Are you making full use of the name cards you collected? I'm going to show you a simple way to maintain your list and to build a personalized relationship with all the name card owners with just one simple email...
"If you're not networking, you're not working." This statement stands true for every one of us, especially those of us who are looking for business opportunities.
Usually at the end of a networking session, you would have added a stack of name cards to your already huge collection of 100, 500, even 2,000 cards. There seems to be a sense of achievements from here, as though you've collected a limited edition Superman comic book. However, let me ask you this:
* Do you remember who, when and how you gotten the name cards from? How about remembering just 5% of them?
* What are you doing with the name cards?
* How many of them are you still keeping in contact with?
* How many changed their contact detail?
From just these 4 simple questions, you'll know how much these name cards are of value to you and how you've added value to the owners of these name cards. It's not a matter of how many name cards you have, but how many name cards owner you're building quality relationship with.
Although a name card is just a piece of paper with a person's information and contact detail on it. It is however more than that. The person who gave you their name card may become your potential client, your friend, your mentor, even one who gives you opportunities or vice versa. It may not be immediately, depending on what you're currently doing, but these people may be of value to you in the near future. That is if you still remember each other, and able to still keep in contact regardless of any changes in contact detail.
Rather than keeping in touch with just a few name card owners, how about keeping in touch with all of them once in a week? Or at least once a month?
Of course, this would be a difficult feat if you were to call them individually. But it is possible and much easier if you were to contact them in mass via email and best of all, personalized with their names! How cool would that be?
Instead of sending an email:
Subject: It's been some time since we last chat…
Content: Hi, how have you been…
Wouldn't it be great to send this out instead?
Subject: Tom, it's been some time since we last chat…
Content: Hi Tom, how have you been…
By seeing their names, it is unlikely for the recipients to delete the email without looking at it. Furthermore, you can keep in contact with them with a personal touch to the email as though you're communication just with them, instead of having the email message looks like one for mass distribution.
Not only that, it is also possible for you to pre-prepare a list of email messages once and send it out automatically. For example, you can prepare a message that sends out every month automatically asking the people in your database to update their details. And you just need to write the email once.
Of course, you can't do what I mentioned above using your normal email clients / services. This however can be done with Sequential Autoresponder. This can either be a program that you install in your web server, or a web service that you can subscribe to.
For more information about Sequential Autoresponder, you can do a search with the keywords "Sequential Autoresponder" in the search engines, or check out my Internet Resource page at www.vernlai.com.
Vern Lai is an Internet Home Business Expert. |
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