One of the most exciting aspects of launching or growing a great small business is the sheer thrill of all the opportunities in front of you.  You’ve got a great business concept, tons of energy and there is nothing but opportunity in front of you.  Whoo hoo!

We often refer to those opportunities at FreshBooks as “Green Fields”.

At the same time, as exciting and appealing as all of that opportunity is, it can also pose an equally powerful threat to your growth.  On more than one occasion I have referred to this threat as being “paralyzed by choice”.

Are you paralyzed by choice?

The reason you are paralyzed is that you are a small business constrained by your own resources.  There is only so much you can actually do.  Trying to deal with all the opportunities at once can become overwhelming.  You start and stop so many things that suddenly you can’t make any of that great potential happen.

That’s where “choosing” becomes the single most powerful enabler of growth.  And its power is not in selecting…it is really in eliminating.   By choosing you are both deciding what to do and what not to do.   That’s powerful.  And once those choices are made, you and the rest of your team can start to really mobilize around those choices.  Every day people can move and make decisions using your choices as the guide – and eliminate all the other opportunities from the decision equation.

And that’s when things really start to happen and you begin to advance your efforts.  All of a sudden you feel like you are moving forward and growing.

Making choices is more important than making the right choices

I’ve often said that the act of making choices is more important than making the right choices.  And I believe that because it drives you into action and results.  And, with so much opportunity in front of you nearly all of your choices are going to be good ones.  So even if you choose your fifth best idea to go forward with instead of what would have been your first that’s great!  At least you move that forward.

And, in the unlucky and unlikely event that you do make a bad decision, at least you will figure out early that it was a bad decision because you moved it forward fast enough.

Finally, the beauty of choosing is that you can keep choosing.  Once you’ve moved one agenda or priority forward sufficiently, be sure to look at your choices again and see which might be best next.

So, if you find yourself facing the “Green Fields” of opportunity in front of you and feeling a bit “paralyzed” then choose your way out.   Make your choices, get in action behind them and start growing!

Every once and a while a big idea comes along – a landmark victory, a four-bagger, a game changer.  One that propels your business to a new level.

Those sure are fun!

And while many businesses that have seen strong, ongoing growth often have a few of these big ideas along the way, it’s hard to build a long-term business model on just big ideas.

So, while you’re working on the big win, one of the most practical, efficient and successful ways to keep growing fast is to play small ball.

Small Ball – shoot for consecutive and cumulative wins

When it comes to delivering sustained growth, month after month, year after year I have to tell you I  am addicted to small ball.  Small ball for me is the ability to deliver small but meaningful enhancements to your business in succession and continually.

A 2% improvement here, a 1% improvement there and a 4% pick up in efficiency here – those small bits can really add up.  If you stopped to think about how you can deliver a 10% or a 20% improvement in your business it could be a struggle.  Or you might have a few good ideas, but the resources to get there may be out of reach.

Instead, if you thought about how you could improve your business by 1% or 2% you’d likely come up with a bunch of practical, implementable ideas.  And the good news is if you string those wins together you get your 10-20%!  Even better, if you keep doing it you’ll go way beyond.

So I say shoot for consecutive wins.  One after another after another.  If you are measuring and learning then it’s easy to continue to find new executions to build off of the next.  It’s a code I live by and makes me feel like I can impact the business every day.  And that’s a good feeling.

Superheroes deliver super results – 98% response

This is the finale to my killer email secrets series and reveals how I was able to actually get a 98% response rate on an email. Feel free to check out  Part 1 and Part 2 for the full story.

So..

At the time I was working for Polyair, a company in the protective packaging business (bubble paper, foam, mailers, etc.)

Every two years the packaging industry has its major trade show called Pack Expo. It is the biggest show of the year.

The goal was to create a unique theme for the show and get Polyair and its customers excited about it.

What We Did

We came up with a Superhero theme and developed an entire program around it.

As part of our program we created actual Superheroes – Bubble Girl, Captain Foam, The Inflator, The Foil and Mailer Man.  Outstanding artwork was created for the booth in comic book fashion.  Each major section of the booth had a large screen depicting one of the heroes in a mini comic scene saving a packaged product from the evils of every day delivery.

After the success of our first email marketing program we decided we wanted to now try an  email campaign targeted at our customers who would be at the show.  The goal would would be to create some real excitement and build up to the show to ensure they visited the booth.

The Emails

We created 4 email – The Teaser, Bubble Girl, Captain Foam and Mailer Man.  We would start the campaign three weeks prior to the event.  The first two emails ran one week apart and the last two ran during the week leading up to the show 3 days apart.

Each email linked back to the Polyair website where we had carved out a large “movie screen” area to play the respective ads. Below are the images for each email we sent.  Click on any image to view the accompanying video and message.

The Teaser - click image to play video

Bubble Girl - click image to play video

Captain Foam - click image to play video

Mailer Man - click image to play video

What Happened

Response was overwhelming.  The average response rate was 80% with 98% of customers clicking through in the final week.

Weekly Email Response Rates

Perhaps even more pleasing was that the phones started ringing off the hook with customers calling to tell us how much they were enjoying the campaign!!

Turn out at the booth for the show was phenomenal with everyone wanting to meet Bubble Girl (she was the most popular).  We had created life sized cut outs of the heroes for the booth – but for some it wasn’t enough…they really wanted to meet Bubble Girl!

But that is not all….by having our customers visit our website at least once a week for three weeks we actually created a behaviour change.

Our average weekly total site visits were up 20% even two weeks after the show.

Weekly Site Visits Post Email

Learning

First, I never thought I would ever get a 98% response rate – that’s nuts.  And I have never, ever gotten close to that again.  But it happened, and it wasn’t all a fluke. We did a bunch of things right to help along the way.  And it’s pretty much what I laid out in the the first two posts of this series plus a few more things.

Here’s what we learned:

1. Getting better happens on purpose, and in steps.

We took the learning from our first campaign that produced strong results and took it further.  Every campaign can get better.  Take the good bits that work consistently and see how you can extend them to do even better.  No way we would have hit 98% on this campaign without all the learning from the first.

2.  Engage you audienc.

First, all our customers spent their every waking business hours dealing with bubble, foam and mailers.  This was an execution they could relate to and enjoy because it was such a big part of what they did.  At the same time, the superhero campaign extended to the physical at our booth that they were going to see.  So everything in the entire campaign around the show carried through.  That made everything more impactful.

3.  It’s not about selling.

At the end of the day, it’s about building trust and relationships with your customers in a way that your competitors are not.  This campaign was a breakthrough in that it started to transform our relationships with our customers simply because we started talking about packaging in a new way.

As I said, I’ve never come close to a 98% response rate again, but I sure do use the same principles and lessons learned to try to learn more, build and extend what does work into each and every new execution.  And who knows…maybe there’s a 99%’er just waiting to happen!

In my last post I shared some insights into how to generate a great response from email marketing.

I also told you I was going to share with you how I achieved a 98% response rate on one of my campaigns. And I am going to share that.

But not yet.

First, I want to tell you about the very first email program I ever ran because it was, in a large part, responsible for me seeing my way to the 98% campaign.

What was really crazy about this particular email program was it was a “make work” project. It was supposed to be a token marketing effort to show good will towards one of our partners.

Nobody expected any results and nobody really cared. We just needed to do “something”.

And with that, we managed to get a 47% response rate and had our phones ringing off the hook with orders.

So, how did that happen and why?

Let’s begin..

Overview

This is a great example of how, with a little bit of effort, a few good customer insights, and a desire to achieve you can bring the house down with just one email.

Situation

Polyair, my employer at the time and a manufacturer of protective packaging materials, relied almost exclusively on its sales force to generate leads. They did not advertise, issue product press releases or purchase any online media.

They did have a pretty decent website (not the one you see now, that came later) – but it was essentially an online brochure.

One of their strategic partners overseas had developed a new piece of equipment that manufactured bubble pouches. It was a bulky and rather expensive item, and one that Polyair would not normally carry. However, in a gesture of good faith Polyair offered to support the new product, called the “Kangaroo”, with some marketing support.

Objective – theirs….and mine!

Find a low cost, low effort way to show some good faith support for a strategic partner and see if we couldn’t drum up some sales for them in the process.

I added that last part about drumming up sales to cause trouble and because, really, what’s the point if you can’t aim to really kill it.

What We Did

Polyair had never done any sort of email marketing before so we decided that this would be the perfect scenario to test it out. The costs were negligible and the learning would be fantastic.

We built the campaign on two key insights. First, customers were always interested in new products – so this was a natural. Second, the protective packaging industry, while competitive, was quite dry. Most of Polyair’s customers worked inside all day in warehouses. They could use a little excitement in their lives.

With that in mind we quickly collected about 800 emails over the next two weeks and put together a fun little flash commercial for the Kangaroo that would run on a nice big screen the home page of the Polyair website.

We also included three easy next step options after the commercial:

1. Download the brochure
2. View an online video of the Kangaroo in action
3. Request a demo CD of the Kangaroo.

To drive folks to the site we developed a fun little graphic based email seen below that would encourage our customers to check out the new Kangaroo and to “see the Kangaroo in action”. After all, who couldn’t use a little excitement in this category during their busy day. There was no content…just that image.

Here is that image – click on the image to play the flash demo that ran on our site (keep in mind that this was a whole bunch of years ago folks.)

Click on image to play the flash demo

Several weeks earlier the full training package on the Kangaroo had been sent out to the Polyair sales group.

What Happened

Results were staggering! Within 48 hrs of sending the email we had a whopping 47% of the targeted customers respond to the email. We were right – they needed a little excitement in their lives!

50% of the customers viewed the online video and 50% of those requested a copy of the CD.

Please note there was no discounting or pricing incentives…only the opportunity to get more information. That was our “offer”.

In an interesting twist, we dynamically inserted the phone number of each prospect’s Polyair sales rep into the email so they could follow up directly with their rep for more information – rather than get routed through the Toronto office.

Well boy did the head office phone ring off the hook with sales rep requests to resend the Kangaroo training materials because their customers were requesting appointments to find out more.

Polyair ended up selling about 7 units at about $19,000 a pop over the course of the next 6 months – that’s about 7 more than we expected. Plus we ended up selling a lot more other stuff from the appointments that were made as a result.

What We Learned

We learned a whole heck of a lot.  We learned:

1. Anything worth doing is worth doing right – and with a vengeance.

We could  have just done a lame email and been done with it.  But this was our first ever email and we wanted to make the most of it..and learn the most from it.  So, be sure to take every opportunity to market to your customers as one to really make an impact.

2. Understanding your audience, their environment and their interests is the best way to drive communications.

This should drive everything from the content to the delivery of the message.

3. “More information” was a great offer.

There were no “dollars off” or “percent discounts” or “limited time” offers,  just the introduction of something that they might be able to use and the opportunity to learn more.

4.  Presenting very clear and easy follow up actions for our email list works.

First, it worked because more than half of the respondents jumped on one of those actions.  Second, it worked because we were able to measure the pick-up of those actions to see which ones were most appealing.

5. Personalizing the email made taking action easier.

The simple task of embedding their personal Polyair sales rep in the email made it super easy for them to take action.  They speak to this person every week so the relationship was already there.

6. Sometimes what customers buy is not what you are selling,  and that simply creating a new conversation with them creates new opportunities.

Let’s face it, most of our customers could not use a Kangaroo, but they were still interested in learning more and called their sales rep to learn more.   We sold 7 Kangaroos for sure, but sold a heck of a lot more of other products as a result of the email.  New meetings were set up, new conversations were had and new opportunities were found.

7. Our customers liked to hear from us.

We had not communicated to our customers via email before this.  And they were likely not getting emails from our competition because there was very little online activity at the time.  So, we were there first and delivered something of value.

Finally,

8. We learned that we  had done such a good job at appealing to their interests that, if we kept doing this, they would almost always open our emails.

And this was the key point of my first post.

What Next – We Thought We Hit the Jackpot..But..

Achieving a 47% response rate was simply unheard of so we did not imagine we could do any better. But it didn’t stop us from trying and actually blowing that result out of the water with a 98% response on our next campaign. I’ll be sure to tell you about that next…promise.

The reality is that most of the emails we get from businesses are…lame. And, if you are sending out emails yourself you may have already resigned to the fact that you get a low response rate – it’s just the nature of email, right?

No.

The reason we can accept poor response rates from email marketing is because we are lazy. Creating and sending an email is just too easy these days. So, type away….drop it into a nice template…fire it off and see what happens.

No wonder response is weak. You’ve earned it.

Want to get some killer results???? Read on..

To get the big numbers, you are going to have to do a bit of work. For an email to be super effective it must achieve three things (please note that I am going to avoid all the technical stuff about deliver-ability and getting through spam filters and just focus on your campaign):

1. The email must be opened (attraction)
2. The email must be read to some extent (engagement)
3. The email must inspire action from the reader (response)

So let’s go through each stage and see what is needed.

Getting Your List To Open Your Email

Getting your list to open your email is often the biggest challenge. Many experts say that a provocative subject line is the best way to get your prospects to open your emails. I agree to some extent. Hey, if you have a great subject line then use it. But if that’s all you have and the content of your email does not match the excitement or anticipation created by your subject line then you will only fool them once.

And this leads to my first insight into email marketing. The key to getting people to open your email is to create the condition that they will want to open it – before they even get it.

Yes, before.

How is this possible? It is possible because all of your previous emails have offered them some great value.

You see, too often we write emails from our own selfish needs.  Perhaps you want to up-sell customers to another program, or simply want to sell them something.  Now there is nothing wrong with that but what is in it for them?

In every instance you emails must offer your prospect some value. This can range from some good information, insights into their business or even some good entertainment value.

A good example is the email we launched at FreshBooks back in January 2008.  At FreshBooks the currency of our business is our relationships with our customers – it’s our lifeblood.  Now we’d done a great job at connecting with them through our phone, email and forum support channels and also had a growing blog readership  – but no newsletter.

What we did know was that our customers were always interested in what we were up to and how we worked.  The blog revealed that to some extent but we thought that a more “intimate” and personal view might be a good idea for a newsletter.  One of the things we do at FreshBooks is take our customers out for dinner whenever we are in their town.  It’s a wonderful and intimate environment to really get to know our customers and them to get to know us.  So we thought we could extend that experience to a newsletter and voila,  the “Supper Club” newsletter was born. 

Getting Your List To Read and Respond To Your Email

Now, The Supper Club is not opened by everyone – which is just fine because it was expressly designed for the group of customers that were interested in the goings on at FreshBooks.  What we do have is a very loyal and consistent readership month after month.  And we continue to get accolades from our customers about how much they enjoy it and look forward to it every month.  We feed them the exact stories that reveal the goings on inside FreshBooks..with photos, fun stuff and a very casual and fun writing style. 

Importantly, pretty much every Supper Club includes an interactive element where we ask them to vote on something,  participate in a fun contest or even volunteer for stuff.   Heck, these are folks that want to take their relationship with FreshBooks to the next level - so we do our best to serve that up and get them participating.

Their response tells us that we’ve delivered what they were seeking.

And that’s what we are after.

Can you do that? Yes.

You just need to think from the perspective of your prospect…not from your own selfish needs. What email can you send them that would add value for them? They may not buy anything with the first email, or even the second or the fifth, but over time, if they continue to open your emails and get good value from you…they will come calling – whether it’s to buy something or share their great experiences with your brand to someone else, or just be really happy they found you in the first place.

Feel  free to read through the Supper Club Newsletters  from launch to today and get some ideas on how we engage our audience every month.

Stay tuned for part 2 where I am going to share with you my very first email where I managed to get a …wait for it…98 percent open rate.

I’m going to share something with you that you might help you create a breakthrough in your positioning, and it’s something that actually occurs more often then you might think.  What I want to share with you is that often what you think is your core value is not, in fact, your real core value.

You may think that people choose you because of your price, or your critical thinking or the way you always stick to your deadlines but more times than not, your real value lies somewhere else.

The good news is that the key to unlocking what the real value is right under your nose.

It’s your customers.

If you’ve been doing business for some time and you’ve developed even a small stable of clients then you’ve got everything you need.

If you think about it, there is no better source to uncover “why” people choose to work with you then your own customers.  They key then, is to figure out how to get this information.

I’ve obviously spent a lot of time helping companies figure this out and, in the process, have developed 10 questions that you can ask your customers to get you those answers.

Sometimes all you need to ask are one or two and the answers will start gushing out.  But I’ve got the 10 because you never know which one will give you the great “reveal”.

Here are the 10 questions to ask your customers:

1.    Why did they choose you?

2.    What was their specific challenge/problem before choosing anyone?

3.    What kind of research did they do?

4.    How many others did they meet?

5.    What were some previous problems they had working with others?

6.    What were they expecting in working with you?

7.    What did they get?  Same. More. Different?

8.    How would they recommend you to others?

9.    In what situations would they recommend you to others?

10. How do you compare to their other suppliers?

Now, if you are going to spend some time asking those questions, you’re going to have to be prepared to listen, and I mean really listen.  You might even want to have someone else ask your customers these questions on your behalf.  Often customers can articulate this value better to someone they don’t know because they have to work that much harder to really explain it.

In any event, the questions will help you understand a good cluster of insights into why they chose you, their expectations and their actual experiences.

Give it a shot. Then let me know what new insight, or insights you discovered.

About six months ago I put together a presentation for the Create Chaos event in Florida.  It was a conference for creative professionals and I thought I would speak about creating the messaging around your value proposition.  Many of the attendees were freelancers or small business owners searching for ways to effectively position themselves in this very competitive field.

Obviously this was an audience that was savvy from a design standpoint so my challenge was to create a simple formula for them to wrap their heads around the language of their positioning vs just the image.  That’s been my strength.

If they could then combine a strong message with a sharp or effective design then that would be a pretty powerful result.

The process I asked them to go through, and you certainly can too, took 3 steps.

Step 1 was to think about the kinds of companies you like to work for – and to list these descriptors on a page.   All kinds of descriptors came out including: small, big, savvy, trust, freedom, smart, fast paying, decisive …and so on.

Step 2 was to think about the kinds of projects you like to work on – and to list these as well.  Examples included: websites, print, launches, branding, high margin, profile, causes, innovative…and more.

Step 3 was to have them understand what was the REAL value they brought to their existing clients.  In my experience there is often a gap here.  You might think they like you because of your design skill…but in fact it could be because you always deliver on time and on budget.  I gave them a list of 10 questions to ask their existing customers that would help them reveal their true value.  If you’d like that list then send me an email request and I can shoot them off to you.

The 5 Words To Help You Write Your Value Proposition

So, armed with a list of descriptors about the kinds of customers they wanted to attract,  a list of the kinds of projects they enjoy the most, and with new insights into the value that they really delivered I gave them a framework to then construct their value proposition.

And it consisted of these five words:

Are you a:

Looking for:

With those five words and their list of descriptors they could then start mixing and matching elements to craft a messaging strategy or positioning to start attracting the right clients, for the right projects and be sure that they were also the ones that would appreciate the value they would bring to to the table.

Here are a few examples, with each one building on additional layers:

Example#1

Are you a:  Growing entrepreneurial business?

Looking for:  A website that breaks through the clutter, but not your budget.

Example #2

Are you a: High quality interactive agency experiencing periods of high demand for tier one graphic illustrations?

Looking for: Serious design chops that know how to expertly handle client relationships, tight turnarounds and is available on an as-needed basis.

Example #3

Are you a :  Large corporation, with a strong brand and advertising campaigns that cross all media, who is tired of dealing with large agencies that are incapable of creating renewed interest in your business?

Looking for: A smaller, nimbler agency, with big ideas, and an even bigger passion to execute them with precision.

Each of these examples, in their own right, create a richness to the message.  Certainly more than just saying you are a “graphic designer who builds websites”.  They all clearly define the target audience as well as the scenarios they are facing and how the provider can best meet those needs.

And that is pretty much what you need to effectively position your company against your target – designer, agency, developer, lawyer, dog walker or whatever it is you do.  And if you remember from my previous posts, you’ll be wanting to attract those customers that YOU love to work with as well – heck, that makes work fun!

What’s Your Value Proposition?

I have yet to find a scenario where this simple task and the structure of these five words has not been able to produce results.  Messaging and positioning can be extremely difficult if it is not something that comes intuitively to you – or you are not a “words” person.  This framework is designed to take you through some simple steps to create a unique but effective positioning statement that you can then deliver to a creative professional (or yourself) to build some marketing around.

If you perform this exercise, and I encourage you to do it, I would love to have you share your results with me directly or post them as a reply to this topic.

In my last post I introduced the notion of changing your orientation when developing your messaging strategy. Spend less time telling them about you and more time telling them about them.

So now you need to ask yourself – who are they?

Well I have some good news…really good news.

You can choose.

Yes, you can choose your customers. And, I would argue that this is one of the most enlightening concepts in marketing.

So, who should you chose?

Well, if you’ve had any success to date I bet it is those customers that you are particularly good at acquiring now (but not enough of them), that love your work and that you love working for, and that are profitable and repeat customers.

That’s a good start. Heck, having an entire business of only those customers you love, that love you, that you do amazing work for and that are repeat and profitable customers is a pretty nice place.

So, let me get back to my point.

Now that you have chosen WHO your customers are, you can create a messaging strategy around who they are. I call this “Is this you?” marketing. Yah, pretty slick.

And, as super slick as that name is, it is super powerful because suddenly your messages start filtering OUT the customers you don’t want and becoming a SUPER filter for those that you do want and who you will most likely satisfy with your service. And that also means a step change in the performance of all your marketing programs.

That’s a nice place.

Your Messaging – Get To It!

So, now that you know the secret that you can actually choose your customers you can start orienting your messaging around them. What businesses are they in? What is unique about them? What specific challenges to they have that someone like you can help them solve? What kinds of things do they really value (price, service, integrity, local boy, creativity, intelligence, friendliness…)?

When they hit your web page – make’em go “Yeah Baby! That’s me”. Then you got’em interested. You may not be done yet but I can tell you if you can get there..you are 90 percent of the way home.

So you want to attract and convert more customers but where to start? For my money the key to attracting and converting customers lies in your messaging – the collection of words and images you use to connect with and communicate to your audience.

Connect and you are golden, miss and it sucks. To me, nailing your messaging is the single most important thing you can do in your entire marketing arsenal.

And in my experience most folks get it wrong – awfully wrong.

And it’s all due to orientation. A change in your orientation around how you view your communication objectives can be one of the most powerful tools in your marketing tool kit. It not only completely draws in your desired audience, but it makes every other marketing program you execute that much stronger.

When most people/companies develop their messaging strategies they do what most folks do – they look in the mirror. And then they tell you what they see. This is, of course, themselves.

And while we might be very handsome or pretty as the case may be, it’s just the wrong orientation.

Point the Mirror Towards Your Customer

Instead, you need to first put the mirror out – to your customer. What they need to see in your messaging is themselves.

Why is this so important and so powerful?

When you are communicating and particularly online when customers can flip off to another site at any instant, you need to connect with and identify with your customer/prospect as quickly and as relevantly as possible. You don’t have a moment to waste so you need to grab’m.

They are looking for something, and frankly, it can’t be you cause they don’t know you. But they do know who they are and their own situation. So, you need to play this back to them where they go “YES! That’s me..yes, yes, yes and yes!”.

When you’ve done this you can go home glowing because you’ve just unlocked the path to marketing happy-land.

So ask yourself, who’s that person in the mirror? That should drive your messaging strategy. At a minimum it should be the first thing you deliver. More later…