I recall our office receiving a phone call several years ago from an assisted living business in Michigan. It was a support staff worker telling us her boss asked her to help cut down on some of the junk mail they were receiving. So she was calling us since a postcard from our training company had arrived in their mail. As a licensed provider of care with pre-licensing and annual continuing education requirements and their company contact info published in a public directory on the state’s website, I knew they would hear from us again. However, our office manager still directed our team to remove them from our internal spreadsheets.
Of course my thinking did go to the likelihood that they had junk mail of much less relevance than anything from us. After all we sold a product they were statutorily obligated to use. My attitude would probably be, “why not get to know these people.” In any event they saw the need to at least try and pull the plug.
Well its even worse nowadays with email traffic. So much of it from so many sources it can drive you nuts. What is really bothersome is how the substantive items can so easily get caught up in the millions of pieces of junk coming from all over the world from the hands of scammers hoping to convince one of us that a foreign military executive would like us to have his fortune, or how lucky we are to have won the lottery in the Philippines. Again, just plain annoying.
With all of that, I am not super quick to ignore or unsubscribe from everything I receive, especially if I engage them initially from an online ad. I have filters for the junk and quickly report spam. But some of the small business items I run into are full of good ideas, even if you do not purchase their major products. From building email lists to enhanced online marketing to tools for better client engagement I have found numerous tidbits that benefit me in large ways.
I do have a schedule and will move things to a certain spot until Thursday at 4 p. when I take a moment to read some of these things. After all our productivity would go straight to the dogs if we stopped throughout the day to examine everything that came our way or every Facebook or LinkedIn ad that was designed to grab our attention. Perhaps a notepad near our computers to write down the websites we find informative and then moving on until we have time to examine it is a better way.
I just no longer take a knee-jerk approach to dumping things without a bit of examination.
Ok now to the kick of our introductory story: We are also healthcare marketers and I have always labeled myself a deficiency expert. When it comes to care providers, especially small ones and including those who are for children, I look for deficiencies in marketing and professional outreach and help them to overcome it with solid programs.
Well a few months after they called us to end junk mail from us, they learned we re-introduced our program of creating, editing and publishing videos for our clients which for some can come with managing their YouTube or Vimeo channels for $129.00 per month with a new video every 2 weeks on a different aspect of their business. During this call they asked: “Why weren’t we notified you did this as they had 10 group homes and wanted to educate the long-term care community about their new services and expanding populations?” We told them, you asked to be removed form our lists. (Click Here for a little more background)
No we cannot read everything but I bet you can see now why I am not super quick to unsubscribe. What are your thoughts? Sign-in and let’s talk….
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