Steve Dotto here.
How the heck are you doing this fine day?
Me?
I’m excited because today we’re going to go into a bit of a new place for Ask DottoTech.
We’re going to start taking some audio questions from the social network Anchor.
So it’s Anchors away today on Ask DottoTech.
Ask DottoTech is the show where you ask questions and I answer them.
And it shouldn’t matter where you want to ask those questions, I should be there to
listen and one of the places I am listening is on the new social audio network, Anchor.
Now we did a video on Anchor not too long ago.
If you’re interested in learning about it, have wee gander at that video.
Basically what it is, it’s a place where you post, almost like a Tumblr blog, where
you post a comment and then people comment on your post but instead of written posts,
all of the posts are audio-based and this is based on your iPhone app this point here.
I’m sure it will be available in other platforms soon but basically you do it all through your
smartphone.
Now the cool thing is I can actually export all of those audio comments and questions
here into the web so we can have a listen here and we can use your questions from Anchor
for the show.
So if you do have a question, you can follow us at Anchor.
You could ask questions there.
You could also just do it the old-fashioned way which is posting questions here on YouTube,
or in Facebook, or replying to our newsletter, depending on how you consume our content.
So this was the beginning.
I posted this video or this audio clip when I started the Anchor account.
“Hey there, Anchor chain.
Let’s give this a try.
We will try and use Anchor for a while to see if we can generate new questions and answers
for my Ask DottoTech show.”
So I go on to explain just what this show is all about and invite some questions and
indeed we got questions right away.
The first came in from Lisa, “Hi Steve, this is good timing.
I’ve signed with Constant Contact.
I'm going to be a partner with them.
I want to integrate a CRM, just a little free or cheap.
Got any thoughts on that?
I was looking through the integrations and they had Zoho and inborn [phonetic 00:02:15]
things and then I saw your question.”
So Lisa is interested in CRMs.
As it happened just a couple of questions later, we got a question from DownHill for
Life, “Hey Steve, I would really like to know some of the greatest email newsletter
solutions out there.
I have been using GetResponse and Mailerlite and MailChimp quite a bit but I find them
a bit expensive because…”
Okay, so basically he’s looking for also an inexpensive solution for mail list management.
Now these two questions are actually about almost the exact same thing even though they’re
coming from different angles.
CRMs or customer relationship management software for those of us in the online and the internet
marketing world are really all about managing our mail lists.
Now a good CRM will do much more than just manage a mail list as far as it managing all
of your communications and interactions with the customer.
But for so many of us in the online space, it’s all about mail list management and
actually I did a very detailed vlog post in my Growing Your YouTube Channel to 100,000
Subscribers on just this topic of why I chose a tool called InfusionSoft.
But InfusionSoft while it is many things is not inexpensive so let’s talk about some
kind of budget things that you can do to get into the CRM space.
This is a difficult space for anybody to advice because there are so many contenders in that
space.
So let’s just pop in.
I’m just going to bring up a couple of websites of the products that were talked about.
So I’ve got up here Zoho, which Lisa mentioned early on, another one called GetResponse which
was mentioned by Downhill for Life, MailChimp which Downhill for Life mentioned and also
Constant Contact, which Lisa mentioned she was becoming a partner with.
Now all of these are different forms of CRM.
Now Zoho is an interesting tool.
I’m going to take a step back.
Choosing the right tool here is impossible to do.
I’m going to tell you right up front that you will never know that you made the best
choice in mail list management or CRM software.
All that you will ever know is if this choice is working for you.
All of them will do essentially the same sorts of things and its incumbent on you, the person
that’s using these tools, to figure out the best way to use the tools, to dive in
deep and integrate them with your business processes.
So I would never tell people even though I’ve chosen InfusionSoft that InfusionSoft is better
than another application.
It is an application which I purchased and I’m happy with and is working for me.
But I’ve invested more than just money on InfusionSoft.
I’ve invested learning the skills.
I’ve hired people to support me with InfusionSoft and I make sure that I use it to the best
of my and its abilities.
It’s the same with all of these applications.
So Zoho is the one that’s kind of the most open form, more traditional business like
if you’re a consultant and if email is not your primary concern, sending out email but
instead staying in touch with your customers, having communications, having a really elaborate
contact manager, kind of a SalesForce type interface.
It’s probably the most affordable and very robust, high-end, entry-level product.
What I mean with high-end is it’ll do a lot.
What I mean as entry-level is it shouldn’t cost you a lot.
But it’s going to cost you a lot of time and energy to figure out how to learn it and
how to actually implement it, so much so that I’m not even going to do a demo because
we couldn’t do it.
We couldn’t do it justice in this short period of time.
So Zoho is far more traditional CRM as far as that goes.
These other three packages that we’re going to talk about, GetResponse, MailChimp and
Constant Contact, these are very much products that are built around the mail list in managing
your email list.
So let’s just talk about that for a moment and some of the subtleties that are involved.
Managing your mail list for most small businesses that are in the online space is probably the
most important task that you have to do.
There’s an old mantra that says the money is in the list and I believe that is very
true because you have to think about all of the people who you connect with in the online
world, if you’re connected them through Facebook, through Twitter or as I do, through
YouTube, every one of those people that we connect with through all of those other spaces
are not our customers.
They are not in our community because they are in YouTube, or they are in Facebook’s
community and they own that connection.
It’s not until you move them to your website and then have them to opt in, have them sign
up for your mail list that they become part of your community, potentially at that point
your customer.
So from my perspective, the most important business process that online and internet
marketing people do and online sales happens do is we have to move people onto our mail
list where we have the right to have a conversation with them and ultimately the right to sell
something to them downstream if that’s our business objective.
So this is the keystone as far as building your business and actually converting from
just being a curiosity into real revenue.
So making this decision is often fraught with anxiety because you don’t have a lot of
answers going in.
Of these tools, I like all of three of these tools and there’s another one that I use
called Aweber, which I started out with before I moved over to InfusionSoft.
All of these I would consider to be entry-level products.
I’m just going to give you a quick snapshot of—actually, I’m not going to give you
a snapshot of Get Response because I don’t know it.
I’ve just heard good things about it and heard that it does quite well so you’re
going to have to check it out yourself but I do have experience with both MailChimp and
with Constant Contact.
Constant Contact to me is the perfect mail list management for things like church and
social groups.
It’s got a wonderful template builder for building out your template emails and it’s
very simple.
It’s very user-friendly and they’ve got excellent customer service.
It’s a little bit expensive and it’s a little bit limited in the flexibility and
all of the different type of API integrations that we do.
So if you’re going to be actually doing some really sophisticated marketing with Facebook
campaigns, webinars and all of those sorts of things, it will work but it won’t be
quite as sophisticated as higher-end product like in InfusionSoft or Entreport, which is
kind of the next level up.
But I think if you’ve got a lot of different people that are going to be managing your
mail list, you don’t have the wherewithal to dive right in and learn all of the nuances
of the management system but you’re looking to be hand- held through it, I think Constant
Contact is a terrific place to start.
We will say that that’s good for that.
Aweber is the one that I used the most.
Let me just call it up here because Aweber is the one that I’ve started out with and
I think along with MailChimp, it’s probably considered to be the top of the entry-level,
kind of one of the most popular entry-level packages.
I liked Aweber a lot.
I was able to build my business with Aweber but I don’t philosophically agree with Aweber’s
business practices.
Let me explain something to you that happens and this is a big decision point.
This to me is probably the most important thing as you look at these packages.
What is it ultimately going to cost you to use as you go downstream because they will
all cost you.
You’re not going to be doing this for free.
They are going to cost you between $50 and $100 or $200 to $300 a month as you move downstream
and as you build your audience.
And the thing that threw me off with Aweber is this – essentially with all of these
packages, you pay for one of two things.
You pay for the number of contacts you have or the number of emails you send or a combination
thereof.
The value they bring is because they keep their email list clean and because they manage
it all, you can send to hundreds of thousands of people emails without burdening your own
server which will then be identified as spam.
So this is a way that we can get our message out to many, many people.
This is why we can’t use our Gmail account for something like that.
So this is why they are all set up for double opt-in and they keep their mail list clean.
So that is all totally legit with all of these applications.
They do a good job.
What I didn’t like about Aweber is how they identified how they charge.
You have to go back to what is one of our contacts worth in each of these applications.
Aweber charges you by the number of contacts you have.
So if you have an email address of a person that signs up—let’s take me for example.
Let’s say they’re interested in Evernote.
So they sign up for me with some sort of an opt-in program that I have to use Evernote
or to learn about Evernote, to take my free Evernote course.
So they now are on my Evernote email list.
But if they’re also interested in task management, which they likely are, then when I opt them
in or when they indicate an interest in learning more about task management, what happens with
Aweber is they actually go on another list and now there are two people that I’m paying
monthly to have on my list, not just one.
All of the other applications, or should I say MailChimp and InfusionSoft, the higher-end
applications don’t look at that as multiple individuals.
Instead they attach a tag or some sort of flagging structure that allows me to say that
this person is interested in both task management and to-do lists and I’m only paying for
a single person.
So you really have to dive in deep before you decide, as far as understanding what the
real pricing is of these application is, as you make your decision because it’s difficult
to switch once you’ve made the decision and you’re on the path with one of these.
In fact, I think it’s counterproductive to move laterally.
So if you’re going from Aweber to MailChimp, I would never consider that because they’re
very similar products, very similar levels.
You have to kind of take a step up to the next level above all of these applications
if you’re going to make a change, moving to an InfusionSoft or Entreport which is the
decision process that I went through.
And it’s a lot of work.
It’s disruptive for, I will be honest, maybe two months of your business cycle while you’re
migrating your business over, learning the new platform and ultimately enrolling and
getting it all running and moving forward.
So I hope you found this useful.
It’s kind of been a tutorial on mail lists and CRMs from an internet marketing perspective
but these are some of the most important decisions that online marketers and internet marketers
have to make.
This tool becomes your business partner for quite some time so making a decision in this
space is ever so important.
Bottom line is I don’t think you can make a wrong decision but you can enter it with
the wrong attitude of just kind of constantly looking at other applications.
Instead, once you’ve made your decision—do the best research you can.
Once you’ve made your decision you dive in with both feet into that application.
Learn every nuance, every subtlety of it and take full advantage of each of their potential.
Well, I hope you found this today’s video to be useful.
Now there are several ways to stay in touch with us here on DottoTech.
The first is of course subscribe to our channel and I would be remiss if I didn’t invite
you to sign up for our newsletter where we tell you about all of our upcoming live trainings,
tutorials and other sorts of things like that that are awesome.
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I encourage you to drop by our Patreon page, take a look and discover what perks are available
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Till next time, I am Steve Dotto.
Have fun storming the castle!