Campaigner is an Ottawa-based email marketing service.
In their web app, you go through 6 steps to send your email to your clients. The process is straight forward, but on step 4 they include this towards the bottom of the page:
Now…I am not against that sort of “viral” marketing, but here are three MAJOR problems with the way Campaigner does it:
1) By default they ASSUME you want their marketing in your email. WRONG.
2) This check box is below the fold so it is easy to overlook. WRONG.
3) They don’t show you what the campaigner footer looks like, so you don’t know what you are getting. POOR.
4) EVERY time you go to this step/page, they reset the check box to “on”. WORSE THAN WRONG.
When you are putting the finishing touches on an email campaign, you may make many last minute edits.
If by chance you don’t look below the fold and notice they have rechecked the box WITHOUT asking you or prompting you, your email will include their logo and marketing message. Very poor form. Do not do this to your users.
Here is the right way to go:
1) Default it to “off”.
2) Show your users an example of what it will look like.
3) Remember your user’s preference (i.e. “on” or “off”).
This is just respecting your users and their interests, and that is always the right thing to do…plus it keeps people from writing posts like this…another upside
With the introduction of our new ground mail feature, we have made a small update to our API. If you are not familiar with our API, you can read more about the FreshBooks platform here. You can now send invoices via ground mail using the API as well as normal email invoices. Documentation of the new feature is available on page 15. Currently our API allows you to create clients as well as create and send invoices outside of FreshBooks. We have received a lot of requests to add recurring billing to our API, and that is a feature we plan to add for our next big API release, so stay tuned.
The first of our Fall teleseminar series last week was John Jantsch, author of “Referral Flood” and twice voted best small business blogger by Forbes Magazine. John has practical and proven advice about how to build your business by getting people to refer you to others. John has joined Michael once before and we were delighted to have him back.
Here are some notes and timelines from our call with John:
(0:29) - About John’s Duct Tape Marketing blog network.
(02:55) - Podcasts are being listened to in cars.
(05:55) - Overview of what John’s going to talk about:
The rules of referral marketing
Creative referral offers/strategies
Strategic partnerships
(06:49) - People generally forget to think about how to build their business via referrals.
(08:30) - Rule of referral marketing: If you’re not getting any referrals, you’ve probably got another problem.
(09:20) - Rule: Establish a referral mindset.
(10:14) - You are doing your customers and friends a disservice by not making it easy to refer your business.
(13:03) - Rule: Make referrals an expectation when doing business.
(15:16) - It’s important to set the expectation of referrals at the start of your relationships.
(16:35) - Rule: Target your referral sources
(18:53) - Rule: Educate your referral sources; strategic partners as referral sources
(20:40) - The 3 big components of educating your referrals.
(23:00) - Rule: Invite participation from clients & strategic partners to understand what incentives motivate them.
(28:00) - Rule: Make it easy for people to refer you.
(30:17) - Rule: Be ready to pounce on moments of truth by having the mindset that you’re always looking for opportunities.
(31:55) Rule: Follow up is crucial - acknowledge your referral sources’ efforts.
(34:36) - If I was an independent, say PR, consultant, how much time each week I should put towards building/implementing a referral strategy?
(35:44) - Rule: Make time for marketing; establish a habit.
(38:38) - From FreshBooks user: What kind of carrots should we give to referrers? Money, services in kind, something else?
(41:15) - Being creative is a referral strategy; do something creative that forces people to talk about you.
(43:15) - From FreshBooks user: When asking for a customer reference testimonial to put on your web site, is it important to get a signed copy or is an email okay?
(45:40) - Referral strategy: “Will work for referrals” - for people who are in a new industry/town.
(48:40) Referral strategy: Partner with non-profit or charitable organizations.
Today is the first in a series dedicated to those crazy people who don’t spend every waking moment reading our blog. Here are five great blog posts for small businesses you may have missed.
Streamline Your Collections
“As a follow up to a post I wrote about dealing with larger customers, once again Jim Logan in his Cash Flow Blog has some good suggestions for composing a good collection letter.”
Generate more referrals for your business “Earlier this week Michael spoke with John Jantsch, author of Referral Flood, who has great advice about how to generate more referrals for your business. I listened to the call and took notes - here they are in point form.”
Good Contract for Web Designers “Now, I am not a lawyer, but here is a contract for web designers that I used to use when I did consulting and web design projects for less than $10,000. It’s a great contract for those small brochure-type websites in the $0-$5,000 range (we used a different contract for engagements over $10,000). Why is it a good contract?”
Good Web Design is Not Guesswork “I want to tell you about a process you can use to design your pages. Your users will benefit from the time you invest in page layout, and so will you because it will reduce the number of changes you need to make later to get a page right. Also, your site will be more successful so your client will want to invest in additions and that means more revenue for you.”
Time To Pay Trumps All “Jim Logan in his Small Business - Cash Flow Blog explains how frustrating it can be dealing with larger customers that take a long time to pay their bills … Jim goes on to suggest that if your customer is making a habit out of paying slowly, you should investigate them and confront them on it.”
We have been experiencing an increase in the amount of comment spam on our blog lately, so I’ve put some time into finding a way to combat this evil enemy. Hopefully this post will help others in their battles against COMMENT SPAM!
We have been running the Akismet plugin that comes packaged with the WordPress platform but as you can tell it is not been 100% spam proof. It seems only the really nasty comments get through. We’ve also noticed that we receive the most spam at night or on the weekends when none of us are in to moderate the comments. Tricky little devils. So recently I put a verification code on the comment form that you have to type in correctly in order to post a comment. I left it for a night but the next morning we were at it again deleting a bunch of comment spam. I wasn’t very fond of a verification code because:
User may have images disabled in their browsers
User may be visually impaired (though there are some image verifications with and audio option)
It’s darn annoying for users to have to type in a code
So I did a little more reading and am now trying 3 plugins together, Akismet, Spam Karma 2 and Bad Behavior (I killed the image verification). From what I read, using these 3 together are very effective in blocking comment spam. So we’re going to run with this for a while and see how it goes. It probably won’t be 100% spam proof but I hopefully it will cut down the time spent moderating our comments.
P.S. If you guys have any thoughts, experiences or suggestions on combating comment spam lets hear it.
I just got back from holiday in Peru. I travelled with 14 people, trekked the Andes, saw Machu Picchu and generally had a great time.
The group is now reconnecting by email and I said I’d find a service where we could all share our photos. I had thought I would use Flickr, but I am loathing Flickr these days because:
You have to have a Yahoo account and the sign up process for that is a TOTAL PAIN. I was mad – like 90’s bad internet mad – by the time I got into my Flickr account.
You can only upload 20MB/month … I had 160MB to upload.
Then, Daniel and Levi reminded me about BubbleShare. As it turns out, I know Albert Lai who runs it (I’m so sorry it was not my first stop Albert…unforgivable…wasn’t thinking). Anyhow, BubbleShare is:
Way easier to use.
FREE.
[bubbleshare 63093]
I have some slight design/usability beefs with the service (mostly the heavy use of grey text, instead of black and the fact that the “Share Album” and “Share My Album” links do different things), but other than those, I had a wonderful experience.
Uploading over 100 images was a breeze – and I did not need to download anything to do it, which Flickr makes you do (though you may have to upgrade to Flash8). Inputting multiple email addresses and inviting the group to see my album were both a snap as well. In fact, all these things were so easy they seemed magical.
You don’t need to give up an email address to use BubbleShare, only if you want a lasting account and profile, and you can get started in less than 30 seconds. You can also make prints and photo albums of your images meaning BubbleShare is a nice example of a transitional service. What more could you ask for?
For photo sharing, BubbleShare gets two thumbs up. Check it out.
This Fall we are going to help you build your business. I’m delighted to announce our Fall teleseminar series
where you can access specialists who will help you:
• Generate new clients for your business
• Analyze and improve the results of your website
• Better manage the projects you undertake
Meet the experts:
The calls will be useful to anyone who owns their own business – especially freelancers and consultants – because the teleseminars will not only help you with your business, but will make you more valuable to your clients. The more value you add the better rates you can charge, right?
All the calls are free to access. We are going to launch the series with two returning experts, but don’t think you’ve learned everything from John and Andrew if you were on a previous call - we will be covering new content.
We encourage you to tell other people you know about these teleseminars and be sure to sign up; we will send you a reminder before each session.
Let’s build your business together. Better, faster, cheaper.
A very useful time-management “trick” I learned while working at Cisco (after facing many long days in which all I did was participate in other people’s meetings back-to-back from 8am to 6pm) is to formally schedule meetings with yourself using Outlook or any scheduling tool.
No more than an hour or two long, but give each meeting a real topic or action item.
In addition to making your calendar full so others can’t automatically add you to their meetings (you get phone calls, I’d like you to join us for a meeting about X but your calendar says you don’t have any free time in the next few weeks….) creating events to accomplish specific activities formalizes them, even for yourself, and the computerized reminders help keep you back on track.
I am often asked about being a soloist: an independent consultant. “How do you find work?” “Is it difficult to balance all the things you need to do?” “How do you market your services?” I thought I would try to scribble some thoughts that might help would-be soloists in taking the plunge — or avoiding this sort of life altogether.
I may be an edge case, in that I am an unusual sort of independent, but I bet there are some general lessons to be learned in here, somewhere.
Marketing and The Finding Of Work
I have a simple approach to marketing my services: I don’t. Or, perhaps more accurately, I don’t do any marketing other than blogging and attending conferences, which are the primary channels for potential clients. I leave the rest up to fate, the Tooth Fairy, and word of mouth.
Blogging is the centerpoint of my professional life, and in a real sense defines my professional identity. Many thousands of other consultants also blog, so I am not some outlier in that regard, and I believe that the benefits of diligently exploring your professional interests in the blogosphere can be enormous. Blogging is also relatively low-cost, although the time investment may be high. I know that there are some advocates of blogging who believe it is possible to get a solid return on a lesser time investment, but I try to blog daily, and often, many times a day. I have come to be considered an A-list blogger (whatever that may mean) but I think the key is to define a niche of interests that you write about that would allow a potential client to get an insight into your thinking. And then the email will start.
I speak at conferences frequently, and I have found that to be an amazingly productive investment. Even just attending conferences where prospective clients are attending can work. Note that becoming a well-known blogger may allow you to attend conferences free, even if you are not speaking, since conference organizers appreciate the coverage, offering another reason to blog.
The Balance Of The Soloist
The most difficult challenge for soloists is to find a balance between the various activities that must take place to survive. I like to oversimplify these down to three:
Doing The Work — The heart of consulting — of whatever description — is delivering the work. A soloist has to deliver value to the client in order to make money. Most consulting-oriented people start with this capability: it’s the other two that cause problems, in general.
Marketing and Networking — I have already noted that I principally market myself through blogging, and that I attend conferences: those are the outward signs of a willingness, or even an obsession with networking with likeminded others. When I find out about a web product that sounds interesting (my beat), I sign up for the beta, fool with it, write a review, ask for more info, and very soon I am involved in a direct communication with the company’s management. I read other people’s blogs and comment on their ideas. When attending conferences I try to chat with both old friends and folks I have never met before. I know many consultants whose natural introversion makes such activities difficult if not impossible. But these interactions are just as critical to being a soloist as performing the work, and are likely to take up just as much time!
Prospecting, Contracts and Cash Flow — I am always happy to talk about money, and as a soloist it is imperative to get what you are worth, and then to collect the fees. This is a blind spot for many, and a make-it-or-break-it issue. I know a lot of folks that find it hard — even with people they know well — to ask for a project, an engagement, whatever, and to demand payment later on. It may seem obvious but many consultants only get involved with this as a necessary evil, but it’s not. It’s just as central as delievering the goods and networking.
My sense is that you need to be doing each of these three things an equal amount of time. One third of your time should be devoted to networking and marketing, that is finding new clients, or letting them find you; one third to talking up new projects, getting them into contracts, and managing the business side, up to and including getting paid; and one third performing billable work. I can hear the groaning already: only one third of the time billable?
Yes, and you will have to jigger your billing rate to make that work. I plan to only work 10 days per month, so that has to make all the ends meet. I know that 10 days will go to marketing and networking, and 10 days to prospecting, negotiating, contracts, and getting the money. I no longer fool myself that these things will happen by themselves.
So balance is the most likely place for a prospective soloist to run aground. They do not allocate enough time to marketing, or they underestimate the level of effort involved in prospecting, or they hope that they will have 22 billable days a month and set their rates too low so that they starve to death while working five days a week.
In The Final Analysis
I have found being a soloist a wonderful and liberating life. But it is not for everyone. Especially at the outset, it can have all the fun and charm of falling down an open elevator shaft.
Since building the necessary reputation for expertise in an industry niche can take some time, I would suggest starting on the marketing a long way in advance of quitting your day job, perhaps several months or more. Then start threading the prospecting in to see if you can indeed land some work at your survival rate (remember: only 10 days/month! No cheating!) Then, and only then, should you consider the leap. It’s not for everyone.
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