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E-Mail Marketing: Use Your List, Don’t Sit On It

May 6, 2010 By Kara View Comments

Don’t Let Me Down

E-Mail marketing has developed a bad reputation. We all hate spam. The more a person hates spam in her own mailbox, the less eager she is to send frequently. But not all e-mail marketing campaigns are created equal. Imagine that there are potential clients out there who would be disappointed not to hear from you. I know I was.

It was happy hour  about a year ago. I settled in with a good friend at a shabu shabu restaurant for a fun evening and the waiter came by to present us with a survey. If we filled it out, including our e-mail addresses, we were promised a free drink. Talk about a no-brainer. We gladly filled out the survey which was pretty fun in itself with a series of silly conversation-starters worked in.

I remember this experience so clearly because it was fun, and I felt like I got something good out of the deal. We didn’t fill out the survey to enter to win something or just to tell them what we thought of the meal. We had already won. There was no drawing. Just by filling out the survey, we received a reward – our free beverage and a great start to a fun night. That restaurant had made two new friends.

I’d mention the name of this restaurant but I don’t remember it. I never got a single email from them. I have impeccable handwriting when I want to, so I’m sure that wasn’t the problem. The woman I was with hadn’t heard from them either. With all of the amazing restaurants in LA, it hasn’t occured to me to trek across town to visit them again.

Give New Friends Love – Get Love Back

Paul K is the name of a restaurant I visited in San Francisco with a friend over two years ago. I enjoyed my meal and the friendly wait staff so much that I left my contact info on the comment card even though I live in LA. I receive e-mails from them about once a month. They always use a friendly tone that seems to be a continuation of the good rapport we had with our waiter. They also have fun with their email offers using “secret passwords” instead of boring coupons. I loved getting their emails even though I live in another city. About a year later, I visited San Francisco with another friend and insisted that we dine at Paul K, a restaurant name I’m sure I’ll never forget. Next time I make it back to SF, I’m going there again.

Keeping In Touch Maintains Relationships

What do we do with information that we collect from new contacts? I sometimes wonder if we don’t reach out because we don’t know what to say. Or we get performance anxiety. Do we have enough information for a proper newsletter? If we send coupons or announce specials, will they think it’s spam and unsubscribe? Maybe you’re a small operation and no one is a particularly gifted copywriter. If we expect our emails to read like the Economist, this might be a legitimate excuse. But I don’t think our new contacts expect so much from us.

E-mail marketing is about maintaining relationships with people who trust us enough to give us their information. They’re our new contacts – friends – not prospects. Maybe if we think of them as new friends instead of prospects we’ll have an easier time writing our emails and our new friends will look forward to reading them a little more because they’ll come from a person, not an organization.

Learn more about new ways to think of e-mail marketing.

Filed Under: E-Mail Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Social Business & Social Media: Breaking The Rules

April 30, 2010 By Kara View Comments

Many of my favorite bloggers are talking right now about bold risk-taking and entrepreneurship. This is an especially exciting topic for me because I’m at the very beginning of building my new business. Yesterday I commented on a post by Sonia Simone about how we need to be true to who we are and not be afraid to break rules. The comment thread grew as I made my way to Santa Barbara to attend an Eleos Foundation event called “Who Are The Social Entrepreneurs?” As I listened to the speakers, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between the kinds of people who are leading the way in social entrepreneurship and the leading minds in social media.

Dr. Al Hammond of Ashoka began with the statement, “Social Entrepreneurs are motivated by a sense of passion – they want to fix things. They have a vision for how things could be different and they’re foolhardy enough to embark on that vision.” Each time I read or hear about another social business, I’m struck by the “well, duh!” moment that always seems to come. The answers to these pressing problems were always staring us in the face. The problem is, we’re stuck in ruts and blindly obey the old rules.

Here are a few examples of what Dr. Al Hammond is describing:

Dr. Muhammad Yunus (The Grameen Bank)
Problem: The poor were in hock to a moneylender who ripped them off so they could never get ahead.
The Rules Said: You can’t get a loan without collateral. You have to have money to borrow money.
The Rule-Breaker’s Answer: No. The people who actually NEED money are the poor, not the rich. The poor will value the opportunity more than the rich and be more likely to pay it back than someone who takes money for granted.
The Result: The Grameen Bank was born. After over 30 years and millions of loans, the average repayment rate is around 97%.

Danone Yogurt
Problem: Kids in Bangladesh were suffering from malnutrition.
The Rules Said: Send in donations of food or vitamins.
The Rule-Breaker’s Answer: That will be expensive and unsustainable. Let’s start a business instead of a charity. Let’s sell fortified yogurt to the people at a price they can afford. Then we’ll build small versions of our yogurt factories near their villages and hire the locals.
The Result: Grameen Danone – a thriving, sustainable social business.

Adidas & the 1-Euro Shoe
Problem: A lot of people in poor countries don’t have shoes. A perfectly healthy person can step on a bone and die of tetanus.
The Rules Said: Get donations to buy shoes or get people to donate their old shoes to these poor soles. (I couldn’t resist.)
The Rule-Breaker’s Answer: Let’s see if we can make a decent shoe at a price the poor can afford. Then we’ll sell the shoes to the people and create economic opportunity for ourselves and the shoeless folks.
The Result: People’s feet have shoes. When those shoes wear out, there will be a place to buy another pair at a price they can afford.

Social Media
Problem: You have a good message  to get out, but people are getting better at blocking out ads, mailers and e-mail blasts. The news media is changing so fast, it’s hard to get good coverage.
The Rules Said: Buy a bigger list. Be a little louder. Make your ads a little more clever. Work harder to get through to those overworked reporters.
The Rule-Breaker’s Answer: Take your message directly to the people. Self-publish content like blog posts, videos and podcasts that your community of customers, donors or volunteers will find interesting and thus keep them engaged with your organization and each other.
The Result: The power over information is increasingly in the hands of consumers. Your company will be judged not by the color of your banner ad, but by the content of your pages.

We’re out for ourselves and others at the same time.

Saving lives and spurring economic growth for the poor might seem a lot more noble than changing a communications strategy. But the people leading the way in these endeavors are, as Dr. Hammond described, “motivated by a sense of passion.” They have a vision for how to fix things, do things differently. Social entrepreneurs and social media enthusiasts have one very important thing in common: “social.” We have a passion for people and have a heightened awareness of our place in the grand scheme of things, the on- and off-line social networks we all live in. We’re business people and yes, (gulp) marketers. But we’re ripping up the rule books and destroying the old perceptions of what those words mean in the public lexicon. We’re not just out for ourselves, but yet we are. We realize our interdependence on the social networks of this planet.

What big problems are staring you in the face?
What does the rule-book say about your problem?
What obvious answer might also be staring you in the face?
(WARNING: The answer will seem ridiculous and impossible until you choose to believe it’s not.)

Filed Under: Social Business Tagged With: , , ,

Rude Facebook Friends: Just Hit “Remove”

April 26, 2010 By Kara View Comments

edit personal newsfeeds, social media marketing los angeles, social media consulting los angelesRude Facebook friends can be dangerous to your relationships with the rest of your network. Imagine someone plastering an ad for their business to the side of your office building? Or a neighbor planting a campaign sign for a candidate you’re not crazy about in your front lawn? You would take down the ad and the sign without worrying about hurting the feelings of the person who put it there.

Unlike the clear examples above, the rules of social networking can seem a little fuzzy at times. It’s important to take control. You can decide on editorial standards for your “newsfeeds” or “walls” so that you can keep rude Facebook friends from hijacking your conversations with the rest of your network.

There are no 1:1 relationships in social networking.

E-Mail is 1:1. Social networks are 1:MANY. As soon as you accept a request to connect with that woman you worked with a few years back, you have access not only to her individual profile information, you have a window into her online social interactions via her “newsfeed” or “wall.” You can see links to items that reflect the shared interests of her community as well as the conversations she’s having about these links with her other connections.

Your newsfeed tells as much about who you are as your static profile.

Now think of what this woman will see when she visits your profile. Let’s assume this is a profile where you hope to primarily make business connections. You’re careful about what you post, but are you careful about what is being shared on your wall by others in your community? Are they items of genuinely shared interest or are they the equivalent of ads plastered to the side of your office building? Do conversations around controversial posts ever devolve into unproductive banter?

Set Your Editorial Standards

Every newspaper and magazing has a set of standards. You’re not going to find fashion advice in the pages of the Economist any more than you’ll find a long expose on the Nuclear Summit in Glamour. No one is going to begrudge Glamour for not posting a letter to the editor about the World Bank. It’s not a part of their agenda. There are other magazines for that. In the same way, how you manage your community should be a reflection of who you are, not an open forum for friends to post irrelevant ads or promote their personal agendas. They have their own newsfeeds for that.

1. Decide on a primary purpose for each profile. Some are personal, some are for business and some will be a mix. But make sure you’re clear about your goals for each.

2. Imagine the “personas” of your connections. What are you looking to accomplish via a particular profile? If it’s only to expand your business, think carefully about how you want to interact with the members of that community. What connected them to you in the first place? What would stimulate the kinds of conversations that would lead to deeper business relationships? Conversely, what kinds of conversations should you steer clear of in order to keep the professional nature of these relationships strong?

3. Go to your newsfeed and make some editorial decisions.

  • Has anyone posted pure ads that don’t reflect any shared interest at all? Click “remove.”
  • Has anyone posted inflammatory discussion items or polarizing political comments that don’t have anything to do with growing your business relationship? Click “remove.”
  • Has anyone questioned your value proposition or made an on-topic comment that contradicts your assumptions about a posted article or comment? Click “respond.” This is what Social Networking is made to do: foster conversation. Just remember to keep it cool, on topic and don’t take criticisms personally.

If a conversation is derailed by a member of your community who starts down a road that conflicts with your editorial standards, you have some tough decisions to make about your future with this connection. What might satisfy this one person may not be good for your community as a whole.

We’re all in this together.

The refreshing thing to remember is that most people in your community are just like you. We’re in these networks to lift one another up. But the longer you stay in the game, the more likely you’ll be to encounter people who are looking for a place to vent their frustrations, push their agendas or plaster their unwanted ads. But never forget that you are not at their mercy. You have just as much control over your own newsfeed as the Economist or Glamour does. Anyone who begrudges you this may not be looking out for your best interest. That’s your job.

Filed Under: Facebook, Featured
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