Section 1: Understanding your customer and the market
01 – Introduction
10 Sections | 1 Quiz 03 – Being remarkable
10 Sections 04 – Researching your customer
9 Sections 05 – Understanding why vegans buy
9 Sections Section 2: Your vegan marketing toolbox
06 – Your vegan marketing toolbox
5 Sections 07 – Creating your vegan brand
9 Sections 08 – Your website
8 Sections 09 – Google
9 Sections 10 – Email marketing
7 Sections 11 – Creating and using ‘content’
7 Sections 12 – Social media: paid
9 Sections 13 – Social media: free
10 Sections 14 – LinkedIn
8 Sections 15 – Networking, events and fairs
10 Sections 16 – Offline marketing
9 Sections 18 – PR and getting your business in the news
12 Sections 19 – Working with influencers
7 Sections Section 3: Creating and carrying out your marketing plan
20 – Creating your marketing plan
7 Sections 21 – Creating your marketing funnel
11 Sections 22 – Creating your marketing mix
7 Sections 23 – Setting your timeline and tasks
6 Sections 
Recap, resources and support
We use Mailchimp to send out fortnightly newsletters from our vegan charity – these show up in the inboxes of my personal and work emails, but in the spam folder of my actual charity email account, and I suspect go into many other people’s spam folders too. Do you have any idea why that happens and how I stop our emails going into junk folders?
Me again!
Just wondering if it’s better to sign off targeted email campaigns with our names, i.e. “Natasha and Ed”, rather than “BReD”… do you think it adds more to a sense of personal connection?
Then again, using the company name might appear more professional…
Would love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks 🙂
Hey Natasha – the simple answer to that is yes, yes, yes and YES! And even put a photo of the pair of you next to it. If you were buying your daily sourdough bread from a local company, wouldn’t you want to feel you were buying it from real people, not just a faceless company?
There is nothing unprofessional about being personal, remember – people don’t buy from a business, they buy from PEOPLE within a business. If someone came into your bakery, would you and your staff hide behind a curtain and direct your customers to a touch-screen to order? Or would you want to engage with them and build a relationship to make them feel good about coming back? The internet can be a faceless medium, so always put a face to it where you can and treat it like a real-life interaction.
The only argument to not being personal, and then it’s a weak one, is if you are trying to build a business where you have plans to stay anonymous. For you, they would be bad plans because you have such a great story.
It will also help to build this familiarity when you come to build your personal brand later in the course, and to start showing some behind the scenes with yourself and your team on social.
David
Hi guys,
We have a website hosted through Square space. I am keen to start a newsletter and collect email addresses through a pop-up window on the home page but I have never created a newsletter or email campaign before.
Do you think I could set it up on my own or is it worth investing in an expert to get it of thr ground and set it up and walk me through the system?
If so, do you recommend anyone?
Thanks,
Natasha
Hi Natasha. Did you create the website yourself? If so, and you’re feeling technically vibrant right now, then Mailchimp do a free account for up to 2k contacts (although I think it puts a badge on the bottom of your mailings on the free plan) and Squarespace can automatically connect with it.
There’s a walkthrough here:
https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/205815508-Using-Mailchimp-with-Squarespace
… although note that they start with the most technically complicated bit (Set up domain authentication in Mailchimp)!
If you’d like help getting set-up, then Kayleigh and Lee at https://www.kakaducreative.com/ are fellow VBT members and I am sure would be very happy to have a chat if you would like me to introduce you?
David ?
Hi David,
Thanks for the speedy reply!
I did not set up the site originally so I think I need help!
Thanks for the tip – it would be nice if you could connect us.
Thanks so much,
Natasha
Done!