Let’s take a peek into the lives of two fictional computer business owners:

Bob Breakfix:

It’s Monday and I feel like that 80’s ad, “Time to make the doughnuts“. But wait I, love IT don’t I? I mean, we get to do some cool stuff.  So why do I feel so overwhelmed and overworked?

::ring, ring::

Oh no, that call is from XYZ Customer and the message they left is that their QuickBooks server is showing a red alert on one of the drives and as usual, the owner is freaking out.  Deep breath… breathe…

Marty Managed:

It’s Monday and I can’t wait to get started, see what new challenges I can tackle, and make some extra money to put towards my vacation this summer.

::ding, ding::

Dang, received an alert that a hard drive on XYZ Customer’s server has failed.

Click.

Clickety-click, click, click, click-click-click.

Bam! Looks like one of the drives on their RAID has failed.  Good thing their backups are current (received an informational alert).  I will grab a drive from inventory and dispatch a technician later this afternoon.

Which One Are You?

Can you relate more to Bob Breakfix or Marty Managed?

[Read more…]

Welcome to Part 2 of our series “Email Marketing for Computer Business”. In Part 1, I explained small changes that you can make to start writing more effective emails today. Using these techniques, you can significantly improve your conversion rate – how many recipients open your email, then buy your service. Read it here if you haven’t read it already.

Eventually, your sales will plateau, then start to decline. The reason is simple – email lists shrink over time. Research shows that an average of 25% of email recipients unsubscribe each year. They might not be interested in your services, bought your service already, or simply do not find them relevant.

To get more business via email consistently, you’ll need to address two problems:

• Add more subscribers to your mailing list
• Make your emails more relevant

First, a note on what NOT to do. Some companies sell or rent email lists. For a small sum, you can get access to thousands of local email addresses that fit your demographic. They might even claim that these are “opt-in” lists. Growing email lists can be hard, so this can be tempting.

However, emailing people who did not explicitly ask to hear from you will not only tarnish your reputation, but also land you on the bad side of your email marketing company. These companies are legally bound to fight spam, and the most reputed ones, like MailChimp and Campaign Monitor, are especially serious about this.

Being reported as spam can be very bad news for your marketing campaign. Even an innocent mistake like sending emails to deactivated accounts can get you banned from using their service (it’s happened to me!). You must tend to your mailing list like a garden, not use and abandon it like a coal mine.
[Read more…]

When used right, email marketing could be your most potent weapon for growing your computer business. Companies that have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, but no email campaign, have their business strategy all wrong. Think about it… Facebook limits the reach of your posts to around 2% of your total fans, and on Twitter you need to be tweeting constantly to stay at top of the feed…

But people who have subscribed to your emails want to hear from you! Most emails you send out are delivered to the inboxes of your readers, where they can stay until your customer has the time to read them. Unlike ads and phone calls, emails are non-intrusive.

Smartphones have made emails even more effective. Research shows that smartphone users are more likely to open emails, rather than save them for later. Email marketing is going to remain relevant to your business for the foreseeable future.

There’s a lot more to email marketing than composing a blurb and sending it to your contact list. Its purpose is to engage your readers, and also sell your services, without being pushy.

It’s a vast topic, which is why we’re breaking it down into two parts. First, we’ll look at selling… what motivates readers at a rational and subconscious level to take an action. In Part 2, we’ll explain reader engagement – managing email lists and scientifically improving the quality of your emails. [Read more…]

Running your own computer repair business, either part or full time, can be a pretty awesome and rewarding experience. The biggest challenge would probably be building up a steady stream of income. Having a steady revenue stream can help to break the “feast or famine” cycle, and provide your growing business with some much needed income stability.

Arguably the best way to stabilize your income is to provide services that generate a recurring revenue.

An easy, and often overlooked, way to start generating a steady source of income is to start offering your residential clients a “managed antivirus” service. [Read more…]