Jennifer Allan's Selling to Your Sphere of Influence - No Sales Pitch Required!

A long time ago (last week? The week before?), I promised to continue a little series I was running about Turning Cheese into Soul - that is - taking yesterday's tired old prospecting techniques and making them less, um, cheesy. Well, I got a little distracted, but it's been driving me NUTS to have the remainder of the series on my to-do list... so, I'm back.

Today's topic is about greeting cards. Specifically, a program called Send Out Cards.* If you aren't familiar with the product/program, it's a greeting card system where you choose a card from an online selection, customize it, and "sign" it... hit SEND and a real, live greeting card goes out in the mail with what appears to be your signature. You can even provide samples of your handwriting and the system will "handwrite" your personal note in the card so that appears to actually have been written by you. Pretty slick.

I've been rather critical of the program for awhile now. I did try it a few years ago, had a negative experience - my cards were sent out twice, thus destroying any notion the recipients might have had as to the authenticity of the cards. I've never used or recommended Send Out Cards again. Here's a blog I wrote on the topic, in fact: http://activerain.com/blogsview/430334/if-you-re-gonna-soi-don-t-over-systemitize-

However, I had a conversation a few weeks ago with my new friend John Lind who might have changed my mind. At least, sorta. Maybe I should say that he opened my eyes to a better way to use the product/program; one that is much more in line with my philosophies of how such things ought to be done.  

John uses his Send Out Cards membership in a decidedly non-dorky/non-cheesy manner. In fact, his use of the program falls right in line with what I teach about staying in touch with your Sphere of Influence. Instead of simply relying on the program to sign and mail a mildly clever, but run-of-the-mill greeting card, he takes the time to use the technology offered by the program to create a truly memorable card - one that will almost certainly make the recipient smile; maybe even LOL!

Here's an example of a card John sent me:

John generated this card after our discussion where I explained why I didn't like the idea of Send(ing) Out Cards. He "wrote" a very nice note on the inside of the card; one that was personal to me and our conversation. I am, in a word, impressed. And yes, I did LOL when I opened it. I even kept it!

Here's another card John did at Thanksgiving...

So, what's the punch line? While it's cheesy (IMO) to rely on technology to do your staying-in-touching FOR you, it's not at all cheesy to use technology to make your staying-in-touching memorable!

See the difference?

Let me know if you have any cool ideas I can steal admire.

* I have nothing to do with the Send Out Cards program - I don't sell it, promote it or distribute it, so the above is definitely not any sort of infomercial for the product. However, I'm sure John would be happy to brainstorm ways that you can make more of an impact with your staying-in-touching! Here's his email address. 

The other day I got a very timely question from my cyber-friend Ron, considering this week's Cheese-to-Soul series.

Ron asked if I knew of a source for good real estate-related newsletter content that would be "meaningful" to his Sphere of Influence (his "SOI"). He's frustrated by the material available for purchase, most of which simply feels canned. Moreover, he's uncomfortable using much of it because it relates to topics he's NOT an expert in, such as tax planning, home staging and credit reports.

I agree. As I may have mentioned a time or two, I refuse to use canned, boilerplate material. I think it's cheesy and dorky. (My definition of Dorky is any written, self-promotional communication that is dull, dry, boring or corporate. Most content-for-purchase pretty much qualifies. )

But let's go back to Ron's quest for real estate information that would be "meaningful" to his SOI.  Here was my response to him:

"Here's the thing - your SOI doesn't have a lot of interest in real estate on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, there's not much in OUR world that would be generally meaningful to people outside of our world, with a few exceptions that come up from time to time.

You want your newsletters to be interesting to your audience, more so than "meaningful." And you know what's interesting to your SOI? Stuff from YOU.  From YOU, their friend, Ron. Maybe an observation about the real estate market, if it's interesting, or to pass on a funny story from your career. Or maybe not related to real estate at all.

I write to my SOI every month in email form, not newsletter form. I want my SOI communications to clearly come from me, not some canned product I bought off a virtual shelf. If newsletters/emails are going to be part of my marketing plan, I'm going to put some effort into them in the hopes of inspiring my friends and acquaintances to think fondly of me, rather than to just simply remember that I sell real estate (and promptly forget)."

So, to pick up from yesterday's blog post on this very topic, remember that the primary goal of your "newsletter" is not to impress, educate or overtly prospect. It's simply to remind the people you know that you exist and that you're a pretty cool guy or gal.

What topics might do that? Well, kinda like blogging, the list is endless... and once you're in the habit, it gets easier and easier to come up with ideas. Here are a few of mine:

Didja' See Me on the News?

Denver Dwellers, what's YOUR special day?

And I thought I was so smart...

I recommend that you always have a notebook with you to scribble down ideas for SOI newsletters - and I think you'll be pleased how quickly your list will grow once you get in the habit.

This seems like a good opportunity for a little SWS plug - I just released my SWS Mega-Toolkit which includes a section of several dozen real-life SOI letters and emails that might give you some ideas for your own 2010 newsletters.

Okay, so that's three blogs on the Art of the Non-Cheesy Newsletter. I think I'll move on now... next up - Greeting Cards! Or... maybe listing presentations... or maybe... heck, I dunno. Just stay tuned!

In yesterday's installment of the Cheese to Soul series,  I commented that I might have half a dozen posts in me about how to create an effective newsletter. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that might actually be true. We'll see how far I get today.

Remember, the goal of a newsletter is to make the recipient of the newsletter smile and think of you fondly. Which is best accomplished not with gardening tips, Just Sold notices or descriptions of your listings, but rather with interesting content that reflects YOU - your voice, your personality. And the best way to do that is to write the content yourself.

Now, don't freak out on me. Writing interesting content YOURSELF is not all that hard, especially if you work under the principle that less is more. As in - don't feel your newsletter has to be formally formatted with a Volume Number, Table of Contents and a three-column layout. Nope. In fact, a simple email-style newsletter will work much better. If you're on my mailing list, you've seen my "newsletters" which are nothing more than me rambling about something, hopefully of interest, with my cute little signature logo at the bottom. No sidebars, very few graphics, and only the occasional sales-pitch (which I usually apologize for).

And, by the way, my newsletters are probably the most important (and effective) self-promotion I do.

Write your newsletters with the goal of inspiring your audience to respond. Responses are good. They open the door to ongoing conversations with your readers and you never know where they'll lead. You're much more likely to get meaningful responses to your newsletters if they're done in a casual format, rather than a formal newsletter format. Whenever I get a newsletter that appears to be professionally-designed, I might be impressed, but I'm not inspired to respond. And, frankly, I make the assumption that the newsletter is mostly boilerplate or sales-pitchy anyway, and not likely to be of interest to me. If I'm pressed for time, I hit DELETE. Which is most of the time.

Make sure your newsletter goes out from YOU - as in, from Your Name. Not from some professional-sounding company or even your fancy tagline. YOUR NAME. Period. I can't tell you how many newsletters I get from people I know, but I'd never know who they were from because the "From" field is a company I've never heard of.  

One last tip for today ... DON'T use a program to send out your emails that doesn't allow replies! I was recently added to an acquaintance's Avon drip campaign and right across the top of my daily marketing email (sigh) is the note:  "PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL. This email box is not equipped to handle correspondence." Sheesh.

So... what might you write about that would be "meaningful" to your audience and inspire them to respond?

You know the drill... stay tuned.