Keeping Everything Connected

My Sales Tactics is a professional skill development training company offering coaching, consulting, and speaking services that Barb Girson founded after she was laid off from a vice president, general manager corporate position. Barb had been an entrepreneur and built her own multi-million dollar franchise prior to working the last 10 years in corporate America.  She always had the idea of going into business for herself again 'someday'. The layoff was just the impetus she needed.

Today, the New Albany, Ohio-based My Sales Tactics offers free teleclasses designed to give would-be customers a taste of Barb's abilities and knowledge; paid webinars for customers; and small group and individual coaching classes. Barb also does public speaking, develops custom company sales training programs and presents at workshops.

Challenge: Seminar registration is a tedious process

While working as vice president, Barb always had marketing and creative service departments available to help execute her ideas. As a solo entrepreneur with a desire to keep start up costs low, Barb has to do it all herself.

Constant Contact is vested and invested in my success. For both her free and paid seminars, this meant promoting them via email newsletters, on her website, and through other sources; manually tracking registrations in an Excel spreadsheet; copying new email addresses back into Constant Contact, which was used to email out the dial-in information for the seminar call; and, after the event, following up with attendees and no-shows with the replay call-in number.

"I either had to do all this myself or pay someone as a support person to handle the registration process," Barb says.

Solution: Event Marketing automates the registration process

Barb has been a "raving" fan of Constant Contact since she started her business in December 2008, so she eagerly signed on for Event Marketing when it became available.

Using Event Marketing for her seminar registration and promotion has automated many of the labor intensive manual tasks Barb had to do for each event and registrant. Now she can link directly to a registration page from her website or any social media website, collect all the information she needs about the registrant, and easily build contact lists for pre- and post-event follow-up. Plus, for paid events she can more conveniently collect payments via PayPal without the cut-and-paste drudgery.

"Each person who has shown interest was willing to voluntarily give me data and contact information in exchange for my free content," Barb says of the registration data field options available.

In addition, Barb is able to collect more metrics on her registration efforts. Prior to switching to Event Marketing, her links for registering couldn't be tracked. "It was all manual, so I had no idea who was opening the emails, whether they forwarded, or even who clicked on links," Barb says. "Now I can see what percentage opened the email, what percentage registered, and what they clicked on, which will help me to better target to their interests and better meet their needs."

Results: Numbers speak for themselves

Barb Girson's first free seminar for which she used Event Marketing combined with social media, web posting, and strategically stepping up the event promotion attracted 524 registrants with 166 people dialing into the live call - both My Sales Tactics records. Previous events averaged about 20 to 30 registrants and attendees. "Now that I am on the radar screen of these new contacts and have an opportunity to build a relationship, that's a huge increase," Barb says. "That is a lot of new people that I can communicate with and hopefully provide service."

Barb attributes the larger attendance numbers in part to the fact that she could more easily promote the seminar beyond her email newsletter. "I love that I could attract people that were not already on my list," Barb reports.

In addition to increased attendance and awareness, Event Marketing has also saved Barb time and money. She can now easily re-use event templates and collect information and payment without a lot of the manual steps she used previously. "It's going to save me a lot of time, which is money," Barb says. "I can be more productive and drive more revenue."

Post-event time savings were also realized as Barb could quickly send out replay information to all registrants for those that may have missed or want to hear the seminar again.

Having used all of Constant Contact's products, Barb Girson feels that the company is a partner to her My Sales Tactics organization. "Constant Contact is vested and invested in my success," Barb says.