Have You Reached a Plateau with Your Communication?

An Audio Version for Your  Convenience

Word of the Week: Communication
“ … the imparting or exchanging of information or news.”

This is week 07 – Are your marketing efforts falling on deaf ears? …A hearing aid is not the answer.  

The painful truth: if you are communicating with your database regularly and there is not a lot of exchange going on, then you are having a “come to the truth moment”.  It’s simple, your communication efforts may have reached a plateau.  Your messages are falling on deaf ears and you have to figure out a fix.

Let’s step back momentarily, to our earlier comparison of physical fitness and database fitness.
If your physical fitness workout is not continually evolving to keep up with the increases in strength and endurance that your body is making, plateaus will occur.  The natural fix is to look very carefully at each action you are taking. Your diet, your activities, your mindset, and your spiritual outlook; any or all could affect the positive outcome of moving forward. 

When you are able to identify the area that is polluting your quest for victory, you’ll have very little trouble pushing forward and gaining control of your original intent. Your desire will help you stay on track to avoid plateaus.

“Desire” leads us back to our concept of Database Fitness and your business goals.  Because learning what’s holding you back is not enough to move you off the plateau.  You must have the desire to either let it go of a negative and/or embrace a positive to move forward.   ​

Let me share an example from one of our small business clients, whose communication efforts appear to have reached a plateau. We’ll call her Beth. Beth is a service provider. She produces a weekly newsletter, and she tracks her statistics monthly.

• She currently has approx. 500 contacts in her database.
• She attracts approx. 3–5 new contacts each week.
• She tags and segments her contacts; and delivers up to 100%.   
• She structures her messages to meet her clients pains/desires.

Now let’s look at some statistics Beth is seeing in her database:

• 31% of her database opened her most recent communication.
• 10% of her database clicked on her Call-to-Action (CTA)
• These statistics have remain fairly constant for 60 days….

Beth’s overall desire is to increase the clicks to her CTA to a min of 50%. Since we know that more opens will increase the possibilities of more clicks on her CTA it’s a good idea to look carefully at the 300+ contacts who did not open her communication and determine:

• · how many of the 300+ in her database may be duplicates.
• · how many NEVER opened ANY of Beth’s communications.
• · how many still match Beth’s definition of an “Ideal Client”.
• · how many are worth re-engagement.

In summary: Even if you are using a so-called “free” CRM database system, your time and talent for running the system is too valuable to spend it on people who are not engaging. Revisit your definition of your Ideal Audience. Make the choice to extract people who are not engaging. Make the commitment to put in the work required to attract more ideal clients to your database. 

The marvelous truth:. When you are communicating the right message to the right audience your open rates and the clicks to your CTA will be unmistakable!

If your database system is a spreadsheet, or if you are uncertain of the right CRM system for your business and marketing needs, we are ready and able to help guide you.  Let’s chat.

Database Fitness = Business Growth