Happy Clients Make Me Smile

It's not often I post testimonials from clients here. But this one made me smile. Are you making the most of testimonials you get from your happy clients? Thank You Ready To Go Newsletters!  You have given me the most successful marketing tool I’ve used in my 11 years as a mortgage agent. I was skeptical…

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Announcing…The First Newsletter Marketer of the Year

 I'm delighted to announce that Patty Wagner, of MAS Insurance LLC, in Colorado, has won our first Newsletter Marketer of the Year contest. She wins an Apple iPad. Patty won for three reasons: Excellent results from her newsletters Excellent use of the customization features – she really made the newsletters hers Excellent and innovative marketing…

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Email Marketing Getting More Effective

Some good news. Most people who use email marketing – and that includes email newsletters – say that it’s getting more effective, as this chart from Marketing Sherpa shows. Says Marketing Sherpa: In general, the effectiveness of email for marketing purposes is doing well. More than 3 times the percentage of marketers who said the…

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Why I Put Those Darn Recipes in My Newsletters

Here's a video on a very important topic – the actual content of your newsletters. Here I explain why I choose certain types of article – and why that choice is important for making your newsletter effective.

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How Great Leaders (and Marketers) Inspire Action

Check out this TED video. It explains the power of telling people "why" you do something rather than "how" you do something or "what" you do. (As an aside, follow this link to find out "why" I do what I do!)

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Building Relationships With Newsletters

This post by Sonia Simone is worthwhile reading if you want to make your newsletter more effective. Here's the thing: long-term business success is down to building long-term relationships. Newsletters are the most powerful tool you have to build those relationships. This article mentions the kind of content to include to build them.

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The Personal Paragraph: An Easy Way to Boost Response to Your Newsletter

One of my best clients called the other day to report something that made a big difference to the response to his wife’s real estate newsletter. At the top of every email newsletter he sent out, he added a personal paragraph about something that was going on in their lives. Just a tidbit. He tells…

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Ash back: A Great Example of a Timely, Relevant Offer

I love this email newsletter I got from low-cost airline easyJet a couple of weeks ago – just after flights in Europe were resumed after a week on the ground due to the Iceland volcano. Airlines faced a lot of any passengers at that time – even though the crisis wasn't their fault. So it's…

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The Business Owner’s Dirty, Little Secret

Maybe I’m just a screw-up.  You see, I find the biggest battle I?face in business isn’t with competitors, or finding new clients, or customer service.  It’s the battle that is waging right between my ears. It’s the voice that says “sales are terrible this week, you’re going to fail.” Or the voice that says “my…

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Newsletters with Passion

Sometimes I?get this overwhelming urge. I?want to grab a business  owner by the shoulders and give him a good, hard shake. “Why the heck,” I’d say through clenched teeth, “are you in this business anyway?” Once they’ve got over their shock (and probably called their lawyer), they might start to answer the question. Because deep down, hidden…

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Is the Harvard Business Review Claiming You Can Spam Other Businesses?

The blog over at the Harvard Business Review  is jumping. A recent post by Ruth P. Stevens stirred up that old hornet’s nest of “opt-in” versus “opt-out” marketing email. Here’s what she said: It’s OK to send unsolicited emails (newsletters and the like) to businesses with the expectation that they can opt out if they…

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