Imagine for a moment if all your email marketing messages, email newsletters and blogs you subscribe to were printed out on paper – as opposed to being virtual.  How large a pile of papers would be desposited through your letter box every day?

I think it’s safe to say you’d find it very difficult (if not impossible) to cope with such a massive daily delivery.  And yet we allow our email inboxes and RSS readers to amass more messages and articles than we can ever hope to read in depth – because they don’t (seem to) take up any physical space.

Reading articles and blogs in your areas of interest – both for business and personal enjoyment – is made very easy with the internet.  Unfortunately, finding good quality articles can also mean sifting through a lot of very average offerings.

Even with all the online tools to help manage your online reading lists, there comes a point where you need to look carefully at each of your different subscriptions, for example:

Email newsletters – are you still learning from it or is it time to unsubscribe and move on?
Email marketing lists - if you’re deleting more messages than you read, why are you still on that particular list?
RSS Subscriptions (email or reader) – some people send out the same message by email and simultaneously publish it to their blog.  If you’re subscribed to both, weed out duplications and also any posts you no longer look forward to reading.

If your heart sinks when you look at all your unread emails and blog posts, then it’s time  to be really ruthless and prune out some the overload of information before you get completely swamped by it.  Then you won’t miss the genuinely helpful stuff and you’ll free up enough time to put the good ideas into action.

Have you done any subscription pruning lately?  Do let us know in the comments

I’ve been sending out a newsletter (at varying intervals) since 2003, which is amazing because it means I’ve been using Email Marketing for 7 years!  There have been many changes during that time, and also regular false announcements of Email Marketing’s demise.

But in reality it’s still very much alive and kicking & definitely deserving of a place in every small business’s marketing arsenal.  Here’s why:

• It’s a very easy way to keep in touch with clients past and present (as well as with new contacts).
• You know that people who subscribe to receive your messages want to hear from you, so they’re warm leads already (less cold calling required).
• It’s a quick and inexpensive route to broadcast your message to a vast number of prospective clients.
• Using a reputable, dedicated service will give you reports and numbers so you can accurately measure the effectiveness of your campaigns
• If done well, Email Marketing will increase visitors to your website who are already interested in your projects and services.

Over the years Sam and I have seen examples of good, bad (and some downright ugly) Email Marketing and we decided it’s high time to share our experiences of this great marketing tool with other small business owners!  Join us on 20th May for a free Teleseminar packed with best practice tips – and get your Email Marketing campaign off the ground.  Full details and registration here.

Whenever we run workshops or give talks to groups about the benefits of using the internet to market small business, there’s one question we invariably get asked.

“Will social media marketing work for my business?”

The short answer is you don’t know – until you try it!  In our experience, owners of small businesses are discovering all kinds of benefits from using social media marketing methods – and many different ways of using the social networks too.  It isn’t just about immediately getting more sales!

However, it would be foolish to keep using precious time and resources on activities that aren’t working and measuring results and effectiveness are a vital part of marketing.  Here are a few ways you can start measuring social media effectiveness:

Website visitors – You don’t only want to measure the number of visitors to your site with a tool like Google Analytics, you need to capture their details to be able to contact them again.  This is where having a sign-up box will help.

E-Commerce – It’s surprising the number of potential customers who don’t complete the purchase, even though they fully intended to buy.  Most Shopping Carts will let you know where and how many people jump ship, so you can correct and reduce the loss.

Blog – Providing interesting content will encourage readers to comment.  Also, make it easy for people to subscribe to the feed and offer more than one way for them to do this (either to a reader or by email).

Article Marketing – monthly reports will show you how many views each article got, the number of clicks on each link, and even which keywords people used to find the article!

Newsletters – Using a good provider (not Outlook!)  will enable you to see how many people received your mailing, how many opened it (although this isn’t completely accurate as some people have a preview window which automatically opens the message) and most importantly, the number of clicks back to your selected web pages.

Social Networks – Of course you want to know which networks are bringing the most visitors to your website or blog.  Using (currently) free tools like http://bit.ly/ and http://ow.ly/url/shorten-url (part of the Hootsuite Twitter client) mean you can easily track this.

I hope this has given you some ideas to try out in your social media marketing.  What else have you tried that can be measured and works well?  We’d love you to share by leaving your comments below!

Each time you send out an Email Marketing message, as opposed to a regular informative Email Newsletter, you run the risk of increasing the number of unsubscribes from your list.  Here are some thoughts and tips to avoid annoying too many people!

• If your subscribers have been used to receiving a chatty newsletter once a month and you suddenly start bombarding them with ‘salesy’ messages every couple of days, be prepared to lose those who don’t like the sudden change.
• Don’t try to make a sale from your Email. The objective should be to get interested readers to click through to a specially prepared web page that will take over the job of selling.
• Some people will take exception to you selling anything at all – they believe you should give them everything for free.  You’re better off without them on your list.
• Rather than keep sending the same marketing Emails to everyone on your list, find out who could be genuinely interested by inviting them to join a separate list.  Then mail this smaller, targetted list.
• When your promotion has a genuine deadline, like a date for an event, you’ll need to send out reminder emails right up to the day itself.  It’s surprising how many people ignore anything that isn’t urgent or immediate and therefore don’t book until the last moment.  Interestingly reminders like this don’t seem to annoy too much.

What tips would you add?

I was checking through my spam filter the other day, noting with satisfaction how it had trapped many messages from bogus contacts and then, to my surprise and dismay, saw there were also some from people with whom I had exchanged emails in the past.

As I approved those messages I wanted to forward to my Inbox, it occurred to me how easily we can lose touch with valuable contacts because of the otherwise useful spam filter, if we’re not vigilant.

Here are a few suggestions to ensure you receive emails you want if you have a spam filter in place:

1.    If possible, let new contacts know what to expect the first time they email you.  Perhaps include a short note in your first email to them.
2.    Make the authorisation / approval process very easy for people to follow, especially if they’re a bit technophobic.
3.    Personalise your verification message, the default is so bland and I’ve found people often ignore it if they don’t know it’s from you and they’re reluctant to click on links.
4.    In your verification message, give them an alternative way to contact you if they get into difficulties.

And make sure your messages get to their destinations without falling foul of other people’s filters:

5.    It’s a good idea to send out a message to each of your contacts ahead of the change (if possible), informing them of what your new email address will be.  Include a short note in your email signature block.
6.    Whenever you change your email address (or use a different one!), remember that the spam filters won’t know it’s you, so you’ll need to go through the verification process again for everyone who has a filter in place.
7.    Make sure any emails you send from within any of the social networks are expected, verified or ‘whitelisted’, especially if you know which of your contacts has an efficient filter in place.
8.    If you change the email address from which you send out regular newsletters and promotions, do check the ‘bounce’ report your service provides, to see if your message was trapped by spam filters.  You don’t want to lose any potential customers from your list in that way!

What experience do you have of using spam filters?  We’d love to hear & share any tips!

It’s taken a while but more businesses are discovering the delights of using email to communicate with their contacts every day, or so it seems.   And once they start, there’s just no stopping them!  Sam and I have both received mailings recently that really do break all the rules of good practice; hence this post.

1.    Don’t email everyone you’ve ever met
I’m sure some people just go through the piles of business cards they’ve collected over the months or years and add them all to their email contact list.  And/or they go through the member directory of the business groups they belong to and add those names too.  Not everyone is going to remember who you are.   Not everyone is going to be interested in what you have to say.
Best Practice Tip: Ask for permission to add people to your list when you meet them.

2.    Don’t email jokes, cute photos or ‘chain mail’ to your business contacts
I know they can be cute, hilarious or tug at the heart strings – but I’m going to be a killjoy and say they don’t have a place in business and they don’t do much for your professional image.  Speaking with a friend at the weekend she just deletes the emails without reading them now because the pictures take so long to download.
Best Practice Tip: If someone has entrusted you with their business email address, then business is what it should be used for.

3.    Don’t mass email from your computer Email programme
Once your list grows to over 50 people, it’s wise not to take the risk of sending emails to everyone from your Outlook or Outlook Express programme (or Mac Equivalent).  Your email provider will pick up the activity and may take the view that you’re spamming your contacts.  At best you’ll receive a warning, at worst your email account will be suspended – not good for business or your online reputation.
Best Practice Tip: Use a professional email service for your larger business mailings (see our March 2009 newsletter for suggestions)

4.    Don’t make your contacts’ email addresses public
If you must send small mailings from your computer email programme, for heaven’s sake don’t lump everyone into the ‘To’ or ‘CC’ fields where they can be seen by everyone else.  This practice makes it easy for your less scrupulous contacts to spam all your contacts with their messages too, which won’t make you very popular.  Read this cautionary tale.
Best Practice Tip: Send the Email to yourself and use the ‘BCC’ field for everyone else. (click on ‘CC’ to reveal it).

You might also be interested in listening to this short interview with Robin Houghton of Egg Box Marketing on the subject of permission email marketing.  Click here to listen

If you know anyone who could benefit from reading this post, please do us all a favour and show it to them

I often hear this used as a reason for not starting, or keeping up to date with a blog.  But blogging doesn’t have to be just about writing articles.  In fact, there are many people who aren’t very keen on reading either!

If you don’t like writing, why not use another medium to get your message across?  How about podcasting?  There are many different services you can use – some paid, some free.  Since the beginning of 2009 I’ve been using Blog Talk Radio to broadcast a weekly internet radio show, as I mentioned in detail in an earlier post.

Unbelievably that post was 6 months and many shows ago!  I have since set up a separate blog for the Radio Show and update it each week after the event, providing a short summary with links to the guest’s website and also back to Blog Talk Radio.  To see what I mean, click to visit the show blog.

As well as the show Sam & I did last week about the implications of BING, we thought you might be interested in listening to recordings of some other recent shows, as the interview topics are very relevant for you savvy business owners out there!

Small Business blogging
Why Twitter works
Making Facebook work for your business
Just how secure is Cloud Computing?
Email Marketing – get better results with permission

Your comments about any of the topics are most welcome, as are suggestions for future shows.

While more and more small businesses are catching on to the importance of writing an email newsletter and using it as part of their overall marketing strategy, they often forget to take one of the most crucial steps before publishing.  They forget to test the message.

OK, I’ll admit it doesn’t sound very exciting!  But it can mean the difference between your prospects and clients receiving a professional looking newsletter – and not being able to read it at all.

Rarely will they take the trouble to let you know there’s a problem, so you’ll never know.  You’ll have lost an opportunity to keep in touch, and if you were hoping to promote a new product or special event, you may have lost a potential sale.

When you put together an email newsletter or promotion, it’s worth having a checklist beside you of all the steps you need to take before hitting ‘Send’, because while most providers are pretty good at ensuring your message is checked for spam and spelling, they can’t check for other basic human errors.

Another advantage of sending a test message to yourself is you get the chance to read through it again for typos and to check all the links work.

Don’t forget to send a text only test message to yourself so you can check what it will look like for those people who prefer to receive text versions of emails.  Also remember when you use a lot of pictures in your newsletter; that they’ll appear as blank boxes if the recipient hasn’t enabled images in their email package.

If you’d like to find out how to avoid some other common email newsletter mistakes, here’s a previous post on the subject.

Marketing Sherpa’s Sergio Balegno believes that social media does not endanger email marketing.  I wonder if he’s right.

There was a time when the only way to read informative articles was to subscribe to the publisher’s newsletter.  That’s how they grew their list of interested prospects to market to.

Recently we’ve noticed that  things seem to be changing.

In addition to the ‘traditional’ Email Newsletter (or Ezine), there are so many different routes to get your article out there – you can blog it (to your blog and as a guest post on other people’s blogs), submit it to article directories, post on forums, tweet it and even Squidoo it.

In theory this is great because using social media helps to quickly increase the visibility of your articles, but it also puts pressure on you as a writer to keep producing more and more new content.  And as it’s a way of show-casing your expertise, it has to be high quality content too!

Now, Sam and I take pride in providing original fresh content, both in our individual newsletters (Marketing Karma and Competitive Advantage) and in our excellent jointly authored Savvy Marketing Tips (hint, hint!).  We truly value our subscribers and want them to keep reading, even though it’s sometimes hard for us to fit in all the writing.

As suggested in a previous post, it’s acceptable practice to use articles more than once, after a decent time interval.  However, this is what some people are doing:

They are writing an article, posting it on their blog, submitting it to directories, tweeting it and sending it out in their newsletter – all in the space of a few days!

Here’s the point.  I can get the same article on my blog reader sometimes before the email newsletter even  reaches my inbox.  If the main difference is that the newsletter also contains promotions ….. you can guess which one I prefer to subscribe to.

Email Newsletter publishers are going to have to re-think their article distribution strategy if they want to keep their subscribers reading.

Talk about a sledge hammer to crack a nut!

We really can’t see how this is going to work, if it ever comes to be.  This article on the BBC website highlights just how ridiculous the new Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) which says that, from March this year, all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year.

We’ll keep you posted as the argument is bound to hot up the nearer we get to March!

What do you think about copies of all your emails being stored by your ISP?  Please let us know by leaving your comments here.