Being consistent in your business is one of the critical factors for
ensuring long-term growth, and one of the ways to ensure consistency is
to create systems. Everything you do in your business, from responding
to emails to working with clients, needs to be systemized and
documented, so that it’s very easy to create a repeatable process in
your business.
This consistency is what builds the like, know, and
trust factor with your clients, and so ensures that you continue to
build your client base.
When you don’t have proper and
well-thought out systems in your business, mistakes happen. One of the
areas where I see this happening is in sending out your email
broadcasts, whether you’re a do-it-yourself business owner, or whether
you have a virtual assistant doing this for you.
Just some of the mistakes that can happen are:
- Bad links in emails – they go to the wrong page, or they don’t work.
- The wrong email template being used.
- Emails going out at the wrong time.
If
you’ve experienced these, or any other mistakes, in your email
broadcasts you know just how frustrating that can be. And once that
email has gone out, there’s no getting it back!
So, to avoid these
mistakes happening in the future, create a checklist for what needs to
happen when sending out an email broadcast. Here are five areas where
you can create a checklist and so ensure that when your broadcast does
get sent, it does so with the RIGHT information:
1. The Content. Who
is writing the content? What is the content going to be about? Who
needs to receive the content (team member)? When do they need to receive
the content in order to prepare the broadcast in time? These are just
some of the critical areas you need to be aware of, and be clear on, so
that the right information gets sent out at the right time.
2. Look and Feel. Some
people have a different HTML template for their solo broadcasts than
they do their newsletter. So specify which HTML template is to be used
for which broadcast. And in some cases, a simple Text-only broadcast is
relevant. With all of the list management services you have the option
of sending out your broadcasts in either HTML, Plain Text, or MIME (a
technical term that stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
and basically this means sending out your broadcast in both HTML and
Plain Text versions. I always recommend using the MIME format – yes it’s
more work – but it means your email has a higher chance of being
delivered and is less likely to be classed as spam, because you’ve taken
the time to create both formats.
3. Check Any Links and Other Relevant Information.
If the broadcast is for a teleclass or other event, are the telephone
numbers listed correct? If it’s your ezine or other broadcast, are all
links correct? There’s nothing worse than sending out a broadcast with
an incorrect phone number or bad link and then having to resend it again
because you made a mistake the first time. It doesn’t look good for
your business.
4. Proof Read. If you’re handing
your broadcast over to a team member, ask them to proof read it too for
any spelling or grammatical errors. If you’re doing it yourself, ask a
family member or friend to proof read for you. A fresh pair of eyes can
spot any mistakes that you’ve overlooked.
5. Send a Test.
Many of the list management services give you the option of sending a
test broadcast beforehand. This is a great way to check layout,
formatting, links, and other relevant information. So ensure that
sending a test broadcast is part of your system.
Creating a
broadcast checklist is just one of the ways you can start to systemize
your business, and so begin to build that all-important Standard
Operations Procedure (SOP).
