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One of the strategies I recommend to expand your reach is collaboration with others – including people that offer similar services and products to yours.

A great way to do so is through creating joint venture events.

I recently was asked a question about how can you ensure when running events, teleseminars, webinars or seminars with people how do you ensure that you comply with Data Protection requirements and your data base of contacts.

Here is an element of our ounline marketing strategy I implemented for a not for profit organisation I am involved with, where several of us on the board wanted to invite people to register to learn about the organisation and also register for events:

1. We all advised our own lists either through email newsletters, articles on our blog (where we had one) and through email distribution lists to our personal network contacts – this meant we did not have to share our own contacts and data bases

2. We made sure that we had a specific registration on the website page for the not for profit association where we directed our own contacts – this meant that if people were interested in the detail of the not for profit organisation and the forthcoming event they could register to join that mailing list

3. We nurtured the new data base – this meant that we only mailed to people who knew they wanted that information and we then update them with details of future events.

That organisation has grown from strength to strength, with new members joining each month. The content of the events certainly attracts new members to the not for profit organisation.

However, without the collaboration of the leadership team who are all employed in similar, and in some cases directly competitive organisations, we would not have reached critical mass for even our first event.

How have you collaborated with competitors but still maintained privacy on your mailing lists and data bases?