Email Campaign Providers--Take your pick!

I am in the beginnings of starting an email newsletter and was researching the best autoresponder to go with. I got this information off of LinkedIn. I was so awed by his details that I thought it was a definite plus for my readers. He even lists the cost of each provider. Thanks, Ethan, for detailing this for someone searching for an Email Campaign provider.

As far as email service providers go, here's a breakdown:

AWeber: The industry leader in autoresponders and also one of the most reliable and economical email service providers. The interface is on the lo-fi side and there is less hand-holding than with Constant Contact, but if you don't require that, they are potentially the best option. They, like most of the options have a very high deliverability rate, plenty of templates and successful email marketing tutorials. $19.95 per month with no setup fee. This covers 10,000 subscribers and you can email them as much as you like. Each extra 10,000 subscribers is $9.95 per month.

Constant Contact: Very customer friendly and non-technically-oriented. Lots of templates and tools and online assistance to help you succeed with your email marketing. $15 per month gets you 0-500 subscribers with unlimited emails. The pricing scales from there, with 10,001 to 25,000 email addresses costing you $150 per month.

Get Response: Another non-techy option similar to Constant Contact. $17.95 per month for 10,000 addresses. $4.50 per month for each 5000 addresses over that. Unlimited emails and campaigns.

Campaign Monitor: A very polished, slick aesthetic earns this one all the kudos from the design crowd. Many good tools and templates to help with your email campaign's success. They use a price per email model instead of a total subscriber model. You pay $5 for each campaign and then 1¢ per recipient. You can get discounts of up to 50% by pre-purchasing email credit.

SparkList: This is the hosted service of Lyris, the makers of one of the more high profile email marketing software systems, ListManager. It is much more expensive than the others but carries the Lyris brand behind it and is much more suited to high volume emailers. It also offers a familiar interface if you are already using ListManager somewhere else. $175 setup, $100 per month for 5000 email messages up to $500 setup and $1000 per month for 500,000 messages.

A very important consideration given if you have an existing email list has to do with importing the list into their system and opt-in confirmation. In order to maintain the positive nature of their relationships with the ISPs, these email service providers want to make sure that you have obtained permission to send email to these addresses. If they require you to re-confirm the opt-in status for each email address, they will send a new request to the address. Since roughly 50 to 60% of email subscribers never confirm their subscriptions, this will erode a fair bit of your list. However, many of these people were probably not receiving/viewing your email anyway, given that they did not respond to the confirmation request.

AWeber: Re-confirmation is required. Each email address will receive a customized message asking them to re-confirm permission. Constant Contact requires you to state that the list is permission based and they will penalize you if your bounce/spam numbers get too high. They offer a free 60 day trial of up to 100 email addresses. Campaign Monitor requires you to state that the imported email addresses are 100% permission based, they were not purchased and they were not scraped from emails/websites. SparkList also requires that a re-confirmation email to be sent to each address. Get Response will also not require that you reconfirm each email's permission.

More info and vendor links at Ethan Pierse's website below.
http://www.advenir.com/internet-marketing/internet-marketing-resources.html...

"Pat on the Back" Powerpoint Presentations

Are you working on a presentation? Many people give presentations everyday and quickly put together a powerpoint presentation without thinking about the audience but trying to achieve completion. Don't let your presentation be a sleeper. This article below is how to effectively capture your audience's attention and keep it. And maybe by the time you get done everyone will be patting you on the back saying "Well done"!

Utterly Droolworthy Power Point Presentations

By Joseph Plazo

You can sell Benzes to refugees during war time.

You easily part a nun from her vow of chastity.

No doubt- you’re the greatest at influencing people one-on-one.

But can you conduct killer power point presentations?


If you’re like 99% of all the presentors out there, I bet you ‘re a veteran at observing the MEGO Syndrome in audiences.

MEGO?

“Mine Eyes Glaze Over”


That’s right. Three minutes into the powerpoint presentation, the audience is restless. Some begin sneaking out the door. The more polite ones just pretend to listen behind dark spectacles. But you know where their minds went.

The MEGO Syndrome arises from five monumental presentation mistakes. Do the opposite and you’ll deliver utterly drool worthy power point presentations- and influence the socks out of your crowd.

1. Keeping Them Guessing. Many speakers fail to give a roadmap of their speech. So throughout the presentation, the crowd is asking ‘huh? What’s his point? Where’s this leading to?’ Guide them by the hand. Before the actual presentation, outline exactly what you’ll cover and let them know when you’ll finish.

2. Failing to Connect At the Beginning. Audiences don’t like to be preached to. They’d prefer to be talked with. Keep your style interactive. Open the talk by asking a rhetorical question, launching an anecdote, or saying a shocking statement- then invite a comment! You’ll draw them in like Pirahnnas to a pork buffet.

3. Looking at the Floor and Closing Your Body. I’ve seen it so often. The speaker assumes a closed body language. Guilty of this? Hands in pocket. Arms crossed. Legs tight together. Look stiff, and you alienate the audience. To invite the audience to appreciate your power point presentation, move around. Gesture. Smile!

4. DataDumping. I’ve attended hundreds of business presentations where the speaker fills the slide with size 9 font text crammed to the margin. Then they read each line. Good lord! We’re attending a presentation, not an online reading course! The best slides follow the 4 by 4 rule. Four words across, four bullets down.

5. Forgetting the Call of Action. At the end, the speaker jumps to “any questions?” without giving the audience a specific command. Is it to buy? To invest? To visit a website? Without the call to action, the audience is left wondering what you yammered about for the last 20 minutes of their valuable time.

So here’s my call to action for you: create drool worthy powerpoint presentations. Right now.

Your audience deserves it.



About the Author: More of Joseph Plazo's killer articles: Art of Unstoppable Persuasion, Sneaky Negotiation Techniques, and finding Jobs in the Philippines
Source: http://www.isnare.com/

Unfog the Day!

It's Monday! Welcome to a new work week. In an article for a local business journal I wrote some tips for a productive day. Here is my suggestions to get the most accomplished in a day:

1. First thing in the day, make a list of what needs to be accomplished.
2. Set a priority to the list.
3. Shut off the world by closing doors, turning off radio, etc., until most important is accomplished.
4. Mark off items as you proceed.

You may not accomplish all that is written but the purpose is to plan. If you plan effectively in your daily projects, as well as in your business, you have a roadmap to follow with goals for the outcome.

Carole DeJarnatt
Alliance Advisors, Inc.

Business Card Overflow: What to do?

Attended any networking events or luncheons lately? I attended a luncheon not too long ago that was new to me. When you walked in the door it was almost like a 5 minute dating game to see how many people you could talk to about their business. Another meeting I attended had a contest to see who could collect the most business cards in the room. And another event had us exchange cards with every person at the table (table of 8) and also played a game where you found people in various professions in the room.

What do you do with all these business cards? When I first started attending these type functions my intentions were good. When I first got home I tried to enter all the information in different categories in Outlook and then contact them via email. I did this a couple of times but then I procrastinated and the stack got put on my desk and by the time I got around to entering the information in my contact file I had to be creative in the way I contacted them so they would remember who I was.

Now I do things a little differently than I did in the beginning. Here are a few suggestions on ways I have improved and utilize business cards:

• Within one day review the cards received. If a connection was made with someone, contact them immediately (email, phone call, snail mail, text message, whatever). Just do it.


• For those cards received and no real connection was made, utilize them for direct mail purposes. Write a letter, send a postcard or a note; whatever you do personalize it with a message stating you enjoyed meeting them.


• Save the cards for future reference. After entering the information in my Contacts file, I save all cards received in a plastic container. Several times when working with clients I have searched through this container looking for a card of someone I had met. Eventually you will have to cull out the old but until it fills up no need.

I hope some of these tips I wrote help you to better organize your contacts and also get more benefit out of cards that were given in passing and no real connection was made. Utilize them to your benefit. You never know what may come of your follow up techniques.

Carole DeJarnatt

It's tuff in the real world

This entry has nothing to do with business. It has to do with my son. I shared with you in a previous post that he is going through some growing pains and most of it is dealing with "The Need for Speed"!

I can relate to his "need for speed". We both drive Cobra's, his being a '95, mine being an '01. Today I saw an '03 and all I wanted to do was show this guy I had as "bad" a car as his. What is wrong with me? I am an adult (or so I think), but I was overcome with this desire to show my stuff.

If you have been keeping up with my blogs, you will know that I did nothing. Not that I'm chicken (but I am really am), but I am a responsible adult. I know the outcome (if you are caught) and really, what is the purpose? Nothing. People do not care what you have. Some may envy but most do not care.

Being a mother, it is as hard for me as it is for my son, when it comes to him not having a license. We are close so he shares with me his anguish and disappointment in himself and the lack of driving. Today I wrote him a poem as I emailed him about an article from "The Wall Street Journal". This is what I wrote:

Can we turn back the clock
So we can start again?
You are growing up so fast
I do not know where we began!

I want to help you and guide,
But it is beyond my control
You are a man now,
With all your own goals.

May God bless you and guide you,
Do not stray from His side,
He is there when you need Him,
He’s along for the ride.

I wanted to share with my subscribers because most of us realize business is tough but so is family and life. I'm sure some of you can relate.

Carole

Making the best of Voicemail

Opportunity knocks in the form of a voicemail. A friend of mine that sells Aflac took the opportunity to educate a few friends this morning on the advantages to be taken when leaving a voicemail. I am not one to coldcall so had never thought about being prepared for leaving voicemails or how to create intrigue by leaving a not so common voicemail.

Here are three steps she recommends to design an intriguing statement:

1. List a Feature (a fact about your product)~~I offer business advisory and coaching services
2. What is The Benefit (value to your prospect, what's in it for them)~~We help you to find solutions to the situations that impede your business growth
3. Now, Make it Intriguing (make them curious, keep it clear and short)~~If I could guarantee positive results or your money is returned, would you be interested in talking?

She also gave 10 advantages to using voice mail but the list is too long to go into here. What I most appreciated was her efforts to bring people together to interact and be a sounding board for others who may make cold calls.

What I took away from it was: Be prepared, Be Upbeat, and Have a message of interest. They may not call you back but if you do make cold calls your chances are better of a return call if you sound like a person who is fun to work with.

Thank you, Becky, for educating this non-coldcalling person about the importance of voicemails.

Carole DeJarnatt
Alliance Advisors, Inc.

The Cost of Poor Service

We have all been there at one time or another. You've experienced the poorest service you have ever received. We do not forget either. Today I still remember the episode referenced below as if it were yesterday.

Calculating the Cost of Poor Customer Service
By: Carole DeJarnatt, Alliance Advisors, Inc.
Have you ever thought about how much money has been lost due to poor customer service? Is it happening within the organization you are affiliated? Or perhaps you are the owner and are not aware of the practices of your employees.

A few months ago I had decided to purchase a new laptop. Being a business owner and from a small town, I try to frequent the local businesses if they have what meets my needs. This timeframe happened to be the week after Christmas so I am thinking there are lots of sales going on and I should be able to purchase something at a decent price. I tried the local store that claimed to have new computers and laptops.

I decided to call first so I could talk with someone on the telephone. An answering machine answered the telephone and informed “they were busy with a customer and would return the call.” I did not leave a message. I tried again an hour later and the same scenario. Finally on the third call I left a message stating “I wonder how many customers you have lost due to no response.” I did not leave any contact information. Later that day I decide to drive to the store since it was only a few miles from my home. When I arrived at the store, I find out the store is not open at all. It was closed for the week!

To say the least I did not purchase my laptop from this store, nor will I purchase from them in the future. I did send them a letter notifying them of situation that occurred and how I could help them improve on their services. I never heard from them.

What do you think this cost that company? I spent approximately $700 on my computer, but was I the only customer that tried to contact them that week? Probably not. Being the only local store to have the services and items they claim to carry, there were probably some inquiries.

In my opinion, this company could be more appealing than the Best Buys and Circuit City’s of the world. Being a local company, they have the opportunity to show their customer they are the one stop shop for all their computer needs with the home town appeal. I much prefer to buy from a local company than one of the bigger ones when their customer service is the personal touch. All of us want the personal touch when dealing with companies and I believe the smaller business has the greatest opportunity to apply and show they care.

The big companies also have the opportunity for personal touch but I have not come across one yet that does it well. Customer service is so important, no matter whether you are big or small. People want to buy from companies they know who will take care of them but also care about them. It is not about what they do but it is about what they do for you! Take care of your customers’ everyday as if it were their birthday! Do we not try to be nice to people on their birthdays if we are aware?

Carole DeJarnatt
Alliance Advisors, Inc.