Today, I am struggling with a decision related to marketing. We are subscribed and pay $48 per month for Constant Contact for a way of storing email addresses, keeping them sorted and for sending out monthly reminders of events and webinars. I was paying for this through our company, with the idea when I started that I would sell 5 or 6 other vendors in the group to pitch in about $100 each for a business card advertisement to be put in teach email that goes out to the group.
Well, Covid 19 hit and quite frankly, I didn’t know what to do. I knew that I was still secretary of this association, but didn’t know if I should cancel the Constant Contact subscription and save the $~50 per month and keep it in an excel spreadsheet or hang on and keep it to send out emails periodically.
During Covid, our marketing team developed a Digital Expert Guidebook of our team with links to CV’s and to our website. I decided to put this in my Outlook email signature with a little Black Book icon that said “Download Expert Guidebook” and a link that sent you to the adobe cloud.
If I send out emails from Constant Contact, then I can’t have the link to the Expert Guidebook. However, if I send the emails for the association out through my Microsoft Outlook account, then, in my email signature, I can have that link.
So, the year progressed and I ended up getting a piece of paper on my desk from our office business manager asking when the association was going to pay us this $500. I told her I would work on this. So, I have printed out a spreadsheet of the entire association’s database and have identified about 25 companies that might be interested. Out of 25 people, I believe that I could convince at least 5 people to pay $100 each and this could be applied to the reimburse our company for this expense…while allowing us to keep the program running for another year.
However, I learned in DA this is a little vague and actually not completely honest. I would be collecting payment from these vendors to then pay our association. When the association gets paid, then it can pay back our company but the book keeper would think it was for the year 2020 and not 2021…which was actually how it was sold.
I also thought we could offer a chance for vendors and attorneys to write a blog and get it sent out to the group of people. These vendors who are paid sponsors could have that opportunity.
Possible prospects would include our competitors. I have to offer it up to them. Would it be ok to just cancel the Constant Contact account? Stop the expense and just use excel. Our budget will just take a $500 loss for this year, but we were in a $17,000 surplus and the company will make a profit this year. I don’t think it is a good idea, now since I have typed this out, to go to the expense and time commitment to do this newsletter and sponsored ad email every month in 2021.
