SSS for Success (Simplified Social Media Solutions) Blog and Podcast Series

5 Easy Steps to Setting Up an E-Newsletter: Building Web Traffic Through Email Marketing

I’ve talked in a previous post about how Email Marketing through e-newsletters can be used to build bring traffic either to your website or blog, and ultimately enhance your small business's overall brand by nurturing the relationships you have with your customers.

I’ve noted how email marketing can be used to build your reputation as an information resource to your core audience, and let your audience know that you’re an authority in your area of expertise. I’ve also highlighted how it keeps you connected with your audience, and it gives you the opportunity to stay relevant and provide useful information that they’ll appreciate. Additionally, I’ve mentioned that if you sell things, or at one point will want to promote something, it’s a great way to have a “pre-sold” audience who trusts you and your opinions, and it helps you build traffic and enhance your brand, while engaging in activities that help your business’s bottom line.

Today, I’m going to share with you the 5 Easy Steps to Setting up an Email Marketing Account and Distributing an E-Newsletter with very little money. Let’s get started (Note: This list assumes you already have your website or blog set up, and if you don’t, I’d suggest contact SSS for Success at 615-336-4325 ASAP to get one setup FAST):

Step 1: Sign up for an Email Marketing Service. I’m currently using MailChimp under their “Forever Free” program that allows you to have up to 2000 subscribers and send 12000 emails per month. No expiring trials. No contracts. No credit card required. In my opinion, this is THE BEST email marketing program for someone looking to grow and build their email marketing list! It’s been my experience that it’s not the best for importing a large list from a personal database, or another email marketing program, but for those just starting out with email marketing, this is the best (and cheapest) service out there. Plus, it gives you the opportunity to find out if email marketing and e-newsletters are really a worthwhile long-term investment of your time and money (and I’ll note that MailChimp’s paid programs are comparable to many of the other paid email marketing services out there). One of the market leaders in email marketing would be Constant Contact and chances are if you’re receiving several email newsletters currently, at least one of them is coming from Constant Contact just based on the prevalence of the service. They have monthly plans that start as low as $15 a month, and they offer a lot of additional solutions like online surveys, event marketing solutions that assist with planning events including tracking registration and payments for events. Yet another paid option is Vertical Response, which offers a free trial where you can send 100 free email newsletters to test their service.

Step 2: Add people to your list (ethically). I want to emphasize “ethically” because there are rules and regulations to how you can add people to your list. For instance, just sending a blanketed business-related email to everyone in your email address book can be considered “spam”, especially if you did not acquire their email through a legitimate business transaction within the last 18 months. Most email marketing programs give you the option of “importing” or adding email addresses, but I would advise against doing this for the email addresses you already have in your address book for a number of reasons. First, just because you have someone’s email address, that doesn’t mean they’re interested in your newsletter or its content. And second, if you add them to your list, and they receive email from you they don’t want, and unsubscribe from the list or report you as spam to your email marketing service, you can be kicked out of it. The best thing to do (in my opinion), is extend an offer personally to the people in your address book to sign up for your newsletter. This is great because it insures that you only have the people who are truly interested in your content. True, it might mean that you start off with fewer people on your list, but hopefully, over time, with good content, you’ll grow your list, and grow it with the right intended audience that’s open to receiving your message. Again, I can’t stress this enough: Do not randomly add people to your newsletter list without their permission! This one particular issue is something that hits close to home as I get annoyed with being added to newsletters I didn’t opt into. And it makes me twice as likely to report you for spam to your email marketing service and my email provider. I’d much rather prefer if a person contacted me directly to announce their newsletter, then gave me the option of subscribing to it, as opposed to me receiving yet another unsolicited message in my already overflowing inbox.

Step 3: Use the tools of your email marketing service. For example, MailChimp has a lot of functions and integrations that let you not only see statistics on who opened your newsletter and when, but also what they clicked on, if they forwarded it to someone, and a host of other options. Additionally, you can set up automated messages or “autoresponders” that send a message to your mailing list (or even only a subset of the mailing list that you identify) at a specific time or date in the future. Luckily lots of great functionality is typically packed into just about any email marketing service you choose, so choose a free service like MailChimp, or a free trial with Constant Contact or Vertical Response and just dive right in!

Step 4: Create Interesting Topics. I would suggest as a general rule of thumb writing 1 newsletter article per week, if you have the time or at least one per month to stay relevant to your audience. Also, there’s lots of research out there on what kind of email marketing schedule works best, and when’s the best time to send your letter, and there are plenty of places who work out all the science and methodology behind what works and when. But the best rule of thumb in this situation would be to determine the time schedule that’s going to work best for your audience AND decide if you have enough content to consistently put out content on the schedule you’ve set. I typically work to create “evergreen content”, which is “timeless” content that can be reproduced again over the years without much information that gets “dated” quickly. Another good tip I would suggest is to write out in advance, 52 topics that you’d like to hit with your newsletter within a year. It seems like a lot when you say it, but if you manage to keep your content light, fresh, and relevant, it’s not hard to stamp out 52 topics very easily. Or, if that number seems too daunting, start out with 4 (i.e. a month’s worth of topics) and watch how many new topics you’ll come up with from just that 4!

Step 5: Watch the Analytics of your Newsletter. The final step in creating and producing your email marketing e-newsletter would be to watch the analytics of your newsletter. As I mentioned, most email marketing services give you the option of knowing just about everything your subscribers are doing with your newsletter messages. Use that information and analyze it for what it’s telling you about your audience. What do people click on most? What doesn’t get any clicks? What type of subject lines get opened the least? All this is information that you can use to improve your newsletter over time. Also, be sure to integrate a feedback survey at some point to get feedback from your subscribers and find out directly what they think of your newsletter.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be sharing more information about email marketing and e-newsletters, including sharing my own personal journey of creating and disseminating the SSS for Success “Social Media Covered” Newsletter due to be unveiled soon, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, I ask: Are you using email marketing in your small business? Tell us some success stories.

Kindra Cotton, Small Business Survival Specialist

5 Easy Steps to Setting Up an E-Newsletter: Building Web Traffic Through Email Marketing

Beware: Domain Registry of America

By sss4success 9 Comments

Recently, I received a “Domain Name Expiration Notice” from a company called “Domain Registry of America”. What bothers me most about this notice, is that it’s designed to look like a bill, and to the untrained eye, or unlearned domain owner, you are very well led to believe that you need to follow the instructions on this form in order to renew your upcoming expiring domain.

For this reason, I’m issuing this Public Service Announcement to Small Business Owners who may have or will receive a “Domain Name Expiration Notice” from Domain Registry of America. In my opinion, this company participates in an unsavory business practice of preying on individuals, via the mail, who are likely not web-savvy enough to know that this “notice” is nothing more than an advertisement of their high-priced domain transfer and registration service.

And when I say “high-priced”, I mean it. I’ve attached a copy of this notice here:

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And on it, you’ll notice that a one year renewal for one domain is $35! This is highway robbery, especially since the worst case scenario I’ve seen for a domain renewal has only been upwards of $12. So, with Domain Registry of America, you’ll likely pay 3 times more than you would with other registrars!

It bothers me that this company is participating in what I believe is a “shady” business practice, especially since they’re going after people who likely don’t know what they don’t know. I’ve been getting these notices for quite some time now, but it recently came to my attention again because one of my clients inquired to me about it, based on some recent domain purchases that I had just procured on their behalf. They thought, that something mentioning their domain name and having their address on it, with what LOOKS like a bill, was a bill, and if they hadn’t spoken to me first, they likely would have been out of at least $40!

Because I knew to intuitively ignore these notices, I assumed that others did as well, but then I later learned I was wrong in my assumption. For that reason, today I say: BEWARE OF “Domain Registry of America” of 2316 Deleware Avenue, #266, Buffalo, NY 14216-2667. They may in fact be a “legitimate business”, but the way they go about business sucks and they need a new model that doesn’t prey on misleading people and taking advantage of them.

I would suggest, if you get one of these notices in the mail that you REPORT IT TO YOUR LOCAL STATES ATTORNEY FOR CONSUMER FRAUD! That’s what I intend to do! It’s your State’s Attorney’s job to stay vigilant and protect your state’s consumers from companies with unsavory and predatory business practices, and this should be brought to everyone’s attention, to keep “Domain Registry of America” from sending out these faux-bill notices with its ridiculously small fine print on the back.

I hope that this information has been useful to you, and I’d encourage you to share your experience with Domain Registry of America, and similar companies that operate like them. Have you gotten one of these notices before?

Kindra Cotton, Small Business Survival Specialist

Beware: Domain Registry of America

Help Me Construct a Blogging Workbook

By sss4success 6 Comments

I’d like to ask for your help in constructing a Blogging Workbook. I recently created a series called “Blogging for Success”, where I help bloggers (and aspiring bloggers) come up with great content that attracts new and returning visitors to your blog. So far, I’ve added the 7 Tips to Blogging Successfully, as well as How to Create Great Blog Content and 7 Tips for generating a blog calendar. I want to make sure that I’m not just operating in a bubble using only my own experience and what I’ve learned as my only guiding light, so for that reason, I am asking for your help in constructing a blogging workbook that can help other bloggers get to generating great content and sticking with it.

Whenever I create a Branded Blog for a company, I include a Blogging Tutorial specifically designed around the primary blogger’s level of expertise. One thing that I’m noticing consistently is that people who aren’t naturally gifted writers or speakers are getting stuck at some point between their ideas and actual blog posts, so I’d like to build a blogging workbook that helps bloggers get past that impasse.

It’s very clear that no one these days has enough time, so what I’d like to do is construct an instrument that can help blog writers get the most out of the time they do spend building their blog content and audience. I’m looking for people at all skill levels, from novices to experts, and even people that are just thinking about Blogging, but either aren’t sure where to start, or can’t find the time to fit it into their schedule. You can help me by filling out this brief survey and telling me about your blogging experience (or lack thereof), or filling out this contact form and put “Blogging Workbook” in the subject line and drop a note that will help me get pointed in the right direction. You can also give me a call (615-336-4325), or if you use Skype, you can find me if you see me online. My Skype ID is: Kindra.Cotton and you can check the icon below to see if I’m currently online.

So, are you thinking about blogging? Have you tried it? What might help you get ahead in the process of getting it done? Reach out and let me know what’s on your mind.

By the way, as a Thank You for your help in constructing the Blogging for Success Workbook, I will provide a complimentary digital copy of it to you for any help that you provide in creating a better resource for current and aspiring bloggers.

Kindra Cotton, Small Business Survival Specialist

Help Me Construct a Blogging Workbook

An Overview of Social Media Tools and Outlets (Part 2)

By sss4success 4 Comments

In Part 2 of An Overview of Social Media Tools and Outlets, I want to talk about other avenues that are used for sending out messages and connecting with others in the Social Media Space, specifically Blogging, Podcasting, and Email Marketing (See Part 1 here).

One of my personal favorites in social media is Blogging. Blogs provide a way to establish yourself as a thought-leader in your field, and regular blogging on a consistent schedule can help you grow your small business because it allows you to build web traffic by providing useful information to your blog’s visitors. At SSS for Success we specialize in providing Branded Blogs which are highly customized blogs built around your brand and designed to amplify your company's message in the blogosphere and throughout the World Wide Web. One good thing about blogs, versus say a regular website, is that blogs are better for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes because a blog is updated more than a traditional website, thus prompting search engine spiders (or robots) to crawl your blog pages more frequently and increasing your chances of being found through search engine results for specific keywords.

The next social media outlet is Podcasting (or digital audio broadcasting) which is like broadcasting your own radio show, where people can choose to download it and listen to it at their leisure. Podcasting can help you drive traffic to your small business's website by providing a platform for you to talk about your area of expertise via your very own broadcast known as “podcast”. It is a great way to amplify your company's message and reach a new audience in a different online medium. Some interesting stats on podcasting: Approximately 45 million people in the U.S. have gym memberships. Why is this relevant? Because most will need something to listen to during the 30-60 minutes that they work out. Another stat: 97 million people who drive to work along on a daily basis, with an average commute time of 25 minutes. Again, a podcast for this lonely driver definitely fills a void. One of the things that I like about podcasting is its relatively low cost of entry into the field. All you really need is a microphone, some recording software, and web hosting space to store your files. This is something you can get started with for $50 or less. As with anything, once you get more sophisticated in your podcasting, it can get more expensive, but I like how you can tinker around with it first, and see if it’s really for you before making a huge financial commitment. If you visit this blog often, you might also be interested in checking out our podcast in iTunes here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sss-for-success/id420375160

Last but not least, I want to talk about Email Marketing because even in the age of mobile internet and text messaging, there’s still some people out there that are using email marketing and using it well. It will certainly depend on your industry and audience, but a well-run email marketing campaign can be the difference between an empty inbox and your phone consistently ringing off the hook! Email Marketing through e-newsletters can be used to build bring traffic either to your website or blog, and ultimately enhance your small business's overall brand by nurturing the relationships you have with your customers. For instance, email marketing builds your reputation as an information resource to your core audience, and it lets your audience know that you know what you’re talking about. It also keeps you connected with your audience, and it gives you the opportunity to stay relevant and provide useful information that they’ll appreciate. If you sell things, or at one point will want to promote something, it’s a great way to have a “pre-sold” audience who trusts you and your opinions, and it helps you build traffic and enhance your brand, while engaging in activities that help your business’s bottom line.

Another hot topic in the Social Media Space for business professionals is Mobile Marketing. It definitely has people buzzing, especially as more and more people are using their mobile devices to get more things done. I’ll be talking about Mobile Marketing soon on this blog, so please stay tuned for updates.

So, that’s a general overview of social media tools and outlets, and there is certainly more to share. The main point that I want you to walk away with here is that you want to be sure to choose the right mix of social media outlets that fit with your company’s message and branding. As always, you can feel free to give me a call at 615-336-4325, if you have any questions about how you can better utilize social media in your small business, and I’ll end part 2 of this series by asking: Have you tried any of these outlets, and what’s been your experience with them?

Kindra Cotton, Small Business Survival Specialist

An Overview of Social Media Tools and Outlets (Part 2)