The Lead-Up to Changing the Heartbeat of My Online Business!
You might be thinking – what exactly is the heartbeat of an online business? This can mean different things to different people – it can be the auto-responder, or it can be the automated email system. In my case, it was an integrated system that I have been using for several years. It served my business well, or at least I thought it did. I was able to run my automated marketing, shopping cart, and affiliate system through this one system. I had explicitly chosen this system because it was a one-stop shop – one system that satisfied my email marketing, shopping cart, and affiliate needs. Any other alternatives that I knew about, were above my investment limit.
Why Second Guess System Capabilities?
Overall, I was pleased with the tools that my system provided me with to run my online business, so I didn’t second guess its capabilities, nor did I look for suitable alternatives that would better fit my business. Why would I? As a small business owner, I’m sure that you can agree that the thought of migrating systems can feel overwhelming. I’ve invested a lot of time in setting up and learning my system to a point where I am comfortable, so learning a new system wasn’t something that I felt necessary at this time.
How I Selected My Current System
When I started my business, I spoke to my colleagues to find out what systems they were using, and ask their opinions on which systems they feel would be best for my business. I took the recommendation of a colleague and selected my current system. It was the one system that did everything, and there are not too many that can do that, so I was pretty happy with it. The system was less expensive than the alternatives, and had similar capabilities, this especially important for Canadian business owners who are paying in U.S. dollars. In addition, I work on a lot of joint ventures, so this program was appealing because I was able to work with my partners through this system, providing them with easy access to reports and marketing materials that we are working on.
System Limitations
Although I was content with my current system, I did, however, see some limitations with the system over the years. I accepted these limitations, as the thought of changing my system seemed overwhelming.
My World Changed
In September of 2015, my world changed as I know it. As I typically do with my campaigns, I set out to test the campaign prior to launch. This time I noticed that something wasn’t working. As always, I use auto-responder which automatically triggers emails that are to be sent to subscribers and found that this wasn’t working. The first email went out, but after that nothing happened. I may not be the most technically-savvy individual, so when this happened, I automatically succumbed to self-doubt, and determined that the reason it didn’t work was because I had done something wrong. My system has never let me down, so it must be me. I did the test multiple times to no avail.
After several tests, I realized that I wasn’t in fact the culprit, but there was something wrong with the system, so I called tech support. Unfortunately, tech support couldn’t understand why my system wasn’t working and they concluded that I must be doing something wrong. After ten days, the IT team finally agreed that there was in fact an issue, so they finally decided to take my matter seriously.
The Show Must Go On
In the meantime, life must go on. I run an online business, so if I don’t launch my campaigns on time, this can cause repercussions to my business, so the show must go on!
Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures
As I mentioned, the auto-responder function wasn’t working, so my campaign wasn’t triggering emails automatically. This meant that I was going to have to push the emails out manually. Don’t get me wrong, this can be doable with a small batch, but with a large batch, this can be impossible to manage. Let’s face it, I pay for a service, so I shouldn’t have to execute emails manually, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
The problem with manually pushing out the emails is that I found it hard to determine where I was in the sequence of emails, and if a subscriber had already received an email from me. The number one way to scare away subscribers is to send them duplicate messages – so this is definitely not what I signed up for. This went on for three months, so as you can imagine, at this point I had pretty much given up on my provider ever fixing this glitch. So I embraced the fact that it was time to let go of my system.
[Tweet “The number one way to scare away subscribers is to send them duplicate messages.“]
Embracing the Inner Turmoil
It was hard to surrender to the fact that I was going to have to let go of my integrated email system and venture out and look for a new provider. It was a scary realization actually. Not only will I be looking for a new email system, but I will also be shopping for automated marketing, a shopping cart function, as well as an affiliate system – all the while continuing to run my business. I had so much invested in this system, but had to come to the fact that at this stage it was holding me back.
Unfortunately, the reality is that if my campaigns and essentially, my business is being held back by my email system, this can’t go on any longer. Before I committed to finding a new system, I had to find out what this system malfunction was actually costing my business to determine the opportunity cost of not being able to expand my business. I looked at the following:
1. What was not expanding my business costing me?
2. What did the lack of confidence I now had in my system costing my business?
3. What did my reluctance to build my business, due to the fact that I can’t run proper campaigns, cost my business? How can I nurture leads and build my business if I can’t efficiently interact with my leads?
So after three months, I decided that it was time to look for a new solution. And given the situation with integrated systems, I knew I had to bite the bullet and find a combination of multiple systems that will serve my needs for an automated email system, a shopping cart on my website, and an affiliate system. In addition, the system has to support my existing webinar, online course platform, and my opt-in pages. This is where the “fun” started.
Check back here later to find out how I started the process of finding a new integrated email system and what steps I took to ensure that I found a solution that integrated not only my email system, but also my automated marketing, shopping cart, and affiliate system.
In the meantime, if you have questions about how you can find a system that integrates all of the tools that you need for your online business, join the Freedom Seeker’s Mastermind Facebook Group, where you can post your question and get support from your peers and myself plus find out about the next Strategy Power Hour, a Business Hour I offer to my clients and followers.
