Get on a First Name Basis with Online Prospects and Clients

Once upon a time, geography and the surrounding community limited the customer base for small businesses. Today, our connected world offers an unprecedented opportunity for small businesses everywhere because we can live anywhere and work with clients on a global scale. But what have we sacrificed? Sometimes we long for the days when an owner … Read more

Connect with Clients and Prospects with Email Marketing

A 2011 MerchantCircle.com survey of over 8,000 US local business owners found email marketing cited by 35.8% as a “Top three most effective marketing or advertising method.” Likewise, the 9th Annual Merchant Survey (2010) conducted by The E-tailing Group asked merchants to list which initiatives they would be using to improve website performance. The top … Read more

Personality and Style

I took child psychology in my sophomore year of college. The one thing I’ll never forget about that class is taking Myers-Briggs Type Indicator for the first time along with other personality and learning style tests. The result? ISTJ (Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judging). And I’ve tested ISTJ every time since then. Even my daughter is … Read more

How to Make Email Marketing Work for Your Business

One of the bigger themes of Web 2.0 is interactivity. Putting the control in the user’s hands. A past email newsletter I managed lets users choose what content they want to receive. Help Potential Customers Remember You Email newsletters offer an easy way to build relationships with clients and prospects while keeping your business in … Read more

Here Are Recipes for an Awesome Email Newsletter

Many types of cuisine are award winners and require a variety of special ingredients to be flavorful. It would be easy if one award-winning recipe existed for all newsletters, but newsletters, too, are as different as Creole gumbo is from Korean dumplings. One recipe won’t do the trick. Fortunately, two newsletters can be opposite in … Read more

Work Overtime to Get Readers to Open Newsletters: The Second Send Controversy

Many newsletter publishers believe in “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” So they send their newsletters a second time and maybe even a third. Whether or not this is a good thing has yet to surface. Spam has driven many publishers to take this step, as legitimate email newsletters get diverted to … Read more

The Body of Email Newsletters

How much content should it sport? by Meryl K. Evans, editor, eNewsletter Journal How we dress for the day depends on the season and our tastes. During hot days, most of us tend to wear short-sleeves and light-weight material — I’m partial to shorts and a t-shirt. A few daring folks wear less, and when … Read more

Energize Your Newsletter

Five ways to keep readers engaged by Chris Scott, Vice President of Hodge Communications, Inc. Whether distributed via email or printed and snail-mailed, newsletters are a cost-effective way for businesses or other organizations to keep in touch with employees, customers, prospects or members. The trick, however, is to come up with a strategy to keep … Read more