Re-Introduce Yourself - After Uncovering a Bunch-o-Business Cards

I just saw a great email marketing campaign from one of our customers. It was a simple text-based email sent to people this person once met but never contacted.

What a great idea, we all have business cards from people laying around. Do you have a bunch of business cards from people you've met over the months or even years that you've never sent an email to?

Here's a plan to get you going.

1. Enter them into your contact manager like FileMaker, ACT!, Salesforce, or your VerticalResponse account. You can either enter them one by one into all of these programs or upload them from a spreadsheet.

2. Include a field called "MEEETINGPLACE" and for each name you enter, if you can remember it, include the place where you met. If you remember the date you can enter that too. These are your "custom" fields in your VerticalResponse account.

3. Create an email. You can use text like this particular customer did, or you can include pictures as well. Why not include one of yourself or logo of your business to jog your recipient's memory?

4. Personalize it! Go beyond Dear {FIRST_NAME}. Try to include your custom fields in the first paragraph.

Dear {FIRST_NAME}

Hope you're well. Sorry it's taken so long to email you, I misplaced your card. If you don't remember, we met at {MEETINGPLACE} on {DATE}.

5. Ask them to opt-in to your list. You can include the link to your opt-in form in your email and you'll find it in your VerticalResponse account.

6. If they've already agreed that you can email them, go ahead and give them a deal. If you're selling something, link them off to what you think they might be interested in.

Oh, and If you don't have time to enter them, hire an intern, make time to input 10 per day yourself or check out Card Scan. You feed your business cards into a mini scanner and it spits out a list for you. It's not full-proof so you'll have to read through what the scanner "thinks" is the right name. Then get to emailing.

Have you had good luck with this? Tell us your story!

Comments

[Email Marketing journal]

I think half the battle with this (very good) task is remember where you met THEM! I'd have to pick my brain for hours and most likely would mix it up a bit! :)