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Are you a brick and mortar business owner that has put your blood sweat and tears into creating a storefront that lights you up and serves your clients well only to be frustrated that you’re the best kept secret in town?
If you’re NOT hearing your new clients say, “I found you on Google!” then you’re in the right place.
Welcome.
I'm Melissa Rose—mom, business owner, and your straight-shooting visibility coach. I've cracked the SEO code to becoming the top choice on Google in my industry, and now, I'm sharing the secrets on this podcast. Get ready for stories, fail-proof strategies, and practical tips to elevate your brick and mortar presence to the top choice on Google.
So let's get real, because we're about to make your business, “The Only Option in Town!”
Hey there, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of brick and mortar visibility. Today, we have Jason Creamer on the podcast, and I'm super excited for you guys to learn from him and understand the importance of nurturing your people, your leads, because every lead is important. However, not every lead gets treated the same. And when he talks about this, he talks about revitalizing or reengaging, leads that may have fallen through the cracks and the importance of that.
Speaker 1:So we get into that, and we get into CRMs and how to make sure that we're not losing our future clients. Before we dive into today's topic, I just wanna say a special thank you and welcome. First of all, thank you for listening to the podcast. If this is your first time or you're new around here, welcome. We talk about visibility through SEO and your Google business profile here on the podcast, but I also bring in guests like Jason and others to talk about marketing and visibility.
Speaker 1:And as brick and mortar business owners, we want that foot traffic, virtual and physical foot traffic to our websites, to our stores so that we can be the the go to option in our industry and be that gem in the community. That is one of the best compliments I've received is your business is a gem in our community, and I want that for you. I want your business to be thriving so that you can provide for your family and give generously to the community that you love and are part of. Your PSA for today is to go grab your Google Business profile and update that. What do I mean by that?
Speaker 1:You're gonna go grab a social post from one of your social medias, whether LinkedIn or Facebook, whatever it is, and bring it on over to your Google Business profile. If you just glazed over, grab my Google Business Profile workshop. It's about 30 minutes long. You can speed me up. That way, I sound super smart.
Speaker 1:But it's gonna show you how to optimize all those bells and whistles on your Google Business Profile. And it is important. In fact, I'm going to share some stats with you. Did you know that only 56% of business owners claim their Google Business Profile? And out of that 56%, only 40% actually do anything with their Google business profile.
Speaker 1:So that means if you actually do the work here, I give you the workshop telling you how to do it, show you exactly what to do, if you actually do that you are way ahead of your competition because most business owners don't take advantage of it. So please take advantage of this free tool by Google because over 90% of people search for your business on Google. Did you know the work you do today affects your business 60 to 90 days from now? And that just doesn't go for business. That goes for all areas of life.
Speaker 1:So based on the work you're doing right now, where are you gonna be? Is it gonna be same old thing, different day, or is it gonna be a level up? If you answered level up, let's make sure it actually happens. Come join me in my mastermind called level up, where we meet once a month to hold each other accountable, think strategically, and get inspired and empowered to take the action needed so that you can level up your business. If you want to learn more on how to level up you and your business, go to the link in the bio or missmelissabroes.comforward/mastermind to learn more.
Speaker 1:It would be my privilege to be part of your story in your level up. Now I wanna introduce you to Jason Kramer. He is the founder of Cultivise, a consulting firm that specializes in b to b lead nurturing strategies and technologies. With 15 years of experience running a creative agency, Jason identified revenue gaps in marketing and sales funnels for distributors, service providers, marketing agencies, and manufacturers. He launched Cultivise to provide customized solutions and empower businesses to connect prospect and customer data with marketing campaigns and sales team activities.
Speaker 1:We had a great conversation talking about CRMs, the importance of lead nurturing, and different ways to do that. I got so much value out of today's conversation, and I hope you do as well. So if you enjoy today's podcast, if you got some takeaways out of it, I know Jason would love to hear from you. So make sure you click his link in the bio and say hello, tell him your takeaways, and better yet, leave an honest rating and review on Apple Itunes so that way more people can hear about Jason, his work in the world, and brick and mortar visibility. So without further ado, let's get to it.
Speaker 1:Let's hear from Jason Kramer.
Speaker 2:Are you a brick and mortar business owner
Speaker 1:that has put your blood, sweat, and tears into creating a storefront that lights you up and serves your clients really well only to be frustrated that you're the best kept secret in town? If you're not hearing your new clients say, I found you on Google, then you are in the right place. Welcome. My name is Melissa Rose.
Speaker 2:I'm a mom, a brick and mortar business owner,
Speaker 1:and your straight shooting visibility coach. I've cracked the SEO code to becoming the top choice on Google in my industry, and now I'm sharing the secrets on this podcast. Get ready for stories, fail proof strategies, and practical tips to elevate your brick and mortar presence to the top choice on Google. Let's get real because we're going to make your business the only option in town. Jason Kramer, welcome to the brick and mortar visibility podcast.
Speaker 1:So good to see you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Thanks, Melissa. Happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Yes. Alright. Okay. I start everybody off with this basic easy softball question. What did you wanna be when you grew up?
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a good question. Well, I think I the answer for me is I'd love to be a chef. Oh. I I I have a huge passion in food and why I never got into that kind of professionally, I don't know. But I'm like a very artistic person, you know, that's my background which we'll talk about.
Speaker 3:But, yeah. It'd be cool. I've actually done classes at the Culinary Institute, which is so far from where I live, in New York. And, I've always wanted to go back. They have, like, a 2 week intensive, like, training program for, like, amateur cooks that wanna learn how the tricks of the trade.
Speaker 3:And so that's something on my, to do list.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Awesome. And you live in New York with 2 kiddos and a wife. How old are your kiddos?
Speaker 3:They are 15 and 12, a boy and a girl.
Speaker 1:Alright. You're in the thick of it. You're having fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, that's a fun age. Like, you're into their stuff, and as long as as long as everybody's behaving. Yeah. And they're
Speaker 3:doing they're doing their homework and not forgetting about Exactly.
Speaker 1:What kind of food would be your interest? Like, if you really if you did that, do you have a like, is it Italian, or is there a certain kind of food or just anything?
Speaker 3:I don't I it's it's a hard one. I mean, I would say maybe more, like, like, kind of like a a fusion or, you know, because I like a lot of, like, flavor profiles. You know? So I feel like in the the world of Italian and people maybe not like what I'm about to say, but I feel like you're sort of, like, in a a lock of of palate when it comes to Italian food. Like, it doesn't range too much.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. You
Speaker 3:know? Whereas you go into different cuisines, you have like, last night, I made a homemade chicken shawarma. And I bought one of these cool like, I have people listening audio, but these cool pans where you could stack all the meat up, you know, in the oven, like, on a spigot kind of.
Speaker 1:Okay. And
Speaker 3:my son's like, oh my god. This is amazing. It tastes so authentic.
Speaker 1:You know? Aw.
Speaker 3:So it's like you know, so yeah. So I don't know. I would say, like, probably, like, kind of like some of fusion
Speaker 1:type of thing. Alright. Well, we're gonna launch from that into what you do right now in your world of business entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2:At the
Speaker 1:end of this episode, Jason, what do you want people to get from it?
Speaker 3:So I want them to walk away, Melissa, with the moment to realize there are things in my business that are causing us angst or frustration, and he can hear some things we can do to fix it. Most notably, most businesses face the challenge of how do I manage, you know, growing my business? You know, how do I manage all the marketing I'm doing and the and the leads that are coming in and making sure things don't fall through the cracks when we get busy? And with another follow ups, I think, are important in to, important as well. There's a lot of times you forget about those follow ups, and you kinda let those opportunities do.
Speaker 3:You spend a lot of time materializing, and investing in, running spending money on sort of fall to the wayside because there's no systems in place to follow-up with those people in a systematic way. And so, I think for people listening today, you know, there's a lot they can bring out of it regardless of the type of business. I know you work with a lot of, like, brick and mortar and, you know, retail. But in any business, there there's browsers and there's shoppers. And my contention is that people that are browsers are more likely most likely gonna buy at some point.
Speaker 3:It's another way that they're gonna buy from you or a competitor. And that's what we're trying to do is help people buy from you and not the competitor.
Speaker 1:Awesome. I'm super excited about this episode, everybody. This is gonna pertain to all of us, no matter what industry you're in. So I'm super excited for Jason to share his wisdom on how to get, get more leads to be buyers. So tell us the cliff notes of your story, how you came to be where you are.
Speaker 3:Sure. So the real bridge version is so I my background is in, communication design, marketing, work for agencies, got to work on some really cool brands, you know, the Virgin Atlantic to the world and smaller brands that listeners never heard of. But it was really early on in my career that I saw an opportunity for, like, the first gap. And that was businesses that couldn't afford an expensive agency and also needed more than just like a freelancer. And so I built back in the early 2000 a virtual agency, and we help mostly service based businesses, doing branding, web development, all that great stuff.
Speaker 3:And then fast forward about 16 years later into that business, I sorted this opportunity to find another gap which was people spending on money on marketing, but they weren't nurturing and and managing those leads. Right? So they were just really just dropping the ball. And so I sold the 1st business, the agency, to start Cultivise. It's now gonna be in our 6th year.
Speaker 3:And we're not in the business of lead gen. We're in the business of what we call lead nurturing and lead conversion.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 1:Alright. So helping us nurture and convert those leads. So
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:Going okay. So you do that through your CRM. What is a CRM for everybody who doesn't know that terminology?
Speaker 3:Sure. So a CRM, can mean a lot of different things just like the word marketing can mean a lot of different things. Right? It's very, very subjective. But to me, a CRM has 3 core functionalities.
Speaker 3:So the first is it's going to store all of your contacts, and that could be potential customers, existing customers, it could be vendors, strategic partners you work with. It's really think of it as an address book, but, you know, sort of on steroids. It's it's gonna have a lot more information about the history of those people, the notes you've taken, you know, all the little things you need to know about them. That's the first piece. The second piece to a CRM is gonna be the ability to send out emails.
Speaker 3:A lot of, you know, companies out there are do, you know, using Mailchimp and different tools which are good for different purposes. But if your CRM can deliver your marketing messages, your newsletters and all these things, then you could have a lot more insights to connecting all the information to your contacts. And then the 3rd component would be sales activities. There's a huge disconnect in a lot of businesses. And when we talk about sales, people think at the retail well, sales is maybe not as much of a player, but it certainly is.
Speaker 3:Even if somebody's walking in and browsing through the clothing rack or, you know, signing up for a gym class, it's transaction. It's a sale. Right? Nevertheless. And so the CRM, you know, has to have, in my opinion, a sales component or tie into your existing sales component, which could be, like, your point of purchase system.
Speaker 3:Right? It could be your sales component. Mhmm. And that's what I would define as a CRM.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. I love that. I love that you can, brought in all 3 of those because the I started my business 16 years ago. Mhmm. I think I invested in CRM probably in 2020 maybe 2016 ish, around there.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And the one I invested has all those components to it, and it's and I I'm like, so I don't have any extra plugins or anything, and and I'm like, how do you I I don't even know how to do that. Like, like, you just I don't know. Like so I invested in in in that. So what are your favorite ones or, like, if somebody because once you invest in 1, you're not really gonna change, I feel.
Speaker 1:Like, it's one of those, like, once you once you invest, you're you're there because to transfer over, your pain point has to be pretty big. So which ones would you recommend to people?
Speaker 3:Well, this is the thing. Before I get into the answer of that question, Melissa, I think the thing that's important, actually on the Cultivize website, we offer a free, what we call, CRM fit assessment. Okay. And there's about 30 different things we look at when we're recommending a CRM to a company. Okay.
Speaker 3:Obviously, it's not time to go through all of them, but some of the important things beyond talking about specific platforms is, you know, who on the team is gonna be using this tool? How are they gonna use the tool? What what functionality do you need in terms of, like, what are your goals? Like, do you wanna send emails out? Do you wanna be able to do these things we're talking about, like, nurturing campaigns where we're dripping emails out to people.
Speaker 3:Do we wanna track our sales activities? Right? There's always different things you need to figure out as a business owner. And then also a few other things is usability. We know and you know too, Melissa, like, when you started back a few years ago using your new system, it could be overwhelming.
Speaker 3:Right? So it's how usability is on that new system. Am I because my team is gonna be difficult for them to use it. Is it gonna be easy for them to use it? Those are important factors.
Speaker 3:And then you mentioned a really big one is scalability. So a lot of times and listen, there's between you and I, we both know, maybe listeners don't, but there's literally thousands of different tools out there. Right? Literally, I mean, as and just more and more coming out every year. And so they have these shiny objects kinda syndrome where it's like, oh, this is a cool new tool.
Speaker 3:I wanna try it. I wanna sign up for a month for a year. But, ultimately, you gotta figure out these other things first. And so the last part and and one of the many 30, but the last one is how is the tool gonna scale? Right?
Speaker 3:So you might say, hey, Jason. I can only afford $100 a month, you know. Right? And what can I get for that? Mhmm.
Speaker 3:But if you know you're planning on investing in your business and growing, next year you might outgrow that CRM.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Well, then
Speaker 3:you gotta start over again. And so it's better to kinda plan ahead and grow into something versus outgrowing it pretty quickly. A few systems that we like starting with, like, very low tier ones
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:In terms of, like, CRM, There's a product called Pipedrive, which would be more for a a business, not necessarily in retail, but someone that's selling services or products perhaps to consumers or other businesses because you can manage the Pipedrive if you have a sales process. It has some good CRM kind of functionality. Although, I would define it more of a as a, you know, as it's called a pipeline management tool, but it's a good entry level product. But we sort of fast forward. There's other ones in there.
Speaker 3:The ones that we focus most on at Cultivise are HubSpot and a product, used to be called SharpSpring. It got bought 3 years ago by Constant Contact. So it's a new Constant Contact Constant Contact product that came out that's really cool. And the reason we like those is because they're so comprehensive, and they're so easy for the teams to start adopting and using. And the price points, you know, depending upon, obviously, the business and different nuances, are affordable compared to, like, say, a Salesforce, which you're gonna be spending, like, a $100,000 a year, you know, rolling that out.
Speaker 3:And that's not, you know, always needed for every type of business.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. The gamut is huge, and you really I'd love that you, have that q and a for people just to kinda see, like, bullet point, like, what are you really looking for? Because there there there are a lot of different features, and you can just go, oh, I want that, I want that, but do you need it, and are you gonna use it?
Speaker 1:That's the other thing I advise my clients. You probably have a software platform that you're not going deep enough in.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, people don't know that it does offer this or whatever. I want to jump to, lead generation and nurturing activities, lead nurturing activities. Can you talk about the gap and what we're missing as as business owners there? And what the difference of those and
Speaker 3:Yeah. Absolutely. So so lead generation, right, is the the catalyst where somebody doesn't know about your organization, your company, your product, whatever it is you're selling, and your marketing is saying, hey. Look at me. This is what we do, and you're and you're drawing them in to download something on your website, to come into the retail store.
Speaker 3:It's it's drawing that person into your world. Lead and nurturing is when that person walks through that front door physically or virtually, right, depending upon your business, but they don't buy anything. They sort of just look around. They're like, oh, this is nice. This is cool, but I don't I don't need it right now or I can't afford it right now.
Speaker 3:The nurturing helps you stay in front of that person to educate them and to inform them. So I'll give you a great example. Yeah. This past summer, we started working with a new client, happens to be in in a, it may seem like a seasonal business. It's not a pool company.
Speaker 3:So they do pool construction. They do spas. They do all these different things. Well, a lot of people that are gonna drop, you know, 20, 50, $80 or more on a pool, maybe sort of just experimenting in terms of, like, what is the cost? You know?
Speaker 3:What's involved? Right? And so they get a lot of people that say, talk to me next year. I'm not ready this this season to buy it. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Apparently, they're not doing anything to nurture those prospects. They will, and they've already signed off on doing that with us. But what that program is gonna look like for that client is here's the things you should know about a pool. Right? Here's the 10 top things next month.
Speaker 3:Here's an email about the hidden cost of owning a pool. Right? Another one might be, here's, you know, some resources. When you do an inground pool, you'll need landscaping. Here's some resources and ideas to do landscaping around your pool.
Speaker 3:So it's not saying, are you ready to buy the pool yet? Right? Or saying, hey. When can we sign a contract? It's saying, here's some things you'll need to know that are gonna help you make an informed decision.
Speaker 3:And when companies do that and they go from that education standpoint, it really helps sorry. I was stuck with my microphone over.
Speaker 1:I apologize. He's excited. My hands. You know? I'm a very
Speaker 3:animated person. I can
Speaker 1:ask where those hands are going.
Speaker 3:I apologize if I just, like, caused anybody's eardrums to kinda go there. You know? But the the point is even, let's say, a gym. Right? So you're kinda coming in and you might join the gym, and you don't sign up or you do a free trial.
Speaker 3:Right? You come into the day and you never sign up. Imagine getting all these different emails and information about, you know, here's some exercise routines. Here's some nutrition tips. And it's like, oh, wow.
Speaker 3:This gym has a lot to offer. It's not just trying to sell me a membership. It's really trying to help me with my lifestyle and and make these changes. And so that's what nurturing is all about. Now all that being said, you need to know who's actually raising their hand and showing interest.
Speaker 3:And so a good CRM is gonna alert you when, oh, Jason's gotten emails for the last 6 months, never opened any of them. Now he finally did went to the website. You didn't fill out a form, but he spent 10 minutes on your site. You need to be getting that information and to be alerted by that. Right?
Speaker 3:So you can't be expected as a busy business person, to go in and be looking for that. You need a CRM to be able to say, hey, Jason. Look at this. Melissa's back on the website. You might wanna give her a call.
Speaker 3:And so that's what the idea of nurturing is, is to educate, but also then to have the resources and technology to let you know who's actually, like, you know, sort of, like, eating up if you have all the Mhmm. The information and then saying, like, hey. Hey. This sounds interesting. Like, I want more.
Speaker 1:Okay. My wheels are my wheels are buzzing, because we have a separate CRM for my dance studio, and then I have a separate one for my consulting. And I, a couple years ago, wanted to bring those leads over from my dance studio 1 because it doesn't have the robust analytics that say Susie q opened this email, and she went to the website. So but she hasn't registered, so I can do that. So it's just, and we got rid of it because my just what you said, you have a team member, like, in charge of that, but it was just too much for them to do.
Speaker 1:And now I wanna revisit that. Like, okay. If I could revisit that because there are. There's a bunch of leads that come in. They make that account.
Speaker 1:They may even come in for that trial. And, yeah, just you're they fall off. They fall off. So how are we done doing that?
Speaker 3:Exactly. And we talked before about losing things to competitors, and that's what happens. You know, a lot of companies just build really great content, you know, marketing strategies, whether it be email and other things, but then they don't follow through. And so it's like, if you're gonna put all that time and money into, you know, getting people attracted to whatever it is you're trying to sell, but you're not gonna actually look at that data and look at that information in real time and be able to do something about it. In my opinion, it's kind of like, well, why are you even doing it at all?
Speaker 3:You know? Because, you know, everybody that invests money in in marketing and growing their business wants to see a return on in that investment. And that's something we help our clients do is be able to see that return because we could really zero in so closely on the data to be able to make that really worthwhile for them.
Speaker 1:Okay. Can so can you help me understand exactly what you do? So are you creating the copy for people to get those e those nurturing emails, or are they doing that? Or what is what is the role? And then are you going behind the scenes and looking at and then giving them a list of, okay, these are the people that you should follow-up with.
Speaker 1:Like, what is the nuts and bolts of what you do? All of the all of it? Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 3:With with some modification. Right? So we have clients who are, like, amazing writers or they have people on their team or external people they work with Mhmm. That write all their content. That's great.
Speaker 3:They may need us just to build out the email designs, or maybe they have somebody doing that too. Melissa, we're very flexible. We're a small team of 6. Very agile to adjust to our clients' needs. At the end of the day, we just wanna get them to the goals that they have.
Speaker 3:So it doesn't hinder or or hurt our feelings if they're like, hey. We got all the content, and it's great. We wanna use this. As long as, you know, we think it's good, not to say that. And some will give push back and suggestions be like, hey, you've your email has 52 links.
Speaker 3:It's a little bit much. Gotcha.
Speaker 1:You know,
Speaker 3:we wanna kinda bring that down a little bit. So to to answer your question, we have some clients that say, hey, Jason. We need your team to just manage this and and monitor everything for us. Sometimes it's a hybrid. Sometimes we you know, because we provide training too.
Speaker 3:Right? So we're we're not only setting up these systems and putting everything into place. We're showing the client and their team how to use the system, how to do the things that we know how to do. Uh-huh. And we meet with them every month just like I know you do a lot of we coach our clients and and have these strategy sessions with them on a monthly basis indefinitely to make sure that, you know, they're getting the most out of it.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, it's very flexible.
Speaker 1:Very cool. Okay. I wanna jump to, newsletter. You have a question here. Which type of data to collect to to create a relevant newsletter content?
Speaker 1:So explain that. What 3 types of data should we be including?
Speaker 3:Well, so a lot of companies out there, when they do, let's say, a monthly newsletter
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:They're sending it out to their entire database. Right? And so that content may not be relevant to everybody the same way. And so, you know, for example, just in very simple terms, you might have a list of here's our active customers, here's our past customers, and here are our, like, active prospects. You might wanna have 3 different versions of your newsletter so that the messaging can change to resonate with who's receiving it.
Speaker 3:I remember, we had a a fairly decent sized museum we were working with a while back, and, they had something like like, 30,000 people on a list that they were sending out an email to on any given week. And it had donors, it had sponsors, it had, you know, people that were members, that had people that came in for a one day visit that never came back. And and their email was so long. I mean, if you those that could see the visual, but I'm holding my hand up really high, really low. And it was like, oh my god.
Speaker 3:That gives so much information. And they were wondering why their engagement wasn't high and why people weren't, you know, responding to the emails. It's because they were trying to cram everything possibly for every single audience into one email. It doesn't work well that way. So that's what I mean by that.
Speaker 3:It's like, you know, thinking about, you know, who you are, in terms of a company, what you do, but then also you might do it a little bit differently for different people. And so that messaging really should be, you know, unique to each of those different groups.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:So I'll give you
Speaker 1:one example. Yeah. I'm just, like, thinking about all the things I should do better.
Speaker 3:So go back to the to the gym example. Yeah. So let's say you own a gym Mhmm. And you have a list of your members and people that came in as guests. Alright?
Speaker 3:You wouldn't wanna send out a monthly newsletter. And let's say all the members paid, you know, $30 a month for their membership. Okay? And you wouldn't wanna send a newsletter out, include your members, but, really, the messaging is to the people that aren't members and saying, hey. We're running a special, you know, get a membership for $10 a month for and locked it in for 3 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It'd make a lot of your existing members very upset that they didn't get that offer. Right? So those are the types of things where messaging is important because it cannot only not do the right thing, but it also hinder your business as well. Mhmm. You know?
Speaker 3:Yeah. And we've seen that a lot with companies where people, make a purchase, and then the very next day or a week later, they get an email, and they're like, why are you sending this to me? Like, I just bought this. Like, you know and so it makes the company look like they're not buttoned up, and you could lose some kind of credibility with, you know, that customer for future business.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. The automation is lovely, but if it's not working properly, it it makes you not look very professional. And that's Exactly. Yeah. Very good.
Speaker 1:So so back to that newsletter. So when you do break it up, then you can identify quicker and more fish effectively who truly are warm leads or, you know, the low hanging fruit that you Yeah. I I
Speaker 3:so you're you're limited only based on the type of system you're using to send out the newsletters. So nothing wrong with Mailchimp. It's a good product for for what it is. But it's not gonna tell you who's coming to the website, who what they're looking at. All you're really gonna know is these are the people that clicked, these are the people that opened.
Speaker 3:Did they click and they did they do anything? Did they leave your website right away? Was it, was it even a real click? Maybe it was a a bot click. Because nowadays, you have a lot of, you know, different security systems in place when on the recipient side to scan your email, they click everything to make sure there's no malware.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. And so that could send back a false positive that there was only a click and there wasn't. So, you know, it all depends upon what you're trying to get out of it. If your if your newsletter is just like a billboard and you're like, I don't care if people look at it or not. Like, I just wanna send it out, you know, because I wanna stay in front of people.
Speaker 3:That's certainly one approach. I think the biggest thing that you can do in any system regardless of what you're using, which I think a lot of people don't do, and I always kind of, like, you know, sort of smile when people tell me, oh, I got a 60% open rate. I'm like, that's great. What about the 48% that didn't open your email? Right?
Speaker 3:And they're like, I don't know. Well, they didn't open it. So what we do for our clients and what I recommend to anybody listening, your system should because what you have, should have the ability to tell you who did not open up your last email that you sent. Mhmm. What I suggest is wait typically, like, 3 to 5 days and send out a different version of your email to the non openers.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And
Speaker 3:when I say a different version, it could be something where it's a different subject message. Mhmm. For Cultivize, what we've seen really good results with is our newsletter is all nice and glossy and beautiful pictures and design. But for the people that don't open it, they get a plain text version of our newsletter a week later, which is usually about 50% to 75%, excuse me, shorter in terms of content than the original.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And it comes from, you know, me personally and, like, hey, Melissa. Like, you know, I was working on this. I thought you might just find this interesting, and so it's like a different tone. And we see a huge increase in engagement on that second send for the non openers that didn't open up the first one.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:So that's something that a lot of people don't do. They just say, oh, we're gonna send out a monthly newsletter. They send it, and they don't they don't pay attention to the non openers.
Speaker 1:What, you said something about the, nurturing, going back to that with the the pool. Okay. Let's go back to that pool scenario. And, as as an SEO person, so for those of you smaller t you know, smaller businesses, you have, you know, we have our lean and mean team. Sure.
Speaker 1:And you're overwhelmed with that nurture going, oh my word. Okay. I understand the importance of it. But those to me, in my mind, those are blog posts. Those are things that, people you could use as a blog post to help with your SEO, but then repurpose that blog post into a a nice email to keep that nurturing going.
Speaker 1:You know, did you think about this? Or when you're considering a dance studio, make sure you're looking at the teachers' blah blah blah. Or when you're looking at a dance studio, make sure they have a sprung floor. And this is why. Okay.
Speaker 1:So just, because when you said that, I was like, I could just feel my my people just go, oh my gosh. I have to do this. No. We're repurposing. And then then that all gets brought into your marketing a little bit sprinkled in here and there.
Speaker 1:It it all works cohesively, but it can be feeling overwhelm whelming. But I I love, I love this, the importance of these analytics of checking and seeing that low hanging fruit. Like, I love looking at my email stats of who who opened, who clicked, because then I send you know, if I'm really on top of it, I'm sending them a private message. You know what I'm saying? Hey.
Speaker 1:You know, I saw you would check that landing you know, checked out the mastermind or checked out this. Can I help answer any questions? Or
Speaker 3:Melissa, I've got dozens I mean, we don't have time, but I've got dozens of stories where we'll be nurturing somebody. They might be on a a a sequence of emails that are dripping out, or they might just get our monthly newsletter. And it could be a year or more that they haven't opened up any of our emails.
Speaker 1:And then
Speaker 3:all of a sudden, I get a notification on our system. Oh, John's back on the website. I'm like, well, that's weird. I remember John's name. And then, like, I look at John's profile.
Speaker 3:I see what he's looking at. And then when I call John within 24 hours of that action Mhmm. Oh, hey, Jason. Yeah. I remember you.
Speaker 3:How's it going? I never bring up the email. I never mentioned that I saw them on the website, but I'm top of mind to them. And I can't tell you how many pieces, or how many clients we've closed because I was just in the right time at the right place. And that's really what a lot of business is all about, you know, to closing these, you know, deals or even, you know and again, in the retail, you have something, a new product that you just got in.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's in the front shelf when you first walk in and, like, they're, like, oh, that's cool. They they pick up and buy it. If it was in the back of the store, maybe they would have never seen it. Right? So
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:It's all about, you know, positioning and about, you know, all these different things. So, yes, it does it does work. And it's it's quite Mhmm. I always find it, like, astonishing when it does because, yeah, it's like, I do it for a living, but I'm like, you know, it's it's pretty remarkable that people are human behavior. Right?
Speaker 3:It's it's just Yes. You're you're doing something for a reason. I joke a lot, you know, sort of that you don't, on a Saturday, be sure to report and have nothing to do, walk into a car dealership and just look around. Right?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:You're there because you probably are in the market for buying a car or you you wanna get some ideas. And so if somebody doesn't recognize that and doesn't tap you on the shoulder and be like, hey, Jason. It's great to meet you and introduce themselves and you just walk out with no one ever inter inter inter, interacting with you, that's a huge missed opportunity.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. I love this conversation because it's, we work so hard Mhmm. On getting the new lead, on getting that new lead.
Speaker 1:And we have so many for those of us that have been in business, I have to say every month, every year in business, you just have more data. You have more feedback. And with 16 years in business, I have a database, a beautiful database. And, it was asked, do you ever delete people off your database? And somebody said absolutely not because you don't I I'm in business long enough where my students are now parents and some of them are grandparents.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow. So to to have them, oh, I'm gonna bring my daughter or my granddaughter to dance, it it legit happens. So as long as you're in front in front of face there. But I I, got so much value out of your conversation today just to, I wanna go back to my instincts of what I was doing a few years ago. It was just a little bit too much, to handle with my my part time admin, but I I the value of it that we work so hard for those leads, but we have we have so many warm leads among us that that we can we can dial in more.
Speaker 1:This is this is really good. This is really good. Do you have any parting words or anything that I did not say or ask you that you would like to put on?
Speaker 3:I would just say that, you know, for the people that are still tuned in and I'm I'm I'm hoping that most of them are. Oh.
Speaker 1:I think
Speaker 3:this has been an engaging conversation, is that it it it does sound overwhelming. You brought that up before. And and there are a lot of moving parts, and it's something new. Just like if you were to say, hey. I'm gonna go put an extension on my house.
Speaker 3:I don't know how to build that. You know, like, you figure it out or you hire somebody. Right? So, you know, that's what we're here for. We help you to figure it out, to do all the work for you.
Speaker 3:You know, we are not a company that says, here's the plan. Go figure it out. Like, that doesn't work in the realistic world. And so every one of our clients, regardless of the size, small or big, we're doing all this work for them. We're we're creating that strategy.
Speaker 3:We're putting the things together, putting the right software into place, showing them how to use it. And so that's one thing I would say as a takeaway. If for those that are interested in just kinda, like, learning more at different levels, you can go to after the lead.com. That's just after the lead.com as it sounds. And on there, there is a place to sign up for our newsletter.
Speaker 3:We provide we talk about newsletters. So, hopefully, everybody listeners like ours, but we have lots of great content that goes out monthly. If someone that's a little bit more kind of, like, ready to take the next step, we actually wrote a playbook. So the playbook is all about lead nurturing, and it goes step by step with all the components you'll need, different framework examples. They could download that for free.
Speaker 3:And for those that are like, hey. I need to talk to Jason tomorrow. There's a link in there to schedule a call with me personally. Absolutely free. We'll dive into the business challenges needs and and help you out as any way we can.
Speaker 1:Awesome. This is so helpful. I hope everybody's brain is just buzzing a little bit. I know there's there's always stuff to improve. There's always things we can do better.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But just but hearing hearing this was really helpful for me. So, Jason, thank you so much for your time and sharing your wisdom and knowledge with brick and mortar visibility, our our community. And, everybody go grab that. We'll of course, we'll have it in the show notes, so you can just click there.
Speaker 1:And, Jason, I appreciate your time. And, everybody, we will see you here same time, same place next week.
Speaker 3:Peace. Melissa.
Speaker 1:Bye. Bye bye.