Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Made in the UK for HR consultants worldwide. You're listening to the HR Marketing Guys podcast.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hello, James here and welcome to this week's podcast episode. Your email list of opt in contacts is the most valuable marketing asset that you can build for yourself. So in this week's main event, I'm going to explain how you can create your very own email marketing list and the best way to keep in touch with your lovely contacts. And in today's thought of the week, I'm going to address why lots of consultants I know are embarrassed about marketing their consultancy and what you should remember instead.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: So let's jump straight in this week's main event.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Email is one of the most powerful yet underutilized marketing channels for HR consultants. And your email list of opt in contacts is the most valuable marketing asset that you can build for yourself. It's your future gold mine because. Because these people are most likely to buy from you in the future. The bigger your list is, the more relationships you have and the more clients you'll win as a result. But so many consultants I know shy away from creating an email list because they don't know where to get started, the best CRM to use and how it all works. So that's why in today's main event, I'm going to explain how you can create your own email marketing list and the best way to keep in touch with your contacts. So let's get started by defining what is classed as an opt in. Technically speaking, an opt in is when someone has given you their permission for you to contact them, either by completing a form or by interacting with you in a way that could be interpreted as an opt in. When thinking about who you can add to your opt in list, the first thing you need to decide is what your definition of an opt in is for this exercise. So if you're new to email marketing, it's unlikely that you'll have loads of people ready to go that have completed a form and given you their express permission to contact them in the future. So when creating a list from scratch, we have to think a little bit more flexibly and create our own definition of what an opt in is for this exercise. As a loose definition, I would say that anyone that has booked a call in with you, given you their business card, or you've had some sort of conversation with, or you've worked together in some way would qualify. So past and current clients would definitely go into your list. You'll probably be amazed at the amount of work that comes out of the woodwork when you start emailing past clients on a regular basis. People who have subscribed to your LinkedIn newsletter. I would class as an opt in to anyone that has given you their details or business card in the past, whether that's at a networking event or booking an appointment in to speak with you. All of these people have signaled enough interest, in my opinion, to be added to your opt in list to begin with. So what I would do is go on a contact hunt and create a spreadsheet of anyone that would fit into this qualification criteria. Once you've created your initial spreadsheet of contacts, I would then go through to make sure you're likely able to help them with their HR in the future. What you're basically doing here is qualifying that interest in your future services. I'd rather you get started with a really small list of just 50 contacts that meet both your definition of what an opt in is and are likely interested in your services in the future, rather than creating a list of hundreds of people that will never buy from you. Not only does this make great marketing sense, it's also a really practical way to think about list hygiene too. In email marketing, list hygiene is one of the most important things you can maintain, not only from a quality of lead point of view, but most importantly from an email deliverability point of view too. For email marketing to work, your emails have to get through to people, and when you send emails to people who are never going to open them, this would affect your future email deliverability. And that's bad. So that's why it's important to make sure your contacts have been qualified to begin with and you maintain list hygiene in the future. Technically speaking. Again, you shouldn't email someone that is opened or clicked on your emails for three months, and if they stopped engaging with your emails, you should send a re engagement campaign to them to see if they want you to stay in touch. I've personally bought clever software to help me manage my list hygiene and it integrates with my CRM. But most email senders and CRMs can run these reports and it's very easy to include or exclude people from your emails depending on their engagement. I can dive into this a lot more if I wanted to, but for the sake of this podcast, I'm going to leave it here as an FYI for you. Your takeaway here is that your list should only include people who are engaged. Okay, so now we've spoken about what your definition of an opt in is and the importance of only including and keeping engaged contacts in your list. I'm sure you're probably wondering about the legalities of this, so let's talk about cold email marketing first. So this is emailing people that have never heard about you before. In the UK we have GDPR to think about and in the US we have the Can Spam Act. Now, based on my experience, it's my understanding, and I'm choosing those words very carefully, that you can legally send cold emails to other businesses without permission as long as you can prove legitimate interest and follow cold email best practices like always offering an output. So when it comes to creating your opt in list, I think you can confidently go ahead and start emailing these people based on the fact that one you have legitimate interest and two you have had some sort of relationship with them in the past and they've signaled an interest in your services. If they don't want to hear from you, they will do one of three things. They'll either ignore your emails and you'll stop sending emails to them after three months. Following your list hygiene protocol, they'll opt out themselves or they'll send you a reply back saying stop contacting me and you'll opt them out yourself. This is completely normal and nothing to overthink or worry about and it's highly unlikely that you'll ever get in trouble from the email police. Okay, so now that you have your list, you've double checked it and you're happy to start sending emails. You'll now need to set something up like an email email sender or CRM to send the emails for you. You'll use software like this to send multiple emails at the same time to make your life easier as opposed to sending 100 plus emails manually like I know some consultants to have done in the past. Now I've done loads of research on CRMs. I've created a whole podcast episode on the research too if you want to check out episode four. Long story short, there aren't many CRMs out there that can manage both client delivery and marketing well. For an all in one solution, HubSpot is probably the best on the market, but it's expensive. We've found that Capsule CRM is the best for client management and for marketing. CRM I'm recommending Active Campaign. At the moment it's like 15amonth and has all of the features you need from a CRM. And then if you're looking for just an email sender, the mailchimp is probably the best one to use because you get a bunch of free contacts. If you have A small list and you're just starting out. Just get mailchimp. Make your life easy. If you're a little bit more established and you want a scalable marketing CRM for the future, take a look at Active Campaign. Or if you want to be really bougie, then you can check out HubSpot again. I could spend a lot more time talking about the different options, but for the sake of this podcast I'm going to leave it here. I am launching a brand new company called Software for HR Consultants that will help you with all of this in more detail. So please let me know if you'd like to sign up for updates about our launches. Okay, so now you have everything you need to start emailing your opted in list of contacts. What's the best way to actually keep in touch with them? Well, this is super easy. I recommend emailing your list at least once a week and the goal is always to add value when it comes to creating content. The best way to get started is by making a big list of problems or questions that business owners have about hr. These questions and problems are your subject lines and in your emails you're going to answer them. In terms of email design, I know lots of consultants that want to have a beautifully designed email and templates that go out. My advice is just to keep them plain text like a normal email that you send on a day to day basis. Why? Well, as soon as you start adding lots of images and graphics, it's an email deliverability red flag and you can never guarantee that they're going to load the same for the end user as what they do for you in the design process. So just keep it simple, plain text for the win and answer the problems and questions that business owners have. So I think that's all you need to know right now to get started. To summarize, emails are a really important marketing channel to use to increase your brand awareness. And hopefully this podcast has given you an idea on how you can get started. To help you more, there's a number of different services that we can offer. The first is the HR Marketing Box Kickstarter do it Yourself package. So to start marketing your consultancy, there's actually quite a lot of things that you need to set up and optimize like your website for blogs and SEO, your Google business profile, your personal and company LinkedIn page and LinkedIn newsletter and an email list and CRM. Like we've spoken about today, we've recognized that this can be really daunting. So to help you we've created tons of resources to help you set up and optimize the most effective marketing channels that you need to increase your brand awareness. We then have the HR Marketing Box Kickstarter done for you package. So this is a one month program where we will set everything up. You need to do your brand awareness marketing and then we have the HR Marketing Box which is an online library full of ready to use marketing content and ideas, think newsletters, guides, LinkedIn posts, and lots of emails you can use to keep in touch with your lovely new contact list. For more help about creating an email marketing list or for more information about any of the services just mentioned, please Visit my website thehrmarketingguy.com and book in.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: A call James is Thought of the.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: Week I know lots of consultants who get really worried and almost embarrassed about marketing their consultancy and especially posting on LinkedIn. It's a really common thing I come across. Whether they're a startup or an established consultancy owner just starting to properly market themselves. Putting you, your brand and your words out there for everyone to see can be really daunting and there's lots of reasons why. Maybe you have imposter syndrome. Maybe you're worried about what your past colleagues or other HR consultants might think. Maybe you don't have a clear content strategy. Or maybe you're worried that no one will like or comment on your posts. These are all very real issues that we all struggle with when it comes to our marketing, including myself. So if you felt like this, or you're currently feeling like this, then I want you to remember three things. The first is who you are. You are an experienced, seasoned, talented and knowledgeable HR expert. You have years of experience behind you. You've been there, you've seen it all, and you know how to handle the most complex people problems. You've got a body of work to back that up, whether or not you've ever posted about it online and you've delivered results and made a huge difference to the organizations you've worked with. Basically, I want you to remember that you are an HR superhero. Okay? The next thing I want you to remember is who you're helping as an independent HR consultant. You're helping ambitious business owners who don't have a Scooby Doo about managing people. In fact, the majority of business owners are absolutely terrible at managing their people and they have no idea how to leverage their greatest asset to help them achieve their goals. And that leads me nicely onto the third thing I want you to remember, and that's your consultancy's mission Your consultancy's mission is to work as a strategic partner and help business owners achieve their goals. So when it comes to your own marketing, this is where you're speaking from. You're an experienced HR expert helping inexperienced business owners manage their company and people. This alone should give you the confidence you need to speak up and start marketing your consultancy. In terms of creating content, you need to think about what's going to add the most value. And you can simply do this by thinking about every problem and question a business owner has when it comes to running and growing their company. It's your job to answer these problems and questions. So the next time you're nervous about marketing or consultancy, whether that's because of Imposter syndrome or what other people are thinking, I want you to remember who you are, who you're working with, and why. Like RuPaul, a famous drag queen once said, if they ain't paying your bills, pay them no mind. Can I get an amen to that?
[00:12:19] Speaker A: You've been listening to the HR Marketing Guys podcast, helping you to get new clients and create a life you love.
