New(ish) to it all! Hi! My name is Michelle, and I'm in my mid-50's. I only tell you that so you know I'm not new to EVERYTHING, just everything on CC! LOL! However, I am a designer, and while you'd think marketing should be a part of that - it's not! I've had my own business at least part-time since 2008. In 2017, I restructured and became independently wealthy! Ok, maybe not... but I did at least become self-employed full-time! Most of my work has been subcontracting to contractors and builders that I've met or been introduced to, so marketing has not been a huge issue. Welcome to 2020 and the pandemic effect. What had been a pretty constant stream of work went down to a trickle, and then a drought! I needed to get some marketing knowledge, and quickly! So what did I do? Everything wrong, apparently. I've gone to webinars, read every article I could get my hands on, signed up for seminars and paid events, even bought a couple of books. I went so far as to hire a website design team that was supposed to help me convert my site to leads. Did any of it work? NO! So I started to think of things I could do myself, without having to shell out thousands of dollars with no ROI (Return On Investment. See - I told you I did some reading!). I knew I had a bunch of contacts, but they were spread all over the place, with no real format or function. I wasn't sure what to do, so I asked some very smart friends for their advice. I would say about 75% suggested Constant Contact! Turns out I had used Constant Contact many years ago in one of my previous positions. This was probably very near the start of CC, so I'm sure things were MUCH different then - especially since the email marketing landscape seems to change on a daily basis anymore. While I remember CC being quite helpful, I did NOT remember any of the details, so I have to start from scratch. I knew I wanted to get started this week, so I signed up last week and gave myself a lot of homework over the weekend! I've literally scanned in about 400 business cards, rounded up contacts from all my accounts and files, and even went through an old rolodex that I was using several years ago (I know, I know... I'm showing my age here!). For those of you who don't know, a Rolodex is the analog version of your contacts list. Hard copy. Sits on your desktop. Not the desktop on your computer. Honestly, at this point, doing all of that was MUCH harder than actually launching my first campaign! I've been able to udpate, edit, and sort all my contacts into several different lists so that I can send targeted emails, and with the CC Design Template that you did for me, I'm off and running! I actually sent my first test campaign to some friends and family! And while I had to send a 2nd one immediately due to an auto-fill error (watch out for that, by the way!), I've already received some feedback from my test subjects, and can't wait to hear more! While I don't have any reportable results yet, I'm pretty hopeful at this stage! Add in the fact that I can post to ALL of my social media accounts from one source (which I've been trying to figure out how to do!), and this might just be the best thing I've done for my business in years! I'll keep you posted on the results, if you're interested. I haven't sent anything to all my business contacts yet, so there's still some stuff to do. Thanks for the system - I'm really glad I made the decision to give it a try! P.S. - I just read the other "replies" on this thread - sorry mine is so long! LOL!
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