Growing an E-mail List While Cold Calling

[DHK]

I agree on those points regarding the e-relationship messages themselves. At least it is a method to try to generate a response.

There are video marketing programs that do something similar too - such as WebPrez.

If you include a reason for someone to contact you - a free report or specific guide - then you can probably collect a few more responses per month.

I do agree with scagnt83 that it would make sense to make some pro-active follow up on your end as well. At least the call won't be 'cold' at all.

 

[Cash]

The problem I had with e-relationship is that I felt the pieces "tricked" them into requesting more information. (ie., "tell me more" after clicking through 5 slides) You then get a "lead" in your e-mail that they requested information when they really had no intention of you contacting them.

What percentage of leads were accidents?

 

[briko3]

What percentage of leads were accidents?

Not one of them knowingly responded or expected me to call. Not that they were offended, but it sets up the person to click "show me more information", etc. After clicking "show me more", "show me more" on each slide, they think they're just clicking for the next slide, not requesting you to call them.

Just my experience.

 

[EMCRick]

Hi

I think the objective of any salesperson is to eliminate the phrase 'cold call' from their vocabulary as soon as possible. Yes I do realize newbies in the business might cold call to build their client base.

But what I like to say to salespeople is this 'how would you feel if you went to work on a Monday knowing you had to call 50 people you don't know?' if the answer terrible, stressed etc, then why do it?

Nothing beats going to your existing client base and getting referrals so you can make 'warm calls'. Isn't that better?

As far as building your database through cold calls, and emailing a newsletter there's no harm to it. However please keep this in mind...

It's not what you send, its what's IN what you send. In other words if your newsletter is a generic industry verbiage full of pages of text who would want to read that? It might actually do more harm than good.

Make your content relevant to your client, make it visually pleasing and easy to read. Use words that resonate with them.

Hope this helps

 

[Cash]

Hi

I think the objective of any salesperson is to eliminate the phrase 'cold call' from their vocabulary as soon as possible. Yes I do realize newbies in the business might cold call to build their client base.

But what I like to say to salespeople is this 'how would you feel if you went to work on a Monday knowing you had to call 50 people you don't know?' if the answer terrible, stressed etc, then why do it?

Nothing beats going to your existing client base and getting referrals so you can make 'warm calls'. Isn't that better?

As far as building your database through cold calls, and emailing a newsletter there's no harm to it. However please keep this in mind...

It's not what you send, its what's IN what you send. In other words if your newsletter is a generic industry verbiage full of pages of text who would want to read that? It might actually do more harm than good.

Make your content relevant to your client, make it visually pleasing and easy to read. Use words that resonate with them.

Hope this helps

This thread isn't about whether or not to cold call or cold calling vs some other method.

I don't know why every time someone has a discussion about cold calling someone feels the need to evangelize the people who are talking.

This is a freakin' cold calling forum. It is one of the few outpost on the internet where cold callers can actually talk about this stuff.

It's a forum on a subject not an invitation to debate that subject's usefulness.... every freakin' thread.

The same goes for the Annuity forum..... the life insurance forum..... it is a place for people that sell those products to talk to other agents about those products. We don't need to debate every time someone mentions IUL whether or not BTITD is better.

I want to build a business. Telemarketing is what I am trying to build my business upon. I believe I need to make thousands of calls so I can properly train others how to telemarket, know my scripts, know my ratios, know my demographics, etc.

I have seen plenty of people try to outsource telemarketing without knowing how to do it themselves and it always turns into a disaster.

BTW..... the email collection is going well for me. I am now looking into the best way to work the list.

 

[EMCRick]

Understood. No worries.

 

[scagnt83]

BTW..... the email collection is going well for me. I am now looking into the best way to work the list.

Good to hear. Imo the best way is to have a website and write articles for it. Then push out those articles to your email list. There is a lot of contact software out there to use for that. Or you can just craft an email yourself... but the software will usually have analytics to track views/clicks/etc. MailChimp is one that I used to use, plenty of others out there, constant contact is another.


Imo using these "canned" newsletters for insurance or financial pros are not effective at all. Do you really want to send out the same newsletter as 1000 other agents? What happens when a prospect sees the same exact newsletter from another agent? At that point you lose that "uniqueness" that they might have perceived before.

Plus, out of all the people that I know who use the 2 methods; the ones with original content are the ones who are capitalizing off of it.
Even just thinking about myself, I am very picky about what newsletters I let come in my inbox. I recently started receiving a retirement plan newsletter that is excellent... mostly because it is unique and well written (and not too long) content.

You also need to put a little blurb at the end that says something like "if you have any questions or think this might be relevant to your situation then contact me at ________ and lets chat".
Some people will put a contact form on the blog posts or even embedded in the email. Emails can show either the full article or just a preview. If you want them to visit your site then do a preview. If you care about the article more than site visits then do the full article and maybe put links to relevant articles on it for site visits.

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It's not what you send, its what's IN what you send. In other words if your newsletter is a generic industry verbiage full of pages of text who would want to read that? It might actually do more harm than good.

Make your content relevant to your client, make it visually pleasing and easy to read. Use words that resonate with them.

I agree 100%. Generic content, canned content, or overly complicated content is often just a waste of time.

 

[EMCRick]

well said scagnt83

thanks

 

[Cash]

Good to hear. Imo the best way is to have a website and write articles for it. Then push out those articles to your email list. There is a lot of contact software out there to use for that. Or you can just craft an email yourself... but the software will usually have analytics to track views/clicks/etc. MailChimp is one that I used to use, plenty of others out there, constant contact is another.


Imo using these "canned" newsletters for insurance or financial pros are not effective at all. Do you really want to send out the same newsletter as 1000 other agents? What happens when a prospect sees the same exact newsletter from another agent? At that point you lose that "uniqueness" that they might have perceived before.

Plus, out of all the people that I know who use the 2 methods; the ones with original content are the ones who are capitalizing off of it.
Even just thinking about myself, I am very picky about what newsletters I let come in my inbox. I recently started receiving a retirement plan newsletter that is excellent... mostly because it is unique and well written (and not too long) content.

You also need to put a little blurb at the end that says something like "if you have any questions or think this might be relevant to your situation then contact me at ________ and lets chat".
Some people will put a contact form on the blog posts or even embedded in the email. Emails can show either the full article or just a preview. If you want them to visit your site then do a preview. If you care about the article more than site visits then do the full article and maybe put links to relevant articles on it for site visits.

----------



I agree 100%. Generic content, canned content, or overly complicated content is often just a waste of time.

Yeah I have Mailchimp for now. It's free up to 2,000 subscribers and it has a ton of support, plugins, etc.

No way I am sending out a newsletter. Those things are so bad I can't imagine the conversion rate would be high.

Plus, my list is mostly business owners so I will put stuff that is of interest to them instead of news of life insurance awareness month lol.

 

[DHK]

I found Mailchimp hard to work with. It could just be me and what I was trying to send though.

I use Vertical Response. It's free up to 1,000 subscribers and you can send up to 4,000 emails per month. Plus, you can connect it to Facebook and Twitter too.

Personally, I find the user interface much easier to work with too.

Pricing | VerticalResponse