Selling a business wasn’t part of Lorraine Ball’s original plan. But after nearly two decades of running her marketing agency, Roundpeg, she knew it was time for a change.
Rather than walking away entirely, Lorraine kept the pieces she loved — her podcast, “More Than a Few Words”, and her consulting work — while selling the rest. “The day you start [your business], you need to think about your exit,” she says on Be A Marketer. “You want to build a business that someone will want to buy.”
On this episode of Be A Marketer, host Dave Charest sits down with Lorraine to explore the key lessons she's learned along the way. She shares why answering customer questions is one of the most effective ways to improve marketing, how business owners should plan for their exit strategy from day one, and why automation is essential for filtering and prioritizing leads.
As a longtime Constant Contact Partner, Lorraine also dives into how marketing automation and email segmentation have helped her streamline her efforts, engage her audience more effectively, and deliver personalized experiences that drive results.
Meet Today's Guest: Lorraine Ball of More Than a Few Words
☕ What she does: Lorraine is a marketing strategist, Constant Contact Partner, and host of the More Than a Few Words podcast. After nearly two decades running her agency, Roundpeg, she transitioned into consulting, helping businesses refine their marketing strategies and improve their results.
💡 Key quote: "When you get people from different kinds of ways that they find you, and you dump all of them into one email list, and you send them all the same email every single week, you're going to watch your open rates fall, you're going to watch your engagement fall, you're going to see a lot of unsubscribes. When you start tying different people based on how they come to you to different campaigns, and you start sending them information that is relevant to what they're looking for, it has a level of personalization. It feels more like you're talking to them. People love that.”
If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/bam and follow the simple instructions.
Chapters
Selling a business wasn’t part of Lorraine Ball’s original plan. But after nearly two decades of running her marketing agency, Roundpeg, she knew it was time for a change.
Rather than walking away entirely, Lorraine kept the pieces she loved — her podcast, “More Than a Few Words”, and her consulting work — while selling the rest. “The day you start [your business], you need to think about your exit,” she says on Be A Marketer. “You want to build a business that someone will want to buy.”
On this episode of Be A Marketer, host Dave Charest sits down with Lorraine to explore the key lessons she's learned along the way. She shares why answering customer questions is one of the most effective ways to improve marketing, how business owners should plan for their exit strategy from day one, and why automation is essential for filtering and prioritizing leads.
As a longtime Constant Contact Partner, Lorraine also dives into how marketing automation and email segmentation have helped her streamline her efforts, engage her audience more effectively, and deliver personalized experiences that drive results.
Meet Today's Guest: Lorraine Ball of More Than a Few Words
☕ What she does: Lorraine is a marketing strategist, Constant Contact Partner, and host of the More Than a Few Words podcast. After nearly two decades running her agency, Roundpeg, she transitioned into consulting, helping businesses refine their marketing strategies and improve their results.
💡 Key quote: "When you get people from different kinds of ways that they find you, and you dump all of them into one email list, and you send them all the same email every single week, you're going to watch your open rates fall, you're going to watch your engagement fall, you're going to see a lot of unsubscribes. When you start tying different people based on how they come to you to different campaigns, and you start sending them information that is relevant to what they're looking for, it has a level of personalization. It feels more like you're talking to them. People love that.”
If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/bam and follow the simple instructions.
What is Be a Marketer with Dave Charest?
As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the Be a Marketer podcast! New episodes every Thursday!
DaveCharest:
In today's episode, we're diving into the twists, turns, and unexpected detours that make the entrepreneurial journey so interesting and how to turn those surprises into opportunities. This is the Be A Marketer podcast.
DaveCharest:
My name is Dave, director of small business success at Constant Contact, and I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business, even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer. And at Constant Contact, we're here to help.
DaveCharest:
Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Grateful to have your attention today and grateful to be joined by yep. You guessed it, Kelsi Carter. Hi, Kelsi.
Kelsi Carter:
Hi, Dave. How are you?
DaveCharest:
I'm good. Hey, listen. I think we're well overdue and people wanna know how are our ducks doing?
Kelsi Carter:
Our ducks are doing amazing. And we're getting two eggs a day, which is awesome. And since it's starting to get warmer out, we've put their pool back outside, which they're very very happy about. So they get to swim.
DaveCharest:
I was just like, how did the indoor living go for everyone involved?
Kelsi Carter:
Well, they were only inside on the really cold nights when it was below 20, which wasn't bad so they're in a crate but they just make such a huge mess. So outside is definitely like the place to be. Next season, we're gonna get a heater though to put outside so we don't even have to bring them in at all. They obviously love being outside though having their space, having their pool. They missed it a lot.
Kelsi Carter:
They wouldn't go in their pool even if it was like 15 degrees out. So but I gave you some duck eggs too, so I'm interested to have you try some.
DaveCharest:
I know. I haven't had a chance to try them yet, and they were just given to me yesterday. So calm down, people. But I'm definitely interested in trying those out to see what they are like by comparison because I don't think I've had duck eggs. Although, I could have.
DaveCharest:
I just don't remember. So yeah. So I'm excited to try that. So thank you for those. What has being a duck mom?
DaveCharest:
Is this has this been everything you've expected it to be so far?
Kelsi Carter:
Yes. It has. I will say the only thing I wish that they were a little more cuddly now because as they get older, they get a little more skittish. That's the only thing is I wish they were a little more cuddly. But other than that, I think it's pretty good.
DaveCharest:
Excellent. Very cool. Very cool. So our guest today has absolutely nothing to do with ducks, but I felt we were well overdue for an update. So we wanted to check-in there.
DaveCharest:
Kelsi, what can you tell us about our guest today?
Kelsi Carter:
Today, our guest is Lorraine Ball, marketing strategist and constant contact partner in Indianapolis, Indiana. She's also the host of the More Than a Few Words podcast where she has ten minute conversations with marketing professionals from around the world to provide business owners practical tips and marketing inspiration.
DaveCharest:
Excellent. So I was fortunate enough to be a guest on Lorraine's podcast, not only once but twice. The second episode is on the way. But Lorraine's a great conversation. She sold her marketing agency, Round Peg, after nineteen years.
DaveCharest:
But after doing that, she really kept those things that were uniquely her and that she enjoyed doing. And so, Kelsey, as you mentioned, the More Than a Few Words podcast, which she started in 2010, that's really the center of her business today. It's how she introduces her consulting services to businesses looking to get better results. And, I'm excited for everyone to hear this conversation. We talked about why you can't go wrong answering the questions your customers are asking.
DaveCharest:
Why the day you start, you also need to be thinking about your exit, and how automation allows you to move potential clients through the buying process without handling every interaction. So really cool things. Let's go to Lorraine as she shares her journey of starting her own business.
Lorraine Ball:
Whenever anybody asks me about my business journey and I see them looking at me expecting this lovely even tail, well mapped out start to finish, I know they're in for a bumpy ride. Because like many entrepreneurs, there were lots of twists and turns along the way. I was a teacher, I had corporate roles, I got all the way to the VP suite, had the job I always wanted, but you know that expression that says, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. When I got it, I realized that that was really not where I was meant to be. And so I walked away and started a small company that originally was going to be focused on teaching managers how to build high performance teams.
Lorraine Ball:
It was not a marketing company. And while I was trying to sell those services, people kept coming to me saying, hey, Lorraine, I know that you're doing other stuff now, but you're good at marketing. Could you help me with? And one day I woke up and I went, you know what? I have a marketing company.
Lorraine Ball:
I didn't expect it. That wasn't what I set out to do, but you know what? I really like it. I've always liked marketing. So let's be here and let's do this.
Lorraine Ball:
And that was in 02/2002. I started the business by 02/2003. I was really clear on where my business was and what I wanted it to be. And that was also about the time that I got introduced to email marketing. I got an email from somebody and it was really different than anything I had seen in my inbox up until that point and I was like, wow, this is really cool.
Lorraine Ball:
So I called the guy and I said, how did you do this? And he said, oh, just look at the little thing in the corner, it's Constant Contact. Just click on that and it'll take you to their page and you can get started. And I did. And I have been a fan ever since.
Lorraine Ball:
For me, the company we started as a traditional marketing company, I did a lot of direct mail. I was the postcard wean. I am really good with a punchy headline and a fun graphic landing in somebody's inbox. And then with the introduction to email, I was like, wow, 500 postcards or three emails. I know what I'm gonna do.
Lorraine Ball:
And so that was the first game changer for me. Still did a lot of traditional marketing and then along comes Facebook and LinkedIn. And again, the game changed and we changed with it because our core clients were and have always been small businesses, 10 employees or less. Companies that may be in the startup phase or established, but still in that range where they don't have full time marketing people on staff. And that was really the role we fit.
Lorraine Ball:
I found that working with business owners directly was much more rewarding for me. I wasn't trying to translate through three different people who really didn't understand what I was saying and who didn't always have the business owner's vision. And so that that was always our niche. Did work with some bigger companies over the years, but as long as I could still have the conversation with the owner, that was the kind of work we wanted to do. We ended up doing web design, social media, content marketing.
Lorraine Ball:
We developed a real skill. I say we because company grew to about 10 people. We developed a real skill around what I call content based SEO. We figured out that everybody else in the market seemed to be zeroing in on keywords and obsessing about keywords. And my feeling was that's great.
Lorraine Ball:
You get people to your website, but they're coming looking for answers. And so if you just answer the questions that people are asking, you will have better content. You will be more likely to get noticed. And when they come, they'll be happier that you were there. And so everybody else in in my market, they were all playing these white hat, black hat games and I was building content and they were telling me that I was missing the boat until Google changed their algorithm.
Lorraine Ball:
And they changed the algorithm to bias towards content. A lot of my friends called me up and went, okay, now how do do this content thing?
DaveCharest:
Hey, that thing you were talking about.
Lorraine Ball:
That thing that you you know? And so that has always been the core. And when you start with great content on your website, your email newsletters are a slam dunk. Your social media is a no brainer because you've got all this rich information that you can break up into little pieces and deliver at the right time. And that was the core of our business.
Lorraine Ball:
I sold the company in 2021. After nineteen years, it was time. I I wanted to have a little bit more flexibility and somebody else was willing to pay me for what I built. So bonus.
DaveCharest:
Congratulations to you. That's amazing.
Lorraine Ball:
Thank you. What I kept when I started going through the journey to sell the business, what I kept were the things that were uniquely me that didn't make any sense to sell and the things I enjoyed. So I had been podcasting since 02/2010. I wasn't going to give that up. I had written a number of small books and I had built a lot of online training.
Lorraine Ball:
Again, all of that was really tied into me and my expertise. So I formed a separate company where all of that information lived and resided. So when I sold Round Peg, those those were not part of the the conversation.
DaveCharest:
Got it. Very cool. I love that. So what does the business then look like now? Are you selling anything?
DaveCharest:
Like, what does that look like?
Lorraine Ball:
The podcast is kind of the center of what's keeping me busy these days. I love it. It's a lot of fun. Pick a few pennies from sponsors here and there and things like that. It is a nice way to introduce my consulting services.
Lorraine Ball:
So what I do these days, in a way it's full circle back to what I was doing in the early days of my business. I work with companies that have been in business a little while that have spent money on marketing and they're not happy with their results. And I will go in, I'll audit their website, I'll audit their email campaign, I'll look at their social media. What I have found is that a lot of marketing companies will offer an audit, but they have a second agenda. No disrespect.
Lorraine Ball:
I mean, you girls got to eat. If you own a hammer, all the world is a nail. If you're a web design company, every audit is going to end in a recommendation to change your website. If you have an SEO company, every audit is going to end in a recommendation to improve your SEO. When I do an audit for a client, it ends in recommendations that I have no skin in the game.
Lorraine Ball:
I'm going to tell you based on my experience, your website is fine, you need to improve your SEO. Your email campaigns are terrible and here's why. Or your email campaign is good, but you need to add some auto campaigns or you need to integrate something else with it because you're dropping the ball. I'll help develop a plan which you can take back to your team, back to your web designer, or if you want, I can recommend people that do that work, but I have no skin in that part of the game. So it allows me to be really objective about where you are and what you need to do.
DaveCharest:
Well, I definitely wanna get deeper into email and some of the things that you've learned over the years and things you're even doing today. But before we get there, were there any other particular lessons you may have learned during that journey that you think small business owners need to hear today?
Lorraine Ball:
One of the lessons, it took me a while to learn this, and now, again, anytime somebody asks me about that, I always say that the day you start, you need to think about your exit. Not that you're working on selling it right from the get go, but what you wanna do is build a business that someone will want to buy. And you do that by number one, building in systems and processes so that the business is replicable so that every morning you don't walk in like Dory the goldfish going, Oh, here I am. There should be some replicable systems that number one, allow you to deliver a consistent level of service throughout the entire time that you run the business. Number two, it allows you to step away from the business.
Lorraine Ball:
I could go on a two week vacation and trust that my team would still keep things running, that web projects would move along because we had a system. You gotta be working the business and committed to what you're doing while you're doing it. But at the same time, if you're building that value, the second piece of building that value is reoccurring revenue. If your entire business is built on this idea that every sale is a one off, it is exhausting. It is not productive.
Lorraine Ball:
It's I mean, there are businesses that do work that way, but it is really hard, number one, to sustain that while you're in the business, but it is also really hard to convince someone there's any value there when you leave. Remember I said we were a content house. So we developed one year contracts and we actually had clients that stayed with us ten and twelve years, which is kind of unheard of in that industry. But we would have a one year contract or a two year contract. And we could then say, okay, you've been with us a number X number of years.
Lorraine Ball:
We had a standard value bundle. We would adjust it for each client. But when I got ready to sell the business, not only did the projection of a revenue help me figure out, do I have enough staff? If I lose this project, can I still pay all my bills? How much am I going to have?
Lorraine Ball:
And then if I sell more than that bonus. So building that value creates stability while you're running the business as well as, again, something that makes your business attractive when you are ready to sell.
DaveCharest:
Anything you would have done differently?
Lorraine Ball:
Well, hundreds of things. It took me a while to learn staffing, when to hire. And it's so funny because sometimes someone sees something that you just don't see. We had a staff of a certain size and I was like, Well, we're starting to get more of this kind of work. Maybe we should hire another writer or another web designer.
Lorraine Ball:
And one of my team, and she was pretty young at the time, she would have been 25 or so, she said, Why? I said, Well, because we're going to have this extra work. And she says, Yeah. But if you bring that person in, we'll get this work done, but now you're going to have to sell this much more to pay for them. Yeah.
Lorraine Ball:
But we we can't handle the work that we have. And she says, so why don't we just raise our price? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It took me a long time, but to get comfortable with this idea that if you're at capacity Yeah.
Lorraine Ball:
If you are at capacity, you're not charging enough. Mhmm. Raise your price. Well, but I may not I may not make the sale. Well, okay.
Lorraine Ball:
Little math. You get 10 projects. They're a hundred dollars each. You can do two a day. So your whole week is filled.
Lorraine Ball:
Great. You charge a hundred and $10 but now you only get nine sales. So at the end of the week, instead of having a thousand dollars, you have 990. But you only have to do nine projects so you can take Friday afternoon off or you can do other marketing to get that next sale. And so the question is, you know, if I raise my price 5%, how many of my prospects like if I my closing rate is one in four, will I go to one in five?
Lorraine Ball:
Does the business still work at one in five? If I stay at one in four, I need to raise my price another 5%. So, yeah, that was a big learning curve, not getting comfortable with that early enough in my business and managing the staff. I I would do that differently. What else would I do differently?
Lorraine Ball:
I loved doing seminars and teaching and training as as a a sales tool. And we had a conference. The conference was really good. We put the tools online. While it was good because the pandemic hit to have all the training online, I actually think that was not a great idea because so much of what I was really selling was not the training.
Lorraine Ball:
It was my expertise. And you don't get that in a PowerPoint.
DaveCharest:
Right.
Lorraine Ball:
So losing sight of what I was really selling and what had real value, and I would go back. I wouldn't do that.
DaveCharest:
You mentioned you found out about Constant Contact. I mean, you you after you've started your business, you also became a Constant Contact partner really quickly as well. Tell me a little bit about that experience and what that was like has been like for you.
Lorraine Ball:
At first, when we first started getting clients coming on board, we're like, okay, so we wanna do content marketing and we wanna do social media and we wanna do email. And they're like, well, we use Mailchimp. And I'd be like, oh, okay. And then there was that moment where I said, no, I'm sorry. If you're gonna hire us, you're gonna hire us for our expertise and the best tools.
Lorraine Ball:
And what we're gonna do is part of your monthly fee is your Constant Contact subscription. So I never had to have that conversation about which tool we were going to use. We just rolled it into, it's fine, you know, where your $2,000 a month, fifteen hundred dollars a month, three thousand, whatever it is, the constant contact fee was already in there. We just put them in our dashboard and we just did it because it slowed us down. One of the lessons I learned is that when you're running a when you're running a marketing company, you're running a manufacturing company.
Lorraine Ball:
And I'm very much Henry Ford. You can have any car you want, any color you want as long as it's black. When I standardize you on an email tool that my team is comfortable using, I can spend more time focused on creating the content that will engage the customer, the prospect. If I have to keep relearning how to use a tool or fight with what I consider to be an inferior tool, I don't have time to be creative. I don't have time to really focus on the things that matter.
Lorraine Ball:
I loved the community that I connected to as a partner. Back in the day you had some conferences, I went to a couple of the One Cons and I met my entire region. I was in the Midwest region. Some of these people that I met at OneCon seven and eight years ago, I'm still in touch with. They are still guests on my podcast.
Lorraine Ball:
I'm still guests on theirs. When I travel around the country, if I'm anywhere close, we get together. So it was really good for business, but beyond just being good for my business, a revenue opportunity, reselling the software, doing the seminars, getting paid, having an opportunity to be in front of an audience where I could then sell the software. I also became part of this community that we were all sort of approaching things the same way. We had different businesses.
Lorraine Ball:
We shared a lot more in common than, and because we weren't really in each other's backyards, we could brainstorm together without really being concerned that we were stealing each other's ideas. So that was a big part of my journey with with Constant Contact as well. And, because I've been using the software since 02/2002, I have gone through the growing pains. But what it has evolved to is just really fun, and it's very productive for me.
DaveCharest:
Well, we appreciate you being a partner, of course, and and all you've done over the years to help and build that community, I think, which is is just really fascinating. So you mentioned your your podcast and how you've you have people like some of that community that comes on to your podcast. Tell us about the podcast. How did that all get started?
Lorraine Ball:
I had an intern who walked into my office one day and he said to me, you know, you like to talk.
DaveCharest:
And that's it. Left, and that was all.
Lorraine Ball:
And I was kinda like, well, yeah. Actually, I do like to talk. And he said, you should have a podcast. And I looked at him. This was 02/2009.
Lorraine Ball:
And I said to myself and I I'm sure I said it out loud. What the is a podcast? And he proceeded to explain it to me. And I said, well, that sounds really difficult. He says, no, he says, you know, you've got this iPhone.
Lorraine Ball:
You can record the audio files on your iPhone and we can just put them up. There are call in shows you can do. And so we started doing the podcast and it was rough. Oh, God, those early episodes are so rough, but it was fun and I could see where it was going. And so we actually started on Blog Talk Radio where it was really more of a call in radio show.
DaveCharest:
Yeah. Yeah.
Lorraine Ball:
We did them live. So we were doing live and we were live tweeting
DaveCharest:
Okay.
Lorraine Ball:
During the interviews. So you had that whole dynamic going on and it was chaos. It was fine if I had a good guest, but every now and then and, you know, you as a podcast host probably have experienced some guests are better than others.
DaveCharest:
Sometimes you run into a situation. Yeah.
Lorraine Ball:
And when you're live, you're you have to do a lot of tap dancing.
DaveCharest:
Yeah. Yeah.
Lorraine Ball:
So we we shifted away from that, and then that's when I actually turned back to my Constant Contact community. And a lot of my first guests were all of the other Constant Contact service providers that I had relationships with because these were people that I knew. I knew they were articulate because they were all the trainers. So I was confident that we could talk about things that were important to them. I knew that they knew a lot of the same things I knew and that we would have a good dialogue.
Lorraine Ball:
So that's where the show started and then it kind of grew from there. Today, more than a few words, I will be celebrating my fifteenth anniversary on 01/03/2025. We have about almost 1,100 episodes and I love it. And it's I talk to people all over the world and it's so funny because I'll have a string of guests from Australia. So then I start getting a lot of fans from Australia.
Lorraine Ball:
I love staying in touch with people because then when I travel, I can catch up with them as well.
DaveCharest:
Well, you're coming up on fifteen years, eleven hundred episodes. I mean, talk about consistency. Yay. But what have you learned from that process?
Lorraine Ball:
First off, if you're going to get into podcasting, number one, you've got to set a schedule that you can live with and you can manage. And before you launch, have five to 10 episodes done, ready to go because things get away from you and consistency in the podcast world, being in people's feeds at the same time so that they know when to look for episodes from you is absolutely critical. That was the first thing. The second thing, somebody told me this, one of my guests and and I agree with him, people will forgive grainy video. They will not forgive bad audio.
DaveCharest:
Yeah. The audio is tough.
Lorraine Ball:
If you have a speaker who has ums and er's in every other sentence, it's like nails on a chalkboard. When I have an episode like that and I have to get in and edit, I can't edit all of them out, but and a ten minute episode takes two hours to clean up. I'm hating my life. Being a little bit selective about who you invite to be a guest so that the shows are consistent with what your audience expects, promoting the heck out of it. People may find you on iTunes just by accident but odds are if you really wanna grow your audience, you need to let people know when you have a new episode.
Lorraine Ball:
You also need shorts, you need reels, you need just graphic social shares and you need to share them and wanna go back to, you need to be selective about who you invite as a guest. You need to have people who understand that being a guest on a podcast is a collaboration, that you are not doing them a favor unless you are some Pulitzer Prize winning novelist or an Academy Award winning actor. If neither of those describes you, you need to recognize that when you come on a podcast, it's a collaboration. They're giving you airtime in exchange, not only for the information that you're going to share on the podcast, but the audience that you're gonna bring to the show. So when you get the social shares, when you get the videos, tag, reshare, interact, engage with the content.
Lorraine Ball:
And when I said promote everywhere, I do, I do a weekly newsletter. In that newsletter, I always feature at least two episodes of the podcast, the newest one. And because I've been doing this so long, if I'm talking to somebody today about authenticity, I can search my library and find three or four other conversations on authenticity. We were talking before we got online about reusing content. And so then I will take that same, I will feature the new interview and then, oh, by the way, looking for more on this topic and I have two or three others to choose from.
Lorraine Ball:
Every now and then I have a miss, but I will tell you, I send my emails out on Wednesday morning. I love looking at my download stats on Wednesday afternoon because I can see a direct correlation from that email to those particular episodes every single week.
DaveCharest:
Let's dig into that a little bit. Right? So, like, when you think about where your business is now, like, how are you marketing? Like, what are the types of things that you are doing today to market? I guess, I mean, do you look at the podcast?
DaveCharest:
Are you marketing the business? Are you doing both? Like, how does that all come together?
Lorraine Ball:
I share content from the podcast, but almost always what I am linking to if you enjoyed this episode, sign up for the newsletter. If you enjoyed this episode and wanna put something into practice, maybe it's download this white paper. Or if you are curious about how this applies to your business, set up let's set up an office hour and let's chat. So the podcast has always been the entry into a larger conversation. Yes.
Lorraine Ball:
I like it when people subscribe to the podcast because then they're listening to me more often and then there's a greater chance they'll hear something that makes them say, oh, I need to work with her. But I don't very often just push from my email newsletter. Here are two episodes demonstrating expertise and knowledge on a subject. By the way, here's a link to a class I'm running on this subject. Here's a link to my office hours where you can book a session just to talk about this.
Lorraine Ball:
And really kind of that's really what the marketing is designed to drive to is what I want to sell is the consultative services, but everybody and their brother is selling consultation. Much like when all my friends were focused on keywords and I was focused on content, I still believe and and it works. I demonstrate the expertise. I have both my solo shows as well as the interactive as well as being a guest on on shows like this where people get a chance to go, oh, she's kind of smart. Yeah.
Lorraine Ball:
Yeah, I am. Okay. That's a little arrogant. But that's okay. But when you're selling, when you're at a point where what you're selling is you and what's between your left and right ears, You can either be very arrogant and that's going to appeal to certain number of people or you can simply present information that is relevant to your target audience that demonstrates your core expertise that makes someone say, I think she could help me.
DaveCharest:
You talked a bit about, obviously, you bringing clients on, you're doing your consulting, and you, you know, constant contact kinda comes as part of the package when you're doing that. So I guess what role does constant contact play in the strategies that you're developing from a marketing standpoint, either for yourself or for the clients that you work with?
Lorraine Ball:
What I appreciate about this tool is the fact that it is more than just a, Hey, have a newsletter once a week. I mean, that's a very nice part of it, but where it really always had value for all of the clients that I worked with and what really made me stay so long was the auto response piece because everyone is not your customer. Everyone is not at the same stage in their buying process. Everyone is not interested in the same products and services. So when you get people from all different kinds of ways that they find you and you dump all of them into one email list and you send them all the same email every single week, you're gonna watch your open rates fall.
Lorraine Ball:
You're gonna watch your engagement fall. You're gonna see a lot of unsubscribes. When you start tying different people based on how they come to you to different campaigns and you start sending them information that is relevant to what they're looking for, it has a level of personalization. It feels more like you're talking to them. People love that.
Lorraine Ball:
They love that personal. But it also allows you to deliver the right information at the right time. So I have probably, and I've cleaned them up and now I'm starting to expand them again. I probably have half a dozen different auto response campaigns. If you download information on my inbound marketing, then I have two or three emails that I have set up in a sequence.
Lorraine Ball:
And the beautiful thing is I don't have to stop and write those darn emails every time you express an interest. If we have a conversation about it, I drop you into that list. If you download the appropriate form on the website, my form on my website is integrated with Constant Contact. Please don't ask me about the technical. It's all just magic.
Lorraine Ball:
It works. But I have it set up so that when you download this form, you end up on this list. And then I use the auto response that says, anytime somebody is added to this list, they get these emails in this sequence. And some people just run through the sequence and maybe they open a few, maybe they don't. Great.
Lorraine Ball:
But if you click on certain things in those emails, I use the click to join feature.
DaveCharest:
The click segmentation?
Lorraine Ball:
Click segmentation. And so now I've talked about, hey, I noticed that you downloaded this. That's great. Here's another resource that kind of piggybacks on that. And if you wanna talk about it, maybe consider office hours.
Lorraine Ball:
If they click on office hours and they get to that page, but they don't book an office hour, they're now in a new group. And now they get maybe an additional communication that says, hey. I'm running a special, which I'm running all the time, but it's designed it's only visible to people who have gotten these other emails and now have clicked because now I know they're they're a little bit more interested. They're at a higher level of engagement Because I'm not looking for hundreds and hundreds of customers right now, I can take the time when somebody does that. I can do a little stalking.
Lorraine Ball:
Go look at their website. I can go look for them on LinkedIn. I can engage with them in other ways and do much higher level of interaction. I have a lot of people that apply to be on my podcast. You've been around fifteen years.
Lorraine Ball:
You show up on everybody's list. Okay. Everybody and their brother replies to be on the podcast. I copy all the people who applied. I put them in a in a list.
Lorraine Ball:
They get an email from me that says, hey. Thanks for applying. We're working a couple of months out. Blah blah blah blah blah. If you don't open the email, if you unsubscribe right away, you've already told me something.
Lorraine Ball:
You're not interested in a partnership. I'm not gonna waste any time. Oh, look. You opened the email. Oh, you clicked on the links.
Lorraine Ball:
Alright. Who are you? And now I have a much smaller list of people that I'm paying attention to, and that works for almost all of my clients. It's really good in the home services industry. It's really helpful in any kind of professional sales, accounting, legal, business coaching.
Lorraine Ball:
When you have something out there and people respond and then you kind of give them an opportunity to learn more, who's really learning more? Using that information to then decide where do you spend your limited time to follow-up and communicate? Where are gonna get the biggest bang for your buck?
DaveCharest:
Yeah. I love that way of kind of walking through it a bit because I think sometimes you don't necessarily get it. There is some work in there. There's some steps in there that you do, but I love having the automated pieces in it too allows you to be people often think when you say, like, you you wanna be personalized. Yes.
DaveCharest:
Names, first names, things like that are one thing. Right? But I actually think personalization really comes down to being timely and relevant. And because those things are based on the actions somebody is taking, right, it's about them doing something that indicates an interest in a specific thing. You're able to, I think, even talk to them more frequently, but you know they're gonna be interested in the thing if you take the time to do that.
DaveCharest:
And I love your tip of and I think this is particularly easy, particularly as you're like building where you don't have like these huge numbers, but like you can tailor things that you're doing more so to specific people that are taking those actions by just doing a little work in the background. If you were to give someone just getting started with Constant Contact, maybe this is a client, what's the first thing that you're gonna want them to do?
Lorraine Ball:
Well, you've gotta build a list. Number one, you gotta have people to send it to, but you don't have to wait until you have hundreds and hundreds of people. If you have a hundred people in your database, in your contact list that you feel like you can reach out to because you've had some kind of interaction and we can go on for hours about why getting the list from the Chamber of Commerce does not give you permission to send an email to every one of those people. That's not what I'm talking about. But I'm talking about people that you have some kind of relationship with.
Lorraine Ball:
Don't wait till you have 500. Send an email. See what they're interested in. Always let people know when you go networking and you meet people and you get their business cards, hey, I send out tips on this. Would you mind if I sent you one?
Lorraine Ball:
If if it's not relevant to you, I'm happy to take you off the list or you can unsubscribe. Talk about it. Let people know that you're doing that. Just like the podcast, create a schedule you can live with. And I don't think you have to create original content for your newsletter.
Lorraine Ball:
Remember I said everything starts with your website. So if you've been blogging for a little while, you have content. If you haven't been blogging for a little while, start blogging and then you'll have content. In different product categories, you have a more salesy approach or less salesy approach. As you're sending it, do not treat one newsletter as if it's the only chance you're ever gonna have to talk to people.
Lorraine Ball:
Keep them short. You know, I used to follow the constant contact rule of two pictures, three links, keep it really short. The truth is that people have less time, less attend Well, they have exactly the same amount of time as they've always had. They are less willing to give you their time. Yeah.
Lorraine Ball:
So I think keep it simple. My favorite strategy is one or two sentences from an article with a link to the rest of the article. What if they don't read the article? Well, then they weren't interested and it's okay. Now you know when you shove the whole article at them.
Lorraine Ball:
Did they care? Were they interested? How do you know what to send next week if you don't know what they liked or didn't like in your last email? So those are the kind of things I think I I always encourage people to do right from the beginning.
DaveCharest:
Well, friend, let's recap some items from that conversation. Number one, create automations based on interests. Lorraine highlights the power particularly when leveraging automation to segment audiences and deliver timely, relevant messages. She explains how Constant Contact's automation features allow her to create personalized experiences, track engagement, and move potential clients through the buying process without manually handling every interaction. Now this allows you to be smart about how you follow-up based on engagement and interest and make sure your emails can be more timely and relevant.
DaveCharest:
Number two, use engagement data to decide where to spend your limited time. Lorraine also uses email automation and audience segmentation to identify high interest leads. When someone interacts with her emails, such as clicking on a link or responding to an offer, she knows they are more engaged and prioritizes them for personalized follow-up. She takes the time to research them, check their web website, and engage with them on LinkedIn to build a deeper connection. For example, when someone reaches out about being a guest on her podcast, she applies a similar filtering system.
DaveCharest:
Applicants receive an automated message and their engagements determines her next steps. If they unsubscribe or don't open the email, she moves on. If they engage, she evaluates them further, creating a smaller high value list of people worth her time. Now this targeted approach is particularly effective in service based industries like consulting, accounting, and business coaching where personalized follow ups can lead to stronger client relationships and better business opportunities. And number three, engage your list no matter the size.
DaveCharest:
Now Lorraine reminds us to start emailing. Don't wait until you have a massive list to start sending emails. Even if you have just 100 contacts who've interacted with you in some way, start engaging with them now. The key is to build a list of people who have a real connection with you. When networking, let people know you share valuable tips via email and ask if they'd like to receive them.
DaveCharest:
Always provide an easy way to opt out, ensuring your list is made up of generally interested contacts. The sooner you start emailing, the sooner you'll understand what resonates with your audience. Here's your action item for today, implement click segmentation. With click segmentation in your Constant Contact account, you automatically segment contacts based on clicks within your emails. You can also set up automated emails based on behavior to ensure potential clients receive relevant information at the right time, increasing engagement and conversions.
DaveCharest:
As always, more details in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to ratethispodcast.com/bam. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show.
DaveCharest:
That's ratethispodcast.com/bam. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.