The Keap Insider

Holiday Edition 2021

Your Guide to Your Biggest Black Friday Yet | 5 Football Hacks to Reach Your Business Goals

Boost Attendance at Your Next Event Follow Abigail Olaya’s 5-Step Guide

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Happy Holidays From All of Us at Keap

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Contents Holiday Edition 2021

5 Football Hacks to Reach Your Business Goals

Get Out of the Weeds of Your Business

Your Guide to Your Biggest Black Friday Yet

How to Create Ridiculously Good Content

6 Tricks to Convert Online Prospects

Boost Attendance at Your Next Event

3 Retention Strategies That Actually Work

3 Ways to Transform Your Direct-Mail Marketing Strategy

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From One Entrepreneur to Another

Are you overlooking the golden rule of marketing? Every holiday season, the volume of promotional email soars as our customers work hard to get their offers out to customers. If you’re like most of our customers, you’re eager to get your message out, too. But cutting through the noise can be quite the challenge. The other day, Scott and I were talking about the challenge so many entrepreneurs have in getting their message across. As entrepreneurs, we often feel like we’re shouting our mes- sage into the wind, only to be ignored by the customers we know we could serve well, if only given the chance. Well, it doesn’t have to be so frustrating, if we remember this golden rule of marketing: Your customers don’t care about what you offer; they care about their problems.

As entrepreneurs, we naturally talk about the solution we offer. We tout the features and benefits of the products and services we’ve worked hard to create for our customers. We easily and endlessly talk about what we can do for our customers because we want to serve them, we want to grow sales, and we want to accom- plish our goals. But all those words are wasted if we don’t remember this golden rule of marketing. When we were early in our busi- ness, one of my mentors, Dan Kenne- dy, said, “Remember that you aren’t a small-business owner, you’re a marketer. And remember you aren’t a marketer of your product or service, you’re a marketer of information. And remember you aren’t a marketer of information about your product or service, you’re a marketer of infor- mation about the problems solved by your product or service. In other words, talk about your customers’ problems (that are solved by your product or service) and you’ll attract customers. That simple lesson made all the difference as we prac- ticed it and our business took off. A friend and longtime Keap cus- tomer, Donald Miller of Storybrand Marketing fame, says it this way: “As you fish for customers, the hooks are your customers’ problems. Put enough hooks in the water and you’ll catch a lot of fish.” And I would add that your lead magnets are the bait on your hook. Remember, your lead magnet is the most compelling thing you can give your customer, which addresses their problems. So, as the volume of marketing messages skyrockets this holiday season, make sure you’re not ignoring the golden rule of marketing. Put your hooks and bait out there, and you’ll catch a lot more fish! –Clate

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By Shaun Buck, Founder of Newsletter Pro To Reach Your Business Goals 5 Football Hacks

M ore than 14 years ago now, my family packed up and moved to Idaho. There were a lot of changes coming from California to Idaho, but I think one of the weirdest (and coolest) was the absolute obsession everyone out here has with the Boise State Broncos football team. You see it every- where . In the grocery stores, you’ll see shopping carts painted in their colors (even at big-name brands like Walmart). Their pictures are sprayed across buses and on cars. They have merchandise in every store — from shirts to greeting cards — and even at school events and functions! People in the Treasure Valley cheer hard for their Broncos. At the time we moved, I was an occasional sports-watcher but never really a football fan. I’d watch if it was on someone else’s TV, but my interest was never really piqued. Then we moved to Boise, and I got caught up in the culture of it all. Once I caught the bug, my oldest son soon followed, and then before I knew it, we became a whole football family! I even chose News- letter Pro’s old color scheme based heavily on BSU’s colors. New hires have laughed and rolled their eyes a bit when hearing about it, but I think there’s so much business sense that can be learned from watching foot- ball and seeing how each team perseveres and learns. The best teams all have the best plays, and those plays are things we can use in order to get ahead. Football Hack #1: Teamwork makes the dream work. All right, so it’s a cliche. But it wouldn’t be repeated so often if it weren’t true. Defense is just as important as offense. The quarterback can’t take on the weight of the Super Bowl by himself, no matter how good he is. (See Patrick Mahomes in the last Super Bowl.) It takes collaboration to go the distance. I’ve spoken before about how hard it was for me to let go of some tasks when Newsletter Pro started to scale fast . I had to hire new talent to come in, write, and design, and I was a terrible “back-seat driver.” I would often let my new employees spend hours work- ing on a task, only to come in and redo it myself later. This became bad for morale, and I wasted money and time feeling convinced that no one else could do the job quite like I could. When my team finally convinced me

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Football Hack #4: Let the referees do their jobs. On the field and sidelines next to the action, the referees are crouched low, eyes on the field, making sure that the game follows the rules and is as fair as possible. We pay these people to be impartial and tell us uncomfortable truths; they don’t always get it right, and they are not always the most-liked people on the field for sure! But could you imagine a game without them? This is a personal pet peeve of mine. We get cli- ents who pay us to be the pros on their campaign … and then promptly demand something that will torpedo all of our efforts. I’ve seen it time and time again: If we can’t convince them to go another route, their product satisfaction steeply declines, and we lose them as soon as the contract period is over. It’s madness! Why would you hire an expert, then ignore all of their data on what works and what doesn’t? If you’ve been in my shoes before (or are now), sometimes you need to save people from them- selves, and that’s just the truth! We will very rarely take on a client wanting to mail quarterly (except for some very specialized niches) because the data shows us that it just doesn’t work. Better to light your money on fire than to take on something that you know will fail to meet standards. Football Hack #5: Check out the watch party. When the game is done, win or lose, the players sit down and analyze the game film. What worked? What didn’t? Where were their trouble areas? Celebrate and learn from your wins. Evaluate your losses. Not everything you try will be like running the ball in from the 1-yard line on ev- ery play, although even that can prove difficult at times. Sometimes you have to go back to the drawing board with your failures and recalibrate your plan. Try, try, and try again. Keep what works. Throw out what doesn’t. Most importantly, pump yourself up for the next “game” by remembering that you have all of the tools to succeed. Opportunities are endless these days. Continue seizing them! Continue growing. Continue analyzing. With the right team behind you and the right playbook, you can’t lose. Newsletter Pro may have updated its colors and design flow, and the bright blue and orange is no longer everywhere you look in my office, but make no mistake, we are still hardcore BSU fans in my household. When the season starts, you will find me firmly planted behind the blue field, surrounded by my kids, looking for opportunities to continue learn- ing and cheering for the Broncos with all I’m worth.

to loosen the reins and let them do the tasks I’d hired them for, I realized that a lot of those things I insisted on doing could actually be done just as well or better , even if they got done differently. Football Hack #2: Develop your playbook. Players do not go out on the field and wing it. They study the playbook, run the drills, and make sure they are physically fit enough to perform in good condition. They spend time adjusting their strategy so that each teammate’s strengths are used to their ultimate advantage. Now, I’m a 9 out of 10 on the Kolbe Quickstart scale, so slowing down to put a fully realized plan together is sometimes painful. But it is worth it 100% of the time, and it’s one of the areas I’ve worked hard to perfect over the years in order to be an effective leader. We all know that growing and scaling has just as much to do with sys- tems, processes, plans, and people as it does with having a great idea or starting an innovative new project. Football Hack #3: TOUCHDOWN! I read a fascinat-

ing study recently by health behaviorist Dr. Emily Nagoski. She wrote the book “Burn- out: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle,” and I took a lot

of interest in her research about the fastest way to process stress and feel better. Turns out it has nothing to do with forcing yourself to “relax” but has everything to do with celebrating the fact that you survived! So, when you see someone on the field running with the ball like their life depends on it, avoiding tackles, jumping over opponents, and making it to the end zone unscathed, their victory dance is actually a necessary part of fin- ishing the body’s stress cycle and telling it, “We won! We made it! We’re safe.” This is a big one for me. As business owners, our stress doesn’t look quite as obvious as trying to avoid a giant football player from literally slam- ming us to the ground. But Dr. Nagoski’s research shows that filing taxes, firing an employee, or even sitting in rush-hour traffic feels the same way to our bodies . So, the advice is to let yourself have a “TOUCHDOWN!” when the moment is over to let your body know that it made it through safely.

Get O the W Hire to the Visio

4. Meeting Rhythm The only way we’ve found to consistently spend enough time creating the future of your business is to utilize an effective meeting rhythm. The discipline of a good meeting rhythm perfectly complements the intentionality of setting the vision. Long-Term Planning Pays Off When the businesses we work with implement these concepts, they are rewarded with more clarity, purpose, freedom, peace, and even fun.

In last month’s article, we shared that the Elite Business Growth Method works to help address the common pain points of growing a successful busi- ness beyond the $1 million annual revenue mark. Here’s a recap. 1. Vision Jim Collins teaches that the No. 1 responsibility of a leader is to “set the vision.” Setting the vision includes getting total clarity on the purpose, the values, and the mission of your business. 2. Short-Term ‘Operational Excellence’ The operational side of your business is all too famil- iar — it is truly what we mean by being “lost in the weeds”: getting and serving customers, reconcil- ing bank statements, scrambling to make payroll, etc. Every minute spent working in the business means one less minute dedicated to working on the business. 3. Long-Term ‘Strategic Progress’ This is the business-building work that must be done to move beyond the seven-figure business mark — and the easiest to neglect. Ideally, you would allo- cate about 20% of your team’s collective focus, time, and energy to creating the future of your business.

This month, we’ll talk about the importance of long-term planning and how, by dedicat- ing time and energy into orga- nizing the work and determin- ing who you will need on your team, you will reduce overload and have more time to work on your business. I recently interviewed Lisa MacQueen for our “Elite En- trepreneurs” podcast. Lisa is CEO of Australia-based CleanCorp and was the 2014

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son to fit a position. But you can’t train culture into them, and you can’t train vision.” Unfortunately, too many business owners out there feel this pain. After all, if you can afford to bring someone in to fulfill a dire need in the busi- ness, why not just make it happen? It’s Critical to Hire to the Vision Lisa shifted their hiring process to include a detailed job description, digging deep into what is required for the role both culturally and function- ally. These robust job descriptions serve as a road map for success in the role and make it easier to measure the expectations for the role against the applicant’s real-world experience. But most im- portantly, it ensures that those aligned with the company’s vision are the ones applying for the role — saving time and reducing the risk of hiring the wrong person. By measuring all of their hiring needs against the vision of the company and organizing the work to ensure that hires were onboarded in the order that best served the needs of the organization, the leadership of CleanCorp was freed up to work on their business strategically and do less of the day- to-day operations. Are you ready to get out of the weeds by imple- menting the Elite Business Growth Method in your business? Scan the QR code or visit GrowWith Elite.com , where you can access free resources to help your business grow.

Out of Weeds on to Get More Freedom By Brett Gilliland, CEO of Elite Entrepreneurs

Infusionsoft Ultimate Marketer and Small Busi- ness ICON award winner. During our interview, we discussed how she powerfully shifted their hiring process to be aligned to their vision as a result of learning the Elite Business Growth Method. After attending one of our Elite events, CleanCorp more than quadrupled in revenue from $700,000 to $3.2 million over the course of two years. Don’t Rush the Hire In her role as the CEO, Lisa recognized that she and her husband were navigating tremendous growth by continuing to do everything themselves. As a family business, they knew they had to make a shift in how they managed their finances and grew their team. They recognized gaps in their team that needed to be filled, but Lisa admits they jumped the gun with their hiring decisions. They hired a general manager who was not a culture fit. It was a tough and expensive lesson to learn and one they may have taken on too early. “When moving through growth phases, it is really important to know who you need on the team, and when,” Lisa shares. “Now, we hire for vision; we hire for fit. In most cases, you can train the right per-

Brett Gilliland is the CEO of Elite Entrepreneurs, a company that spun off from Keap in 2018, specializing in giving $1 million-plus business owners the knowledge, processes, and tools to grow to $10 million and beyond. Brett spent 10 years helping Infusionsoft grow from seven figures in revenue to over $100 million.

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$ Make This Holiday Season Your Biggest Yet! By Leveraging the Power of Keap

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A ccording to Kath Grannis, a spokeswom- an for the National Retail Federation, a whopping 40% of holiday shoppers start planning their purchases before Hallow- een. That timeline is enough to make any business owner panic about falling behind, but the good news is that it’s not too late to prepare for the holiday shopping rush, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday — especially with Keap’s suite of small-business tools on your side. According to Adobe, Cyber Monday 2020 was the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history. Amer- icans spent $10.8 billion online (up more than 15% from 2019), and that’s on top of the $9 billion (up 22%) they’d already spent on Black Friday. Online sales soared last year, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and will likely remain at record highs this shopping season. Are you ready for them? Start Your Holiday Campaign Strong. Every great holiday campaign starts in house. First, you need to make creating a killer offer a top priority. That means turning the campaign into a project and itemizing all of the necessary tasks so that you and your team can stay on track. Using the Task feature in Keap’s Sales and Marketing Automa- tion software makes this easy. You can use it to or- ganize tasks for yourself and as many team mem- bers as you’d like. Plus, it integrates with Slack and other communication tools so that you and your team can stay on the same page. Once you’ve carved out time to work on your holiday campaign, it’s time to create an irresistible offer. You have four great options here. 1. Discount your product or service. Mark- ing down products by 15%, 20%, or even 50% is the most popular option on Black Friday or Cy- ber Monday, and many business owners gravi- tate toward it. The challenge with this method is that you have to sell enough products or services to offset the loss of the discount. If you’re a small company with slim margins, a discount may not be the best way to go. Fortu- nately, it’s far from your only option! 2. Bundle your products. If you offer multi- ple products or services, bundling them into one lower-cost offer can be an excellent way to drive sales without slashing prices too much. We see cellphone companies like AT&T and Verizon do this a lot with new cellphone sales. For only $60 more, you get a phone

case, car charger, and a package of screen protectors. The phone case alone is $50, so the bundle of everything else makes spend- ing only $10 more! This is a sweet deal for the business because it moves more product out the door. 3. Create a value-add. People love getting things for free, even if that thing isn’t what they set out to buy! You can leverage this and add value to your deal by pairing it with a helpful tool or resource that fits your prod- uct. If you sell a service, maybe you have a tip sheet or e-book about how to get the most out of it. If you sell blenders, you could throw in an online recipe book! When you plan your value add, just make sure it’s a flat cost to you no matter how many products or services you sell. 4. Offer an early-bird giveaway. Anyone who has shopped on Black Friday in person knows early-bird deals work — this strategy creates long lines in front of store doors! You can also offer an early bird giveaway online using Keap’s email marketing feature to seg- ment it for VIP customers only or email it out to your full list. Rewarding the early cus- tomers with an added bonus is a great way to maximize the word-of-mouth marketing. According to Twitter, 62% of shoppers Tweet about purchases they’ve made. Which of these options is right for you depends on your type of product or service and the de- mographics of your customer base. To learn more about the latter, you can rely on past data and reports gathered by Keap. How did your list react to past email marketing campaigns? What language pulled them in during A/B testing? Now is the time to leverage those insights to get results on this holiday season. As we mentioned before, you can make your of- fer(s) even more effective with segmentation! Using Keap’s robust CRM features, you can tailor your mar- keting message to speak to different parts of your customer base (new customers, returning custom- ers, VIPs, etc.) and leverage email and text marketing to target them with deals they’re more likely to buy (more on that later). Last but not least, if you’re planning to funnel buyers to your website, you need to tune up your e-commerce system in advance of the big day. Keap’s Pro and Max editions include a range of e-commerce capabilities that can help you scale

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$ To continue bringing in sales, try upselling holi- day-related content on your checkout forms using Keap! If someone purchases a spa package from you, for example, you can offer them a second bundle that they can give as a gift OR an additional service they can add for themselves at a discount. From there, you can use Keap to automate follow-up if they come back to your platform for last-minute gifts. If you sell a service, you can also make it easy for your clients to pay you automatically with Keap’s invoicing and payments system. Keap will send pay- ment reminders to your clients, track your invoices, and send automated holiday-themed messages via email to help you stay top of mind even while you’re out of the office celebrating with your family. Think Ahead to 2022. Last but not least, if you’re a coach or consultant, now is the time to schedule your end-of-year/be- ginning-of-year check-in appointments with clients. Not only can Keap help you send out those remind- ers, but you can also include a scheduling link to re- move the hassle of finding an agreeable time during the holiday chaos. Go Beyond Black Friday and Cyber Monday. As you’re planning your Black Friday/Cyber Mon- day offer, keep in mind that there are other key dates coming up around the holidays that you can pair with promotions, like Small Business Saturday (Saturday, Nov. 27) and Giving Tuesday (Tuesday, Nov. 30). Keap integrates with Google Calendar and more than 2,000 other apps, making it easy for you to stay on top of these smaller but still important selling days and automate email and text marketing for them in advance. Stay In Touch Through the Holidays. The holiday season isn’t over once you break your previous Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales records! There are still last-minute shoppers to serve. One Klarna survey even found that 79% of people don’t jump on their holiday shopping until the two weeks before Christmas, Hannukah, or Kwanzaa. $ Before the dust has even settled, it’s time to look forward to 2022! To learn more about Keap’s fea- tures and how you can leverage the platform to find even more success next year, visit Keap.com.

$ On top of those features, Keap’s e-commerce plat- form also triggers powerful and intuitive automa- tions and syncs directly with the CRM. This allows you to use just one tool for all of your holiday sales prep! If you take advantage of these features today, you’ll level up your customers’ shopping experience. Launch Your Marketing Like a Pro. When you’ve pinned down your deal and are ready to launch your marketing campaign, Keap can help you execute it effortlessly and effectively across email, text, and social media channels. Email mar- keting is a great place to start. The best way to get results is to begin teasing out your offer 5–8 days in advance of your first day of sales. This way, your audience will be hungry for your email, AND you’ll increase your chances of reaching them throughout the holiday season and well into the new year. Keap makes email marketing simple with beauti- ful templates and the option to segment your email offers based on your customers’ purchase histo- ry. You can also automate these emails to launch based on client actions and even run an A/B test to prepare for future holidays. while also saving effort and time, including easy- to-use checkout forms, a native Shopify integra- tion, and premium payment processors like PayPal, Stripe, and WePay directly within the app. To compliment your email campaign, we rec- ommend launching a parallel texting campaign to reach more smartphone-savvy customers like mil- lennials, Gen Z, and even young Gen Alpha. Entrepreneurial small businesses can text pro- mo codes and special holiday offers automatically to leads and repeat customers with Keap’s texting tools. Text marketing is also a great way to get the word out about a flash sale! Market research has found that 90% of all text messages are read within three minutes, whereas most emails are read within 48 hours. If you decide to extend your Black Friday/ Cyber Monday offer an additional few hours or offer an early-bird special, you can notify your customers via text to keep your business top of mind. Last but not least, you can round out your mul- tichannel marketing with social media promotions and influencer marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and more. These ads are great to increase brand awareness. Instagram stories and video ads are underutilized sales tools that you can leverage to share your Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions, and you can also link engagement in these to your text and email campaigns with Keap.

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‘Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content’ by Ann Handley This thorough guide is a must-read if you want to level up your com- munication skills and produce quality content that connects with your audience. Ann Handley, once named Forbes’ “Most Influential Woman in Social Media,’’ covers personal storytelling, grammar, 17 types of marketing content, and more.

‘Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly’ by Bernadette Jiwa

the road to achieving that title. She starts the book as a waitress but never gives up on her goals of achieving more. Jaime Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, recommends the book to “anyone who has ever questioned whether it is worth taking a chance and pur- suing their dreams,” calling it “a must read.” ‘When More Is Not Better: Overcoming

In this book, author and story strategist Bernadette Jiwa delves into the origin stories of success-

ful brands like Khan Academy, GoPro, Dyson, and Kickstarter. Her goal is to identify what makes their products so mean- ingful to users. She writes, “After years of consulting with hundreds of innovators, creatives, entre- preneurs, and business leaders to help them tell the stories of their ideas, I have discovered something: Every business that flies starts not with the best idea, the biggest budget, or better marketing, but with the story of someone who wants to do something — and can’t.”

America’s Obsession with Economic Efficiency’ by Roger Martin Efficiency is almost always considered a good thing in busi- ness, but in this book, Roger Marin argues

‘Undaunted: Overcoming Doubts and Doubters’ by Kara Goldin Kara Goldin is the founder and CEO of the flavored water brand Hint, and her book tells the story of the obsta- cles she overcame on

that the U.S. economy has become so efficient that it’s threatening democratic capitalism and the entre- preneur’s way of life. He dives into income inequality, economic policy, government, and more to lay out the flaws in our system and propose a better one. “When More Is Not Better” was just published in 2020. It’s full of interesting historical anecdotes, surprising analysis, and innovative solutions that just might change the way you look at our economy and the management of your company.

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6 Tricks to Convert Lead Harvesting Techniques That Work

G etting traffic on your website is a great sign that your content is attracting peo- ple’s attention, but is it converting them into customers? This is an intimidating question at times. It’s a lot of work to get exposure and steady content that will gather a consistent stream of clicks on your brand’s blog or social media accounts. But if you ar- en’t taking your prospects and leads and putting them into your basket to nurture, you won’t develop a strong pipe- line of quality leads for your business to thrive on. It’s essential to fill up your pipeline early and often, since some leads may not pop for weeks or even months. If you’re not harvesting your leads, you’re generating traffic for nothing. Here’s how you can create compelling reasons for people to give you their name, phone

number, and email address on your website. No. 1: Live Chat It’s becoming increasingly popular for websites to fea- ture live chat options on their websites, and it’s trending because it works! With just a click of a button, your custom- ers can get the answers they need to their questions, and you can interact with pros- pects right away. A chat fea- ture will qualify leads, answer questions, resolve objections, and reduce churn, and you can automate as much or as little of a customer’s experience as you’d like. No. 2: Exit Pop-Ups Ever visit a retailer’s web- site, change your mind on a

purchase, and, right as you’re about to exit the page, you see a pop-up box offering you a discount? These might be annoying, but they truly work! SumoMe analyzed two billion pop-ups and found that the top pop-ups gave the com- pany’s lead conversion rate a 10% increase. Even a 2% increase would be worth your time and money! However, keep in mind that in a perfect world, nobody will ever need to see your exit pop-ups. Ideally speaking, every page on your website should be compelling enough for leads to stay and convert. If your exit pop-up box is working a little too well, you may want to consider ways to improve your website to con- vert prospects sooner. x

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t Online Prospects

No. 3: On-Demand Scheduling

No. 4: Digital Newsletter Your 150-page e-book is

lead to convert, you need to be unique, different, and enticing. Offer educational micro cours- es or create quizzes that email their results. Develop special generators or calculators spe- cifically for your niche. Deliver value where competitors won’t. No. 6: Clear Call to Action

Are you offering a free consul- tation, demo, or evaluation on your website yet? If not, do it! Since only serious leads will opt in, you’ll get a higher chance of qualified prospects. The only problem is that scheduling all of these meetings can be a major pain. Emailing back and forth, playing phone tag, being busy when they’re free, and living in different time zones on top of all of that isn’t fun. And it’s not worth it just to get something on the calendar, either. That’s why you need on-de- mand appointment scheduling, which allows your prospects to choose an available date or time that works best for them — and you! It takes away the hassle, frees up everyone’s time, and gets your appoint- ment set before your prospect loses interest. Once you have it on your calendar, you can select your preferences, such as only providing free consults from 1–4 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

probably full of amazing infor- mation, but people struggle to have enough time in their day for the things they need to get done, much less for reading an e-book. But if you don’t make your expertise known, nobody can get a taste for your brand or even remember your name. The solution? Send bite-size pieces of helpful information that keeps them in the loop. Create a digital newsletter that you deliver to people via email. Send your recipients an email either weekly or monthly with helpful, actionable tips that inspire and motivate them to trust you and use their new- found knowledge. No. 5: Gated Content Speaking of e-books, you’re probably already familiar with lead magnets that make you type in your email to get a free e-book or discount. But why stop there? In order to get your

Keep Me in the Loop!

Don’t just tell people to “click here” or “subscribe.” Tell them directly what they’re click- ing and subscribing for. If you use CTAs like “Keep Me in the Loop” or “Give Me Free Info,” you’ll probably get more cus- tomers to click and subscribe. Remember, don’t be bor- ing. Your virtual “storefront” should be eye-catching and full of interesting content. Otherwise, your leads will go to the next store.

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bigail Olaya and her hus- band, Edward, own and run one of the most successful wedding and event venues Boost Attendance at Your Next Event With This 5-Step Guide from Keap User Abigail Olaya! A

claimed! So many families flocked to Venue at the Grove that volunteers had to serve them in shifts. As you can tell, the Olayas have become experts at holiday event marketing, and Keap is a vital tool in their toolbox. According to Abigail, a successful event isn’t a Christmas miracle. It’s a process any business owner can replicate, including you! This winter, Abigail sat down with us to share her five-step process for event marketing success. Use her tips to boost attendance at your next networking event, open house, or party — during the holidays or any time of year. Step 1: Leverage searchable phrases in your mes- saging and keep the details consistent. When you’re deciding on the name of an event or promotion, ask yourself, “If I were in my target demographic, what would I Google to find this event?” Then, identify the keywords in that search and work them into the title and description you use in your marketing. For Break- fast with Santa, Abigail uses keywords like “fami- ly-friendly” and “Santa photo” to attract families.

in Arizona: Venue at the Grove. It’s a romantic space filled with pecan trees, lush foliage, and Southern touches — literally an oasis in the desert. But during the holiday season, they pause their wedding sched- ule for one morning only. Overnight, the Grove trans- forms into Santa’s workshop. “Breakfast with Santa is our big event highlight every year, where we give back to the community,” Abigail ex- plains. “Families come in, have breakfast, and enjoy an amazing backdrop with a real Santa sitting there. They get to have that picture as a memory and, of course, get to walk around and experience the Grove.” The Olayas have hosted Breakfast With Santa sev- en times in the last 10 years, raising funds for worthy causes like the Salvation Army and the We Care Foun- dation. It’s a huge hit in their community. In 2011, they sold just 100 tickets, but in 2019, all 430 seats were

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Step 2: Find influ- encers, platforms, and organizations already reaching your target demographic, then send them pre-for- matted content. “For us, we’re looking for the sites, people, and organizations that are promoting events,” Abigail explains. “The Phoenix New Times, the North Phoenix Mom Blog — anyone saying this is what to do to see Santa.” Once you identify those key players, scope out how they format their event blurbs. Then, custom- ize your message to that style so that when you send it, they can just copy and paste.

to sell tickets to Breakfast with Santa in batches, re- leasing 25 spots at a time. This is a more complicat- ed approach but gives the event an exclusive feel and makes it easier for her team to accommodate large parties because they can halt sales early if needed without disappointing guests. To make your online ticket sales easy, Keap offers plugins to integrate with DynamicSync, PlusThis, and Event Espresso. Bonus Step: During the event, keep your campaign going! At Breakfast with Santa, Abigail’s team con- tinues to advertise their partners (rental companies, nonprofits, etc,) on table tents. You could also pro- mote future events that way, pass out fliers, or col- lect information from attendees and funnel it through Keap for future marketing campaigns. Abigail developed this process through years of trial and error, and Keap has been there every step of the way. Although Breakfast with Santa is currently on hold due to COVID-19, the Olayas still rely on Keap’s sales and marketing automation software to collect and follow up with wedding leads year-round. “From the moment someone inquires on our web- site, their information goes into a Keap campaign, then there is a series of emails within that campaign that we work them through. We’ve also customized another section of Keap, and we use it to manage and send out emails for our clients to stay connected with where they’re at during the planning process,” Abigail says. Keap also comes in handy during large marketing events and trade shows. When a couple stops by the Venue at the Grove booth and signs up for their email list, they’re immediately funneled into Keap. “We have a whole campaign for them that promotes what we call the ‘Special Open House,’” Abigail says. “We have all of our vendors there and have it deco- rated as if a wedding was occurring that day.” Periodic automated emails from Keap guide leads through the RSVP process and follow up after the event. The Olayas took a big risk when they left the engi- neering field to start their own business. They bought Venue at the Grove during the darkest days of the Great Recession. But that risk paid off, and now, they regularly win the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Award and Couple’s Choice Award and have picked up The Knot’s Best of Weddings designation more than once — all with 7-year-old triplets in tow. Abigail and Edward’s success is beyond inspiring. This holiday season, follow their five-step marketing approach to make your event attendance the best yet!

The easier you make it, the more likely they’ll be to share your event! You can use Keap to collect email addresses for local journalists and influencers and send out a blast press release. Step 3: Promote early and often on social media. Abigail starts promoting Breakfast with Santa on the Venue at the Grove’s social media channels in No- vember. She also leverages the power of partnerships by encouraging everyone involved in the event to post and share, from vendors to the nonprofit ben- eficiary. According to an Eventbrite survey, nearly as many people talk about an event before it happens as when it happens. Some of the most effective strategies to boost engagement are highlighting spe- cial guests and speakers (like Santa), posting about early-bird specials, offering advance giveaways, and sharing behind-the-scenes snapshots. Step 4: Reach your existing contacts with email marketing. “We have Keap email campaigns for our wedding leads, and we put a blurb at the bottom of those emails to tell them this event is going on,” Abi- gail says of Breakfast with Santa. Updating the auto- mated emails blasts you already have in place is an easy and efficient way to promote an event to your existing contact list in Keap. Step 5: Keep excitement high (and your stress low) by batching tickets. Abigail uses an online platform

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• Acquiring a new client can cost five times as much as retaining an existing one, according to Invesp. • The 2020 CallMiner Churn Index just reported that American businesses lose $136.8 billion dollars every year because of client turnover. • Research from both Bain & Company and the Harvard Business School shows that a 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by as much as 95%.

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These stats are not small potatoes. You probably realize that, and you may have already taken steps in your marketing to maximize retention at your company. But if you haven’t rethought your entire marketing strategy (and maybe even your business model), you’re probably still losing clients that could be saved. Luckily, it’s not too late to make a change! Here are three ways to completely rethink your retention marketing and save your team time, money, and stress. 1. Reallocate your resources. Don’t just talk the retention talk — walk the walk! In order to truly change your company’s ways, you need to invest in retention and reallocate your resources. Here are just a few ways to do that. • Provide additional training for your team on customer service. Import- ant points to emphasize for retention (per Forbes magazine) include frequent and friendly customer communication, transparency, listening, and relationship-building. • Create a fund for customer perks and gifts. Celebrate your clients! When someone has a baby or you hear they’re going through a difficult time, send a gift or card to show you’re thinking of them. These gifts cost resources, but as Newswire reports, multiple studies show cus- tomer gifts increase retention. • Invest in retention tools. Staying in touch with your customers is the best way to keep them happy and remind them that you care. You can stay on top of this by doing the hard work of reaching out personal- ly each month, but it’s easier and more efficient to invest in recurring communications like automated weekly emails and regularly printed newsletters. 2. Make personalization possible. In order to retain customers, you must build quality relationships with them. This starts with knowing who they are, what they need, and how they interact with your company and your marketing. To figure out those key points, you have to gather and interpret a lot of data, both online and off. You can do some of this data-gathering and calculating yourself (for exam- ple, you might consider calculating the lifetime value or “LTV” of each client), but hiring a third-party data analytics company will help you take your reten- tion marketing to the next level. SAS, Alteryx, Kissmetrics, and InsightSquared are great options for small-business owners. 3. Hire (or create) a retention expert. If you truly want to maximize your retention, you need to make it an integral part of your team’s marketing approach. As RetentionScience.com puts it, “Retention marketing is a full-time endeavor and should be treated as such. This means getting buy-in from the top down because it has to be a priority for the business, not just your marketing department.” Investing in specialized training for your team is one way to do this. But you can also hire a retention expert or shift one of your existing team mem- bers’ roles to focus exclusively on managing and retaining clients. Yes, hiring is expensive, but remember: Increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase profits by as much as 95%. That new team member will pay for themselves in no time! These three retention marketing mindset shifts will be game-changers for your company. You can start with one of them or dive into all three, whatever feels right for you. It won’t be long before you see the difference in your bottom line.

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3Ways to Direct-M

We don’t dodge the hard questions when it comes to direct mail marketing. The internet has become an important tool in the marketing world, so how do you transform your direct mail marketing to earn the highest ROI pos- sible when technology is becoming a more integral part of how customers in- teract with your business? The answer is sim- ple: Ensure your direct mail marketing cam- paign elevates your brand and integrates with your digital marketing campaigns so both are working to meet your overall business goals.

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o Transform Your Mail Marketing Strategy

Even in today’s world, print marketing is one of the ultimate forms of showing commitment to your customer. It takes resources to print con- tent and mail it to your customer. It also takes time and effort to design content, especially long-form content. We’ve been seeing a huge trend in brands using long-form content market- ing to boost their image. Here’s why (and how) it’ll work for you, too. No. 1: Use long-form direct mail marketing content to make a lasting impression. In 2020, our society saw a huge boom of com- panies boosting their print marketing presence, especially with the arrival of the Black Lives Matter movement. It was breaking news when MasterCard released a two-page, full-length communication ad in the Sunday edition of The New York Times. Such long-form ads used to be considered “normal,” which means you can make a lasting impression with long-form direct mail marketing right now. No. 2: Use QR codes to direct customers to online resources. Times have changed for our dear QR codes. They used to be a hassle with a high barrier of entry. First, you needed a smartphone. Second, you needed particular apps to read and use them. Today, over 81% of Americans have a smart- phone, and reading QR codes has become a native feature of many. Thus, the popularity of QR codes has been rising steadily. Over 11 million American households — not people! — used QR codes in 2020. It’s a massively trending tool for anyone who does marketing in print or online. Whether you have social media, a website, or a product page,

you can attach it to your marketing and create a fluid transition between print and digital in your customer’s experience. Best of all, combining a sensory experience with fast digital convenience can give them a unique marketing encounter that’ll make you especially memorable. No. 3: Tap into 2021’s spirit of reinvention. With the post-pandemic market mostly settled in, this is the perfect time to try out new things that will capture the attention of your customers and convert them. Remember that since the mar- ket has shifted, new needs have been created. Create new offers and personas that will in- spire and resonate. Build trust by showing you’re the most well-equipped business to handle your consumer’s needs during these times. There’s no better way to prove it than committing to a direct mail marketing campaign your consumer (and their whole household) can see and touch. As a brand, you have a lot to say. A Twitter ac- count won’t always give you the room to say it, and it certainly won’t instantly grant you cred- ibility. Direct mail marketing can prove you’re a trustworthy voice because you spent the time, effort, and money to deliver free content to your consumers’ hands. Combine that with a weekly digital newsletter, and you will take that credi- bility to the next level. Take advantage of long- form content, QR codes, and innovative offers and personas to create a lasting impact with your direct mail campaign. If you need any help, don’t hesitate to reach out to our experts at Newsletter Pro!

Newsletter Pro Team Info@newsletterpro.com 208-297-5700 NewsletterPro.com

Inspiration From the Greats

“If we tried to think of a good idea, we wouldn’t have been able to think of a good idea. You just have to find the solution for a problem in your own life.” –Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb

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“As a founder, lay all the possible scenarios — from best to worst — in front of you, so you don’t get surprised when something happens.” –Brian Wong, co-founder of Kiip

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” –Peter Drucker

“When you are building a startup, it’s difficult. Particularly, a startup that is expanding at the rate of Tinder. You have to give 100%, and you have to be committed. Solving the problem has to be personal, or else you’re going to disintegrate.” –Sean Rad, co-founder of Tinder, Inc.

“It starts with not having a hangover with the way things used to be.” –Kevin Plank, founder and CEO of Under Armour

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“[Don’t] let anyone convince you that your dream, your vision to be an entrepreneur, is something that you shouldn’t do. What often happens is that people who are well meaning, who really care for us, are afraid for us and talk us out of it.” –Cathy Hughes, entrepreneur, radio and television personality, and business executive

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Thanksgiving Scramble

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ueyrtk oenftlreic stvefelro bftloalo ondwrwel aoetopst apanwmgao

misgirpl artdiniot

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Celebrate the Season By Celebrating Your Customers!

Customers enjoy receiving meaningful and memorable messages that communicate your gratitude for their business. Celebrating their loyalty and flexibility or thanking them for their referrals with customized cards is also an ideal way to differentiate your company from competitors. We make the process easy — simply select the card design(s) you prefer, and we’ll coordinate personalization details so you can customize your greeting with your company name, employee name, other info, and logo. It’s that easy! Contact a Pro today to get started! Phone: 208-252-9565 Email: Consultations@NewsletterPro.com

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