1:04:53
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, hubspot, workflows, question, marketing, email, sales team, crm, automation, making, holly, sales, marketing automation, set, team, bit, linkedin, great, leads, clients, Business broker, Business value builder, M&A consultant.
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Marty Vondrell, Holly McCully, Andrew Deutsch, Ira Bowman, Andrew Cross, Pete Alexander
Damon Pistulka 00:00
runnin, gonna be going gonna be going live here on LinkedIn. Welcome everyone. You’re joining us live on LinkedIn we’re getting going here. You’re joining us live on LinkedIn. We’re getting going here. We’re getting rolling up here. Holly, if you turn on your camera, well let me look here, I might have to put you on stage. That’s exactly what it is. Sometimes it doesn’t do that.
So I’m going to put you up as a presenter. Then we’re ready. Holly’s had some technical challenges today. But you know what, we got the holly backup yet we aren’t even close to the end of our resources here. But for some reason, or Mike was not not cooperating with us. But we got it. She got it figured out to use a different computer and hey, we’re good. We’re here. So
Ira Bowman 00:53
Nelson asked him if you can borrow their computer.
Damon Pistulka 00:56
Exactly, exactly. Well, I just want to welcome everyone once again to the exit your way round table. We we have fun doing this every Thursday. We’re just blessed to have guests like Holly on today talking about email automation, we get to talk a little bit and let people say who they are, what they do that kind of stuff. We do some networking, we have some fun and and we we’d like to roll a lot of good stuff in the chat.
So if you haven’t done it already, hit the chat. If you’re on LinkedIn, tell us where you’re coming to us from where you’re listening at. and ask questions on LinkedIn. We interact there. I’ve got it here to the right, you’ll see me turn over and and go in and out on that. Oh, the remote people are checking back in on me that because they tech support we had him on earlier today. But
01:43
that’s Yeah, that was good. I
Damon Pistulka 01:44
was pretty impressed. They hit me hit me back pretty fast. So if you’re on LinkedIn, tell us where you’re listening at ask questions in there, but and everyone in the audience as usual. Drop your LinkedIn, LinkedIn if you want to ask questions, boom, let’s be doing it and be interactive. So yeah, I’m a little bit excited today. Not just because I don’t know why. I’m sorry, everyone, but I’ve had about a half a pot of coffee already. And I’m ready to go.
Andrew Cross 02:13
miles on your your training, right?
Damon Pistulka 02:16
I did. I did a couple miles on the bike this morning. Just a couple I that’s the lightest light in the morning. But for
Andrew Cross 02:23
anybody who doesn’t know, Damon’s working to get goto marathon. That was his hairy, audacious goal this year?
02:29
Yeah.
02:30
Let’s see. See,
Ira Bowman 02:32
hasn’t set the date? He hasn’t he hasn’t. He hasn’t picked the event. So we picked the event that will know he’s serious.
Damon Pistulka 02:37
Yeah. Well, I see. I’m still working to get up to be able to start the training program for the marathon because you have to be able to run like 45 minutes to start a six month training program. And I’m like, I’m up to about 30.
Ira Bowman 02:51
Yeah, so honestly, David, I should do this with you. In fact, maybe I will. Maybe, yeah, maybe I’ll just commit right here.
Damon Pistulka 02:58
I’ll send you the program because it’s it’s an IT.
Ira Bowman 03:03
Well, I mean, even running in the marathon with you because like, I don’t know that I could run a half hour right now. So yeah, yeah. Cuz I was about to Tz but I’m like, I shouldn’t throw.
Damon Pistulka 03:14
Well, we’ll see. We’ll see. Well, what we’re gonna do today is like, we always start out every day and, and we will see on that thing with a marathon. But I think it’s going to be a fun experience. Nonetheless, what we always start out with on the X era roundtables, letting our guests come up and say a little bit about themselves who they are, what they do, and they get the answer the infamous Question of the day.
So, which is I found a whole bunch more questions that have like, this is like question gold again. So we’re gonna start out with this one. If you didn’t have to work to make money, how would you spend your time? What would you do? Or what would you create? So let’s give that one a shot. And let’s bear start bringing people up on stage.
Ira Bowman 04:02
Can I say more babies?
Damon Pistulka 04:04
You can.
04:10
Eight is enough. Yeah.
Damon Pistulka 04:28
How’s it going, Andrew? going? Good.
04:30
How are you?
Andrew Deutsch 04:30
I’m gonna run a marathon to a movie marathon. I’m gonna watch all the Mel Brooks movies this weekend.
Damon Pistulka 04:35
There you go.
Andrew Deutsch 04:36
That’s the only kind of marathon I’m interested in.
Damon Pistulka 04:39
That’s when I could finish. You don’t have to. Yeah, the trainings a bit different.
Andrew Deutsch 04:45
Yeah, you gotta you gotta prepare the snacks. There’s a lot of prep work for these things, you know? Yeah, that’s so easy.
Ira Bowman 04:51
All right, that’s where my speed and drop come over and join that one anytime.
04:56
will be me in that.
Damon Pistulka 04:59
So Tell us about tell us about fangled tech yourself Andrew and and get to answer the infamous Question of the day
Andrew Deutsch 05:06
the infamous question. Well fangled tech we’re a strategy first marketing and sales consultancy. We help our clients in, in their, in their growth by it the in the ultimate goal converting every touch they have into a voracious advocate for the brand. And we forget to turn our phone off mute, but on mute when we go on meetings, because we like to distract. So, and people who know me know, I have more hobbies than probably any human should have.
So if I didn’t have to earn if I didn’t have to earn a living, I’d probably spend half my day in the glass shop and a third of it maybe in the in the woodshop. And the other third, because I do horrible math and some other fun thing. That’s creative.
05:52
All right, yeah.
Damon Pistulka 05:53
So now when you talk about glass, do you do stained glass? Or what do you do stained glass fused and blow glass blown glass?
Andrew Deutsch 06:00
I don’t blow glass at home. I don’t have a Yeah, at home, I fuse. But I can do all of that. Very cool.
Damon Pistulka 06:08
Very cool. Yeah, it’s good stuff. My mother does a lot of that stained glass. And when I looked at the intricacy of that and how you do it, I didn’t really realize it until I was there a few weeks ago. And it’s it’s pretty cool.
Andrew Deutsch 06:20
Yeah. In reality, if I didn’t have to work, I would open up an artisan training center where people can turn their art into a business and have Mario’s multiple areas with different disciplines where people can rent studio space, make their things and then learn how to sell them and market themselves. That’s really what I would like to do. I just don’t have the funding.
Damon Pistulka 06:40
See, then we got to the base question. That’s cool. That’s cool. Awesome. Awesome. having you here today. Andrew, AJ, glad to have you here again. And you’re coming to us in the evening. so wonderful. Pleasure to be over here. Buddy.
06:59
I’m sorry.
Ira Bowman 07:00
I just had to tell everybody, AJ is my buddy.
07:07
Hey, guys, this is AJ. So I work as a staffing into the IT sector where I help my clients to help fulfill their hiring requirements with the skills they require. Mostly the IT sector like a developers, admins, DevOps and all
07:22
this kind of stuff.
07:24
Coming to the question, so if I don’t need to earn so what I want to do is I’m going to help people who are in need of
07:32
so whatever help I can do that I will be able, I will try to do that.
Damon Pistulka 07:36
Very cool. Very cool. Awesome, man. That that’s great. I think that’s a lot of people. If you could, if you didn’t have to work and just help people every day, it would be it would be something that would be awesome. Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Thanks for being here today. Okay.
07:53
Thanks a lot,
Damon Pistulka 07:54
Kevin. All right. Well, my chat bot keep bumping up from Brad, how are you doing today?
08:00
I’m still breathing. It’s so fun.
Damon Pistulka 08:04
There we go.
08:05
There we go. Well, you’re in Las Vegas, the weather’s probably nice. It’s it’s 43 degrees at the moment but headed towards 60 and this is the low day of the week. So there we are.
Damon Pistulka 08:16
Yeah. Okay, so tell tell us about yourself and then answer the question.
08:24
My my my biggest concern is that I get clients that are that I have to ramp back my ambition for my goal literally is to find out what their limits are, and then help them grow and at zero every time I find a client, someone I’m talking to, I can add zero or two or three to their revenue, right? Then that just makes me happy. What would I do if I didn’t if I didn’t have to, you know, make money right and do this? I think I would upgrade and coach governors I’ve actually been playing with the idea of trying to figure out how to how to coach both evil but both both political parties in this country so they can be ethical again.
09:11
That’s a huge task dude. I
09:15
know you’re ambitious. Why hold yourself back right
09:18
hey, Brad.
Ira Bowman 09:19
World No, he believes in God because I think the only guy can do that. So
Damon Pistulka 09:27
that’s awesome window broad
09:29
IRA if your way I look at myself as this. I am merely an elbow in the plumbing system for the universe’s plumbing program.
Ira Bowman 09:38
I hope I hope arm brother because that’s it. That’s a mission worth fighting for it.
Damon Pistulka 09:44
It is it is that’s for sure. Thanks, rad. awesome to have you today. Dennis Bolger. How are you doing today, man,
09:52
we’d be good. We’re nice. Moving along and having having fun as we do it. The And so what we do is we help people discover their risk. Okay? And then help them manage that risk and pass it off to somebody else. How about that for a different, different way to look at it.
And anyway, we are insurance agents independent, and our helping people be, know what they’ve got as far as insurance, and then help help businesses really become protected properly. So that’s, that’s what we do. And if I wasn’t doing this, I’d probably be doing this. So I enjoy it. And I’m kind of in the background with three guys soon to be four that are building the business and I’m in the background, helping them do what they need to do. Oh,
Damon Pistulka 10:57
nice. Nice. Nice. Good stuff. Dennis. Glad to have you here today. Thank you. And and you know, if you could help me how to pass the risk of me eating too much to somebody else, that would be awesome. I mean, there you go. I just thinking about that when it came up, passing that risk off will be a pretty nice. So who came on first, Andrew? Was it Josh?
Ira Bowman 11:22
Yes, Josh. I think Josh,
Damon Pistulka 11:23
great to see you again.
11:25
Likewise.
Damon Pistulka 11:26
Glad, glad that we’re connected now on untapped. Yeah, that’s really important.
11:30
Make sure you tag me when you check something in.
Damon Pistulka 11:33
I will. I will. So awesome. having you here today. Tell us a little bit about yourself and then answered the question.
11:39
Yep. So I’m Josh, I’m with protocol ad. We’re an inbound marketing agency. Holly can tell you a little bit more about us when she when she talks. So I won’t take her Thunder there. That’s a great question. The question of the day, so if I didn’t have to work, I would travel but I would base my travel around my hobbies. So I would find great place. great places to ride my bike. Eat the best food, beer.
12:06
Who?
Damon Pistulka 12:06
Those would be good days.
12:08
I’m fairly selfish. I guess if I’m looking. I’ll try to help people along the way. But
Ira Bowman 12:14
can you just hear Ron Higgs? And
Damon Pistulka 12:17
I mean, I mean, yeah, yeah, I
Ira Bowman 12:19
think Josh Ron Higgs is your soul mate?
12:22
Oh, yeah. On swappi. Join me. He’s a great guy. Yeah, yeah. I’d love to Maine or Oregon,
12:30
Oregon.
Damon Pistulka 12:32
I’d love to the west. There’s lots of good beers there. Lots of good beers. And yeah, we’ll go. Yeah, the writing and running. so much stuff. Yeah. Cool. Well, thanks so much, Josh. Glad to have you here. And and I’m sure Holly is going to represent protocol at stellar. Lee. That’s not a word. I know. I just made it up in my Yeah, my isms. But awesome. Jill, glad to see you from Portland, Oregon today. Tell us a little bit about yourself, how you’re helping people and answer the question of the day.
13:05
Oh, it’s great to be here. Um, so I provide strategies for companies like small businesses to optimize their performance and productivity. I help them learn how to bring out the best in their people. And if I didn’t have to work similar to Josh, I would travel I love this, explore new places and meet new people. And, and just learn their stories and, and then connect them with other people who need to know their stories.
Damon Pistulka 13:39
Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, awesome to have you here today, Gil. And you know what, I’m excited, because I don’t know if they are there. But here, they’re starting to wrap things up a little bit. And maybe this summer, I’ll even be down in Portland, and we’ll get to get together.
That’d be cool. So Kevin Williams, little quick, they’re awesome. Awesome to have you. awesome to have you here today. And it reminds me too, I want to reach out and talk to you about the data automation and e commerce. I was gonna ask you companies, you know, in there, and because I just have a question, but I’ll pop you an email a little bit later today. So past that, tell us about yourself how you’re helping people in? In answer the question.
Andrew Cross 14:29
Andrew, actually, and I’m a former e commerce brand owner. I just sold actually a couple of brands. And I’m looking to acquire another one. But a lot of my work right now is focused, as David just said on data, automate automation and attribution. In light of privacy changes with Apple in particular, that’s all the looming wave that’s coming for all of you. And it really is.
14:56
And, yeah, so we’re developing a solution that will Allow brands to internally re own their data.
Andrew Cross 15:05
What would I do if I wasn’t working? I love where I live. Park city’s like the promised land. For me. I’m a big cyclist and skier. So I think I would sleep in a little bit, go for a nice ride or a nice ski and then do a lot of what I do right now, which is doing underpaid advisory for small businesses. I really, really enjoy getting into into little businesses and helping amp them up. I’m not particularly good at making money on it. So
15:36
it’d be good to do it as sort of an encore.
Damon Pistulka 15:40
Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. And if people I just gotta say, if people want to know about, I mean, really intensive e commerce stuff. They, you know, DTC, Kevin’s guy. So thanks. Thanks for being here today, Kevin. All right. So we got Marty up. Marty, I muted you because it was mute. It was doing a little bit, but now we’re good.
Marty Vondrell 16:02
Okay. I was wondering about that. I’m trying to fix my mic situation here. This is remos. The only thing that gives me problems on it seems. But if you can hear me, that’s good. We’re done. Yep. So yeah, I’m an EOS implementer. So I won’t spend a lot of time on that tell you guys every, every week or so, what that is, and you probably heard of the book traction. So I’m getting better at just if you hear about the book traction, or you know, somebody that’s reading it, and an entrepreneur, and introduction would be awesome.
I can send them information, the book, you know, tools, and so forth. And this is gonna sound a little, you know, maybe repetitive to some of you, I, I, I would do what I’m doing, I’ve done really well, in my career, I do this because I enjoy it, I don’t do it. You know, when you’re an EOS implementer, you do full day sessions. So I don’t do five full day sessions a week by any stretch, you know, my average is one or two.
And that’s, that’s the perfect amount. So if I was, if I had a little, a few more million, I would probably do a little bit better at delegating and elevating. It’s a tool within us that we use that we talked about, and it’s about delegating the things you don’t like to do so what I’d probably get is a handyman that would do all the things my wife wants me to do around the house build the chicken coop all that stuff without having to be involved at all. That’s that’s probably what I would do. It still have to be more management of the guy, but least side do a little less. But otherwise, I’m pretty I’m pretty happy.
Damon Pistulka 17:31
Yeah, the delegating and elevating. That’d be cool. Like, do
17:35
all the fun.
17:38
There you go, like data bind, guys. And yeah, yep.
Damon Pistulka 17:42
Good stuff. Well, thanks for being here today, Marty. So Michael, glad to see you again. Wonderful having you. Tell us about yourself. How are you helping people? Hey, all right. So
17:54
well i’m i’m at Southern California boy living in in Utah Salt Lake area, I love Park City trying to try to be up by Kevin as much as often as I can. hoping to get a place there one of these days. So we can spend a lot more time skin lm or e commerce space, we help kind of growth stage CPG brands maximize or optimize their online presence and get more customers keep more customers that’s that’s our our business.
And if I didn’t have to work or at the point when I don’t have to I probably like Kevin, you know, I I ski snowboard more and you know, drive at the track more do a little racing, maybe. But then I spent some time I’d like to spend my life working with kids more from real small youth, whether that’s teaching them to snowboard to teaching in school or you know more as they get older, a little bit more mentorship type programs, you know, to really help them kind of get get off on the right foot in this life.
18:57
So it’s kind
18:58
of my my passion. And I’ve I’ve tried to find a way to just do that for a living, you know, a couple few years, but it’s it doesn’t really, it doesn’t provide. Yeah, the way you make money. You know, that’s
Damon Pistulka 19:11
Yeah, exactly. But it’s it’s a great, great thing. And it’s so important. That’s cool, man. That’s cool. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, thanks for being here today like beer. Thank you. All right, Professor Pete Alexander. awesome to see you today. Dude.
19:29
Good morning, Daniel.
Damon Pistulka 19:30
Glad to have you. I’m great, man.
19:34
So I’m great.
Pete Alexander 19:35
I’m glad that you’re continuing to exercise. That’s it. I’m looking forward to seeing you do that finish line on your on your marathon.
19:45
We will we will
Ira Bowman 19:46
see. Start line and the finish line. But
Damon Pistulka 19:49
yeah, what’s closer to the start?
Pete Alexander 19:52
That’s okay. And you gotta if for those of you listening and stuff, if you’ve never seen the movie run Fatboy. Run, you might want to want to do that, because that’s an awesome one for a guy who signed up to do a marathon because his kids wanted him to do it. And it’s hilarious.
Damon Pistulka 20:10
I have to watch that. Yeah.
Pete Alexander 20:13
Oh, my goodness. So good morning. Um, which let’s see, I was trying to remember what the I remember now what the what the question was. Okay. So anyway, I’m Pete Alexander. I’m a popular podcast host. And I empower working professionals to go from mentally and emotionally overwhelmed to better protecting their health and handling challenging situations with grace and success. And, you know, it’s, I’m glad I didn’t go first on this, because I was really thinking about that if I didn’t have to work.
But what I would do is I would lead it lead a group of people. And it probably would be a different group for each one. But some of the same people who would want to say that they were at the top, whatever the highest peak is, of all 50 states, because I love to hike. And so yeah, be very, very low. But some of them would be very high. And want to want to kind of tick off each one of those states and, you know, be able to do that. There’s a there’s a name for it. I read about it once. But that’s what I would. That’s what I would do.
Ira Bowman 21:22
I think that’s awesome. Pete, I would definitely do that with you. In fact, I think we could start at the top of Mount Davis in Oakland.
Pete Alexander 21:32
Unfortunately, though, that’s about the highest peak in California.
Ira Bowman 21:38
We could probably get some beer with with the fear that people like beer.
Damon Pistulka 21:43
Well, I think if I was doing it, I would start in the Midwest, like the highest peak in Kansas.
Ira Bowman 21:51
an elevation of 57 feet.
Damon Pistulka 21:53
Right. Yeah. And
21:54
that’s probably the In and Out Burger or something.
Damon Pistulka 21:57
Yeah. See up over there.
Andrew Cross 22:04
Corn silo?
22:06
Yeah. Yeah, that’s for sure. Awesome. Great stuff. Pete. Glad to have you here. Thanks for being here.
Damon Pistulka 22:15
All right, had to get into the go rate. Right. So we hit on the way out. So we’ve got we’ve got, we’ll, we’ll go ahead and have IRA, then, Andrew, and then myself, and then Holly, you will finish it up. And then we’ll talk about email automation. So go ahead, Ira. All right. So
Ira Bowman 22:37
I think y’all know I, I own Bowman, digital media, Brad was surprised today to find out that my business actually helps other people’s businesses grow their digital audience so that they can run their business. That’s what we do. I typically work with entrepreneurs and smaller companies, I’m talking about, you know, one to five people, teams, usually, they either are not good at or they don’t have time to mess with social media and website building. They’re good at something else. And so I free them up from the marketing stuff so that they can do what they do best.
And then as they get larger, they can hire people, like, you know, Holly, to take over and take them to the next stratosphere, right. So if I had, oh, I was supposed to say this, my service to start at $500 a month. That’s what Brad wanted me to say. So it’s not very much. And you can have all that time that you’re struggling on social media back, and I’ll probably get you better results. So there you go.
What I would do if I didn’t have to earn a living, I would spend more time with this guy right here. Like I love if you can’t tell, I love digital media. I love to create and capture. So I have eight kids and full disclosure, I love to shoot I would take them out in nature, like Joshua’s tree or to the beach to the mountains. Go visit my buddies in Park City. Full disclosure half my family lives in Utah and the other half lives in California. So there we go. So I would take a lot of pictures and I would take movies, and I got a drone. So I would fly my drone more. And basically, I’m a big kid.
Damon Pistulka 24:19
Very cool. Very cool. Thanks, Ira. Great, great to hear from you today. So Andrew, go your next
Andrew Cross 24:29
Well, yeah, you’ve heard it exit your way so Damon and I co founded exit your Weibo five years ago now going on? We help small medium business owners. I know. Yeah, I know. It’s time. Yeah. It has been and we help small medium business owners build their empires and you know, go to, you know, eight digit exits. So, love doing it. If I had less like winning the lottery right? Would you quit your job the day after you win the lottery, you get that kind of freedom. was what it really means. But No, I wouldn’t.
I think the only thing I do different, I might do, I might elevate and delegate a little more. So I have some more time to do the fun stuff, which I already do have a lot of good hobbies, but I probably take more equity in companies and kind of companies to that I think that are working on, you know, especially in the energy space, or something that’s helping the environment or, you know, in those kind of areas that are trying to deal with that kind of battle going on. And I just love doing it, it doesn’t make any difference. I’d rather be in a mentor position, and funding and helping these people succeed. So it was just kind of what we do every day.
Damon Pistulka 25:45
Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Good stuff, Andrew. And you kind of it’s funny, because that’s, that’s what I was actually going to save for a lot of it but yeah, exit your way, we’re helping business owners, you know, create a business that really gives them the freedom and the the value and the legacy they want. So many people get into business and they they are making good money, their businesses are growing, but it’s kind of a soul sucking endeavor.
And we help them get it so it’s not that giving them some more freedom and actually creating the value so they can do the things they want succeeded sell it, whatever they want to do eventually, but really help them get control of their business and make it make it better for them. So and Love it. Love it.
Absolutely love it. I don’t know what the hell else I would do if I wasn’t doing this because I love it so much. I would The only thing I would really if I didn’t have to do it for money. I probably would I would be able to be more virtual because I would like to see you know I make be a real pain in the ass for my kids and my family the rest of my extended family and just I would travel and do this all day
Andrew Cross 26:55
long. Yeah, we get a we get an easier way. Gulfstream
27:00
there we go g
Andrew Cross 27:01
five, so we get around.
Damon Pistulka 27:04
I would I would not show up in the G five and a lot of places where I would go I would just like No way. I want to drive in a car. That’s cool. Yeah, you can meet me, you can beat me. But that’s that’s what I would do. I would do what I do. Yeah, there you go. Exit my RV. I can handle that. Because then you got all set up, right? Just like you’re at home. But you’re not. We could have a
Ira Bowman 27:26
podcast studio next sucker. We could broadcast. You bet. Well, you bet. I
Andrew Cross 27:30
don’t like breaking the bet.
Damon Pistulka 27:33
Yeah. Not quite like that. All right. Well, that’s enough about us and about what we do. But I am so excited today, because if you haven’t heard Holly talked about email automation. I have to say I’ve heard Holly before she’s spoken her manufacturing ecommerce Success Series that we have on Friday. Just enthralled by it. Because when you think about email automation, most people go Oh, crap.
You know, we’re thinking about marketing we’re thinking about and we think about all the technical challenges and the things that do it, but Holly explains it. Well, she she understands it thoroughly and is helping people every day. So Holly, first of all, let you do your introduction of yourself and what you would do answering the questions. But I just want to preface this right for you. Because I do appreciate so much that you’re here sharing your knowledge.
Ira Bowman 28:25
Yeah. Thanks for thanks for doing this.
Damon Pistulka 28:27
Oh, yeah.
Holly McCully 28:29
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here and excited to talk about this again. And hopefully, you guys feel free to chime in with questions. Any time if you have any questions, I’d love to hear from you. I know, Jay was talking about optimizing productivity and that kind of thing.
And I was like, Yes, that’s totally what we’re going to talk about. So I’m really excited to be here with this group. And as Josh mentioned, we’re an inbound marketing agency. So we pretty much help our clients practice in all aspects of inbound primarily in the manufacturing space on the healthcare technology, space, really, anyone with a long sales cycle, and you should be to be industry is really where we thrive. But we like to say inbound is for everyone, we can help any type of business.
So I’m on the strategy side of things. So helping kind of drive the bus in terms of what’s gonna move the needle for clients. So yeah, that’s kind of a little bit about protocol at and if I had free time to do anything, I would probably just continue to move room to room in my house and just renovate it because it seems like after I change something like a month later, I want to change something else. So I think it would just be constantly me putting new coats of paint on the wall flooring, I think it would just be a never ending loop. So thank God I have worked to keep me from knocking down walls in my house all day.
Damon Pistulka 29:46
That’s great. That’s great, Holly. That’s great. And then and I could see where that would happen because you like oh, I’m gonna change that a little bit. Now you go Yeah,
29:54
exactly.
29:54
Totally.
Damon Pistulka 29:56
Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, I’m looking out into I just think I just did we redid some rooms I think I think COVID inspired us. We did like six rooms in our house. So it’s, it’s been a busy couple of couple of years or a year. Yeah, I guess now. So the awesome stuff. Well, Holly, take it away when you’re ready to go. If you want to share a screen, let’s do that. We’ll get people get people educated here.
Holly McCully 30:21
I will share my screen here. This isn’t my laptop. As I mentioned, I’ve had some technical difficulties. So hopefully this goes smoothly. But let me know if you guys can see my screen. Okay, and that kind of thing.
Damon Pistulka 30:35
Yeah, it’s coming up wonderfully. Let’s, let’s see it. They’re really awesome. Awesome.
Holly McCully 30:40
Okay, cool. So here we go. So we’re gonna talk about marketing, email automation, as we talked about, we kind of went through this, like, we’re all working from home, this is me and my cat. She was the one who helped me create strategies throughout 2020.
And now a little bit of 2021, as well, as I split my time, you know, in between the office and being at home. So primarily, I help our clients develop inbound marketing and sales strategies, I help our content team produce, you know, the content that’s going to make that happen. And then I do kind of the analysis and figure out what next steps are to make decisions in the future. So one of the reasons why I’m really passionate about talking about this topic is because ultimately, it’s a time saver.
The things that we’re going to talk about today, when they’re implemented, they say your marketing team time they save your sales team time, they help you organize and automate important info, they help you improve your marketing performance, and they help you delight your leads and customers. So I know I was poking through LinkedIn yesterday. And I can’t remember now who it was. But someone had commented and said, they want to get better about, you know, their email marketing and that kind of thing, because they hate me email marketing, too.
And I totally agree, it’s like the worst. So what we’re mostly going to talk about today is more of kind of the efficiency side of marketing automation, how to save time and less of like how to bother the hell out of your clients, your customers and your prospects. So that’s kind of my goal for today. So just in terms of like what we’re talking about in terms of marketing automation, this really a set of tools designed to streamline and simplify some of the most time consuming responsibilities of the Modern Marketing and Sales roles.
And the reason I included this is I feel like sometimes that gets lost in the conversation of automation, where it’s all about, like, what the results are going to be and less about, like building things in a smart way to actually save your team time. And then the end result, of course, is increasing revenue and maximizing efficiency. When your sales and marketing teams are less tied up, you know, hand writing the same email six times a week, that increases time to make meaningful contact with your customers, and then reduces the amount of time you’re spamming their inboxes.
So that’s kind of, I think, at the heart of what marketing automation is, and why it’s so important. Um, and so what you’re going to need to get started is a CRM. And I know, in the manufacturing space, with a lot of the clients we work with, they kind of come to us and they’re using really just like an Excel system, or kind of like a homegrown, like, I don’t even know amalgamation of different platforms that are on the cloud, and that kind of thing.
But um, 2020, I think taught us that really having stuff in the cloud, having access to reporting, having all your data in one place is really important if your team can’t all be together in person. So having a CRM that supports marketing automation is crucial. And you’re going to hear me talk about a little bit later on, when we’re talking about some examples and that kind of thing. I’m just building these things in an intuitive CRM, something that has closed loop reporting.
So this is really important. If you don’t have a CRM already, if your clients don’t have CRM already, this is definitely the first place to start to make these good time saving decisions. Um, so in terms of finding the CRM that’s best for you, I just included some examples here that include marketing automation, since that’s kind of what we’re focused on. But what we use at protocol Ed, and what we use with our client is HubSpot, just because we’re able to do marketing automation, the CRM as well as social media, closer reporting, landing pages and blog hosting sales and marketing, automation, that kind of thing.
And the reason I mentioned that is one because we use it, and it’s, you know, I think it’s an amazing tool in terms of time saving, so I want to share that with you guys. But also, there are some screenshots a little bit later on of some of these touch points. And that’s the system that the screenshots were taken in. But I would say as I talked about building some of these touch points in that kind of thing. If you’re thinking about, you know, your own CRM, and it’s not supporting some of these things, that might be a good reason to switch.
Because really, it can do so much time saving on its own, even without, you know, practicing any strategies or that kind of thing. So I’m going to talk about two types of workflows or email automation today. So I’m going to talk about internal workflows and external workflows. So these internal workflows I’m talking about, those are happening behind the scenes. These are directly supporting the efficiency goals of your sales and marketing team. And they’re going to eliminate some maintenance minutia tasks and ensure that crucial boxes are checked at the right time. So this is nothing that’s customer facing.
Nothing’s Go into anyone’s inbox, it’s really just all about saving your team time. But then we’re going to talk a little about about your external workflows as well. So this is communication directly with your leads or customers with the goal of eliminating some of the redundant and repetitive email communication, and then ultimately saving your team time, as well as potentially making those touch points a little bit better along the way. And also just keeping the sales process moving and making sure that you’re nurturing all your mq ELLs in SQL. So that’s kind of the two different goals and the two different types of workflows we’re going to talk about today.
So from the internal aspect of things, if you’re like, Yeah, I would love to save my team time. Where do I start? Where do I begin? These are some of the questions that we ask our clients when we look at building some of these things, as well as some things I think, are a good place to start when you’re wanting to onboard this for yourself. So the first place is like, Where are your marketing sales and service teams losing time on a regular basis? What are some tasks that those teams hate to do? And are there recurring instances of missing information or miscommunication among teams? So basically, what’s making them when they think about their job?
And they’re like, if I could do anything in the world, if I didn’t have to work when they’re answering that question, what are those tasks that really push them towards not wanting to say I would keep doing what I’m doing, there’s probably a good chance that some of that can be automated. So that’s really kind of the first place to start. So these are some scenarios what that looks like where we’ve seen success. So for example, sorting contact types, based on domain. So if your sales team is constantly going in and you know, sorting and saying, Okay, this is a competitor, this is a, you know, an educational content, this is a good lead, this is an existing customer.
So you can kind of look that in there. And as things come through your site and that kind of thing, you can have that sorted automatically, you can match companies in their individual contacts together on the same record, so copying info, so if your team members are working with various members of your client teams, you can set workflows to make sure that all that information is matching up, and you’re not chasing down the one record that you ended up putting, you know, a phone number on or something like that.
You can assign contact ownership based on autofill parameters. So this can be anything from you know, location for your sales team, if a contact comes into your website through California, you can automatically assign that to the California sales rep, instead of someone having to go in and do that by hand.
And also setting lifecycle stage based on their activity and putting them on the proper team or team members radar. So if there’s a page on your site that explains what your company does, and you know that the majority of the good leads who have closed in the past year have visited that page, you can, you know, set a task set a reminder, set a workflow, so that your sales team, your marketing teams are notified when certain activity is happening. That way, you know, you’re not dropping any balls, you are able to be right there with the responses needed.
And also just task reminders. So does the marketing team needs to communicate something with the sales team? Do they need to communicate that with you know, engineering, really anyone making sure that you’re setting tasks when a certain thing happens means that someone doesn’t have to go in there and message and remind their team members, every time something occurs, it can happen automatically kind of on the back end of your system. So some examples of what this would look like when set up. For example, if on a contact, you don’t know the phone number, but the company associated with that contact, you have a phone number, you can have a workflow setup.
So your CRM automatically copies that over. And again, that’s just saving your sales team time hunting and pecking going through and trying to find that info, it automatically copies over from record to record. And then so this is an example of how it can also save time in like the pipeline stages. So if you have someone who’s an opportunity, and then you mark it as close one, you can say your sales team time where they don’t have to also go in and set the quotation status to quote accepted, they can just do that automatically. So these are pretty specific examples. But this general rule kind of applies to anything, right?
So if something happens in one part of your CRM, let’s copy that info over to another part of our CRM. So we’re not consistently going in and having to log that. And then anyone on your team at your company can go in and see what’s happening at any given time. And it decreases human error, essentially. So those are, those are some just examples of what we would recommend setting up it just again, just eliminates balls being dropped in that kind of thing. So some general notes on best practices, just making sure that you’re testing what you’ve put into place before assuming it’s functioning correctly.
So obviously, there’s nothing worse than trying to put something efficiently in place to reduce human error and that the human error was in the setup. So just making sure you’re testing it and it’s working the way you want. And also making sure you’re editing notification preferences as much as possible based on the best way for your team to work on something with internal workflows, as well as Is there a sales team member who prefers to get a text to an email, or they prefer a desktop notification, you can tweak all of that and make sure that you’re increasing task management officials. See among your teams just based on editing the notifications to the way that they like to work.
And you can work with your CRM and automation support team, if things start to get pretty complicated. A lot of times, there’s an easier way to accomplish what you’re looking for. So again, if you know you don’t currently have a CRM solution, if you’re looking for a new one, these are the types of things to think about, do they have a strong support team where you could ask, you know, okay, I’m getting pretty convoluted with my workflows, Can someone help me out here, that kind of thing. And there is definitely a time investment upfront to set up all of this infrastructure to set up all of these, you know, different workflows.
But ultimately, in the long run, once you have it sorted and built, it works forever. So you know, it’s kind of like assistant that’s running 24 seven, that you don’t have to pay. So once you kind of put in that time investment, and that monetary investment to invest in this technology and setting it all up, it kind of just works forever. Um, so then moving into some external workflows, so some areas to save efficiency, really similar. So are there any areas where sales or marketing or service feels they wish they could be more thorough with follow up? or older leads being followed up on as much as possible?
And are there gaps where lead follow up is not happening at all? So again, notice that these questions aren’t like, who can we be hitting more with automation? What leads should we be reaching out to actively and again, and again, these are more like, Where are areas where we know we’re dropping the ball, we know that there might be potential, but our team just doesn’t have the time or the resources to put into making those touch points. Good. That’s a really great place to use these types of this type of automation in this type of workflow.
And we’re going to talk a little bit later about personalization and that kind of thing. So it doesn’t seem spammy. But this is really what I recommend the problem being to solve. In Do you have any repeat communication that needs to go out and a certain timeframe for certain groups of contacts. So whether that’s you know, every January, your company has a sale, and you know, you it’s a sales specific to a certain type of space, you know, that is something that could really easily be automated, make sure that that’s going out to everyone who needs to get it, you can drip out the follow up across multiple weeks or months, or whatever works best.
So that’s another great situation as well. And so here’s some examples, again, where we’ve seen success. So one of them is if you’re using an inbound strategy, and you have some great premium content on your website, we’ve got white papers and ebooks, and that kind of thing, just having a form submission, follow up is a really easy one, so that you can drip that out again, over you know, time period.
So your sales team isn’t having to follow up individually on all of these marketing, qualified leads, marketing can help put together the language on that so that they’re a little bit more impactful. And they’ve got, you know, that marketing language with that sales field type of thing. So that’s a great scenario, again, tripping up a dripping contact over a period of time. So it’s not just a one and done follow up. And you can also combine it with task reminders. So that’s sort of like combining your internal and your external workflows.
So doing something where when someone comes in and they download your capabilities guide on your website, you send an initial touch point, and then you set a task reminder, because maybe you’re really interested in the company. But you know, they haven’t raised their hand to talk to sales yet. But maybe in six weeks, you want to set yourself a task reminder to be like, let me check back in and see if they’ve been back on the website, see if there’s anything along those lines where I can reach back out and be helpful to this person.
So that’s kind of a way where you can combine it and you know, do better and also meet your lead where they’re at and you’re following up in a more steady way. As well as activity based marketing, qualified lead, follow up. So again, you’ve got your marketing, qualified leads, and you’ve got your sales, qualified lead sales, people are already really busy. If you’re saddling them with marketing, qualified lead follow up as well, they’re going to get really overwhelmed and probably not follow up at all.
So just kind of doing that activity based follow up again, based on pages seen, based on things submitted, that sort of thing is a great way. And then here’s kind of some tips and takeaways, again for keeping it as human as possible. So using personalization tokens, but I would say this is like the bottom of the barrel. As far as personalization goes, we all know that every company ever who’s using a marketing software has personalization tokens, I would say that’s the bare minimum, it’s really important that they’re there.
But you can’t lean on just that just using that person’s first name or their company name to be all of the personalization in an email. Um, try mixing in some humor, if that’s you know, aligned with your brand, just doing something to make yourself memorable. Try leaving a video voicemail. So this is something that we recommend to our clients whenever possible. So basically, you’ve got your one to one videos that you can lead from a sales perspective, you’ve got your one to see you and you’ve got your one too many.
So let’s say that you have, you know, a specific group of leads that you want to set a workflow for after they download a certain offer on your site and that offers specific to a certain industry. Maybe your sales team member wants to hop on a free tool like Vidyard. And talk about how your company can help that industry as an aspect of follow up feels more personal than just getting a plain old marketing email. That way, when they downloaded something, they’re opening it, they have a nice introduction to your company, and that kind of thing.
So trying out video, voicemails can be a great way to come across as human while you are human, but can it show them that you’re human, and you’re not just somebody who’s trying to pump emails out of them. And make sure that you’re always giving something so sharing resources, assets, free trials, anything. So I think we can all agree when marketing automation is at its worst is when we open an email, and it’s someone asking us for our time it’s active, it’s asking us to, you know, give them something in return for this email that they just sent us and bothered us with.
So we want to make sure that we’re always sharing resources and giving them a purpose for opening that touchpoint. And it feels like a win to them. So they got something out of that. And they weren’t just asked to give their energy and their time, and then ending in a question to start a conversation. So when you are doing this outreach, when you are following up with leads, and that kind of thing ended a question that isn’t just like, Can we hop on the phone for 15 minutes?
And then a question that’s like, what have you been researching lately, um, anything like that it can be more personal. If that’s more of your brand style, it can be more technical, if you’re reaching out to maybe like a technical buyer on the other side of things. It’s a lot psychologically more difficult to ignore email, someone has asked you something about you. Because your brain automatically jumps to answer that question, right. So it’s a lot harder to close out of that than just, you know, a regular email that’s just spammy and that kind of thing.
And you want to make sure that your audience has your experiences at the forefront of all decisions. So when you’re in your CRM, and you’re building these workflows, this marketing automation, you should be able to tweak the settings where if you’re dripping out, follow up, it should be able to tell you that, okay, when this second touch point comes in six weeks, I only want to send that if that six week time frame is on a work day during work hours, right? We don’t want to be sending people emails off to people at three in the morning on a Saturday, we know that’s never gonna work.
So again, just making sure that you’re building that in there as much as possible. And make sure that there’s a clear call to action, you know, tell the user what you want them to do next is it you want me to read this blog is it you want me to watch your video, voicemail, that kind of thing, making sure that you don’t just barrage them with like tons of information about your company. And that’d be like an because they’re never going to respond, they’re not going to know what to do next, I’m just making sure that you’re telling them exactly what you’d like from them.
Again, back to the previous tips, not, hey, I want you to schedule time to talk to me a little bit softer than that with a CTA, but still letting them know the clear kind of objective and goal there and making sure that they’re not enrolled in multiple workflows at once. And that’s a huge one as well, if you know you’re doing this outreach, there might be several contacts who meet several different types of criteria for why you would send a workflow. So just make sure you’re thinking critically about excluding or including people and what those enrollment triggers will be. So that they’re not in like 100 email sequences at once, because that would be very annoying.
And this is especially relevant. If you have tons of different premium offers and guides on your site, there might be someone who comes through and downloads all of them. And if you have, you know, like a six week follow up workflow in every single one of those, they’re going to be getting like 100 emails from you guys. So just making sure you have a way to back check that that’s not happening to any of your leads. And also making sure you’re sending from a human being. This is a pretty common thing to have like an info app or a sales out or marketing ad account. But you know, we all look at that. And we know it’s spammy.
So making sure you’re picking one of your sales reps one of your customer service reps to send these from because it appears more human. And what’s great is if you are using a really intuitive CRM, like HubSpot, you can set your send from in your reply to addresses as different. So if that person replies, it doesn’t necessarily have to go to the person that sent it, it could go to something like an info app or a sales app. So everybody knows that this will be required, if that’s what’s better for your team. So just being mindful of not only how it works, and how it can improve efficiency for your team, but also how it appears on the user. And for you know, the lead who’s getting the email.
And then making sure that every touchpoint has a goal as well as the workflow as a whole. So obviously, with every email we send, it’s like, we want them to reply to the email and then get on the phone with us and we want them to be our customer forever. Let’s put that aside for a second for a second and think about smaller goals and that can really help produce better targeted touchpoints and ultimately improve a better result. So for example, let’s just this one email, we just want them to watch the video. Let’s keep that goal to that. And then maybe the next one, we’re looking for more of a reply, and that kind of thing. So you’re not trying to ask them to do too much in one email.
Again, that kind of comes back to the clear CTA thing as well. But also, you know, you know what you’d like to get out of this and then breaking that down. And working backwards can be really helpful. And then setting KPIs for measuring success, so checking your data regularly, and tweaking your future processes accordingly. So I really kind of hate the phrase set and forget, even though this is all about efficiency, and saving time, you really should never forget, you should, you know, pick a cadence that someone on your team is going in and checking to make sure that these things are actually performing.
Because it’s all well and good that you have these mqm workflows and these touch points built in for your leads. But it means nothing if nobody’s opening them or watching your videos. So whether that’s once a month, you have someone go in and check these KPIs and see where they’re matching your goals once a week. So just making sure that you’re tracking it and then tweaking it, because really, data is your friend when it comes to making better decisions in the future. And don’t forget to test.
So again, I know it’s really exciting after building a campaign and that kind of thing, getting this all together to be like great, it’s launched, it’s gonna start working, like nine times out of 10, something was probably built a little bit wrong. And so you’re gonna have to go back in and tweak it. So grab someone from your team, ask them to create, do whatever that trigger action is, and then make sure you’re testing it and things look okay, from both ends. So that’s crucial. And then sometimes it’s time to make an adjustment. So you’re like, Okay, Holly, I’m doing all of this. I have external workflows, I have, you know, internal workflows, I think everything’s working great.
But it’s just not yielding results. So here’s some things to try if your metrics aren’t quite where you’d like to see them. So if your open rate is low, try adjusting your time of send, maybe, you know, look at your marketing, email data, and maybe even look at times that it seems like you’re getting more interaction on LinkedIn or times where your website is tended to get hit more, and adjusting your time of send based on that potentially trying a couple different things across the board, maybe doing an A B test, just to see, maybe you’re you thought that 99 would be a great time for your audience.
But turns out it’s not. So let’s tweak that that can be a good first place to start, as well as testing different subject lines. So you might settle on a subject line and think it’s awesome. But it might be the subject line. That’s deterring people, but don’t just go through and you know, change every single subject line on all your workflows, try and set up something like an A B test, where half of your audience gets one version, half of your audience gets the other and kind of push and play there until it makes a difference.
Because or else you’re just kind of operating blindly. And you’re not sure what the problem is. And if your click rate is low, try sending better fit next steps. So you know, maybe it’s not clear what you’d actually like them to click on. Or maybe you’re doing too much automation and trying to hit too broad of an audience with this one touch point. And maybe it makes more sense to kind of whittle it down a little bit by industry by contact type, that kind of thing to really make sure that it’s targeted.
And again, that helps to appear more personal and also helps you better marry what they want to see with what you’re giving them. And then also increasing or decreasing the amount of links in a touch point. And I know that that’s really frustrating, probably. But I would say to start, if you are sharing resources, or you’re sharing links, I would say start with no more than three, two or three is probably like a good thing to cap it up. But hey, maybe your audience is really fatigued by clicking links, and you should cap it at one.
Or alternatively, maybe they like to have a more like a bigger option of resources to click. So try five. Again, make sure you’re a be testing make sure making sure you’re having your metrics before and after you make that change. And you can figure out what it is. This really depends on your audience. I wish I could say silver bullet use for links every time put them three sentences apart, but there’s nothing like that. So you’re just going to have to try. And again, try mixing in a one to few video as targeted as you can possibly get it as targeted as as it makes sense for your team where you’re not losing time on these either.
And if people are unsubscribing, try more staggered cadence cadence for follow up. So this is if you did set up a workflow that kind of drips out your automation, try just increasing the time that’s between the touch point you might be fatiguing them that way. And again, making sure not to enroll people in multiple workflows, that can be it as well. So next steps. If these tips, you know sounded good to you, if you’re excited to get started on something like this, here’s my recommendations for what to do ASAP.
If you don’t currently find a CRM, or you don’t currently have CRM, I would recommend starting there finding a CRM and software that works for you. Or if you’re like, my CRM doesn’t do any of this. Maybe it’s time to make a switch and that would be the first place to start. And then next would be determining high priority areas where automation is needed. So sitting down with your team and being like, okay, where are balls being dropped? What leads aren’t getting followed up with what information isn’t being appropriately passed. From team to team, what do you guys hate about your jobs?
In trying to figure out, Okay, let’s see if automation can solve that. And then determine who on your team can accomplish this or if it makes sense to work with an outside party. So that you know that can your marketing team handle this in house? Or does it make sense to, you know, pull in an agency to support here, and then down the line, I would recommend developing a content calendar to log all of your responsibilities and drafts. So and this kind of goes along with outlining KPIs and setting expectations for reporting. So just making sure that both teams can collaborate, because, and I mean, this in the kindest way possible, oftentimes, sales teams are not the best writers.
So if that means that marketing and sales are going to find a collaboration cadence that works for them, so marketing can help support, you know, the the writing aspect of some of these touch points that can be great in a content calendar type setting. And I hope I didn’t offend any any sales numbers, but I know if Josh was still here, he would say the same. And then also research accomplished measure repeats. So again, set and forget, forget that. And you know, make sure that you’re constantly working on improving these types of things, and making sure that you’re hitting the KPIs that you set for yourself.
And I know I talk really fast, everyone’s been telling you that since I’ve been giving presentations since like, third grade, so I can, if it works for Damon, I can share these slides with him, he can share them with you guys, if that’s helpful. And also, if you have any questions, I’m sure we’ll talk about all that next. But then, you know, I’m happy to answer any questions every time anytime my emails there, if I can’t answer it, someone on my team can that’s the blessing of working in an agency. I don’t have to do everything all the time. So yeah, that’s that’s that.
Damon Pistulka 56:46
Awesome, Holly? Well, we can stop the screen share there. And we will, we will take there’s a couple questions that came up, I want to answer those. And I know Andrew is going to be telling us it’s time to quit here. But Khan postel opolis is on LinkedIn, you know, if someone is is in their their solopreneur, you know, what are the first couple things they should do? I think you kind of answered it in Hey, find a CRM. And then and then start to think about your your workflows, but I’ll let you answer it.
Holly McCully 57:21
Yeah, I would say also, one of the first places to start and this is almost even like, like today, like before you even invest in anything, just thinking about those questions about, okay, where am I losing time. And it can really be as simple as figuring out the types of emails that you send multiple times a week, or even multiple times a month, even type up a draft of that, that you feel is the strongest version of that, put that in a Google Doc. And then you have something to copy and paste from everyday. That’s like a non software workflow, not automated, of course. But that’s even like half the battle is just putting in those time saving things for yourself.
And I think diagnosing where those areas are for either yourself if you’re a solopreneur, or for your team. And figuring out how you can help with your existing tools will also help you find a CRM or a software that helps you do that kind of thing.
And maybe you’re looking for something that has more of an emphasis on marketing automation. Or maybe you’re someone who is a social media based business. And so all of your automation is actually like, I hate having to publish LinkedIn posts every day, I want to do something like that. So I think starting there is the best place to begin even before you buy software. But then yeah, looking into software that can properly automate those things would be next.
Damon Pistulka 58:34
Very cool. Very cool. Because the other question I had was specifically around the video emails, and do you find that if you’re sending an email to somebody, and you’ve got a topic based video that’s relevant to the conversation, does that help the engagement on those kind of emails?
Holly McCully 58:54
Yeah, it doesn’t actually, if you put the word video or video voicemail in the subject line, it also increases open rate. So there’s a lot of really good statistics about how video does help improve. And I think for a couple of reasons, not only because all these articles, most statistics say it, but even thinking about it on a human level. Like if someone sends me a video, voicemail, even if I know it’s a marketing email, I’m probably going to at least respond and tell them I’m not interested at this time, instead of just straight up ignoring it.
But like I mentioned with the questions, it’s psychologically harder to ignore someone who’s asked you a question and displayed interest in you. Same with if someone took the time to send you a video, voicemail. They’ve opened it, they see that you did that it’s a lot harder to just be like, yeah, I’m going to never talk to this dude. Of course, you get people who do that. But overall, it does tend to increase those metrics in terms of, you know, click rate, open rate, and like I mentioned, try putting it in the subject line as well, because that does help.
Damon Pistulka 59:48
All right, awesome. Awesome. Well, I didn’t see any additional questions, but I thank you so much, Holly. Holly. McCauley from protocol ad. Thank you so much for being here today and sharing your knowledge.
Ira Bowman 1:00:04
Great presentation.
Damon Pistulka 1:00:05
I love it. And I love I know that HubSpot is a good a good platform to do this from for the if you’re in the right situation and just love that you were able to spend some time and explain this to us because there are so many things in business that we can automate, still keep the human touch in it. Because that’s that’s what we can’t do. I mean, we we’ve gone through that phase of blasting everybody.
And now when you’re getting hundreds of emails a day, you have to have something that’s compelling. That’s that’s a reason for people to interact with you. And do it and make it better like you said, you think about the person receiving it, if you’re really going to provide them some value or some something of interest to them. The automation will allow you to do that tomorrow. So
Ira Bowman 1:00:52
for people who aren’t familiar, HubSpot has a free option. So it’s very limited. It’s it’s HubSpot branded. Right. So it’ll say HubSpot on it. But you can start with HubSpot for free. And then I think their base package is on sale right now for $45 a month, which you can get in relatively inexpensive. Yeah,
Holly McCully 1:01:14
absolutely. In HubSpot isn’t the only way to do it. Of course, it’s our favorite. It’s what we definitely recommend for our customers, mostly because of the closed loop reporting. Like if you’re serious about amping up your marketing efforts, and you’re doing that across multiple channels, something like HubSpot pulls that all together. But if you’re just starting with email marketing, MailChimp can work.
Um, you know, obviously, the more data you’re linking together and feeding into one software, the better. But if not, I don’t mean to make it sound like that’s the only way to go. Definitely. Like I said, start with Google Docs, like something is better than nothing. But yeah, definitely IRA HubSpot. It can be cheap, it can be great. It can also be very robust and very detailed. It’s all about what’s the best fit for your company.
Ira Bowman 1:01:55
You could spend $40,000, a year on HubSpot to so
Damon Pistulka 1:02:00
well, you know, honestly, though, if you spend the money, but it’s worth it, it doesn’t matter. That’s a thing, because you know, everybody is is finding that automation is getting more and more difficult every day. And if HubSpot or whatever you’re using, you know allows you to pull the things together, see how how you’re actually connecting with the people that you’re trying to communicate with? I think it’s it’s well worth the money.
Ira Bowman 1:02:26
Yeah, you got to think about two things, right? The ROI. So your return on investment and your opportunity cost instead of struggling with this stuff. You’re using a system that knows no work. And you can be running your business and making money.
Holly McCully 1:02:39
Absolutely. And I think when you’re in the sales and marketing space, the more data you have, like ROI, first and foremost, of course, but also data like we forget that like we’re not just doing these things to do them. Like something that like one of the biggest values of HubSpot for me is being able to see what pages that good leads land on because traffic is just traffic, right like and if your top traffic pages aren’t actually causing people to convert and are actually helping your sales team, then that’s meaningless.
You just have a lot of people on your website, right. So like to actually track that and make better choices unless you have the data in the first place. And I think sometimes that alone can be a huge reason to invest.
Damon Pistulka 1:03:16
Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Holly. And Andrew, I’ll let you take it away. Because I know we’re getting over time a little bit over time here.
Andrew Cross 1:03:24
Yeah, a little bit. But hey, don’t this is great stuff, though. Holly, thank you very much. Yeah, no, look at Hudson’s CRM, especially for small medium businesses is such a struggle. Because sales, sales force and you know, the big one dynamics and all that really just impossible. You need to hire people to run those and maintain those things. So always find that it’s a great tip. Thank you. Um, one question. What’s the name of the cat?
1:03:54
wasabi.
Damon Pistulka 1:03:56
Wasabi. Awesome.
Andrew Cross 1:03:58
Next week for the roundtable.
1:04:00
If,
Andrew Cross 1:04:01
if y’all got friends hanging around in the background, I got Leo hanging out over here, maybe bring them and we’ll introduce our our companions next week on next. Cool. All right. That’s great. And we will be here back next week. We’re going back to the tables as usual. So we’ll shut off the presentation, folks. But we’ll hang around a little bit if everybody wants to network a little bit. And keep it going. But thanks a lot, Holly. That was awesome.
Damon Pistulka 1:04:30
Yes. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us on LinkedIn live. If you’ve been there commenting, you can always join us on Remo grab the links on on one of our pages and join us here so you can be in the networking. And we are getting off the LinkedIn and we are shutting down the presentation.
