We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Laine Belcastro. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Laine below.

Laine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

My business focuses on not only implementing the technology to automate their initiatives, but also keeping in mind that, at the end of the day, we are still trying to convince real human beings to do business with us. Email marketing is not as simple as just setting up an email platform and sending one email to your entire audience. It’s about creating a relationship with the recipient and building trust. The goal is to send the right message to the right audience to let them know that you have their best interest top of mind.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I have always had an interest in marketing and the human interaction that comes along with the industry. I went to college for marketing and graphic design and started a job in the industry before technology came into the picture full force. I gained experience in various areas of marketing such as event planning, but ultimately had a passion with trying to build the relationship and keep it after the first point of contact was made at these events.

I taught myself how to use the automation platforms that came into the industry and originally became certified as a Salesforce Administrator. I then took a focus into email marketing and taught myself platforms like Pardot, Hubspot and Mailchimp. From there I’ve been building out my certification list in each of these platforms and decided I wanted this to be my sole focus.

I started my business in 2015 after a long stint in the media and technology industries. I decided it was time to offer clients more flexible options in marketing automation, as well as more focus on their email and lead funnel strategies. This wasn’t really being done. I saw a great deal of big agencies setting up technology for companies and leaving them to figure out the rest on their own.

What sets myself and my business apart from others is that I had the opportunity to learn about traditional marketing before marketing automation and email marketing were even in the mix. I learned how to create those human relationships and that doesn’t go away simply because we are using the internet to get our message across. Like it or not, human interaction is not going away and email marketing is becoming a main driver in building better interactions.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

I know everyone says this, but it really is all about who you know and getting yourself as many introductions as possible. In the beginning of my business, I reached out to former colleagues who were willing to make introductions to other people. I had gallons of coffee during that first year simply trying to meet as many people as possible, whether it led to future business or not. LinkedIn was also a great resource for me, as that’s where most of my industry lives in the social world.

As long as you are doing something that you are skilled in and can do a solid job, that one client or one colleague from years ago is going to remember you and you never know when it will pay off in the future.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest lesson I had to unlearn is that not every client is going to care about conducting their automation strategy the right way versus getting a job done quickly. I always assumed that if a company was spending the time and money to hire me, that they are going to value my opinion and take the time to set up their strategy and systems the right way.

Not the case! I’ve had several clients that want to conduct email marketing unethically or just want to do enough to “hit the send button” to show they’ve done something. These are clients where I had to learn to let them go, as this was not going to be beneficial for my reputation.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lmbdigimarketing.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lainemb/