Share this information with internal teams.
5. Stop checking in. Instead, use your database to connect with prospects using meaningful conversations or useful content. 

New Year’s Resolutions for Marketers 

While marketing requires evaluating the performance of efforts throughout the year, using this data to become more effective for the next year is a difficult task. Here are five ways marketers can increase the impact of marketing plans for the new year. 

1. Examine last year’s marketing campaigns and see which ones met your goals. Determine how you will use this information for next year’s planning.
2. Take a hard look at your process for collecting and maintaining your information/data. Make it a goal to get all your data centralized into one place.
3. Coordinate and collaborate with the business development/sales teams on a regular basis.
4. Create high-quality, value-based content that your clients and prospects need.
5. Understand the client experience journey from prospect to project delivery. How can you, as a marketer, improve your client experience to differentiate your firm? 

Increase Business and Revenue in 2018! 

With the New Year comes the potential to increase sales goals and revenue. This is the best time to make changes and adjustments to business development and marketing strategies. Follow these New Year’s resolutions to be more productive in your marketing and business development efforts for 2018.    

If you have been wondering about the newest features of Constant Contact, then look no further, this blog is for you! As the people over at Constant Contact like to say, “New year, new features.” Trust me, there are a whole heck of a lot of new features in Constant Contact. Let’s go ahead and dive right in!

The Newest Features in Constant Contact

• Connect with new prospects using the welcome email | Constant Contact’s new welcome email functionality allows you to enable your website forms with the power of Constant Contact. When new contacts submit a web signup form, they will receive an automatic welcome email. This functionality allows your firm to make the right first impression by sending new contacts relevant and targeted emails. Doing so will allow you to reach out to the contacts when their interest levels are at their highest point.
  
  
• Utilize previously sent emails | The days of starting from scratch with each email campaign are long behind us. You can save time and avoid hassle by intuitively copying previously sent emails.
  
  Here is how it works:
  
  1. Select a previously sent campaign in Constant Contact
  2. Under the Actions Menu select ‘edit’
  3. Click ‘copy’ in the dialogue pop-up box
  4. Newly created email is now ready to go through your edit process

• Create stunning emails with background patterns | Are you looking for new ways to spice up your email? You can choose one of Constant Contact’s new templates with a background pattern. It is easy to customize your background pattern by selecting the design and color of the pattern directly from the visual editor.

• RSVPs made easy with the RSVP block | Are you planning on hosting a lunch and learn or some other kind of industry event? You can quickly get a head count by using Constant Contact’s “RSVP block.” You will be able to streamline your event planning by capturing RSVP responses from contacts in a single click. The RSVP block can be fully customizable with your specific event details, allowing you to avoid using complicated sign-up forms.

  Here is how it works:
  1. Click on the ‘build’ tab on the left hand design menu in Constant Contact
  2. Select the ‘add-ons’ option
  3. Drag the ‘RSVP’ widget into your email
  4. Click on the new block in your email, select the ‘edit’ button and customize the information for your event
• Introducing the video block | Sharing videos in your email campaigns has never been easier. You can increase reader engagement by providing your videos directly in the body of your email!
  
  Here is how it works:
  1. Simply copy your video link from YouTube
  2. Click on the ‘build’ tab on the left hand design menu in Constant Contact
  3. Drag the ‘video’ widget into any part of your email template
  4. Click on the new block within your email, and select the ‘edit’ button
  5. Paste your video link from YouTube and select ‘insert’
• Image options | We all know that images are one of the best ways to engage our audience. Now you can enjoy additional functionality with images! You can utilize images to link your reader’s out to important PDF documents or link directly to an email address.
  
  Here is how it works:
  1. Click on an image within the body of your email
  2. Click on the 'link' button that appears within the popup dialogue box
  3. Use the dropdown menu the select 'email address' or 'document'

Get Started with the Newest Features in Constant Contact

Are you ready to get started with these new features in Constant Contact? Here is the great news! These features are already available for all existing Constant Contact users.

You’re not already a Constant Contact subscriber? That is no problem! You can just click on the link below to sign-up for a 60-day free trial and see how the world’s leading email marketing platform can help you take your outbound marketing to the next level.

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective tactics for acquiring new clients and re-engaging existing customers. So why is it that so many firms are resistant to adopting a dedicated email marketing strategy? Failure to implement a dedicated email marketing strategy focused around best practices can lead firms to experience lackluster email results. This blog is going to dissect the most common reasons emails sit unread and collect dust. Apply these tips to start winning the battle for the inbox!

Common Mistakes Keeping You from Winning the Battle for the Inbox

1. Unclear subject lines | Did you know that 33% of email recipients open email based on subject line alone [source: Convince & Convert]? Experience greater success with your emails by providing your audience with a compelling reason to open your email. In other words, make the subject line attractive to your intended target so that they want to read your email!
2. Missing the mark on content | Not every member of your audience is interested in the same content. The foundation of a successful email marketing campaign is grounded in keeping content relevant to your readership. Utilize your CRM system to drill down your segment list and keep your content relevant to your audience.
3. One way flow of communication | Have you ever received an email from a ‘do not reply’ email address? This type of tactic comes off as impersonal and will leave a sour taste in a recipient’s mouth. When companies send out mailers from a ‘do not reply’ address they tell their audience that they don’t care to have a real conversation. Give your audience the impression that you are receptive to feedback and you will be amazed at how active your subscribers become.
4. Too many links, not a clear enough call-to-action | Links to important content can be helpful and convenient for readers. As a content provider it is important to tread carefully here! Too many links can detract from more important content and confuse your readers. Focus on your message at hand and optimize your emails to drive viewers to engage in your call-to-action.

Get the Most Out of Your Email Marketing Campaigns

We hope that you have learned something from this blog that can be applied to your email marketing efforts. Remember that each email campaign is an additional opportunity for you to attract and delight your audience. Following these best practices can make a huge impact on your outbound efforts and lead to increased conversions and growth in your subscription base.

Interested in learning more about winning the battle for the inbox? Join us on February 8^th to learn how to take your email marketing efforts to the next level.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to participate in a lively discussion among up-and-coming marketers regarding the merits of running email marketing campaigns for professional services firms. Although opinions differed greatly on the types of campaigns firms should deploy, one thing we could all agree on:  Email marketing is widely effective. For example, Chief Marketer reports that email marketing shows an impressive ROI of 28.5%.

So, I wanted to share with you some of my favorite email marketing campaigns. These are the types of campaigns any firm can utilize. These campaigns are merely a starting point to get your email marketing creative juices flowing! Next time I check my inbox, I hope to see one of these campaigns coming from your firm.

The Right Email Marketing Campaigns for You

1. The Newsletter is alive! Believe it or not, the tried and true newsletter is alive and well. Transforming the newsletter from a print to digital format is a natural progression for most firms. In fact, the ability to customize and micro-target specific audiences allows marketers to ensure that they are focusing their messaging on their audience.
   
   When designing a newsletter, keep in mind:
   
   
   1. Subject lines are king. The battle for readership is won and lost in the inbox, don’t let a poorly thought out subject line land your newsletter in the trash.
   2. Create a central theme. Nothing increases your readership-bounce-rate like a disorganized, hard to follow, mailer. Create a central theme to your email blast and stick to it: Your click through rate will thank you!
   3. Make it clear on how to opt out. The number one sin when executing a digital newsletter campaign is trapping your audience in a slow painful death by email. Nothing deteriorates your brand faster than spamming disengaged customers. Give your readers a clear path to exit and your overall mailer will be better off. At the very worst you will know that your messaging needs refining based on an alarming rate of unsubscribes.
      
2. Spotlight your latest project. Have you recently completed an impressive project that your clients would like to hear about? Perhaps you can highlight your top projects to a target list of prospects that you would like to do business with in the future. Bolster your brand by taking pride in your projects and demonstrating your expertise to the world. Bonus: Your current clients get additional exposure for their project, a win-win for everyone!
   
   When spotlighting your next project, keep in mind:
   
   
   1. Give your images alt tags! Email clients can be a tricky beast, and you never know what settings your recipient has enabled. You are trying to spotlight a project, and surely you want to show off your beautiful project photography, right?! Giving an image an alt tag will allow alternative text to appear if the image doesn’t load.
   2. Tell your reader a story. It’s not enough that you recently completed a new state of the art project. In order for your message to be memorable you need to focus on engaging your reader. Make your email standout by crafting a relatable story.
   3. Reduce load time, not quality. Optimizing high-quality images for digital viewing is essential. Compressing your images allows you to maintain quality while reducing long email load times.
      
3. Planning to attend an event? Let ‘em know! Email is an excellent tool to inform prospects and clients that you will be attending an upcoming event. Invite your contacts to join you to ensure that you get the most out of the event. I always like to say that email blasts are a way for me to start networking at an event, before the event ever starts.
   
   Before promoting your next event, keep in mind:
   
   
   1. Why do they care? Do you really think that the fact that you are attending an event is really enough to entice a client to show? You need to let your audience members know why they can’t miss the event. Make it all about them and you just may be rubbing elbows with them sooner than later.
   2. Make your email actionable. It’s not enough that the client or prospect knows that you will be at the event, make sure to let them know how they can connect with you on-site.
   3. Responsive Design. Fast forward to the day of the event and there’s a good chance that your client will be using their smart phone to refer back to the email you sent them with meetup instructions. Make sure that your email is optimized for mobile viewing.

Getting Started is Easier than Ever

So you have decided that this email marketing thing is for you, but you don’t know how to kick off your first email campaign. No worries, we have you covered. Sign up for a 60-day free trial of Constant Contact and access dozens of free email templates to help you craft your message.