Posts filed under 'E-Mail'
I was going over some saved files on my desktop and came across this form and thought it would interest my readers.
When creating an email, there are some important factors that should be taken into consideration. These guidelines will help you get a greater response to your message and increase your reputation as someone who thinks before she hits “send” I keep this email checklist by my computer and refer to it every time I send out an important message. It has helped my small business grow and stay in favor of my intended recipients.Here it is:
Before pressing “Send”
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Does this e-mail message make sense? Are the actions clear and do they have owners?
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Does the e-mail message meet the MPS P.A.S.S test?
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What is the purpose of this communication?
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What action is involved and does it have a due date?
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What supporting information does the recipient need?
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Has the communication been effectively summarized in the subject line?
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Is the message well-written? Is it concise while providing enough data for action to be taken or decisions made?
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Do the links in the message work? Are the attachments included?
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Is the e-mail message being sent to the correct recipients (not too many and not too few)?
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Does everyone on the To line have an action to take?
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Has the message been re-checked for grammar, spelling, and use of jargon?
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November 24th, 2008
Earlier this month I started a topic about how I gathered information to create a marketing plan for the Florida Speakers Association. I asked members how they would spread the word about FSA, who they suggest we connect with and contact (sharing their resources) and how they suggested we increase our membership base and meeting attendance.
Here are six more responses:
I find that word of mouth is great… and also the encouragement I give to others who are speakers but don’t know it yet. Also a brochure would be nice to hand out.
Contact clubs and hold a contest… have them submit club member names who would like to attend an FSA meeting to see what it is all about in helping them develop leadership and communication skills. Then, we could draw one name per month and COMP that person. This would also increase our notice data base.
We could even have a special annual day focused on local clubs and developing good speakers in clubs. We could even start a different membership category for local club member speakers who do not want to become professional, but do like to hang out with the pros.
TV and radio interviews from some of our top speakers about the FSA and what it has done for them.
Ask CEOs (with their own strong followings) to present — and encourage their own people to be part of our group. Have THEM send out notices to business media. Invite media people to discuss how public speaking skills helped them. Usually THEY will give our group free publicity if it involves them.
Do a charity fund-raiser using some of our speakers to improve skills of the people who GIVE the $$…not just get the benefit of dollars. Improve the image of us being part of an INTERNATIONAL - NOT JUST LOCAL OR NATIONAL - GROUP OF GIVING PEOPLE…THE VOICE OF THE WORLD.
October 15th, 2008
Staying in touch with your clients and customers should be an integral part of your marketing plan. In fact, it should be one most important activities that you do. In fact, there are several ways you can touch your customers from phone calls, to emails to snail mail campaigns.
Here are the ways we stay in touch with our retail floral customers:
1. We use postcards for those we have not heard from in 6 months or more.
2. We call those we have not heard from in a year.
3. We send bi weekly emails with specials.
4. We have a quarterly newsletter - Ramblin’ Rose which we send with specials, tips, flowers trivia and more.
5. And we send flowers to those customers who are the most frequent purchasers.
6. We also have a “weekly drawing” of our customer database and send them flowers to say HI.
7. Once a year we send a holiday CD filled with our specials (late November).
8. And I randomly go through our list and send thank you notes for our customers’ business once a month.
Here’s what we do to stay in touch with the members of the Women’s eCommerce Association:
1. We host monthly events which are both educational, informational events that our members attend. At the same time, have the opportunity to stick around after the sessions and chat among themselves and very often with the guests we invite to share their success stories.
2. We publish and distribute a bi-weekly ezine called eMonday News.
3. We also publish a digital magazine ~ WE Magazine for Women - for the Total Woman - filled with excellent articles about wealth, travel, business, women, balance and relationships… and much more.
4. We have a network on LinkedIn that we just started where our members can post questions, answer questions, share expertise, and get to know one another.
5. We also host bi-annual summits on a variety of topics which is a great way to reach out to our members – the most recent was “How to Grow a Million Dollar Business” Summit.
How do you stay in touch? Feel free to leave your comments and share your story.
October 14th, 2008
On one of the forums I belong to the question was asked ~ how often do you market your company, especially before the holidays?
Here is my response:
We never stop marketing! Here’s what we do for our retail flower shop and website. In early November we begin our holiday push by sending postcards, greeting cards and email reminders to our customer base. Even though a great deal of our business revolved around the holidays, we never assume people will remember us in November (Thanksgiving) or December so we know it is just as important to keep our name in front of our audience during this time as it is the rest of the year.
In addition to the physical stay-in-touch reminder method, we send out a weekly eblast for our floral customers reminding them to order early – showcase our current specials and offer a small discount if they order by a certain date. You would be amazed how many people call and thank us for the reminder…
We also partner with our local chamber of commerce and send out an eblast and a broadcast fax around the 7th - for the corporate clients who want to ship out of state - we do gourmet gift baskets so this helps us to really pull in some new clients.
I attend any and every networking event available and give out a holiday CD with our product line for the holidays - which also includes a history of Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hannukah, a coloring book for each of the holidays, the top ten flowers for the holidays, and several other goodies. People love these and once they were produced (about 3 years ago) we only have to update the product line on the CD. It is something people tend to keep.
In addition, we offer free downloadable information products similar to the information on the holiday CD, as well as a letter from Santa for Christmas and free coloring books for the kids. This type of content really drives traffic to the site during the busiest online shopping month of the year.
Although we don’t do as much social networking as I’d like (there are just not enough hours in the day when you are in retail), we do try to visit them at least twice or three times before December 10 to just stay in touch.
And the week after Christmas I do a short plan for the coming year - review last years goals and plan and adjust for any necessary changes or new trends on the horizon.
BTW, Our website, Eden Florist & Gift Baskets is getting ready to relaunch. Laura Wheeler of Fireflight Web Studio is creating a whole new look with greater functionality. Go there today to see it and come back in about a week. The new site should be live.
October 13th, 2008
“Staying connected to email has become a lifestyle more than a choice these days… take back your right to choose and free yourself to do other important tasks.” Heidi Richards
Yesterday I wrote about being addicted to your inbox. You know you are addicted if you have to check your e-mail several times during the day and it’s not for business!Did you know you can set your e-mail to check itself?
I just found out that with many email programs including Outlook Express you can set your email program to check at whatever interval you set it for – you can check every five minutes, every 30 mintues, every hour or twice a day (I highly recommend the latter – which is much more efficient – and you will be amazed at how much more you can accomplish in a days time.
Here’s how you do it with Outlook Express: open IE and go to Tools, Options and choose the General tab. Look for the Send/Receive Messages section.
Choose “Check for new messages every (blank) minutes.” Check that box and then choose how often you want your e-mail to be checked. Also, directly right below that option, there is an option that if your computer isn’t connected to the Internet at the selected time you chose to check email, you may choose to have your computer not connect you, connect only when working offline or connect even when you are working offline.
If you use a program other than Outlook Express to manage your email, do a little research to find out if this option is available to you.
This is a more efficient way to stay “connected” to your inbox without being dependent on it.
Wishing you a great day… and more!
September 23rd, 2008
“I don’t believe in email. I’m an old-fashioned girl. I prefer calling and hanging up.”
Sarah Jessica Parker
Last year on one of the blogs I discontinued, I wrote the following and thought it would be good for all those who may suffer from the same addition I do… the addiction to read email the moment you hear the little sound your computer makes when you recieve a new message.
Here’s the post:
This is so frustrating! I have been trying to check my email for the past 2 hours with absolutely no luck! It appears that my inbox cannot connect with the server hosting my email. And I am about to go bonkers. You see, I have tons of work to get done today (yesterday was a holiday in the US) just to catch up with the week.
I have emails to check, emails to send, blog posts to write and more.
Today I realized that I’m an addict! And email junkie! Seldom a day goes by when I don’t check email first thing when I get to work and again last thing before I leave the office for the day. In fact, since I started blogging I even open up email at home and check it! I’m addicted to my inbox!
Once I realized that I could not check email today, at least not right now, I thought, there’s gotta be other things I can do besides check my email. So here I am writing a blog post about it, and hoping (praying really) that I will be reconnected soon.
It also got me thinking, just how productive can I be if I’m always online attached at the fingertips to my inbox?
After all, I have articles I can write, my magazine needs to be be proofread, bills could be paid (now there’s a thought more painful than not being able to check my email), and I have lots of files to go through and clean out.
Is there a cure? Is there an Email Addicts Anonymous group I could join? And the real question is, do I really want to?
Oh, well since I am going through withdrawal I might as well get busy and start on some of those other items on my “to do list.” Maybe I should take Sarah Jessica Parker’s advice and use the phone!
Well, at least one of the items on my list is now done for the day :D!
September 20th, 2008
Looking for ideas to write about in articles, on your blog or in your EZINE?
Use the Calendar!
Here’s one that I use – http://www.brownielocks.com.
I search for news about the day, ask friends, find the flowers, people and uses for…. Or ways to celebrate and the result is an example of a post I did about Wear Purple Day:
Today is Wear Purple Day!
Why was purple worn by royalty? Mainly because purple dyes were so hard to make. Using lichen, the plant had to react with ammonia (this meant urine in ancient days) and sit out in the air for 2 weeks. Then it was mixed with pot ash to be used as a dye. This was much harder than just boiling berries or leaves for other colors, so purple dye was only for the wealthy. Today, all you have to do is spill some grape kool-aid and everything turns purple.
More about the color purple:
The earliest archaeological evidence for the origins of purple dyes points to the Minoan civilization in Crete, about 1900 B.C. The ancient land of Canaan (its corresponding Greek name was Phoenicia, which means “land of the purple”) was the center of the ancient purple dye industry. Tyrian Purple,” the purple dye of the ancients mentioned in texts dating back to about 1600 B.C., was produced from the mucus of the hypobranchial gland of various species of marine mollusks, notably Murex. It took some 12,000 shellfish to extract 1.5 grams of the pure dye. Legend credits its discovery to Herakles, or rather to his dog, whose mouth was stained purple from chewing on snails along the Levantine coast. King Phoenix received a purple-dyed robe from Herakles and decreed the rulers of Phoenicia should wear this color as a royal symbol.
According to one article in Paper, Film and Foil Converter Rome, Egypt, and Persia all used purple as the imperial standard. Purple dyes were rare and expensive; only the rich had access to them. The purple colorants used came from different sources, most from the dye extraction from fish or insects.
The imperial purple of Rome was based on mollusk from which purpura comes. Emperor Aurelian refused to let his wife buy a purpura-dyed silk garment, as it cost its weight in gold!
An interesting article on About.com says “Purple is often associated with Royalty and Spirituality: Purple is royalty. A mysterious color, purple is associated with both nobility and spirituality. The opposites of hot red and cool blue combine to create this intriguing color.” … giving purple both cool and warm properties.
Purple is also associated with creativity and imagination. However too much purple can lead to moodiness and disharmony.
Other Purple facts:
Purple has been long associated as the color of mourning for widows in Thailand.
The Purple Heart is given to U.S. Military soldiers wounded in battle.
Oprah Winfrey got an Oscar for her role in the movie “The Color Purple” which was based upon the book of the same title by Alice Walker.
The rock star Prince played the lead in the 1984 movie Purple Rain. The film was very successful earning nearly US$100 million at the box office. The movie won an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score.
There’s a book called Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium by Judith Herrin about, three Byzantine empresses–Irene, Euphrosyne, and Theodora and how they changed history (In the eighth and ninth centuries). Their combined efforts restored the veneration of icons, saving Byzantium from a purely symbolic and decorative art and ensuring its influence for centuries to come.
According to Everything2.com “Contrary to popular opinion, the word “purple” does have rhymes in the English language. In fact, there are two rhyming words, abet words that aren’t used in today’s vernacular. Hirple is a British word, which means “to walk lamely or hobble”. Curple is a word out of Scotland, which refers to the hindquarters of a horse.”
Nature is abundant with purple flowers: In fact, purple flowers are among the most popular with both men and women. Some purple (and shades of purple) flowers include Iris, Roses, Carnations, Dianthus, Violets, Sweet William, Daisies, Allium, Status, Hibiscus, Orchids, Morning Glories, Tulips, Crocus, Hydrangea, Lilac, Peonies, Liatris, Pansies, Wisteria, Stock, Larkspur, Chrysanthemums, Eryngium and Alstromeria to name a few.
In fact, in the past 2.5 years I have designed more purple themed wedding and bridal decorations than at any other time in my 27+ years as a florist.
From this post you may guess that one of my favorite colors is PURPLE! I love the way it makes me feel inside and out. Looking at it makes me smile and wearing it makes me feel special. How about you? Will you be wearing purple today? And what is YOUR favorite color?
For more ideas, get your FREE Copy of the 2008 Edition of Your Marketing Calendar TODAY!
September 9th, 2008
Help, I’m Drowning in Email!
If you’re like most people these days, you probably get between50 and 250 email messages a day, many of which are unwanted. And some which are important. Multiply that by the number of email accounts you have, and you could find yourself spending the better part of most days just deleting and/or responding to these electronic communications. The problem is how to clear out your inbox and better manage your time.
Here are 8 tips to get your email under control.
1. Keep your inbox empty. This is the key to managing you e-mail.
2. Put important email messages in a folder or folders and title the folders appropriately.
3. Answer important emails in a timely fashion at specified times of the day (you decide when it is appropriate to respond and schedule that as your email writing time.
4. Set your inbox to check for new messages only a few times a day. Turn down the “you’ve got mail” announcer so you can better focus on the job at hand.
5. Get a spam filter. You may risk losing some email messages, however, you have greater control over what you allow into your inbox.
6. Put important email addresses in your address book so you won’t have to go searching for them when you need to send a message in a hurry.
7. Subscribe to mailing lists, listservs and the like at a new e-mail address. This will help with email overload and you can check these in your spare time instead of having to peruse them with your more urgent communications. Gmail may be a good choice for this.
8. Use your “delete” key (my personal favorite). Clean up your inbox and remove old, unused messages.
August 10th, 2008
Want your Email Read? Follow These 7 Tips for Successful Communications
Email was designed as a two way communications tool. It is meant for quick, simple communication. First and foremost, Make sure that email is the appropriate method for communicating your message. If you have a sensitive or confidential matter for instance, email may not be the best method of communication. Once you have determined that email is the best form of communication for a particular issue, the following tips will help you get your email read and responded to.
Follow these 7 Tips for email success:
1. Be concise. E-mail is immediate. The reader is more apt to scan a long message than read the entire thing. This can result in miscommunication as well as missing important “action items” which you need responded to. Keep your message to one screen or less.
2. Use short lines (65 characters or less) for the body of your message. Many successful ezines use this strategy with great results. The authors know that longer lines are more difficult for the eye to follow, and in many cases, impossible for your reader’s display to accommodate.
3. Write in bullet points – this makes it easier for the reader to retain the information.
4. Give background information when responding to email. By including text from the original message you let your reader know what message you are referring to. Be sure to only include the parts to which you are referring and edit the parts that are irrelevant or trivial.
5. Use a Headline in the subject line – one that grabs the recipient’s attention and tells her/him what the email is about.
6. Don’t overdo the icons – if your email is a business communication, smiley faces may be seen as unprofessional to the receiver.
7. Use spell check – to be seen as professional, check the spelling of your message before hitting the send button.
August 9th, 2008
Did you know?
According to a study done by MarketingSherpa.com an online research firm, putting a graphic image in customer e-mails increases readership. The study found that including a single piece of art (that loads quickly) along with engaging copy, and clearly states the “offer” or message and response instructions prompts people to not only read the message, it increases the response rate of the message.
August 3rd, 2008
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