Being consistent in your business is one of the critical factors for ensuring long-term growth, and one of the ways to ensure consistency is to create systems. Everything you do in your business, from responding to emails to working with clients, needs to be systemized and documented, so that it’s very easy to create a repeatable process in your business.
This consistency is what builds the like, know, and trust factor with your clients, and so ensures that you continue to build your client base.
When you don’t have proper and well-thought out systems in your business, mistakes happen. One of the areas where I see this happening is in sending out your email broadcasts, whether you’re a do-it-yourself business owner, or whether you have a virtual assistant doing this for you.
Just some of the mistakes that can happen are:
- Bad links in emails – they go to the wrong page, or they don’t work.
- The wrong email template being used.
- Emails going out at the wrong time.
If you’ve experienced these, or any other mistakes, in your email broadcasts you know just how frustrating that can be. And once that email has gone out, there’s no getting it back!
So, to avoid these mistakes happening in the future, create a checklist for what needs to happen when sending out an email broadcast. Here are five areas where you can create a checklist and so ensure that when your broadcast does get sent, it does so with the RIGHT information:
1. The Content. Who is writing the content? What is the content going to be about? Who needs to receive the content (team member)? When do they need to receive the content in order to prepare the broadcast in time? These are just some of the critical areas you need to be aware of, and be clear on, so that the right information gets sent out at the right time.
2. Look and Feel. Some people have a different HTML template for their solo broadcasts than they do their newsletter. So specify which HTML template is to be used for which broadcast. And in some cases, a simple Text-only broadcast is relevant. With all of the list management services you have the option of sending out your broadcasts in either HTML, Plain Text, or MIME (a technical term that stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) and basically this means sending out your broadcast in both HTML and Plain Text versions. I always recommend using the MIME format – yes it’s more work – but it means your email has a higher chance of being delivered and is less likely to be classed as spam, because you’ve taken the time to create both formats.
3. Check Any Links and Other Relevant Information. If the broadcast is for a teleclass or other event, are the telephone numbers listed correct? If it’s your ezine or other broadcast, are all links correct? There’s nothing worse than sending out a broadcast with an incorrect phone number or bad link and then having to resend it again because you made a mistake the first time. It doesn’t look good for your business.
4. Proof Read. If you’re handing your broadcast over to a team member, ask them to proof read it too for any spelling or grammatical errors. If you’re doing it yourself, ask a family member or friend to proof read for you. A fresh pair of eyes can spot any mistakes that you’ve overlooked.
5. Send a Test. Many of the list management services give you the option of sending a test broadcast beforehand. This is a great way to check layout, formatting, links, and other relevant information. So ensure that sending a test broadcast is part of your system.
Creating a broadcast checklist is just one of the ways you can start to systemize your business, and so begin to build that all-important Standard Operations Procedure (SOP).
