Ep. 292 – Ask Us ANYTHING❓Follow Up FAST or Say Goodbye FOREVER ➕Embarrassing Yourself at Industry Events🫠

Foreign. Welcome to do this, not that the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.

We are back for Ask Us Anything from the do this not that podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode where we tackle one word question and one absolutely ridiculous question each week.

And if you want to submit a question, you would be very cool. You just go to jschwettleson.com there's a button that says podcast, another one that says ask us anything. And we love getting questions.

So let's jump into the work question. First, we got a question from Baker from Atlanta. I love Atlanta, but your airport is bananas. Like, what are you actually doing?

It's like you land, I was just there. And you get from one gate to the other. You're like, okay, I'm going to go do a 5k now. See you later. Because it's ridiculous.

You have seven trains, 14 of those people mover walking things, which, by the way, that's a whole other topic that people annoy me. Get out of the way. Move. Move to the side. I'm trying to get to where I got to go. Anyway, Baker, I could go on about the Atlanta airport forever.

By the way, good burritos there. I like their burritos. What's your question, Jay? My company is terrible at follow up.

Oh, my boss is upset because none of our leads we are getting from content downloads or webinars or whatever are converting. And I think it's because our follow up is all wrong. Any tips to convert better?

Listen, I don't care if you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer.

There is nothing worse than someone raising their hand, attending a webinar, downloading a piece of content, visiting your trade show booth, buying that direct to consumer product the first time, and then you not following up properly, you are screwing it up. Okay? And when you screw that up, that is an epic fail because it's hard to get that person to raise that hand.

So before we get into what you should do after somebody takes that initial engagement action, let's talk about one of the things that probably is the biggest pitfall to avoid, which is related to time. Okay. How fast you get back to a person is everything. Whether you're A business or consumer marketer.

So this is data from World Data Research Follow up communications, primarily email.

So follow up communications sent more than three hours after a lead is generated by a webinar attendance or someone downloading a piece of content convert to pipeline 80% less then leads that are follow up sooner.

So basically if someone downloads something, they attend your webinar and more than three hours pass and you don't send that first follow up communication based on the initial engagement action they took, they're dead to you forever. And on the consumer side, I feel this one so much.

If you don't send out an order confirmation to somebody after they purchased within five minutes of the sale, customer service calls rise by over 300%. I mean that is so me. It's like you buy something and then you don't get the confirmation that it happened. And you keep refreshing your inbox.

You're like, dude, did it go through? Am I going to get the stupid thing I bought? And if more than five minutes pass you're like, oh my God, I gave my credit card. What's going to happen?

This thing is a fraud. It's a gift. And that's why you call. So speed is really, really important. But beyond time, you need to have a great plan, okay? A really great plan.

You need to have that plan in place immediately. You know, at my agency, I have a demand generation agency, that's my primary business.

And we run campaigns for hundreds of consumer and business brands. And everybody on my team knows this, that we will not take a campaign from a client. We will not actually run the campaign.

We'll say we won't do it if that client does not show us the plan and have a plan on how they will follow up as soon as the leads are generated or as soon as the sales are made. And the reason is, is not because I'm some sort of really nice person. I want to make sure they have their act together. No, I get blamed.

Here's what happens in my business all the time.

We'll run a campaign for, I don't know, some business software company, whatever, and they'll get, you know, 500 content downloads and then two weeks will pass and they will not have done anything with those downloads. And then say, oh, we just sent out our follow up Note to the 200, 2,500 leads that you got for us. But they're not converting. The leads stink.

And we're like, no, you waited two weeks. Two weeks ago was six years ago. I don't remember anything from two weeks ago. I definitely don't remember downloading a random piece of content.

So if you don't have a plan in place to immediately follow up, don't send out the campaign. Now, what should you send? Okay, what should you send if someone attends a webinar?

Let's on the business side, if someone attends a webinar or downloads a piece of content, here's what you should not send that everybody sends. Everybody sends that person that downloaded a piece of content or attended a webinar or whatever.

They send them this nice graphical HTML email with more content like, hey, you like that piece of content? Here's another piece of garbage you should download. And it's the least personalized thing on the planet.

Yeah, it's personalized in what the content is, but it doesn't feel like it came from a person. Right. What you want to do and here's the stat. You want to send a letter format email as that first initial touch point after they do the thing.

So letter format emails that reference the original engagement, whatever they did, they attended a webinar, they downloaded a thing.

So letter format emails that reference the original engagement convert to pipeline 200% more than non letter format emails as the first touch point after the original engagement.

You want to send a letter format email and you want it to sound like it's coming from an actual human, not in some boring tone because the person just engaged with you. Now they want to feel like they're engaging with a human. So letter format email is critical right after that first thing.

And on the consumer side, now they bought something, you're not going to necessarily send them a letter format email on the consumer side, but you can be creative. You don't need to just send them more garbage. You can send them something like hey, you just bought this thing.

How about you enter into our unboxing challenge and you get a reward and and you encourage customers to post an unboxing video on social media tagging your brand once they get the thing that they bought and if they do, they're going to be entered in to win some sort of awesome thingamabob, whatever, some special discount code or who name, who knows what.

But if you are just going to send them a generic email, okay, make sure that the product that you are promoting next is not something random, but it is a complimentary product to what they bought. Right. It's a good add on, it has some maybe advanced features that can enhance their experience, whatever.

It's got to be personalized based on what they just bought. Okay?

So, all right, before we get into the ridiculous question, which is totally ridiculous, of course, this podcast is presented by Marigold Marold is my email sending platform. They're awesome. You need to check them out@meetmarold.com you don't like your platform. I feel it. I feel it through how you're listening right now.

If you're a business marketer, consumer marketer, small, medium, large, and you don't have all the bells and whistles, all the AI stuff, all the loyalty stuff in your email sending platform, Marigold is where you need to be. It's who I use. I've been using it for years. I send out billions of emails. You want to check them out@meetmaragold.com?

all right, let's get into the ridiculous question. We got a question in from Avery from Scottsdale. All right, Avery. What's up? Jay?

I just went to an industry event and went up to a speaker after a session to say hi. It was. And on my way. I gotta read this again, Jay. I just went to an entry event and went up to a speaker after a session to say it was great.

And I tripped and spilled my coffee all over the speaker. And I am mortified. Have you ever embarrassed yourself at an event? Oh, my God. I embarrass myself all the time. I'll tell you, okay?

So at an industry event, I'll tell you a couple of things I've done at industry events that are literally more embarrassing than anything you'll ever do. Number one, this is my all time best embarrassing industry event story. So I was at some conference, okay? And I was in my room.

I didn't want to go out for dinner, and I was hungry. I ordered room service to my room, okay? And they bring the room service to my room. And I ate the dinner in my room in my boxers. All right?

That's all I was in, was in my boxers. And. And. And then I finished my food, okay? And then I. I go to put my food outside my room. I had no shirt on, I had no shoes.

And, you know, these are like Tommy John boxers. These are like fitting boxers. You know what I mean? And then when I go to put the food outside my room, all of a sudden, here, cook.

And the door closed behind me, okay? Now I'm in the hallway. I'm in the hallway in the hotel. And I did the dumbest thing ever.

I knocked on the door, which is very weird because I was the only person in the room. I don't know why I knocked on the door, but I Was in shock. Now I'm in the hallway at this massive industry event.

I'm in the hotel that everybody's staying in. The entire event is staying in this one hotel. And I'm in my Tommy John shorts, you know, boxer things, boxer briefs. That's it. No phone, no key, zero.

And so I had no choice. I said, screw it, we're going to the front desk. So I march the elevator, get in the elevator. I see people in the elevator from the event.

Great, that was horrible. I go down to the front desk. And then the most amazing thing, the guy at the front desk goes, how can I help you?

And I'm like, are you kidding me, bro? I just got locked out of my room. And then the thing that Will has always stuck in my mind, that blew my mind. Some dude came up to me.

I'm standing at this thing, there's all these people in the industry. I'm getting side eye from everybody, okay? And I'm in my boxer briefs. That's it. Some dude comes up to me, goes, hey, Jay, what's going on, man?

Wanted to connect with you, whatever. As if I was wearing fully closed. He did not acknowledge what I was wearing. I'm like, what is actually wrong with you, dude?

And so I got my key, I went to the room that was that and the other one, which was not nearly as bad as that, because there's nothing as bad as that. I'll never forget one of the first speeches I ever gave at a conference. I had the slide deck put together, and it was about email marketing.

And I had a bunch of slides on why I thought Target was doing its terrible job with their email market. I put up like three slides about different emails from Target, you know, the big store that you go to, Target. And I shredded them, right?

Shredded them. And I could tell the people in the front row, there's a lot of people in the room. People in the front row were not.

You could just see they were angry. I don't know why, but they were angry. I'm like, what's going on?

So then after the session ends, those five people stood up and one of them walked towards me. I go, hi. They go, hi, we're with Target. I go, oh, my God. Oh, no. And there was like a junior person that were like senior people. And she.

And she comes up to me, she goes, I just want you know, I was in charge of that campaign. Thanks a lot. And walked away. I felt terrible. Oh, my God, it was so embarrassing. I followed up because I could.

They gave me a list of everyone that was at the session and I tried to track them down and apologize. Forget it. 0 and I love you Target. I love your emails. I'm so sorry to those people. Anyway, don't do that. Listen, I appreciate you being here.

If you if you don't mind, follow subscribe to the show. It matters. It helps us circulate it. You are awesome and I love Target. Later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice, but the party's not over.

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