Full Sail Partners Blog | Marketing (5)

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.

Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Vision Premier Partner, has released the Deltek Vision Connector for Constant Contact, an integration of Deltek Vision and Constant Contact.

The Deltek Vision Connector for Constant Contact allows Deltek Vision CRM users to seamlessly create targeted Constant Contact email campaigns by leveraging real-time intelligence directly from Deltek Vision CRM. Once an email campaign is active, users are then able to analyze the results of these campaigns directly in their Deltek Vision system.

“We are really excited to help professional services firms maintain consistency between their Deltek Vision and Constant Contact systems,” said Peter Nuffer, Director of Solution Development at Full Sail Partners. “Users of this integration are refining their messaging and crafting more meaningful campaigns for their readers.”

Connectivity between Deltek Vision and Constant Contact gives users the ability to create more comprehensive email marketing campaigns, reduce labor intensive manual processes and better capture marketing ROI. This mutual relationship between data will allow your marketing team to save countless hours over the duration of a marketing campaign.

“As  one of the first users of the Deltek Vision Constant Contact integration, BG Buildingworks was excited to sync our contacts between our Deltek Vision CRM system and Constant Contact,” said Karen Crilly, Director of Marketing and Client Development for BG Buildingworks. “We used the integration to setup a campaign to announce our company name change. We were able to create a Constant Contact campaign directly from our Deltek Vision CRM system to notify over 4,500 contacts. The campaign went off without a hitch and we saw nearly a 30% open rate on our mailer.”

Interested in learning more about the integration of Deltek Vision and Constant Contact? Click below to learn more.

Often times, upper management views the proposal process as a “cost of business” and don’t put forth a concerted effort to control proposal related costs. There are several ways to increase the cost-effectiveness of your proposal process, and starting with a bid/no bid process is the first step.

Did you know that 40% of AE firms have no formal bid/no bid process? This is according to the 36^th Annual Deltek Clarity AE Report. For that reason, I’m going to focus on the importance of the bid/no bid process. More specifically, why the decision can be made during any phase of the proposal process. 

Notification of New Opportunity

Let’s start by saying that if you’re receiving notification of a new opportunity within your industry when the request for proposal (RFP) is issued, your business development team is already crippling your chances of winning that opportunity. This is a huge red flag to include in your bid/no bid process. On the other hand, if they have a great relationship with the prospective client, they probably have a decent understanding of the scope of work and the project requirements. Either way, this is the first opportunity your company has to decide whether to bid or not to bid.

Honesty is the best policy, so be honest with yourself! If you specialize in building parking garages and the RFP is for a bridge, your chances of winning are already slim. Sure, you want to branch out and do more than build parking garages, but is this client the one that’s likely to give you that chance? Odds are, probably not.

Release of the RFP

Now you have the RFP that in a perfect world has a detailed scope of work and all the requirements. This is when the page turning begins with a detailed review of every word. Does your proposed solution work within the stated budget? Have you revealed any obscure requirements that are red flags? When evaluating your solution and the requirement, create a risk management plan and think about how your company has managed similar risks in the past. 

There’s the old adage, you can’t fit a round peg in a square hole. In other words, if you can’t provide a solution within the requirements of the RFP, your chances of winning are already greatly diminished. Instead proposing on this opportunity, utilize your resources on an opportunity within your company’s skill set.

During the Proposal Preparation Process  

As you begin to develop your solution, keep in mind that it’s still not too late to abandon the RFP. In some cases, the client may issue amendments or provide clarity that changes the scope of work. Other times, the proposal preparation team may find that the proposed solution has become more complex than originally thought or certain costs were overlooked. 

Usually people say “better late than never” as an excuse. However, in this case, it’s absolutely honorable to walk away from an opportunity before committing your company to something it might have difficulty delivering. In the end, winning the work doesn’t guarantee a profit or a happy client. 

Winning with a Bid/No Bid Decision

In the proposal world, there are always two winners for each RFP. Obviously, the company that wins the bid, but the less obvious is the first company to decide to focus their resources on other business opportunities. As a proposal manager, you want to increase your win rate, and at the same time, upper management has the need to win more revenue. While this puts the two sides at odds, agreeing to an effective bid/no bid process can significantly increase your proposal cost-effectiveness and possibly increase revenue for the company.   

 

    

 

 

Using a third party email suite such as Constant Contact or MailChimp to power your email marketing campaigns is a huge step in the right direction. These types of email suites can greatly improve the productivity of email campaigns, while also providing insight into revenue generated from these efforts. The right technology is essential in achieving marketing goals, but technology is not a silver bullet.  Tech solutions must be accompanied with an effective overall strategy that takes into account systems and processes.

Below is a simple 8-step email marketing guide. Follow this list of do’s (and don’ts!) and start crafting more effective email campaigns!

How to Manage Email Marketing Campaigns in Vision

Looking to capture all of your email marketing campaign data in your Deltek Vision CRM? Not sure where to get started? Vision Marketing Campaigns are the go-to place to manage all of your campaigns!