MySQL Point

One of the questions I’m asked most often by my clients is, “How can I most quickly build my business?” The answer is to spend more time mining your database. It is often said that the money is in your database. Here’s how to mine yours with these four easy steps that can quickly build your bottom line.

STEP 1: Capture Every Contact with a Note

Create a category system that incorporates your personal shorthand for dividing contacts by niche. When you receive business cards, write a quick note on the back or front of the card using your category system. For example, if you are preparing to launch a new product that targets men and women between the ages of 25 and 45 with incomes over $75,000, that’s too much information to write on the back of a business card. Instead, you can invent your own shorthand to write, say, “Code-75+. ” Then, when you add your new contact to your existing database, the information will already be properly coded by you.

Why do this? First, this is what major research marketing companies do for a hefty price. They want to keep your prospect and client lists as narrow and niche-focused as possible. The more focused and niche-focused your group of contacts, the higher percentage of sales conversions you will enjoy.

Here’s the math:

Product/Service + Niche Marketing = Higher Level of Sales Conversions.

Second, finding and categorizing niches allows you to mine contacts and group by similar wants and needs. I highly recommend using the shopping cart Kickstartcart, which does everything you need to communicate and track business and potential business over the Internet.

Third, the more niche-focused and deep you go within a group, the more likely you are to discover trends that will help you develop products and services to better meet the specific needs and interests of your clients and potential clients. In many cases, you will be able to provide these extras before they ask.

STEP 2: Create Specific Categories

One of the smartest ways to provide products or services that your prospects and clients want is to ASK them. An inexpensive way to do this is to prepare a survey to send to your database. At www. surveymonkey. com, you’ll find sample surveys and dozens of helpful links. You’ll be amazed at how much marketing information you will find from your survey. Your findings will help generate specific categories for you to follow.

STEP 3: Go Deep Within Your Groups

Even though I know the hot trend in business is the paperless office, I still like keeping business cards. You can scan them into your computer, or you can keep the cards in plastic holders in a large binder. I have several binders.

Here’s how keeping those cards on hand allowed me to successfully go deeper into niche categories I already had created. As I was marketing my first Branding & Productivity Boot Camp, I revisited some of my business cards, even though niche information already had been captured by my KickStartCart database. I wanted to go deeper.

In my case, I discovered a business card on which I’d written a note that this person was interested in the idea of having a Branding Makeover. This was information not stored with my database, but discovering it prompted me to make a phone call. She immediately signed up.

STEP 4: Keep Your Contact List Active

One of the most effective ways to attract new clients to your business online and offline is to capture a person’s name and email address. Once you have this information, you can communicate your message to clients over and over again.

A proven way to attract new prospects and convert them into clients is by having them sign up at your Web site. You accomplish this by offering information that is truly of benefit. In this era of Information Overload, this is not a matter of quantity. It’s a matter of the quality of information that can be understood easily and that is useful to them.

Here are four products you can offer to your Web site visitors in exchange for their name and email address:

1. Offer access to a well-researched White Paper on a product or service that can become a useful tool in their everyday life.

2. Create an e-zine with good information, and include an article that will help them solve a problem. Offer your expertise on emerging trends that can impact their business or lifestyle.

3. Offer a mini-course on a topic in which you have unique expertise. By using KickStartCart, you can quickly set up a system that will allow visitors to download each mini-class or receive it automatically via email. I am creating my first seven-series mini-course as I write this.

4. Create easily downloadable reports. Some of the products popular among my clients are titled “Five Biggest Time Wasters and How to Overcome Them” and “20 Ways to De-Stress. ” Ask yourself what the clients in your niche categories would consider valuable, and tailor your reports accordingly.

The Home Office is planning a huge government database that will hold details of every single phone call and e-mail in the UK. The planned database will be populated with data from Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies.

Since last October, telecoms companies have been keeping records of phone calls and text messages, which they hold for a 12-month period. However, it is thought that the Home Office now plan to extend this to include internet and e-mail use. Police officers and the security services will be able to access these records by applying to the courts for a warrant.

Plans for this database are at a very early stage, but it is thought that they might be included in the draft Communications Data Bill later this year. A Home Office spokesperson justified the database by claiming that it would help protect national security and prevent crime. The spokesperson said: “The Communications Data Bill will help ensure that crucial capabilities in the use of communications data for counter-terrorism and investigation of crime continue to be available. ”

The Information Commission, which is an independent authority that protects personal information, believes that this database might “be a step too far” for the government, as well as being a huge security risk. Jonathan Bamford of the Information Commission said that his company had “concerns” over the planned database. He said: “This would give us serious concerns and may well be a step too far. We are not aware of any justification for the State to hold every UK citizen’s phone and internet records. We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable. We have warned before that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Holding large collections of data is always risky – the more data that is collected and stored, the bigger the problem when the data is lost, traded or stolen. “

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis was also quick to criticise the idea. He said: “This could well be more of a threat to our security than a support. ” Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne echoed this opinion, stating that the move was “an Orwellian step too far. ” He also said that the government “were not to be trusted” with private data, following recent data protection scandals. He said: “Given the appalling track record of data loss, this state is simply not to be trusted with such private information. ”

Still, a Home Office spokesperson said that any plans would take the public’s need for privacy into account. They said: “These powers will continue to be subject to strict safeguards to ensure the right balance between privacy and protecting the public. ”

As with any project, taking time to plan ahead now will save you and your business a lot of time down the road. A common mistake with database development is that the designer fails to think ahead. This usually leads to the development of a database that is unable to handle all the needs of the company. Unfortunately, once a database is created and implemented, it is very hard to go back and make changes. This is why planning ahead is so crucial. I have provided a few tips below that will help you to avoid these common mistakes. With a little planning and some hard work, your database will be able to work at its full potential. Before even looking at your computer, sit down with a tablet of paper and brainstorm. Create a list of all the things that you want your database to do (i. e. inventory tracking, client contact, billing, shipping, etc. ). Once you have done this, create a sub-list for each of the items you came up with from the previous step. This list should include any items or useful information that will need to be collected. For example, if you would like to track shipping, you will probably want to collect information such as: date shipped, method of shipping, price of shipping, shipping details such as weight and dimensions, date delivered, etc. Remember to think ahead to what you will want to do with this information later. This information, for example, can be used to estimate shipping costs for the following year based on the previous year’s costs. Once you have completed your list, it’s time to begin the basic design of the database. At this point, many designers begin to think about form creation and reports. However, the most important step following brainstorming is in developing your tables. Once these tables have been created, they will be difficult to change later. For this reason, take your time and make sure you have everything you need. The next step is to test your tables. Take information that you already have available to you (previous sales logs, etc. ) and see if all the information can be placed somewhere that will be easy to access. This will ensure that you can at least collect what you have already been collecting. As a final piece of advice, add a “comment” field to your tables so that notes can be made pertaining to the data. This is especially helpful when trying to look back at information later. A simple comment can help to clarify information that might otherwise be very difficult to understand.

Database Marketing is a unique way to collect and store information. This can be easily done by using software programs like Access, SQL and Excel. Useful information is then used in advertising and marketing. This saves time and money by targeting promotional efforts to the best prospects or customers. Information collected for your database depends upon the products and services you offer. The higher the selling price, the more information you will have to gather and use. A strong foundation usually begins with contact and purchase information and date of birth. Once collected and sorted, you now put this data into action. Some top database marketing techniques that do just that are: 1. Appended Data – Business to business (B2B) may need more in-depth data like SIC code, number of employees and annual sales, for bidding projects. Or for one-on-one relationships with clients like for realtors and insurance products, people can append data to name and address files, seeking out income, age, home value, length of residence, number of children and over 30 other bits of info. The resulting data is then used in all types of well targeted marketing campaigns. Appended data is usually done in-house or outsourced with larger companies that have more complete databases. 2. Website Data – Many websites offer a means to collect data through the use of cookies that gather information from website visitors. This marketing method is very popular, allowing Internet marketers to learn more about visitors to their sites, which pages they searched and for how long. This information is then used for their product and service creation and pricing. 3. Email Marketing & Tracking – Surveys, customer reply forms and shipping documents that use tracking numbers and share them with the clients are excellent examples of database marketing. This type of tracking can improve their customer-client relationships, resulting in increased sales and customer retention and learn more about their clients for future sales and marketing efforts. In conclusion, Database Marketing techniques tailored to fit your own products and services, allows you to gather and store targeted information about your visitors, clients or prospects. And you can save time and money by targeting your promotional efforts to your best prospects or customers. Which means,you can now market to whatever group or organization in your database,when you want to, based on all the pertinent information gathered. In other words, you can focus on just the groups most likely to purchase your products or service.

Contests can be an exciting part of a marketing campaign. But contest management and the attendant need for mailings database management must be considered before selecting a contest as part of any marketing campaign. If your marketing firm has engaged in contests before you already know this, but for those new to the process it seems important to at least go through some of the pitfalls, so you approach your contest fully informed.
What, you may ask, is contest management? Contests basically take care of themselves, right? No. And anyone who believes that is not only in for a world of trouble, but potential legal problems. For this reason, when creating a contest it is essential to create a project team which a specific project leader.
This project team will design the contest, operate the contest, and offer all the contest management support required during the contest period. Among the most important of contest management tools is a mailings database and its management. Almost all contests require the contest applicant to send you something. A form, a box top, the answer to a question, something. And the receipt of all this material must be tracked, so that it can be shown that the contest function according to its rules — if questions are ever raised.
The project manager of you contest management team should appoint a single person to oversee the mailings database management. Like all records management activities this is uniquely important to ensure quality control. You may have the best data entry clerks on planet earth, but even they cannot do their job without a system. You mailings database management team and its leader will create this system, and ensure that it is efficiently and accurately administered.
It is probably best if you offer the mailings database management position to someone in your firm who is an expert in records management. This, for instance, might be a great chance to allow someone in research or even accounting to get a taste of the creative side of your business. Although running a contest is hard work, there is something inherently exciting about it. The promise of prizes. The randomness. The novelty. And because of these factors will believe you will have no problem attracting highly qualified people to the project in-house.
However, if you have no one in-house, we recommend selecting a contest specialist. Although there may be many people outside your firm who could handle contest management or mailings database management, it is always unwise to bring someone new into the equation who is not an expert in the task at hand. A new or temporary employee already has the problems of acclimating to your practices and procedures. In most firms, that can take days, even weeks. There is not need to complicate this process by forcing them to do “on the job” training.
Running a contest can be an exciting prospect. We highly recommend it. However, as we have laid out in this brief article, one needs to understand the importance of contest management and mailings database management. But, if you get this right, and we know you will, your client will be very happy. And so will those contest winners! And, by the way, make sure to send us an entry form!

These days, building your email database is a key strategy to growing your business, both online and offline. I don’t mean just focusing on having BIG numbers on your list; what you want to build is a quality database.

How to do that?

Here are three tips:

1. Participate in an affiliate campaign. That means agreeing to offer a bonus product to the launch of someone else’s product (book, eBook, audio CD, program). You agree to promote their product to your email list in exchange for a commission on any sales that come from your list ($ in your pocket) as well as increasing your visibility to prospective buyers thus driving traffic to your website. People come to your website and sign up for your mailing in order to claim your bonus = increase in your database.

2. Are you a good writer? Pick some topics you’re an expert on and offer them to article submission sites . There are tons of sites that accept free articles or you can pay to have your articles listed. Be sure to write about content-rich subjects you really know about that offer value to the reader. If you’re serious about having your articles attract traffic, hire a VA to handle this task. There are hundreds (maybe thousands!) of article submission sites and taking on the job single-handed is daunting and costly. I’m talking HOURS and HOURS taken away from your business that could best be invested elsewhere. I chose a VA to handle this task for me rather than use an article submission service. Why? I’ve heard that spam dramatically increases when using article submission services. No thanks. I’m already deluged by spam.

3. Write a blog. Search engines love blogs. Be sure to offer readers information of value on topics you have an expertise and enjoy writing about. Do you homework and read up on blogging strategies for driving traffic to your site so that you are maximizing your time and energy.

A few additional comments on building your database… ok, I admit this is more of a rant. I often find I’m subscribed to someone’s ezine or email list without permission. This can happen when I meet people at networking events and we exchange cards or I contact someone and they just add my email to a mass mailing list. Often, I mysteriously get emails from people I’ve never heard of who have somehow gotten my email address. You may not realize that on some sites, your email is captured the moment you click on the site.

By assuming people want to become part of your network without gaining their permission to say, “Yes”, you might be sabotaging a potential business relationship. To me that’s just another way to spam folks.

To be added to my mailing list or blog, you must either confirm your subscription or be sent a one-time mailing from me with an invitation to join. At the bottom of mailings, be sure you have a link to unsubscribe or change subscriptions so that people remain in charge of whether they wish to hear from you or not.

That’s why I appreciate the emails that request confirmation of agreement to “opt-in” to a mailing list. Even though it’s an extra step, I find that being asked to join with someone gives me choice – something I respect and need. Listen, I have no problem with one-time samples of newsletters or ezines that give me the option to subscribe.

One of the keys to success is developing quality relationships with people whether they are clients, colleagues, friends, prospects or visitors. In my opinion, growing your business and your database means being a person of integrity and treating others with respect – you know The Golden Rule: “Do unto others. . . “

Bottom line – pick marketing strategies you enjoy and have fun with them!