Debbie Mayo Smith, International Motivational Speaker
Motivational Speakers, Sales, Marketing, Time Management, Productivity, Technology, Tips

Archive for the ‘email marketing’ Category

Five Simple Marketing Ideas For The New Year

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

1. Start doing press releases.

You can make a press release up about almost everything. Extra learning you’ve taken on, certificates and awards, new customers, sponsorship taken in the community. Try to spread the word – be a better marketer!

2. Start writing articles and submit them to industry periodicals and publications your target market reads.

Articles or comments, quotes by you in articles, work so much more effectively than advertising. If you write an article produced in your target market’s periodicals, you’re almost endorsed as an expert – and how many new eyeballs does your name come across to?

3. Use Email Signatures cleverly.

Signatures on emails are a great way to market yourself to different clients and your different products and services. Your email software package should have a Wizard that walks you through creating it. In Outlook it is the tools menu > options > mail format > signatures.

4. Start doing Thank-you notes, cards and emails.

You know the recommendation that you should always send out thank-you notes and cards. But what if you see a lot of prospective new clients in a week? Or you’re just too busy? Why not do a mix of thank-you notes and emails?

5. Direct Your Audience in what action you want them to take?

Plan ahead. Sure, you might want people to click through to your website and order something then and there. But is there anything else? Do you want them perhaps to give you more information? Do you want them to pass the email on to a friend? Do you want them to sign up for regular emails? So if this book is prompting you towards your first email campaign, stop. Go for a walk. Think. Really think. What actions do you really want your readers to take?

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Posted in Cheap marketing, communication, email, email marketing, improving sales | 1 Comment »

Five Permission Email Tips For Marketing

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

 

1. Only email those who have asked. It’s the law

If someone hands you their business card, don’t assume you can just add them to your email list. Ask first – the best time to mention it is when you get the card in your hand. Say something like: ‘I’ve got a great online newsletter, would you like to get a free subscription? You can leave it if it doesn’t appeal.’ Nine out of ten times you’ll get an affirmative answer.

 2. Always honour their requests to opt-out.

Make it a simple process. Since people often have multiple email addresses, include on your email the address you have sent it to. This can eliminate a lot of angst on their side and frustration on yours.

3. Allow your customers and prospects to give you their preferences.

Information: how much and how often do they want it? For example, if you’re doing a daily email – cater to those who might prefer to have only some of the information. This makes it more relevant for them instead of having to scan through the entire email.

4. Do not sell or rent your lists.

Your email list can be your goldmine, one of the most valuable assets of your business. Don’t ruin it by selling or renting your email list. 

5. Give and take.

You don’t think people give you their email addresses out of the goodness of their hearts do you? They do it in exchange for something of value to them. A gift, Information. Education. White paper.Chance to win. Be creative, but truly add value. 

6. Respond to customer email inquiries promptly.

Why is it that once someone hits that send key on their computer, they expect an immediate reply? They expect that someone is sitting at a computer ready to read and respond to their email. Have an email policy and enforce it. Ensure that you have a 24-hour turnaround if at all possible.

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Posted in communication, email, email marketing, Outlook, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Software Tips To Avoid Costly Blunders

Friday, April 9th, 2010

 

Duplicate letters or emails, misspellings, incorrect email addresses can make you look silly, plus they’re wasteful. Before you start your next mass communication, here are a few utterly superb tricks that you can use to eliminate waste and a red face.

First, copy the list you’re going to use into Excel if not there already. Why? Because is not just for numbers. You can work database magic, Enmasse!

 Problem: First and last names in one column, you can’t personalise.
Solution: Under the data menu, Text to columns will split it apart. Tell Excel what to look for – comma, space.

Problem: Double or triple last names
Solution: Need to use those Van de Geens split into three columns by text to columns? Concatenate will put many columns into one. 

Problem: Duplicates
Solution: The exact function will show you where. Simply sort by one column – example email addresses. Use exact to compare. It will return a true for the duplicates. Office 2007 has a new remove duplicates function.

Problem: Mixed upper and lower case
Solution: The function Proper will turn everything to proper tense, meaning first letter of each word capitalized, the remaining lower case.

Problem: Extra spaces between names so your text to columns doesn’t work
Solution: The function Trim gets rid of all spaces in excess of one between items.

With the exception of Text to columns, the functions listed are found under Insert function or the fx icon. After using a function, you have one last step. You see Excel still sees the results as functions (you’ll see the end result). To work with the new data simply highlight the column, copy and paste special. Under paste special select value. This removes the function and replaces it with the new proper format of your text, the last names combined from concatenate.

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Posted in communication, email, email marketing, Excel Tips | No Comments »

Categorise Customers For Ease of Use

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Here are two great tips for enhancing your marketing database to make it more workable and accessible for you.

If you have information in a simple Excel spreadsheet, don’t have a different column for every variable. You’ll end up with an unworkable spreadsheet with too many columns. Instead, categorise.

The wrong way
You set up a column for customers, a column for prospects, a column for old clients and a column for suppliers.

The right way
One column is allocated and called Customer Type for example. All the different variables are then used within that one column such as customer, old customer, prospect, supplier. When you need to see or communicate with a specific type – for example you want to see all the prospects listed, you simply sort the entire list by Customer Type and all the suppliers will be listed one after another.

If you keep your information in Outlook or Lotus Notes Contacts, one of the least-known functions is Categories – a keyword or phrase that you can assign to a contact. Better yet, you can assign multiple categories to each contact.

Categories are utterly brilliant in many ways. Why? Because you can finely target specific customers. By creating industry, occupation, interest, purchase, service categories, for example, all you need to do is sort by category.

How do I create a category?
Open any Outlook contact. In the bottom centre you’ll see the rectangular Categories box. Click to open. Ignore the pre-programmed Microsoft ones. Click the Master Category List button, then type in your own. To view your contacts grouped by categories, go to View,
Current View, then Categories. In Lotus Notes, you’ll find it in the contacts section.

Article by International Speaker and bestselling author Debbie Mayo-Smith. www.debbiespeaks.co.nz Debbie@debbiespeaks.co.nz

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Posted in communication, email marketing | No Comments »

How To Target With A Click

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Would you like to know a secret missile to enable you target and communicate instantly with a selected group of your customers? Suppliers? Distributors? The Missile is Categories in Outlook Let me introduce you to this best kept secret, Categories. What the heck is that I bet you’re thinking. Categories are ‘labels’ that you can assign to your contacts. Lotus Notes has categories, Outlook Express does not. Categories are brilliant because: 1. Contact can have more than one category assigned. For example, it can be classified as a regular customer, by their industry; their preferences; their interests; products purchased… 2.  You can sort your contacts by categories. 3. You can conduct a personalised email or mail merge to the contacts within the selected category. (In Contacts, it’s Tools>Mailmerge) You can get to categories by the edit menu or the little rectangular box in the bottom centre of a contacts. Microsoft Outlook supplies a list of categories, called the Master Category List. You can use selected ones from this list but more importantly it’s as simple as typing in what ever is relevant to you (or more importantly your customers) to create your own unique categories. How do I create a new category? 1.  Select any Contact, click the category box in the bottom centre (or) On the Edit menu, click Categories. 2. Click Master Category List. 3.  In the New category box, type a name for the category. 4. Click Add. 5. To create more categories, repeat steps 3 and 4. 6. Click OK twice.

Posted in email, email marketing, Outlook | No Comments »

Will Your Marketing Email Get Through?

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

I had just written and was testing my latest online newsletter. Every test I received resulted in the same thing. Outlook sending my little masterpiece directly into my own Junk Mail Folder.

Now I should know about spam filters and what to write in newsletters, after all I’ve written two books about it. However no matter how I tweaked and removed words that might catch a spam filter’s ever watchful eye or the most discerning corporate filter, the same result. Straight into my Junk Mail Folder. This issue had an article about marketing, so there was no way to pick a synonym for the words marketing and sales (each in separate paragraphs mind you). How could I not say the words give away in the contest I was running? As there was nothing I could do – I finally gave up and with bated breath pushed the SEND button, shooting out over 18,000 of my little children. Dejected and thinking what does it matter, I mean anyone that has been doing an online newsletter for a number of years will tell you how depressing it is – the  significantly decreasing email delivery, open and click through rates. Then I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. Why not send a follow up email immediately after telling my readers to look in their junk mail folder for the newsletter? This email went out 15 minutes after the first finished. One paragraph. Plain text. The subject line read: Check your junk folder. The email was personable and said they should have just received my business quick tip newsletter and as my copy went in my junk folder, theirs might too. I suggested they right click it and select safe sender to prevent it from occurring again. I also promised them there were 6 interesting short articles in it, so to please take a look. The newsletter was out by 12:55. The follow up email at 1:15. By 5 that afternoon I had over 800 emails personally replying to me. In total over 1200 responses to the check your junk mail folder email. Lessons Learnt:

  1. Most responses were from those having received it.
  2. Few had it in their junk folder. Rather they had not received it at all.
  3. Many wrote of xtra pulling non-spam emails into it’s spam folder
  4. Some individuals received the second email first – by up to one day! This is because when email servers are busy, they softly reject emails which are then presented again at a later time.
  5. What a lesson in goodwill -  while people rarely comment about the newsletter, this seemed to give them an opportunity to send well wishes.
  6. What about the thousands that did not write? Did they ever receive either of the emails?

Email delivery is, has and will be a key problem for anyone using email. What you might not realize is the depth of the problem. By now you would know Microsoft – back in 2003 I might add, changed the rules for email marketing forever. They were the first to introduce the blockage of images, not allowing them to download and show. Gmail does this too. This means anyone receiving an email with an image in it has to either pre-approve the sender or right click the blank box where the image goes to allow the download. In this busy world we live in – unless someone is a raving fan, they’re not going to take the time for the right click. This is old news. Astonishingly , be it the egotism or sheer stupidity or bad advice – I promise you if you look and count your incoming marketing emails,  99 out of 100 still have the top or the top left of the email splattered with graphics. Rendering them unreadable or blank. But wait. There’s more. Email deliverability and obstructed images are not the only key issues you face today. Two more important factors should concern you. Problem three. I bet my bottom dollar that many businesses will certainly pump up their volume of marketing emails trying to catch a sale. Leading to what? Even more email overload. Here’s the final issue and you probably haven’t even though about this. With all the redundancies occurring around the world, what do you think is going to happen to your email list? You’re going to lose a good chunk of it. Depending on the industries in which you operate, some lists might be hit harder than others. Here are three ideas to help you try to maintain your list from devastation.

  1. Have your newsletter sign up request on every webpage, every piece of marketing material – even your business card.
  2. Have two email addresses on your sign up form. Primary and secondary. With the rate of downsizing – you’re going to lose a lot of subscribers.
  3. If your unsubscribes are automatically removed, if possible take it over and do them manually. You’ll keep a closer watch on your list and be able to follow up personally on VIP’s that are now mail delivery errors.

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Posted in email marketing, Newsletter | No Comments »

Grabbing opportunity

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

As a business speaker, what saddens me the most is how many business owners are inactive, rather than grabbing opportunities. I know this to be try because I have a free add-on to my speaking engagements which is a one year consultation period for all delegates with 7/24 access to contact me with questions. To run ideas by and I also contact them quarterly. In the past two years – I have only had one out of the thousands contact me. A jeweler from Australia. The saddest thing from my quarterly follow up is the number that never did a thing. The ones that write back with ‘I’ve been too busy to implement the ideas, but I will’.  ‘I haven’t found time to read the ‘how-to’ books’. ‘I’ll let you know if I need help’. So let me share a recent positive reply from Debra Dorrington, Partner, Alexander Dorrington Lawyers; Auckland Opportunity A new agreement for sale and purchase has been launched by the real estate institute, which represents a fundamental change in the way people will buy and sell property. Action We prepared emails. Used Excel to set up a database of people who would be interested in coming to workshops about the agreement. We personalised the emails, used the Word email merge and had them “click here” to answer.  Sounds very ordinary, but for lawyers this is different from the norm. Benefit As a direct result of what you taught us we ran a dozen workshops; created an email list of interested clientele and prospects. We secured new business but also very importantly we all skilled up on the agreement and completed our client education workshops well before the rest of our competitors had even begun to look and learn about the changes.   We also got our name in front of many new faces, helped cement existing relationships and have even been interviewed for a NZ Herald article because we were recognized as experts on the topic.”

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Posted in email marketing, improving sales | No Comments »

Activity equals success

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

If business is slow, don’t sit twiddling your thumbs waiting for the figurative telephone to ring, Listen to your gut for what would be good for your clients in this economy. Using your database, create your own activity. Activity Equals Success.

Let me give you a personal example. Last winter was going to be an exceptionally quiet one for business. While dropping the kids off at school at 8:25, I thought to myself “Why don’t I run some database marketing workshops around New Zealand and Australia By 9:35 I had segregated out my New Zealand and Australian newsletter subscribers, wrote a simple two paragraph plain text email to each group. I asked them to reply only if they were VERY interested in attending. A flood of over 700 emails had just arrived. Now two months later I conducted 14 workshops for 410 individuals, generated four speaking engagements and sold a lot of books. Let’s look at the aspects of this marketing campaign in relation to this economic climate.

Database
This entire exercise was marketed solely though my newsletter database. With the help of my readers, it was spread though their sphere of influence.

Targeted
Why burn the goodwill of your list by sending people in the UK, Spain, Brazil or Florida an email about an Australasian workshop? After the initial send, the communication continued primarily with those whom had expressed interest rather than the whole database.

Ease. Speed
From my initial idea in the car through to the final targeted execution and distribution of over 10,000 emails – only one hour had elapsed.

Inexpensive
The outlay was purely my time and that of an assistant helping with faxed forms and invoicing/receipts.

Not Fancy
It was simply plain text paragraphs. In fact I am 100% positive that the simplicity not only helped the email get through spam filters, it also was easy to digest and act on immediately.

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Posted in Cheap marketing, communication, email, email marketing | No Comments »

Business Quick Tips February 2009 Vol 5 No #40

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Business Quick Tips February 2009 Vol 5 No# 40
1. Fluff Walks. $ Talks.

2. Extra Value WWD

3. How To Stop Redundancies From Killing Your Email List

4. HP Online Learning Centre.

1. $ Talks. Fluff Walks

Enhance and refocus your marketing and sales efforts by putting a dollar value on how your customer will benefit. Show them their rate of return.

This exercise is easier than you think. Will it save them time? Value it by estimating the time it will save per annum multiplied by the value of that person’s time (their wage per hour, salary). You can reduce stress? Does that lead to happier employees which helps reduce turnover? You can quantify the recruitment costs saved along with the productivity continuum.

Help them make more sales or increase turnover?  Take the average value of one sale (you can even factor in the life time value of that one new client) multiplied by the number of new ones expected.

You can get the base information any number of ways. Research on the Internet. Their Competitors. Annual reports. Talk to HR professionals about salary levels. Colleagues in that industry. Allies within that company.

Read entire article Diamond Marketing on a Pauper Spend on my new Time & Money blog

2. Extra Value WWD

What’s WWD? Working with Debbie. Please let me tell you about three new added value benefits.

If you want to improve the business performance or time management of your staff or sales team, or you’re planning a conference this year – allow me to give you a quote. You’ll get a motivating, entertaining, yet practical how to session on how to make significant improvement in business turnover or productivity from minimum effort or cost. It’s by helping to better understand and use the tools you have – database, email, mobile phone, Internet.

Areas we can focus on for example:

– Where and how to find new business

– Improve customer relationships and service

– Get better results from the Internet

– Boost time management, conquer email overload

The three extra value adds?

In addition to the research I conduct beforehand; this year you’ll get

  1. One year follow up consulting for all conference attendees or staff trained.
  2. Complimentary membership for all attendees in my IIY program – hundreds of one minute video lessons, educational articles and quick tips to use with copyright permission.
  3. All new clients; or referrers resulting in a training / speaking engagement will receive one of the best ever business tools – A business card scanner, four hundred dollar value- take a look

Shoot through an email for a quote – or here’s my formal quote page

3. How To Stop Redundancies From Killing Your Email List

With so many redundancies, you’re going to lose a chunk of your email list. Here are three ideas to help you.

  1. Have your newsletter sign up request on every webpage, every piece of marketing material – even your business card.
  2. Have two email addresses on your sign up form. Primary and secondary. With the rate of downsizing – you’re going to lose a lot of subscribers.
  3. If your unsubscribes are automatically removed, if possible take it over and do them manually. You’ll keep a closer watch on your list and be able to follow up personally on VIP’s that are now mail delivery errors.

4. HP Online Learning Centre

If you have the time, HP has 16 courses online from Laptop PC troubleshooting through to Search Marketing Fundamentals. You simply sign in to use them.

HP Online Courses

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Published by
href=”http://www.successis.co.nz” target=”_blank”>SuccessIS. Debbie
Mayo-Smith International Motivational Business Speaker and Author,
35 Chelmsford Ave, Glendowie, Auckland NZ. Phone 64 9 575 5359.
Copyright 2009 SuccesslS. All rights reserved. SuccessIS
is committed to protecting your privacy. We
do not sell, trade, rent or otherwise disclose any personal information
you provide to us.


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Posted in email marketing, improving sales, motivational speaker, smart marketing | No Comments »

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Books

Marketing in Today's Wired World

Marketing in Today's Wired World alerts you to the many profitable and clever ways you can use email, txt, video and audio messages to boost revenues, recruit new business, cut costs, improve customer service and leapfrog in front of your competition.
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101 Quick Tips for Google and Email
101 Outlook and Google Tips Debbie's years of experience working with email and Google are packed into this easy to read #1 bestselling book.
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101 Quick Tips: Create a Great Customer Experience
101 Customer Experience Tips do you want more sales, referrals and repeat business? Then you need this book! You won't want to miss these 101 tips to place your head and shoulders above the crowd to build customer loyalty, word of mouth, and profits.
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101 Quick Tips: Surviving the Kids
101 Balancing Tips with nine children between them and busy careers, let Debbie and Mary Lambie use their experience to make this practical little book a goldmine of solutions for you.
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Conquer Your Email Overload Superb Tips and Tricks For Busy People
Save hours a week using clever, timesaving 'how-to' solutions to the top problems you have using email, your calendar, address books/contacts.
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