Jeff Pearlman, Author at The Latest on Accounting Tech for SMEs

About Jeff Pearlman

For Happy Newsletter Readers, Roll Out the Welcome Mat

July 8, 2013 by Jeff Pearlman

What if I told you that setting up a welcome email for new subscribers to your newsletter is one of the easiest emails to set and forget?

Setting up this welcome email is usually a low priority when we lack time and resources. But it is a cost-effective way to keep your business top of mind and to start building a long-lasting relationship with your readers.

By creating a great first impression every time a new customer joins, you will minimise the chances that your email will get deleted as soon as it gets to their inbox.

Here are five simple must-haves for setting up your welcome emails.

1. Use Your Company Name

To avoid the question “who are you?” add your Company name to your “From” name in your email program. For example, it would be much more effective and relevant to receive an email from “Jeff from OneSaas” than it is from “Jeff Pearlman”. It then changes your customer’s first reaction on seeing your From name in their inbox to “Oh yeah! OneSaas!”

2. Send Emails From A Monitored Address

Always make sure that your welcome emails are sent from someone’s inbox. Be it the customer service team or your own inbox, it’s important that replies go to someone who can respond back. Feedback from your customers is critical in creating a better experience and a better relationship.

If you use a no-reply address you will miss out on your your customers’ replies. Instead, make a lasting impression to all your customers by letting them know that there are real people behind your business.

3. Authenticate Your Domain

Make sure that your emails will go straight to your customer’s inbox and not their junk folder. Email marketing software will provide a simple process guiding you to easily set up your emails making sure that they are authenticated.

Authenticating your domain for email can be quite technical. This is one reason why it is better to send your welcome emails using a cloud-based email marketing program such as Campaign Monitor or MailChimp which take care of authentication for you.

4. Personalise Your Content

Personalise your message! Make sure that the message you’re sending out is all about your customer. Yes, a welcome message should introduce you and your company, but target the content to thanking your customer for joining and put an emphasis on how you and your company will help them.

Include their first name in the greeting and on the subject line. That way you customers feel like their welcome message is their own personal one.

The customer information that you collect with an email marketing program can be shared with your other programs. Contact information from your email marketing software can be integrated with the customer database from your online shop such as Shopify or BigCommerce. Or it can sync with cloud-based project management systems such as BaseCamp, WorkflowMax or Connect2Field.

5. Send it Soonest

It’s important when a customer joins that you welcome them as soon as you can. Rather than manually importing your contacts to your marketing software, set up an auto-responder email for the new contacts that enter your lists.

Auto-responders are quick and easy to set up and are available in most email marketing software.

You could even set up a series of emails called drip campaigns that break up information about your company into bit-sized chunks. Rather than setting up one “Welcome!” email, a drip campaign sends new readers an email every day in the first week showcasing a different part of your business.

For example, one of the emails could showcase how to contact support and where to get help. Your second email could give details on your product range.

Your customers will get an automated welcome series that introduces you and your company and build the foundations of a great relationship. All you have to do is set it up one time and it will continue to operate for all your future readers.

This post first appeared on the OneSaas blog.

Image credit: Volunteerscreeningblog

Three Signs You Need to Automate Your Business

June 27, 2013 by Jeff Pearlman

As a small business owner, one of your most precious resources is time. Research from BRW magazine shows that 70 percent of small-medium businesses are still processing most of their data manually, resulting in hours of wasted time better invested in activities like growing your business or spending time with family and friends.

So how do you know if you’re one of those 70 percent who are wasting precious time manually processing data? And more importantly, how do you get into the 30 percent of businesses who are operating efficiently and leading their industries?

Connecting your cloud programs can save you precious hours by automating the tasks you do regularly, freeing you up to focus on activities that grow your business.

Here’s a list of indicators that you need to automate your business as well as some tips on how to do it.

1. Entering sales data

Manually entering sales data into your accounting program is not only significantly time consuming, it can invite errors. It also makes your accountant hate you as they usually have to spend hours trying to find and fix discrepancies or holes in the data.

If you are still doing this, stop. There is a better way.

With the rise of cloud software, many of the applications you use to run your business can now be seamlessly connected using online integration platforms so that data flows freely between them. Online retailers can automatically convert sales from your online store into invoices in their accounting program. Or sales teams using CRM sales management software can easily convert closed deals into invoices.

2. Sending invoices and chasing payments

Research from RBS Invoice Finance shows that small to medium businesses spend on average 130 hours every year chasing payments, and that small businesses wait on average 30 days longer than their agreed payment terms to receive money. Not only is that time business owners could be spending growing their business, but it is also a significant contributing factor to the cash flow problems plaguing small businesses.

If you are still manually creating and sending invoices and then chasing payments, you are wasting more valuable time.
To rectify this, small businesses can use billing and invoicing management software such as those offered Freshbooks‎ and WHMCS.

These applications can automate the process of creating and sending invoices as well as send late payment reminders and even automatically add late payment fees to invoices. Once the invoices have been paid, they can be automatically synchronised with your chosen accounting program using OneSaas.

3. Updating customer details

CRM tools and email marketing software provide an excellent way to maintain regular contact with your customers and track your interactions with them. This software is now available on a small business budget (some, such as Highrise and Mailchimp, are even free).

However, if you are manually inputing or updating your customer details in these programs it may not be worthwhile.

The good news is that you can automate the process of getting customer details out of a master system and into all your other systems and effectively maintain one customer database.

Online retailers can have all the customers from your shopping cart seamlessly synchronising with your email marketing or CRM. If you maintain your customer contacts in your accounting package, you can sync them with your preferred email marketing or CRM system.

If you are making any of these mistakes, it’s time to automate your business and get ahead of the competition. Aside from the significant time savings, automating your business in the ways described above can also help you maintain better accounting records, get paid faster and builder deeper, more profitable relationships with your customers.

This article first appeared on the OneSaas blog.

3 Cool Things You Can Do When You Integrate Eventbrite

June 24, 2013 by Jeff Pearlman

Eventbrite is an online ticketing platform that gives event managers the ability to easily promote and sell event tickets online.

It provides a comprehensive set of tools for event managers, including a dedicated event website with ticketing system, an iPhone app that users can store their tickets on and even a credit card reader that plugs in to your iPad and allows you to sell tickets at the door.

While it’s a great product by itself, it’s even more powerful when integrated with the other applications you use to run your business. Here are three cool things you can do when you integrate Eventbrite.

1. Export sales to your accounting program

Eventbrite provides a super simple way to sell tickets to your event online and handles payments for you via credit card, PayPal, Google Checkout and more.

Using OneSaas, those ticket sales can then be exported out of Eventbrite and added into your chosen accounting program such as MYOB, Quickbooks, Xero, Saasu and Kashflow. This enables you to easily manage the finances of your organisation and understand the success of your event.

2. Add attendees to your email marketing

According to research by marketing company Episilon, the tourism industry has the third highest engagement rate from email communications. Over 30 percent of people respond to emails from tourism companies.

By integrating Eventbrite with email marketing software such as Campaign Monitor or MailChimp, you can capitalise on these high engagement rates by sending your audience regular newsletters or event announcements. This keeps them engaged in the periods surrounding your event.

3. Add attendees to your CRM

If the goal of your event is lead generation, then it’s important that you have an effective process setup for capturing those leads, importing them into your CRM for your sales team to follow up.

By integrating Eventbrite with a CRM program such as Salesforce, Batchbook or ZohoCRM, you can easily get attendee details out of Eventbrite.