With the arrival of 2012, our Marketing goals have been set and now it is time to get down to business. One of our major goals for 2012 is to have 12 webinars, which will be a major feat considering we only had 2 in 2011! Why 12 webinars? We figure one a month will be plenty to swallow. One of our biggest struggles to having webinars was just having a formula in place.

As I have been reading and planning, I ran across this great article: Webinar Promotion that Delivers: Use Email, Social, Viral Referrals and Video to Boost Attendance, Drive Lead Gen.

This article was great because it showed...

• The ability to measure traffic
• Advertising webinars using banner ads on your own site
• The creation of a "Webinar Alert" mailing list which had an average open rate of 42.6% and accounted for 39% of registrations
• The "Refer a Friend" promotion in registration confirmations
    The page includes 4 fields:
  
  •      Registrant's name
  •      Registrant's email address
  •      Friend's email address
  •      Text box to write a personal note about the event
• The importance of removing registered users from the promotions for the same event - this may be evident but many companies mess this up and just keep promoting and banging people in the head
• Automated event reminders - both one day and one hour before
• Webinar exit polls - Love these!
• The posting of newsletters to your website to continue to drive traffic

Entrepreneur.com has an article up on 5 Simple Ways to Show Customers You Care:

1. Share Your Knowledge
2. Ask, Listen, Respond, Adapt
3. Reward Customers
4. Hold a Customer Appreciation Event
5. Do Good

It's a great article and I recommend you check out. Here is my take on how you can apply these points to your own business.

1. Sharing Your Knowledge.  Social CRM is here.  As has always been the case, with it you can manage your e-mail newsletters.  You can now also manage your incoming and outgoing Social CRM communications with applications such as Twitter or Facebook.

2. Ask, Listen, Respond, Adapt.  Without a CRM application, how will you be able to keep track of all of your correspondence with your customers.  Newer CRM packages have the ability to integrate with all forms of communications.  Fax, Email, Snail Mail, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, etc.

3. Reward Customers.  With the proper CRM application you can track Campaigns where you use Coupons, Gifts, Events, Targeted Mailers, Phone Calls, Social Media, etc.

4. Hold a Customer Appreciation Event.  Customer Appreciate Events or User Groups are a great way to keep your name in a customers mind.  With CRM you are able to invite your customers or potential customers to the events, track registrations and report on attendance and survey results.

5. Do Good.  Doing good is a great thing, but how will your customers know about it if you aren't able to track and effectively communicate your "good."

Using newer CRM products goes far beyond just a giant electronic Rolodex of names and phone numbers.  With a properly setup CRM application and trained user base, you should be able to manage your complete customer experience from prospect to repeat business.  And then some.