RICHARD BRANSON’S ATTEMPT to refine his own oil in order to cut costs at Virgin Airlines teaches us a few things. For one, it teaches us that Richard Branson is an extremely wealthy man! More importantly, however, it teaches us that it is important to take another look at elements of our business that are currently being outsourced. As Branson illustrates; when possible, it just makes good sense to do something in-house if possible. We should consider this not only to save money, but to have control over the quality, efficiency and access to those elements which are critical to our operations.
One thing that small businesses can do themselves today that they paid others for yesterday is managing their communications. It wasn’t too long ago that we outsourced our marketing campaigns, press releases, and relationship management strategies. Affordable bulk email tools like GroupMail make managing our communication efforts easy. The ability for small businesses to communicate with unlimited lists of contacts in a segmented and personalized fashion is empowering. Small businesses can also track the success of their communications’ campaigns easily today with software like GroupMetrics, another Infacta product. GroupMetrics allows users to monitor deliverability, open rates, and click-through rates. These important tasks were far too technical for most of us to manage ourselves yesterday. Technology rocks! Perhaps one day, we’ll be able to refine our own oil too?
