First a little about me: My name is Victoria Drake and I live in Los Angeles, CA. I am an actress, a social media/internet geek, an adventure girl, and a researcher. I am working my way through the acting world here in LA as well as working to create a social media center throughout my websites and blogs, that encourage discussion, consideration, input, networking, learning and growing as individuals and as artists.
As I said I'm a researcher and in the process, I attend a lot of workshops, classes, teleconferences, webinars, you name it. And because of that I learn about things that I want to share with others who may be winding through the maze like me. This is my first blog in this series - OMM #1, so welcome! Thanks so much for coming aboard. I hope you stay awhile because I have lots to share!
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As I sat here looking at this beautiful photo and having thoughts of traveling to Santorini Greece, I started thinking about email marketing systems. What? You don't believe me? Well... you'd be right actually. I just thought it was amazing, the photo that is.
But seriously, thinking about traveling great distances, made me realize how important email marketing (systems) are as a marketing tool for us and how it allows us to travel further and faster in our careers as actors, and as other self employed, business owner types of people, as well as anyone else out there who's ever needed to manage an email list. So they, email marketing systems, become the topic of my first OMM blog.
Why email marketing systems? Think for a minute about all of your email contacts and then categorize them in your head. For my actor friends, here's an example: Casting Director addresses from workshops, bookings, networking event contacts, agent possibilities, producers, directors, photographers, Facebook Fans, family, friends, well, you get the idea. Do you manage that list pretty well? Does your current email system track the emails for you and provide reports to let you know who reads your mail, and who doesn't, or who clicked on your links and when, who forwards them to others? The list goes on. Does it allow you to consistently and automatically send out follow up emails? If not, then you (and I) need an affordable and effective email service.
If you have any type of email list that you need to manage, Contact Contact is definitely a service to take a look at. Their website is http://www.contstantcontact.com. Constant Contact is one of about 3 or 4 companies that provide very affordable email marketing services such as this. Their prices start as low as $20/month. I'm just in the trial period of the product right now - they offer a complimentary 60-day trial, which is great! It's also why I attended their free seminar the other day in LA I'm still researching the others, (MailChimp being the other highly rated) and will post on a future OMM blog. The mantra I'm starting to take (thanks to Dallas Travers, AMAZING Marketing for Actors Consultant - http://dallastravers.com) is Do Less More Often. I'm working on ways to streamline the marketing I do for myself as an actor and as a self-employed person. An email marketing service is one way to begin that process.
So far, I really like the customer service and knowledge of the people who work at Constant Contact. They have customer support available from 6am to 6pm PDT Monday through Friday. They also have training webinars, and online training that can be taken advantage of as well. See if you like it and let me know! I'd love to hear your input on it. I will provide my comments as well as I check out this product and compare it to others.
I hope this article was helpful. Stay tuned for my next article in the series – OMM #2 – Marketing strategies for actors (taught to me by Dallas Travers). This, my acting friends, you’re gonna love! She opens up a whole new world of marketing ideas for us actors and I can’t wait to share them with you. Talk soon!
Ciao for now!
Victoria
http://victoriasworldonline.com
http://youtube.com/victoriadrake
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