Successful Blog

10 Best Ways to Build An Email Marketing List

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An email marketing campaign is one prong in an effective marketing strategy. Email marketing lets you get the word out to clients and potential clients. The email format is especially conducive to sharing and referrals. It allows you to have a conversational interaction with your target market.

Making your email marketing campaign effective relies on a good email marketing list. The quality and size of your list directly impacts how effective the campaign is going to be. Building your email list, however, isn’t necessarily easy or intuitive. You might put up a sign-up form on your website, for example, and the find yourself discouraged when no one has signed up after several weeks.

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If you want to build your email marketing list, there are some specific things you can do to speed up and increase your success:

  1. Make it obvious. Put the sign-up form for your email marketing list smack dab in the middle of your website’s homepage. You want to capitalize on every little bit of traffic you can, and putting it off to the side just won’t do. If you really want to have a successful email marketing campaign, you need to make it a priority on your site.
  2. Don’t compete against yourself. Realize, of course, that if you’re operating a retail site you could be drawing views away from your store or sales process in order to pull someone into your email marketing list. For online retailers, using a secondary website to generate buzz for your primary site is a better place to put that marketing list.
  3. Incentivize signup. Give something away to people who are willing to sign up for your email marketing list. This should be something of real value, not simply a worthless token. Free reports are common incentives, as are discount coupons and contest entries. Just be clear about the fact that, in order to get the freebie, they’re also signing up for your email list.
  4. Ask for permission. Email marketing lists are most effective when they’re opt-in lists. That doesn’t mean you can’t use your existing list of email address, but it does mean you need to ask them to confirm any kind of subscription. It’s been proven over and over again that spammy email marketing campaigns that don’t use an opt-in are most often failures. Not only that, there are some pretty specific federal laws you need to be familiar with when it comes to spam, as well.
  5. Leverage real world resources. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, get your walk-in customers to sign up for your email list. Some of the most effective email marketing campaigns consist primarily of customers who have already visited your real-world store. Bring a signup sheet for your email list when you participate in community or networking events, as well.
  6. Be relevant. It’s one thing to get someone’s name on your email marketing list; it’s quite another to keep them on that list for more than one or two mailings. If the campaigns you’re using aren’t truly relevant and useful to your customers, they’re going to ask to be removed.
  7. Offer value. In addition to relevance, you need to offer real value to your list. If a customer gets some genuine use out of a mailing, they’re much more likely to share it with others. Word of mouth is a powerful way to increase subscriptions.
  8. Put social media to work for you. Your Facebook page fans and your Twitter followers should also be email marketing list subscribers. Those formats are great for building authority and rapport, and for interacting with your customers. Your email marketing list, however, is all about increasing sales.
  9. Follow all of the rules. Again, there are plenty of anti-spam rules out there. Know what they are, and follow them carefully. Violating those rules can be expensive, and even having to defend against a single accusation can take a sizable chunk of cash. Include unsubscribe information as well as real-world contact and identification information with each mailing.
  10. Honor unsubscribe requests. Although you hate to lose people from your email list, you need to respect their wishes. You’re using an opt-in model, which by its very nature means you have to allow them to opt out.

Email marketing can be one of the most effective types of marketing for your business. Making an email marketing list work for you means putting these methods into practice and doing so with both integrity and diligence.

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Author’s Bio:
Dominique Molina is President of the American Institute of Certified Tax Coaches, an organization of tax professionals who are trained to help their clients rescue thousands of dollars in wasted tax. In addition to her blogging and speaking engagements, Dominique provides tax training and accounting marketing as a registered educator with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA).

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Be Empathetic

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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One of my favorite summer jobs in college was working for Tourmobile, giving tours of Washington, DC.  History, politics, and my latent ham gene all combined to make it the perfect job.  

One sweltering summer day, at the end of a tour, a passenger stopped on the way out of the bus.  I thought the tour went fantastically, and was ready for a compliment or a tip. Instead, the person said, “you know, I’m a Native American, and I object to your use of the term Indian-giver.”  Indeed, in part of my patter about a particular slice of land on the other side of the Potomac, I had used that term.  I had probably used it a million times.  But this person’s statement struck me, and as I apologized profusely, it became a life lesson.

Your most potent skill as a business person or entrepreneur is the ability to see things through another person’s eyes.  
Take a moment now, and imagine how others view these aspects of your business:

Customer service
New offerings or product features
Design for accessibility
Business partnerships
Marketing message
Contracts and deals
Pricing
Hiring and firing process
Employee benefit

Great leaders are usually empathy practitioners.  Here are some ways you can build your empathetic reflex:
*Practice active listening, keep eye contact and lean in
*Visualize yourself above the conversation, watching
*Do secret shopping on your business
*Don’t configure your customers from Liz, circa 2006
*Use outside tools to evaluate your user experience (user interfaces, accessibility
*Before responding, hesitate a moment to project yourself into the other person’s shoes
*Don’t ever use the phrase, “our policy is…”
*At a large business gathering, proactively reach out to the person who is obviously solo
*If it’s practical, try doing someone else’s job at your business for a day

You have a thousand chances a day to connect with other human beings.  How can you practice empathy today?

“Empathy is the most revolutionary emotion.”  Gloria Steinem

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

25 Secrets to Live and Work Intelligently from the Heart

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Dynamic Tension Is the Art

On Valentine’s Day, 2008, I wrote How to Write Intelligently from the Heart. It explored how to create the dynamic tension between structure and expression that makes our writing live on.

We can think and write. We can craft our sentences to be clever. We can make sure that each part is factually, structurally, grammatically correct. But clever and accurate only go so far in satisfying readers. If we want our writing to resonate long after, our words need to come from the heart.

As I read that post today, it leads me to think about the dynamic tension between head and heart that are part of any successful business and any successful life.

In the same way, our work needs to come from the heart.

How to Live and Work Intelligently from the Heart

We can think and plan life. We can think and plan a business. We can build brilliant business strategy and savvy life design. We can make sure we’re on budget, we manage our time, and delivering high ROI that sees to the needs of work, friends, and family. But savvy and brilliant only go so far. If we want build a lasting business inside a meaningful life we need our head hardwired to our heart.

Here are 25 secrets I’ve learned about living and working intelligently from the heart.

  1. Decide who you want to be and what you’re building. It’s not a process. It’s a decision. We don’t have enough future. See it and be it now.
  2. See it as a quest and a mission. Just having a goal keeps that vision and mission in our head. A quest is noble requires us to invest our heart. /li>
  3. If we don’t believe we’ll get there, We’ll give up as soon as it gets hard. No one else will believe in us either.
  4. When we align our mission with our values, we attract people who share them and want to help. Work and life get faster, simpler, and more meaningful.
  5. When we speak the hard intelligent truth gently from our hearts, we never regret it. When we don’t, we always wish we had.
  6. We can’t love and punish someone, anyone, in the same moment. See with intelligent love and you might be surprised with the response.
  7. Know what’s at the heart of the quest before building the campaign to move it forward. An idea still being formed by a heart won’t survive the plan being built by an intelligent brain. A brain can forget how that plan impacts the people we care about and who care about us.
  8. Make a heartfelt commitment to yourself. That’s how integrity starts. Integrity makes us safe, predictable, and easy to trust. Being trustworthy is intelligent.
  9. Except when a life is threatened, wanting to run fast is a signal to slow down. Knee jerk responses rarely deliver as we expect.
  10. The less time we have for the people we care about, the more that making time to be with them would do us good.
  11. When we want want to hold things tightest is when to let go … Holding something tightly is a sign of fear.
  12. When we most want the light to shine on us is the best time to let someone else go first.
  13. When we want anything we don’t need, it feels better to give something away.
  14. Whenever we feel righteous, we’re wrong. Righteous means angelic, godlike, and saintly. Taking that view is bad from the start.
  15. The universe does not need us to keep it going. The stars do all right without us.
  16. People are made of the same carbon stuff as stars. Even the humblest star shines. We should too.
  17. Everybody cries, but not everybody cares. The best people do both.
  18. We win ourselves when we choose our opinion of ourselves over what we want other people to think.
  19. Gratitude is a giving, gracious attitude given from strength. We never have enough gratitude, but we can be too needy.
  20. Every act of generosity goes both ways.
  21. Everyone wants to look forward to something and needs a safe place to stand. Remembering that can deliver it to us.
  22. Everybody gets lost sometimes, but most of us find our way home. Helping someone who wants to find their way is easy. Helping someone who doesn’t want to move is difficult.
  23. Life is about what things are worth, not what they cost.
  24. To know who we are all that we have to do is look at our friends.
  25. We can’t separate work from life. We’re spending the time of our life when we work. Trying to balance work and life is like trying to balance your head with your body can’t pull them apart.

People who live and work intelligently from the heart share the humanity of who they are. It’s the in the humanity that we connect to them with our minds and with our hearts. They have boundaries to structure their work and their lives but their hearts touch other people. And it shows in the way that their lives and their work are art. You see the intelligence from the heart in the thoughtful unexpected gesture at the moment it’s needed most, in the compassion and forgiveness offered by a human with strong sense of self, in the way they seem to breathe an intelligent heartfelt belief that people are meant to be all they are. Head and heart together make meaning in a way that intelligence alone cannot.

It’s the style, the color, and the light — the playful feeling that took skill and thought to express — that makes this photo more than a heart in a frame.

How do you recognize someone who lives and works intelligently from the heart?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Do You “Get” How Important Your World View Is?

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What You See Is What You Are

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Once I thought other people had a better view of the world than I ever could …

I suppose that’s reasonable the people around me were worldly, experienced, and smart. I great parents, great teachers, and outstanding friends. When it came to some of my bosses and boyfriends, perhaps I thought ideas through before I bought in.

It was as if he were a prince with insight beyond my own and for a moment I believed in his view of the world.

He always thought that only mountains could be beautiful. I heard him proclaim it. Yes, proclaim is exactly what he did when he spoke of them. He found his own thoughts worthy of public decree. He’d announce that flat lands had their use, but then ask what possible beauty could a man proud as he ever find in a place with flat air?

No matter the metaphor I couldn’t convey the lovely feeling and the wide open space of the grassland without trees only blue skies above it. The green is so green and blue so blue, that the clouds must show off for fear of being thought to be boring.

A sky like this, with no mountain in view, would mean nothing to him.

So today as I look out over the lake as wide as the world, I watch the cloud ballet and think of the adventures, of the characters we might have invented had we been here when we were kids.

I watch the changes, breathing in every minute. I drink in gratitude for a world that is made like this. I’m particularly glad I had the good sense to quit dating that proclaiming brat before I left college. I can’t imagine what a different person I would have become if I’d adopted a world view like his.

No one guy’s view is better, further, or more beautiful than my own.

Do you “get” how important your world view is?
The way you define your world reflects how you define yourself.
In business and in life, what you see is what you get and we slowly become what we look at most.
Surround yourself with colleagues, friends, family — worldmates — who share your view. Fill your life, your heart, and your mind with images and ideas that define what you love and admire.

Don’t take my point of view … “get” your own.

The succcess of your business and your life depend on it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Where to Find Liz Strauss During Social Media Week Toronto 2012

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Thanks for Asking

It started with a question, “Liz, are you coming to Toronto for Social Media Week?”
The question led to a conversation and a few introductions and the next thing you know I’m making reservations.
Yes, I’ll be there!

As it turns out I’ll be there, and there, and there.
Here’s where you’ll find me.

Monday, February 13 at 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Creating Wildfires, Focus like a Sensei, Be Irresistible

Location: MaRS | Event Page
@SeanMoffitt, @SamFiorella and I (@LizStrauss) are coming together for an interactive debate on the myths and realities of Social Media’s impact on the business bottom line. We’ll be inviting the audience to participate during this rapid fire and highly interactive session.

Tuesday, February 14 at 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

An Empire Avenue evening with the Irresistible Liz Strauss! #SMW12

Location: The Vault at One King West Toronto, ON M5H 1A1 | Event Page
It’s going to be a small group, a cool venue, and an evening of enlightening conversation, cocktails, snacks and fun!! Come meet the engaging Empire Avenue team, including CEO, Duleepa “just call me Dups” Wijayawardhana and me and let us buy you a drink or two. 🙂

Thursday, February 16 at 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM – Networking to follow.

Accelerating Small Business Growth in our Economic Times

Location: BMO Bank of Montreal, (Manulife Centre – 55 Bloor St. West)| Event Page
Sean Stanleigh of the Globe and Mail moderates a panel of social media professionals, which includes , Julie Howlett, Account Director, Global Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn Canada and Chris Eben, Partner at The Working Group.

Then, Ian Portsmouth, editor and associate publisher of PROFIT magazine, moderates a second panel discussion with business owners sharing insights on the issues affecting business growth in Canada. Networking to follow.

And Other Places

Who knows where else I might show up?

So if you’re in Toronto next week, come on over to say hello!
Register for an event and let’s talk!

See you there!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

How to Reset Your Brain When You’re Burnt Out

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Everything in Moderation

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Whenever my grandmother used to visit, she always brought the same advice. “Everything in moderation,” she’d say, and it would apply to basically anything I was doing at the time. Whether it was stuffing my gourd with mom’s superb cooking, or it was playing games with my friends, or it was rocking out on my guitar, she’d always advise me to take it easy. That advice works on two levels, though I didn’t realize that until later in life.

When I was younger I took her advice to mean that I shouldn’t overindulge in anything. Grandma reinforced this notion once I got to college and she continued dispensing this advice. Clearly she knew I was drinking, but continued her mantra of moderation. I can’t, in good conscience, say that I always followed her advice. There were times, albeit brief, when excess became the rule. But Grandma’s voice always reeled me back to moderation.

It wasn’t until she passed away, six years ago, that I started to think more deeply about her advice. I had just graduated college and was starting my first real job, so many of my past excesses were out of the question. Binge drinking ended with graduation; time to wail on my guitar became scarce; even eating heavily was less of an option, since I actually had to pay for my own food. Yet there was a new type of excess creeping into my life. Every morning I’d sit outside the office door, waiting for someone with a key to let me in. At night one boss or another would make me go home, so he, too, could lock up and go home.

This type of excess led to burnout.

Working more seemed great. I was making good impressions with my bosses, and I was sure to advance faster than my peers. It was what I had planned all along: the fast-track to a high-ranking, and high-paying, position. Yet I had not accounted for the burnout that would come with such strenuous work. Soon enough Sunday nights became a burden, because all I could think about was the terror of going to work Monday morning. Getting out of bed became more difficult with each passing day, and it took longer and longer to fall asleep. Excess had begun to rule my life.

Thankfully, I still had Grandma’s advice to fall back on. Something needed to change, or else I’d realize full burnout. That probably meant quitting my job and might have meant seeking psychiatric help. After deciding that I wanted neither of these things, I decided to take action. Using a single vacation day, on a Friday, I got away for a weekend. It wasn’t a tropical beach, or ski slopes, or any typical kind of weekend getaway. It was to a simple bed and breakfast a few hours away. In this time I developed a plan to help avoid burnout. It has been my blueprint ever since.

Here is a full course menu on how to avoid burnout in your own life.

1. Sleep in. Getting to the office at 7 a.m. and not leaving until 6:30 or 7 p.m. definitely took a toll on me. Thanks to stress, I wasn’t even getting to sleep at a decent hour. The first change I made, then, was to pick one day a week and sleep in. This was usually on Wednesdays, which allowed me to recover a bit from Monday and Tuesday, and left me a bit more refreshed for Thursday and Friday. Getting to the office at 9 a.m. just one day a week wasn’t going to negatively affect my work. In fact, it only stood to improve it.

2. Leave early. Again, this is a term relative to my previous habits. Staying late every day might have made a favorable impression upon my bosses, but it was killing me personally. Everyone needs to unwind for a bit after work, and that just wasn’t happening. Getting home at 7:30, getting dinner, and then sitting around for a bit meant I wasn’t going to bed until around 11 — and not falling asleep for a while after that. Leaving early one day a week would provide some relaxation. This usually came on Tuesday or Thursday, which went well with sleeping in on Wednesday.

3. Get away, Part 1. Changing our environments can help change our mindsets. After going on a business trip, I found that spending time in a place other than my apartment provided a therapeutic effect. A new environment also brought new stimuli, which helped keep me fresh. Most surprisingly, I found that the plane ride, especially on the way home, was a great time for redefining my focus. Signing up for more business trips proved immensely helpful in avoiding burnout.

4. Get away, Part 2. It was still early in my career, and I felt as though taking a week’s vacation, even though it was available, wasn’t a great idea. Still, as the business trips proved, getting away could help a lot. Getting away while not working sounded even better. The solution: repeat my weekend trip to the country. It required just one day off every couple of months, and it provided a real motivation boost. With so many cheap hotels(http://www.orbitz.com/) available on travel sites such as Orbitz, I was always able to find a reasonable rate commensurate with my entry level salary.

5. Keep a journal. Maybe it’s because I’ve been writing since high school, but I’ve always found that keeping a written record of something helps ease my mind. Every day before I left work, I’d create a journal entry documenting the day’s work. It actually helped me pick up inefficiencies, which, once corrected, led to a less stressful workday.

Overindulging in anything, whether it be alcohol, a creative pursuit, or more traditional work, can leave us overstressed and burnt out. That’s not to say that these aren’t worthy pursuits — well, alcohol really isn’t — but the over-pursuit of them can have negative effects. It’s just as Grandma said so many times: everything in moderation. It took a while for me to realize that by everything, she meant everything. But once I did, I learned to manage work and stress. It has led to a clearer mind, and a continually budding career.

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Author’s Bio:
Joe Pawlikowski writes about prepaid wireless services at Prepaid Reviews. He has also started his own resource for telecommuting workers at JoePawl.com

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!