It’s Important to be Regular

June 10th, 2008 Chris Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

When I was at Entrust, we started the blog thing. It was an pretty much a complete flop. Why? It’s not that I wasn’t passionate about the topic (OK – it was Internet security but I am a geek). It’s not that I was completely unknown in the industry. It’s that I was lam-mo with respect to posting.

I would typically post with a flurry – at least relative to my droughts which often lasted for a few weeks. So even with pull technologies like RSS readers that make it easy to go and get articles, I didn’t do it regularly and it never took off.

In our current business, our model is such that we first establish communication with prospects via a regular newsletter. We don’t have a sales force so we only make money when we sell to that base – that means it’s critical to be regular.

Why? Database atrophy. For every month that goes by without connecting to your base, you lose 10%. I’ll say it again – every month that you don’t touch your database, you lose 10% of those prospects. That’s a disaster.

I’ll talk about just how frequent is frequent enough – without being a pain, but it also pays to be consistent. Sending an email twice one week, then none for two weeks, then one email, etc… leads to prospects not having any expectation on when they will be hearing from you and they definitely won’t go looking.

As an example, we recently switched our newsletter from twice a month to every two weeks. Believe it or not, our open rates went up. The twice a month thing meant that it was always hard to predict when the newsletter would arrive – just like you always have to check the calendar if you are paid twice a month (when is the 15th, does it fall on a weekend, etc…). Once every two weeks is much more predictable – if it didn’t arrive last week, it will arrive this week!

So, are you touching your base regularly or are they atrophying?

C.

P. S. I’m sure there is some irony in this topic with respect to this blog. For this reason, I’ve made the commitment now to post regularly – every Tuesday and Thursday – versus the hap-hazard ways of my past. If you have a blog, you’re really supposed to blog every day but I know myself well enough to know I won’t. Remember if it starts with a “T” – come learn with me (barf…).