Constant Contact Newsletter

July 25, 2012 by admin

“People started showing up within an hour of getting your e-mail!”

Let’s call this reason #57 for having an e-newsletter.

The headline is a a paraphrase of a voice mail left by a client’s client for whom yours truly writes, designs and distributes a weekly e-newsletter. The client, a retail plant nursery, had announced a special “dollar sale” on summer plants with the e-mail. As you can gather from that quote and the fact that the client volunteered that information, the sale was a big success.

You’re probably saying, “Sure, you can get that type of response when you sell things for a dollar”. There’s no denying a great offer makes a difference in getting almost immediate response. Yet if this particular e-mail was the first one you received, chances are you might not have jumped in your car and went straight to the nursery as what happened with this client.

This particular e-mail was successful for several reasons. The offer is one. Another is how our client collects e-mail addresses, mostly through a sign-up sheet at their two locations. So the people on the e-mail list have already visited their establishment and have a pretty good idea about the quality of the product. Yet what really makes people get in the car to take advantage of this sale is the relationship they have with our client.

You see, besides an initial visit to their store, customers have received a weekly e-mail via Constant Contact since March. So, even though they may not have set foot in the store since early spring, they hear from our client every week. To the customer, it’s an ongoing dialogue. It says, “we’re still here, why don’t you check out what we have on sale this week”.

The most interesting part of this particular sale stems from the number of people who opened the e-mail. At the time our client left the message, the e-newsletter had the lowest percentage open rate of any e-mail we had sent. Let me repeat that:

The lowest open rate of any e-mail we had sent!

Confused? Don’t be because there are a couple of reasons why. First, the list is larger now so a lower percentage open rate doesn’t necessarily mean fewer people received the message (More than 30 percent of the recipients opened, which is excellent). The success of the sale combined with the slightly below average open rate does indicate the strength of the relationship (AKA loyalty) with our client and his core customers. And that’s truly why a regular e-newsletter to your customers is the biggest no brainer in business, no matter what product or service you sell.

If you are interested in starting your own e-newsletter to enhance the relationship with your customers, please drop a line or give me a call at 617-848-0848.

February 10, 2012 by admin

Five things that worked for me in 2011

Happy new year, everybody. Clearly one New Year’s resolution of mine wasn’t to get out the first edition of Changing Lanes in a timely fashion. Still, let the record show this edition came out in January 2012.

One of my “traditions” before setting my goals for the coming year is to review what’s worked in the previous. Those things can be tools for business or things that helped me do business better. Here’s the top five of things that worked well for me last year:

Constant Contact – Social Media

It may seem like a trivial add-on to an already great service. Yet being able to share your e-newsletter to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media serves a great purpose if you’re trying to be consistent with your social media efforts. Even better, you don’t need to take a class on how to do it. Just check a few boxes and it’s pretty self-explanatory.

Matt Furey’s Combat Conditioning

I’ve been using Matt Furey’s Combat Conditioning program for six years and enjoyed the incredible workout these bodyweight exercises provided in a short period of time. One in particular, Hindu Squats, I’ve found to be a tremendous cure for writer’s block.

While a lot of people find a trip to the gym or a run a great way to alleviate writer’s block, it can take a lot of time. A set of 100 Hindu Squats can take three or four minutes. You’re probably breathing a lot harder than a run or 30 minutes on the treadmill and you can do them right at your desk.

Matt Furey – Carpal Tunnel Fix

Last year, hitting a punching bag was my version of stress relief. Unfortunately, it caused a little bit of elbow tendonitis, otherwise known as ‘tennis elbow’. Upon shaking the hand of a 110-lb graphic designer and feeling pain, I knew it was time to seek some help but did not feel like dealing with multiple trips to physical therapy, co-pays, deductibles and all that. I ordered Matt Furey’s Carpal Tunnel Fix program. Within a few days, the pain had subsided dramatically. Within a week, it was gone.

IrfanView

If something works for me, I stick with it. That’s why I kept the same printer-scanner-copier for the past nine years. It worked fine and I saw no reason to switch. Well, almost no reason. When I bought the new computer with Vista, the photo editing software that came with the printer was not working well. Or, at all. That’s when I discovered IrfanView. It enabled me to edit size, crop, change resolution and a bunch of other stuff. And it was free. ’nuff said.

Paint

Not the kind you put on walls. The Microsoft software that’s part of the Accessories suite. Usually thought of as kind of a throwaway/add-on, it has actually come in quite handy in my attempt to save my printer. In fact, it’s the program I use to scan documents. It sure beats buying a new printer.

That’s what worked for me last year. Stay tuned for next month’s Changing Lanes, which should appear before February 31.

December 11, 2011 by admin

I did it last week. Twice. Did you?

That’s really not bragging. It’s what every business, large or small should be doing once or twice a week at a minimum.

The “it” referred to here is adding new content to your website (let’s keep it out of the gutter, people).

When it comes to our websites, the fundamental complaint business owners have is not ranking high enough in the search engines. While
there’s the entire science of having the right keyword or keyword phrases, adding new content on on a fairly regular basis remains a critical part of higher rankings. Yet how many actually do it–add new content–each week?

Search engines only see words. Once a site has been indexed, it receives its ranking. If other website owners–new and those with existing sites–add new content with those same keywords, they can leave you in the dust.

That’s why having a blog that’s built into your website–not on separate blog sites–is critical to sustaining your search engine ranking. By simply posting a blog entry with your select choice of keywords, you are sending a message to the search engine spiders to “reindex me” with that new content. That helps keep your site from going to the bottom of the list.

So, how do you manage to do it at least once a week (shame on you if you haven’t caught on by now)? Here are some easy ways to consistently have fresh content:

Hire a freelance article/blog writer like yours truly to draft a month’s worth of blogs.
Make it a priority for you or a dedicated member of your staff to add content at least once a week.
Recruit guest bloggers. Invite non-competitors who have a similar target audience contribute a blog to run on your site. You can return the favor by writing one for theirs. If you work this right, you can be writing one blog a month but have new content every week and reach additional audiences.
Reference articles and link to them. That’s not advocating publishing an article verbatim on your blog. But a paragraph describing the article and then linking to it is fine.

Companies spend thousands of dollars in establishing a web presence. Yet it’s amazing how many forget to put that same effort on an
ongoing basis by updating the content to ensure the success of the site. By “doing it” once a week (or more), you can keep your website current and virile.