1. Don't make this horrendous marketing blunder
- How to turn your would be customers off
2. Emarketing - Want to know something the largest companies don't?
- See how they're all missing it
3. Utterly fabulous reports
- How to tally up figures graphically in seconds flat
4. Superb Inbox Tricks and Strategies
- New workshop for your company
5. A great new tip to save you time
- A new computer shortcut to use continually
1. Don't make this horrendous marketing blunder
The last time I wrote a strong negative comment (about why you shouldn't use Flash on your website), I got an email from one of the head honcho's at Macromedia in the US. This time I'm not aiming at a large company, but something came across my desk this week that I felt compelled to write about (and will make me re-examine what I do).
It was a marketing mailer with a CD enclosed from a local technology company promoting their ability to create CD's and DVD's for companies.
Here's the opening line from the main paragraph "we've sent you our corporate profile on a CD as an illustration of how we put information on CD's...."
Then these 6 bullet points of info on the printed mailer:
- Learn more about 'xxx' and our culture
- See what we do for our clients and what they think about us
- Understand the thinking behind the company
- Hear what our staff have to say about 'xxx'
- Connect to hot links that take you to the quick quotes
- Discover what makes 'xxx' so different.
The only thing that kept me from immediately throwing this out (even though I get CD's produced regularly) is that I felt compelled to write about it.
I hope you're thinking the same as me. That this entire presentation and wording is focused on them. And who the heck cares (about them)? Look at the bullet points 1-6 again. See what I mean? How can a marketing promotion looking for new customers be so self centred?
Whoever put this together for them, along with whoever approved it should be shot! The thing is I, the potential customer, really don't care about their culture, their thinking, their staff patting themselves on the back. What on earth would I take my precious time to read about them? I care about me; and the problems they can solve for me.
No where in the bullet points is an inducement that will make me take that CD; take the effort to put it into my computer; then use my valuable time to read/listen to it.
It's all about them; and nothing about me- how I'll save time, how I'll save money, how I'll impress my clients.......
Enough said (although I can go on and on). So please, before you print anything over the next few months, before you write your next newsletter, before you send anything out - put your customers shoes on.
- Have you eliminated the I's, we's?
- Is it chock full of benefits to them?
- Is it of interest to them?
- Is it glorifying you and if so will they care?
2. Emarketing - Want to know something the largest companies don't?
I've written about this almost a year ago (when I first got Office 2003). I sent out press releases and have written about it several times in this newsletter. I'm going to repeat it again. Take heed if your company does online communications.
First take a look at these four screen shots from my Inbox.
   
What do you notice? What I see being previewed is a whole lotta nothing! What has happened to these emails?
Office 2003 is blocking the pictures. The new Outlook blocks external links. (All images/graphics are hosted on websites and only linked in emails -think mother and umbilical cord).
So if you have images in your newsletter get rid of them if possible. Office 2003 came out last October. More and more of your recipients will be reading it. We took images out of our emails years ago actually (says she with 5 images in this month. We do rarely use them when necessary.
3. Utterly fabulous reports
- How to tally up figures graphically in seconds flat
A few weeks ago I had to bone up on Pivot Tables for one of the conferences I was speaking at. If you haven't heard of Pivot Tables in Excel) or you'd like a refresher to the marvels of it - I've copied the fabulous online Microsoft 3 part tutorial into a word doc.click here for the word doc
Why Pivot Tables?
If you ever need to tally up figures, compare numbers, prepare reports - Pivot tables can take your work from hours to seconds and the instant stunning charts can turn you into an office whiz kid. All you need to do is click here to go to our website where I've loaded up the documents for you to use (after all I didn't want to have to email them out hundreds of times!)
4. Superb Inbox Tricks and Strategies
- New workshop for your company
Superb Inbox Tricks & Strategies - How to save yourself hours
New workshop - why not have us come in for a privatesession tailored to your company requirements?
Get a quote now
What You'll Learn
Exactly 'how-to' for increase your productivity, inbox time management and clever strategies for email communication and customer database creation. This workshop is NOT just software how-to's. You can go to any computer training course for that.
It is the practical business applications - your problems and the solution focus of this workshop that makes it different (not to mention it's at least half their price).
I combine time management, (email) marketing strategy, problem solving, concepts for improving productivity and strategic customer database thinking (with contacts).
The handout is a complete how to manual of everything covered.
(Or come to the Public Workshop - Auckland 8 October; Wellington 29 October)
Register Now
What's Covered (not a complete list)
- Automatically getting rid of junk mail
- Automatically sorting your incoming email
- Automatically separating what's important and not
- Automating responses
- 3 secrets to turning Contacts into a superb customer / prospect database
- Smart storage
- Saving and moving old emails
- Brilliant ideas to implement with your outgoing email communications
- Personalised email merging straight from Outlook
- Getting individual details out of groups/distribution lists
- Moving contact information in to / out of Outlook/Outlook Express
- Differences between Outlook / Outlook Express - which is better for you
- Automatic prompts and reminders
- Shortcuts instead of keying in new contact details
- Customising Outlook for your own information requirements
- Office 2003 - the new free customer relationship management tool & how it works
- Office 2003 - if you're using email for marketing - what you MUST know
- Calendar top features
- Contacts top features
5. A great new tip to save you time
- A new computer shortcut to use continually
Every time I discover something new I love sharing it. Here's one of my accidental finds that I now use continually.
When you need to open a document, did you know you can add frequently used folders to the window so it saves you from clicking through nested folders and directories?
When you've worked your way down to the folder you want to save, right click the tools and select Add to My Places as shown in the illustration. Then when you add the folder you can right click it to move it up or down the folder lineup.
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