I have been kicking around the idea of offering a free eCourse for a few months. The inspiration for the idea was a result of participating in the ProBlogger’s original – How to Build a Better Blog in 31 Days. ( It was a free eCourse, now it is a book)
The original concept was cool: Sign up, get an email, link to a blog post, comment, join a forum, read other comments, get an assignment, share what you learn, and the cycle starts again.
I thought it was a great way to engage readers , show off what I know, pick up a few book sales, and possibly a client along the way. With the launch of our new website behind us, I was ready to get started.
An avid Constant Contact user, I was disappointed to discover I could create up to 15 auto responders, but only have 5 active at any given time. (That doesn’t work well for someone planning a Ten Week course)
And so the hunt began for another, affordable resource. I was delighted to find, locally developed Address Two now offers a campaign function. Still in Beta, there have been a few quirks, but developer, Nick Carter doesn’t sleep. My requests, questions, and even the occasional complaints are answered, and fixed, often before I log in again.
What is AddressTwo? The short answer: A simple CRM tool, for someone not big enough for Goldmine, or Salesforce. With the help of the campaign tool, I have a set of 10 emails, preprogrammed to be delivered once a week. Each email is connected to a blog post.
As new people download the business plan outline they are added to a new group, and begin receiving the sequence. I can have as many individuals or groups growing through the program, all at different stages.
How is it working so far? Since I sent out the first invitations a tendays ago, I have about 60 people enrolled in one of four groups. Will I see additional business? That is the plan, but atleast for now, I have 60 people being invited to come back to my website for new content each week, and about 1/2 of them are making the return visit so far.
There are lots of applications for this type of campaign, and if we can get all the bugs worked out, we are going to try it out on a few clients as well.
What’s a CRM?
If you’re curious what a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) package does, AddressTwo has done a great job of documenting what a CRM is it in this video: