2Fish 4Business » Marketing

One sure-fire way to get people to open your newsletters!

Carol Logan Newbill — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:21:04 +0000

I’m on quite a few newsletter lists. Like most people, I tend to sign up for them and then lose at least some interest in the company. If a newsletter comes in that happens to offer something I am looking for right now, I will probably click on it. Otherwise, I’ll skim the email and delete, which is most of the time.

So this one from American Science & Surplus really caught my eye this morning. (Highlighting added; click to enlarge photo.)

Did I click on that link? You bet I did! I mean, who doesn’t want 25,000 bonus frequent flyer miles if AS&S ever buys a surplus airline?

If I were running this campaign, I would add anyone who clicked to the preferred customer list and just let them all believe that they were in the first 250. I’d have a special landing page that the link goes to, with my very best product deals on sale. Customers have to click on the email link to get the deal — anyone else pays regular price.

Now I have no immediate need for a boxed set of Cosmos DVDs or a robot hamster wheel, two of the items on the sale landing page. But clicking the link got me to their site, where I might find something else I didn’t know I wanted until I saw it on sale, and reminded me again that browsing AS&S is just plain fun. And who doesn’t need a chuckle now and then?

What a great marketing tool!

American Science and Surplus

How can you use information like this in your next customer newsletter?

Introverts, Networking, and Social Media

Carol Logan Newbill — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:09:20 +0000

Yesterday the New York Times published a piece called Networking for the Shy Entrepreneur. It covered the basics: don’t try to sell, be yourself, think of it as “relationship-building” instead of “networking.” Nothing much new there, and nothing that really helps an introverted IT professional when he or she is dragged to the monthly Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

Here’s another tip.

As introverts, we are much more comfortable interacting with others on our own terms — via email, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. The nice thing with these tools is that we can read the incoming message, take our time to compose an answer, and then return it at leisure. But think about this: Aren’t you “building relationships” when you do this? If you have exchanged tweets with someone over a period of several weeks, won’t it be much easier to walk up that person at the next monthly meeting and say, “Hi, I’m 2fishweb on Twitter. You helped me find a local programmer last week when I ran into a problem.”

I’ll be at the July meeting of IPSA in Birmingham, Alabama. I’ll be very comfortable approaching a couple of people whom I have “met” through Twitter in the last couple of weeks. I don’t have to be their best friend, but I won’t have that sinking fifth-grade-wallflower feeling about being there, either.

Give it a try. Twitter is good for business… and may turn out to be good for your peace of mind in uncomfortable settings, too.