Karen Skidmore's Kick-Ass Blog | CanDoCanBe

Give your email newsletter a personality

Email newsletters are a very powerful way of building your own database for your business.  By giving value in the form of top tip articles, latest industry news or practical advice on "how-to-dos" will allow your subscribers to build trust in your expertise.

And you all know that if you trust someone, you are more likely to spend money with them - don't you?

But having an email newsletter sign up box on your website with the words "Free email newsletter - sign up today" will just not cut it today.

Offering an email newsletter is just not unique enough. Everyone is offering one!

If you are offering an email newsletter and just not seeing anyone subscribe, it may be time to give your email newsletter some much needed personality.

Brand it, name it, give it some value.  Your email newsletter needs to be regards as your most important product to offer because it is the first door that someone opens directly in to your business.

If you had to give your email newsletter a name, what would it be?

Email Newsletters - do you invite subscriptions or business card dump?

I have been posting quite a bit last week about the sins of business card dumping on to email newsletter mailing lists.  And I know that many of you offer and publish your own email newsletters.

But do you go round and collect business cards to “dump” on to your mailing list or do you invite people to subscribe themselves?

I don’t know about you but I am getting rather frustrated about going to networking meetings, having an enjoyable conversation with someone and exchanging business cards to keep in touch only to find myself receiving their email newsletter that I didn’t ask to be part of.  This happened yet again last week!

If you “dump” business cards on to your newsletter database, perhaps you had better check out the postings on my new email newsletter blog www.HowtodoEmailNewsletters.com. 

I have posted an interesting article “Do your newsletters subscribers have to opt-in or do they have to opt-out?” and the facts about the legalities of email address dumping too – “The UK Opt-In Rules Explained”.

Only 1 more week to go!

One of the simplest and easiest ways of keeping the communication going with your past, present and future customers is harnessing the power of Email Newsletters.

Any yet, because of the technology involved and the thought that you have to be a HTML programmer to send one out, many of you are still very unsure on where to start and how to use the simple web-based technology available to you.

My 4 week Email Newsletter Bootcamp starts in less than a week!

A 4 week step-by-step programme that will show you how to set up, write and send out your email newsletter - by Easter.

Who is this programme for?

• Coaches and trainers who run seminars and workshops
• Consultants and therapists who would like to steady flow of 1-2-1 clients
• Women who feel overwhelmed by the technical aspect of setting up an email newsletter and yet can't afford a consultant to set one up for them
• Women who want to re-energise their marketing and discover how writing quality articles really can grow your business
• Women who would like to spend more time delivering the service and products they started up in business to do, rather than spend exorbitant amounts of money on advertising and sweat it out each month hoping that someone responds!

What will you get?

• 4 90 minute structure telephone workshops
• A bonus one hour follow-up clinic
• Workbooks for each of the 4 modules
• Dedicated website where you can access all recordings and workbooks
• Clear and simple actions to take between each module

When and where?

Dial in from the comfort of your own sofa or office
Starts Thursday 21st and then every following Thursday for 5 weeks
12.00pm until 1.30pm

The price of this programme is only £147 which includes personalised email support throughout the programme

The group is limited to an absolute maximum of 15 so that each of you receive personal attention and everyone's questions can be answered.

To quantify the value of this offer, the 1-2-1 coaching and mentoring programmes invested in separately would be £230 a month for just 2 one hour sessions.  If you were to invest in 6 hours with me on an individual basis, this would amount to £690.

£147 is a bargain!  Especially when you realise you will have the recordings and the workbooks to go over and over again whenever you need to.

Take action now and reserve your place immediately

There are only 6 places left at the time of this posting being made, so hurry before they all go.

Click here to reserve your place NOW!

Reasons to Make Contact Part 3

It's too easy to give up early. 

You make a follow up phone call to a customer about their enquiry and they fob you off with the infamous answer "No, not at the moment. Now is just not the right time".

It is easy to feel that you don't want to keep calling them.  After all the last thing you want is your customer to feel pestered and get annoyed with your incessant phone calls.

If you have ever been in a supermarket with a 3 year old who wants sweets, you know how frustrating it can be to have the pester power directed at you.  You may give in and buy the sweets but the buying process is not a pleasant one, is it?

"They will phone me when they are ready to buy", you quietly assure yourself.  "I won't call them again."

Wrong!  There is every chance that this customer will not call you when they are ready to buy.

Why?  Because they will forget about you and your offer.  The offer they were interested in was just not desirable enough at the time and a busy work and life schedule will just get in the way.  Your prospect client will forget you.

So, how do you keep the communication with your prospect without becoming a pest?

Inspired by the sun shining this week and hearing Ian Drury & the Blockheads on the radio singing "Reasons to be Cheerful", I begun to list the number of different reasons that you can use to make contact with your past, present and future customers.

Enjoy my cheesy interpretation (and humble apologies to the late Ian Drury for my dreadful song writing skills!)

Reasons to Make Contact Part 3

Have a cup of coffee, catch up about the weather
What about the results this weekend
How are the children, do you prefer it giftwrapped
What articles would you like me to send?

Have you read my letter, about my latest offer?
Just following up about that quote
Going to that meeting, hope to see you there
Let's do lunch, let's push out the boat

How did you find our service, was it up to scratch
I'm doing a survey, could you help me out?
Got a new product, give me your opinion
Have you seen the latest news about?

Happy birthday to you, Merry Christmas to all
It's start of a new financial year
Would you like to re-order, got a special deal
Thanks for the referral, I owe you a beer

Reasons to make contact part 3
Reasons to make contact part 3
Reasons to make contact part 3

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What reasons do you have to keep the communication going with your past, present and future customers?  Leave your thoughts in the comment box below.

Blogs and email newsletters working together

Blogs and email newsletters work really well together, and it is question that I get asked a lot about.

Aweber, and I have been having a good old rumage around their blog and site today, announced their new blog feed email newsletter not so long ago and by all accounts it has hit the blogging world by storm.

Now I am a Constant Contact email newsletter user at present so to start using Aweber on this blog and build a different database in a new place will just be too confusing at present.  But for those of you out there who are considering your options, I would seriously have a look at what Aweber RSS feed is offering.

It may be that I use Aweber for a new site that I am planning so I will let you know when systems are in place and how they work.  Likewise, if any of you are using it already or start to use it, do let me know what you think.  It would be great to hear feedback.

If you would like to read more about how email newsletters can help grow your business and attract more clients, then check out www.HowtodoEmailNewsletters.com

How passive is your website?

Brochure style websites, which to be honest most small businesses adopt, are OK for, well, brochures – but not much else.

This article here explains beautifully why websites need email marketing to help you and your site visitors interact with each other.

OK, the article is obviously selling Aweber’s email newsletter system at the end (and it is one of the email newsletter systems that I do seriously recommend you check out) but the points they make are very valid.

If email newsletters are something you want to get started but feeling overwhelmed on where to actually start, then check out www.HowtodoEmailNewsletters.com

Archiving your email newsletters - the easy way

Archiving email newsletters and making them available for subscribers to read past editions, is a good way of building a library of resources, as well as building content for your website.

In the past, one way to do this was to create a new page on your website for each newsletter, either as a PDF file, or copy and paste the article in to HTML code.  Pretty cumbersome and lengthy process, especially if you were having to pay your webmaster a fee for each new update.

Today, archiving is a lot easier. Constant Contact, which a great web-based email newsletter system to use, now offers an archive facility which gives you an unique web address which you can use in your newsletters or add as a link on your website.  It keeps the HTML “prettiness” to it BUT it does cost you extra and it doesn’t help your website with its’ SEO and key words.

This is why a blog works very well with your email newsletter.  A blog is very, very easy to use, especially if you use Blogger or Typepad, and a simple cut, paste & publish and your newsletter article is online.

By hosting your own archived newsletters on your own blog, you will also start attracting focused internet visitors on the key words that you use, as well as driving present subscribers to a website that helps build their trust in you (and ultimately spend money with you!).

If you want to start your own email newsletter, but not sure how – you are most welcome to check out the free teleclasses on offer later this month.  Visit www.CanDoCanBe.com/FreeTeleClasses for more information 

 

FREE! teleclasses this month - will you join me?

In preparation for the start of the next Email Newsletter Bootcamp, I am very excited to announce two special FREE! teleclasses.

You can dial in and join a session called “Email Newsletters for Technophobes” where I will demonstrating how easy email newsletters are and how you don’t need to be an IT guru to work the systems.

You can then join in for a second session called “Will Email Newsletters work for your business” where I will be sharing, warts and all, the pros and cons to running email newsletters.  I can give you some questions to ask yourself to work out whether email newsletters are really right for you and your customers.

For more information and to register for the events, click here.

And if you can’t make it live on the day, register any way as you will receive a copy of the teleclass recording automatically after each event.  How cool is that?

Look forward to speaking to you live on the call.

Comments Rock!

Just had to say a huge thank you to all of you who have contributed with your comments over the past few months.

I was just having a quick check of my blog stats and since I started this blog in October 2006 I have posted 205 articles and my comments have just hit the 200 mark.

Thank you, thank you!  I appreciate them all.  There are almost more comments than postings. 

It has taken a while, to be honest, to start to see the comments appear and in fact I had a coffee with fellow blogger Fiona Humberstone who was asking me how long it took to start seeing lots of comments come through.

I have had a think and realised that comments started happening when I increased my blogging to every week day back in September last year.  And the number of comments have steadily and slowly snowballed.

I think having an email newsletter that refers back to my blog in every edition helps, too which is one of the reasons why I believe a blog and an email newsletter work so well together. 

So, for those of you who have started your own blogs and may be getting a little disillusioned by the lack of comments being made, just keep the faith.  Keep writing great posts, write regularly and over time you will build regular readers who feel compelled to add their thoughts and comments.  And if you have an email newsletter, make sure you are including links to your articles on your blog too.

Kylie Minogue Tickets Go On Sale - she got the 7 points of communication right, didn't she?

Kylie tickets went on sale this morning, and yes I was one of those thousands who were had multiple browser windows open, desperate to get tickets to see her.

You may remember an article I wrote a few weeks ago “Did you know it takes 7 times?” where I explained that it takes, on average, 7 times for someone to hear, read or see your name before they are willing to buy from you.  People need to build their trust in you and realise that you are the person who is offering a solution to their problems.

My desire to buy tickets to see her in concert begun a couple weeks ago.  Her new single was being released and she was being interviewed by Johnny Vaughan on Capital Radio.  I was humming her song all day and I remember mentioning to my husband that evening that if Kylie was to announce dates in the UK, I wanted to go.  I didn’t know at that time that she was going to be touring in the UK.

Kylie was then promoting her single everywhere. She was on Channel 4 with her film White Diamonds and then I heard the announcement on the radio that there were indeed concert dates being announced. And ticket sales where happening this Monday.

Just in case no one had heard, read or seen her over the past few weeks, she also appeared on Strictly Come Dancing last night.  The final cherry on her publicity cake!

I was hooked – I found out last night where to get tickets (I’m not a regular concert goer, so this was quite new to me – and at my age too!!) and this morning spent 40 minutes getting a pair of tickets for one of her dates in July.

Hooray! I got all 7 points of communication from Kylie and loved every minute of it.

What about your customers?  Are they loving every communication from you and is that communication helping them desire what you offer?