Can You Automate Followup?

Recently I started using an Outlook plugin, from Sperrysoft, that allows me to automatically send emails (with or without attachments) at a designated time of my choosing. I use this to send out to the staff a monthly email that shows what proposals we submitted, which ones we won and which ones we lost, why, etc.

I'm thinking that there are a lot of people in my address book that I haven't heard from in a while. it would be nice to shoot them a quick email to see how they are. And, in general, I probably should send them a personal email every so often. I want to go beyond "I met you once at a networking event. Now your information is collecting dust in my contacts."

What if I set up a system that would email them at intervals that seemed random (like after 6 weeks, followed by after 12 weeks, followed by 16 weeks). Using Texter, I could have 90% of the email be standard language and 10% (I'm pulling these numbers out of my butt) of the language contain some sort of personal/targeted info. I could create three different template emails so it doesnt seem like you keep getting the same email from me. By doing this I could fully automate the process of "pinging" my contacts without sending them some meaningless newsletter that simply talks about my firm and how great we are.

I know you are thinking, "God Matt, that is just so impersonal!!" But I submit this question. How do you know that any email I send to you is in realtime? You just assume that it is, unless you can detect some sort of pattern.

Also, I should note that this isn't for people who are on my "hit list." if you are a contact on my hit list, I'm already communicating with you more than once every six weeks.

Comments (4)

Matt,

What you have described here is what is know as drip marketing. A client, contact or lead is scored according to some criteria such as no contact in the last 5 months or two separate visits to your website or they attended an industry event. You can set up complex algorithms to accomplish the scoring part. The you use drip marketing to send them automated email or direct mail or put them on a tickler call list. You can also set seemingly random intervals for this. Drip marketing is also called lead nurturing.

Depending upon the score, you decide which email (which can be personalized) should be sent from your library of emails and what interval.

You would be very surprised how many companies do this, especially in the technology business. There are many tools to do this, many of them very expensive. Some tools just coming to the market are more reasonably priced and are adapted to the AEC market.

Guys,

Thanks for your thoughts. I'm not really talking about clients. I'm talking about people in your network. Many of them are not direct clients.

I do see the potential problems and I do agree a phone call or a face to face communication is better than an email.

Thanks again for your comments. I will have to sleep on this some more! Maybe this isn't such a hot idea.

You know, as much as I embrace automation I think there comes a time when people have to get back to being real, not just another person behind a keyboard asking how I am or telling me they hope all is well.

I have been getting out and talking to people more, trying to truthfully get the feel of what people "really" are thinking and what their needs are.

Social media and automation is one thing. Sincere face to face interaction is another.

Of coarse this is just my 2¢

Hey Matt,

I would be worried about how your clients might feel if they found out. I think some backlash could be expected. Any mistakes (ie. repeated automated emails/ problems with the fill-in custom section) would probably be noticed, especially now that you have blogged about the idea!

It seems the problem is not typing the email (which takes perhaps 30 seconds), but rather remembering (or scheduling) a reminder to send the follow-up, and knowing what to write.

I suppose the automated/ scheduled emails would be a good option if you are working without a CRM, but otherwise I would be worried that the automation would take a lot of the thinking out of the process. A key benefit of sending truly personal email is the brief account refresher that is required of the salesperson prior to sending.

We all track far too many opportunities and accounts to keep them all straight in our heads. When I have a follow-up reminder pop-up in my CRM, I am forced to do 2-3 minutes of research looking at prior communication notes and the Account or Opportunity records. If the follow-up sparks a return phone call, I am already up-to-speed, saving me the awkward pause or frantic search to figure out "who/why is this person calling me?"

-Spence

Spencer Morgenthau (http://twitter.com/SMorgenthau)
VP Sales & Marketing – CTI Consultants, Inc.

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