Opt In Marketing Ideas With Caitlyn Jopp

In July 2023, Richardson & Richardson Consulting made the decision to move to an opt-in marketing strategy.

With two large contact lists from previous businesses, Carrie and Ian had a large, active network of previous clients, prospects, peers and industry contacts. Over 44,000 to be exact. The management of that much data proved challenging for a 2-person consulting agency.

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The Opportunity Cost of Mass Marketing for Small Business

When we did the math on how much time we were spending managing our marketing programs – emails, virtual events, follow up activities – we realized we could each easily take back 10 full hours every week if we eliminated the mass marketing approach we were using. 80 hours a month of non-billable time. It seemed like a no-brainer, but what would it be like to drop from contacting a list of 44,000 people every week to contacting a list of 40 (and growing daily, hooray!) people every month?

We invited Cailtyn Jopp, the VP of Community and Engagement for Channel Program, to share the things that she has used to build successful opt-in marketing programs for I.T. Glue, Auvik Networks and Channel Program.

We weren’t disappointed!

Watch the whole presentation, or read the transcript:

The tools we reference in the presentation:

Beehiiv

Beehiiv is a newsletter platform that allows anyone to easily build newsletters, grow subscribers and create communities. Richardson & Richardson chose Beehiiv before their recent announcement of 12.5 million in Series A funding from Lightspeed Partners, but that certainly validated our choice. Beehiiv hosts newsletters that become robust content repositories for prospects, clients or communities. There’s a free version which is completely functional, and paid versions as your subscriber lists grows. We’ve tried a ton of email marketing solutions, this one is infinitely easier and very scalable for both technical and non-technical marketers and business owners. Schedule time to take a peek at it with Carrie or just check it out!

Membrain

Membrain is a process driven sales enablement platform. It’s not a CRM, although it has all the bells and whistles that you’d expect from any CRM or contact management solution. The key differentiator for Membrain is the ability for you to manage your sales process or sales playbook from within the platform, complete with step by step instructions, walk throughs or video tutorials for any step of the process. It manages playbook compliance. It does a lot. We recommend a discussion with Ian Richardson if you’d like to see it in action – seeing one of your own processes managed using your own data is far more impactful than staring at a blank slate! If you don’t wan to schedule a meeting, you can always send a note to Ian on LinkedIN , and he can connect you with the powers that be at Membrain for a more comprehensive demo (without going in to anyone’s marketing funnel!).

Some of the key takeaways from the Opt In Marketing Ideas presentation:

Avoid Mondays and Fridays for marketing events and emails.
If you’re unsure of the email compliance regulations in your state or country, ask your lawyer.
Send communication earlier in the day, before your prospects inboxes have filled up.
You can interact one time (in a single email, not a mass email) with a new prospect without violating US-based compliance laws.
Create attractive offers to encourage prospects to opt-in. Reference the Channel Daze campaign by Channel Program for ideas.
Leverage your connections and networks – you can combine forces to grow your opt-in lists faster.
Don’t let negative responses to marketing initiatives personally impact you – you can’t please everyone.
Be careful when using new solutions like ChatGPT or other AI solutions when interacting with prospects – you can use AI for ideas, but it doesn’t replace a thorough review of your content prior to delivery or publication.

Get $75 in Amazon Gift Cards from Channel Program!

Don’t forget, if you leave five vendor review on Channel Program using the code “CAITLYN”, Channel Program will pay you $75 for your efforts!

Planning Your Go To Market Strategy?

Richardson & Richardson can help you create a marketing strategy (one that includes an opt-in marketing program) for your business. One of the companies we’ve supported with go to market planning is cybersecurity software provider Cydef. Learn more about our work with them here.

Schedule some time to chat with Carrie or Ian Richardson here: https://randr.consulting/connect

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