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Imagine if you had stayed in contact with all the A-Level people you met over the years through work, school or other activities. How much more robust would your list of contacts be?

I've often said that the best thing I ever did when I worked at Pepsi and Kraft Foods was that I made good friends.

Actually . . . the best thing I ever did was to stay in touch with them over the years.

Certainly there was no way to predict that these people would go on to run companies such as Mattel, Hershey or Quaker Oats. I would also admit that there are numerous others with whom I wished I had stayed in touch, but for whatever reason, did not.

I am sure you have similar regrets.

While it may not be practical or feasible for you to go back and try to reinvigorate these relationships, you can take steps to ensure that current and future contacts do not suffer the same fate.

Obviously the key to maintaining relationships is to stay in touch on a regular and consistent basis. However, the biggest challenge we face is . . . time.

Certainly we all have good intentions. However the simple fact of the matter is that we get busy and forget.

This issue is particularly important for those of us who are responsible for marketing our businesses. From a practical perspective, in the vast majority of cases, the "sale" is not made with the lead generation materials. Nor is it made with your website, or offer of a free report.

No, our experience has been that the "sale" is made farther down the road. Well after the initial contact has been established. As a direct result of the ongoing series of Gentle Rain Drops that fall consistently upon your prospective clients.

It's these Gentle Rain Drops that build trust and credibility, and eventually serve to move prospects to take action.

But first we have to remember to stay in touch.

And that's where automation plays a role.

You're probably familiar, at least in concept, with autoresponders. These are the systems that enable you to send automated messages on a regular and consistent basis.

However, although the concept of autoresponders is well understood, the percentage of consulting firms that use them (or use them effectively) is quite small. The challenge to using autoresponders effectively depends on a couple of factors.

The first of which is getting a valid email address.

We've found that the most effective method for getting an email address that makes it way through the SPAM filters, is to leverage your offer of free information.

Although opinions vary on this issue, we believe that it's a mistake to offer your free information or white papers without requiring visitors fill out some sort of request form. From a practical perspective, it's impossible to stay in touch with visitors to your website if you don't get information about who they are.

So here's a tip for making sure that the email address you get is good and valid. One that you can use for subsequent follow-up.

Don't enable people to receive your report when they just hit the submit button on the request form. That doesn't ensure that the email address they give you is valid. A better strategy is to send them an email with a link that enables them to download the information after they complete the form. Naturally, in order for them to get this email from you, they have to give you an address that will actually get to them.

And that's the email address you use for all your subsequent messages.

For example, on our request form it's communicated quite plainly that "the link to access the free information will be sent to the email address you provide." This is the best way we know of to ensure that you are getting a valid email address.

Once you have a person's email, the next step in the process is to ensure that you have a system for staying in touch. This is your autoresponder. But be warned, not all autoresponders are created equal.

For example, the autoresponders that come with a discount website or email service are usually not what you need. You'll quickly find that they won't be able to perform the simplest of tasks without extensive customization. So our advice is to invest a bit more money in a system that is truly designed for sophisticated staying in touch.

You have a choice of options.

The first question is whether you want to "own" the service (in effect it resides on your computer or server), or whether you want to "rent" the service (in which case it is accessed via the web.)

When we first put in place our stay in touch system, we opted for the "own" model and purchased a system from Send Studio. Although it required a certain amount of customization, it worked pretty well. We were able to program multiple email stay in touch streams, and as a basic service it worked fine. If you have access to a savvy tech-support person and you want to own your own system, we recommend Send Studio.

However, over time, we wanted something more robust. Something that would enable us to set up unique streams of stay in touch messages based on specific actions. We wanted to be able to more precisely differentiate between those who were prospects , those who were clients, those who we had initial conversations with, those who had purchased certain services ect. That's when we turned to the web based programs.

The market is dominated by two services, AWeber and Automation Wiz. We settled on the latter and found it to be a very powerful tool. It also has a shopping cart and affiliate management system, which is helpful if you sell products or have others who sell your services on a commission basis.

However, the one limitation with any system, is relying on email as the tool for constant contact. There's no doubt that any stay in touch program will be more effective if it can integrate email with hard copy letters, phone messages, faxed articles of interest ect. This technology appears to be right around the corner and we're in the final stages of testing a couple of these programs. If you'd like more information about our final recommendations on this system please drop us an email and we'll be happy to provide it.

Although most marketers will acknowledge that staying in touch is crucial, it invariably become the one part of the marketing puzzle that falls through the proverbial cracks. That's why we think that every consultant should invest in some sort of automated stay in touch system.

What's right for you? Naturally the answer will depend. Personally we like the ease and functionality of the web based solutions, although the newest programs that incorporate multi-channel methods for sending those Gentle Rain drops are certainly the way of the future.