Why the Frustration?

I receive about 150 emails a day on my main email account plus about 100 on other email accounts.  In the spam filter, I have well over 250 emails a day.  That is a lot of emails.  Out of the 500 daily emails, there are maybe 20 that are important to me.

Maybe I expect too much.

I have had my primary email account for about 15 years, and it has been posted on several websites.  Naturally, just about every spammer has my email address in their database.

So here are three tips I am implementing to help me manage my inbox and never miss an important email again.

Tip #1

Have a separate, private email address for your most important clients.  Don’t publish this email address on your website or on any marketing material.  You will want to set any spam rules to the lowest possible settings for this account.

Tip #2

Use a separate account, like Gmail or Hotmail, for news and other email subscriptions.  I get a lot of new emailed newsletters each day.  Quite often I just don’t have time to read through everything; so instead of cluttering my primary email box where client emails come in, I put them in a separate account.

Better yet, stop all of your email newsletters and look for an RSS feed from your favorite news sites. If you don;t know what RSS is, read this post:  “What is RSS and Why Do I Care”

Tip #3

Even 150 emails is a lot to sort through, and it can be easy to accidentally delete an important email.  Because of this, I am using the ‘rules wizard’ a lot more in my email program.  When a new message gets delivered to my inbox, I have it go to a predefined folder automatically.  For instance:  when an email comes from a staff member, I have it go directly to my staff folder.  Setup as many of these rules as you can, and before long you are managing your emails like a pro.

Bonus Tip

Don’t create a ‘catch all’ email account.  A catch all email account is one that catches any emails set to your domain name.  One of my clients had a catch all created for their domain name.  After one week, they had 16 million emails!  And you think you have email problems

Photo Credit:  Kevin Lawver

Have you have every wondered:  “why bother with social media?”  Great stats  – some very surprising.   Welcome to the revolution.

I made a comment on a blog recently that started a big discussion.  The comment was that “spam is in the eye of the receiver.” Why did this solicit so many comments?

Gone are the days of mass mailing everyone from your Outlook address book. For those of you who want to use email as a marketing technique, you want your email list to be targeted, professional, and polished. You also don’t want to spam people or black list your email server. That’s why using a service like Constant Contact for mass emails (also called email blasts) is recommended.

The most import thing to remember about spam is:  “Spam is in the eye of the receiver.”  It is easy for anyone to mark your email as spam.  If I signed up for your emails a few month ago, but I forgot that I did; your message is spam to me.  I may even report it as spam -  AND reporting a message as spam can be as simple as one click of the mouse.

Here’s the catch with email.

If you do it right, email works to grow your business. If you do it wrong, people think it’s spam, and people hate spam. Hate isn’t one of the buying emotions, is it? So I think it’s safe to say that you don’t want people to hate your communications. In order to steer your business away from negative perceptions and towards positive ones, you need to practice email marketing, not spam marketing.

Email Marketing is:

… delivering professional email communications, to an interested audience, containing information they find valuable.  Let’s examine that definition:

Delivering professional email communications. ‘Professional’ means sending emails that represent the characteristics of your business visually (your brand), while delivering information that educates your audience and/or differentiates your business from the competition.

To an interested audience. An ‘interested’ audience is comprised of people who are familiar with you and your business and have asked to receive your communications.

Containing information they find valuable. If your communications aren’t valuable and appreciated by your audience, no one will want to receive them.

To Spam or Not to Spam – it really isn’t a question

People hate spam.  But they love messages that contain relevant information that they can use.

Are there emails that you get from people you know, like and trust?  Which ones do you read and which ones do you just delete?

Intro

• 30 Days of Social Media
• Are you ready to engage in social media?
• Social Media Tool Box
  
• Putting a Face on Social Media – Gravatars

Facebook

• Face It: Why You Need To Know About Facebook
• Facebook-Business
• Facebook Advertising is for Everyone

Social Bookmarking

• What the Heck is Social Bookmarking
  

YouTube

• Good Marketing is About Telling Stories – YouTube Can Help
• How To Setup Your YouTube Account AND My Famous 5 Minute Video Creation Secrets Revealed

Google

• Google Wants to Alert Your Business to New Possibilities for Free

RSS

• What is RSS and Why Do I Care

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn 101 Getting the Most From This Often Mis-Understood Social Network
• What Everybody Ought to Know About Connections On LinkedIn
• Do You Make These Mistakes

Inspiration

• A Little Shift Goes a Long Way
• If the White House Can Embrace Social Media Can Your Business
• Social Marketing Results in Less than 60 Minutes: One Great Example
• Do You Make These Mistakes With Your Customers

Local Search

• If You Are Not In Local Search Engines Now, You Will Regret It Later
• Getting Started With Your Google Local/Google Maps Listing
• Are You Ready to Take Control of Your Online Reputation

Blogs

• Don’t Be Too Quick To Decide a Blog Isn’t Right For Your Business
• Give Me 15 Minutes and I Will Give You The Formula To Blogging Success

Auto Responder/E-commerce

• Do You Get Better Service From An Auto-Responder At An E-commerce Store Than You Do In Person

Photo Sharing

• Create a Vivid Image – Finding the Right Photo Just Got Easier

Twitter

• Is Twitter For You
• Twitter for Your Business

Authenticity

• Do You Have an Identity Crisis

Email

• Do you know what the single most important ingredient is in your business

Protecting Your Information

• The Lazy Mans Way to Hack Into Your Personal Information and Passwords
• There Is A Quick Way to Secure Your Identity On Social Websites

Summary

• How Much Time Should You Spend on Social Media Each Week

Something happens when you get involved with social media.  You change.  You realize that the more you give – the better you feel – and the more you get back.  I am motivated to be even more active!

By the end of the week, I have created some terrific marketing materials that are customer focused.  I have also created a bunch of ineffective materials that will not work, but here’s the thing – my social community helps me determine what is good or bad based on the comments I receive, the number of times an article is retweeted, or the emails that I receive with questions on the articles or tweets.

So – 15 hours per week to develop marketing materials that educate and creating powerful relationships.  I think that is time well spend.  Would your marketing manager be more effective if he/she were to be active in social networks?

My Blog (1 hour a day)

• Write at least three blog posts per week based on research and conversations I have had on Twitter and on other blogs
• Respond to comments daily on my blog
• Write at least 1- 5 comment a day on other people’s blogs

Analytics  (1/2 hour a week)

• Review Google Analytics to identify trends and possible follow-up articles.
• Review click throughs with FeedBurner

Twitter  (1 – 2 hours through out the day)

• Daily- retweet at least one good idea or something enlightening
• Daily – write a response to at least one person I have not talked to ever before on Twitter
• Daily – scan twitter for relevant conversations
• Tweet my blog posts
• Recommend my most active followers on #followfriday
• TweetLater – schedule a #QOTD or #quote for each day
• Twice a Week – Review new followers and follow active Tweeters

Google Reader  (4 hours per week)

• Monitor Google Reader news articles for relevant blog content and Twitter posts
• Comment on relevant articles
• Bookmark with delicious articles for future blog posts and idea generation

Google Alerts  (15 minutes per week)

• Monitor Google alerts for relevant keywords and phrases

LinkedIn  (15 minutes per day)

• Daily- Update Status
• Daily – review friend (connections) status and comment on at least one
• Tuesday/Thursday – Scan group conversations and engage in topics when appropriate
• Wednesday – Ask one question in a group
• Friday – help connect two of my contacts together
• Friday – send one referral, ask for one referral

Slideshare

• Monthly – Upload a new presentation
• Weekly – Review comments on presentations

Facebook  (15 minutes per day)

• Daily – Update Status
• Daily – review friend status
• Daily – At least one non-business related comment to a friend
• Delete any messages that are spam-ish or any polls or applications sent to me
• Review photos of friends

YouTube

• Monthly – Review my videos
• Monthly – Review favorites
• As they happen – Add a new video to my blog

Delicious

• Daily – Book mark daily to share with clients, employees and twitter followers
• Weekly – review bookmarks to generate ideas for future blog posts or future projects

Email

• Check three times a day – morning, noon, and at the end of the day
• Respond to all emails – even if it just says “I will get back to you.”
• Clean up mail from last week and close any loose ends

Other Activities

• Weekly – engage in other social networks that I belong

There are a few other activities that my staff take care of through out the week that include:

• Managing two Facebook communities
• Managing two LinkedIn communities
• Publishing our e-newsletter
• Manage two additional blogs

What are your thoughts?  I would love to hear them!

It is like marriage

I have been married for 14 years now.  (sweet, glorious years!)  When I first met my wife, I didn’t say, “Hey let’s get married.”  We talked.  We got to know each other.  We spent hours learning about each other.  One date at a time.  When I knew she was the one – and we completed the transaction with marriage

Do you date your customers?

What?  Date your customers?  Do you put out an ad and expect your customers to flock to your door or create a great website and expect orders to start rolling in?  It doesn’t happen.  If it does, it doesn’t last.  Did you know there are more small businesses that fail each year than marriages?

It takes time, money, energy, and effort

It takes 5 – 10 communications to generate a sale from a prospective new customer.  (how many dates did you have before you found the right person?)   Here’s why:

• Either, you have a totally new product or service few people have heard of…then your challenge is education. What is it? Why is it useful? Why is it worth paying for?
• Or you have a product or service everyone knows about…then your challenge is differentiation. Why are you better, faster, cheaper, more convenient, and so on?

Know, Like and Trust

A single promotion that ‘educates’ your audience or ‘differentiates’ you still is unlikely to create enough profit to encourage enough people to buy from you.  What are the chances that after one promotion, a new customer is going to buy from you?  Marketing your business isn’t an event; it’s a series of related events. It’s a process. It’s a relationship.

The purpose of your marketing should be to find a customer, who has a need, to know you, like you, and trust you.  That is my favorite definition of marketing – and it lends itself well to the rest of this article….

Spend Money Wisely

If you spend all of your money trying to market to new customers, you are always marketing to people that do NOT know you – if they don’t know you, they may not like you – and they definitely don’t have enough trust built up to buy from you immediately. It is expensive to attract new client; as high as 6-7 times more to acquire a new customer than attract repeat business from your existing customers.

So why not spend your time focusing on your current client base, while lowering your cost to build the “know, like, trust’ with new customers?

Your Most Powerful Mode of Building Relationships

Emailed Newsletter.  Email is the perfect way to connect with your audience.  We are addicted to email.  How many time to you check your email?  Do you leave it on all day?  Do you get it delivered to your cell phone?  Do you check your email before you go to bed?

E-newsletters are easy to assemble, cost nothing (or very little) to send, have a higher open rate than regular direct mail, and gain loyal readers. PLUS, it is measurable!

• Want to know how many of your newsletters were opened?  You will know.
• Want to know which customers consistently read your newsletters? You can!
• Want to know what is the most popular article in your newsletter?  Yes, you will know that too.

My Favorite Tool

My favorite tool for managing e-newsletters is Constant Contact.  We have been using them for years, and I trust them with my email campaigns.  Their tools allow your customers to subscribe to your newsletter; but they also manage the process for your customers to un-subsribe.  This is important.

ONE ACTION ITEM: To try Constant Contact free for one month.  Sign up and give it a try.

Do you want even more tips?  Sign up for my companies’ newsletter to see how we use Constant Contact.  You can always unsubscribe – so what is stopping you from giving it a try?