Click the “Click Here” for more info!

Click Here!

Click Here!

While there are so many ways you can make people subscribe to your list, there are also some things you must do to avoid subscribers from wanting to get off from your list. 

Aside from that, you also want to avoid any problems with the law and your internet service provider or ISP. There are now many laws and rules that are applied to help protect the privacy of the internet users from spamming and unwanted mails. With the popularity of the electronic mail as a medium for marketing because of the low cost, many company’s have seized the opportunity and have flooded many people’s e-mail accounts with promotional mail.

But, with an opt-in list, you avoid this annoyance because people subscribe to the list; they want to receive the newsletters and promotional materials. They have consented to being on the list by subscribing themselves, just don’t forget to put an unsubscribe feature everytime in your opt-in list so that you avoid any confusion. There may be times when an email account was provided when the real owner didn’t want to subscribe.

It is essential that you keep your list clean and manageable. Arrange it by using the many tools and technologies available for your opt-in list. Do not worry; your investment in this marketing strategy is well worth it with all the coverage you will get which will likely be converted into sales then to profit.

Keep yourself and your business out of trouble and potential run-ins with the law and the internet service providers. Keep your operation legit and clean. Your reputation as a legitimate businessman and a legitimate site depends on your being a straight and true marketing strategist. As a tip, here are three things to avoid when emailing your list.

1) Take notice of your unsuccessful sends. These are the e-mails that bounce. Bounced emails, also known as undeliverable messages, are those messages that, for whatever reason, were not successfully received by the intended recipient.

There are bounces that happen or occur because the server was busy at that time but can still be delivered in another time. There are also bounces because the inbox of the recipient is full at that time. There are those bounce messages that are simply undeliverable ever. The reason for this is that it may be an invalid email address, a misspelled email address, or an email address that was abandoned and erased already.

Manage your list by putting markings on those that bounce. Erase an email account from your list so that you have an accurate statistics and records as to how many are actually receiving your mail. You may also want to check the spellings of your email addresses in your list. One common mistake is when an N instead of an M is placed in the .com area.

2) Always provide an unsubscribe feature in your site and an unsubscribe link in your mails. When someone in your list files a request to be unsubscribed, always take that request seriously. If you don’t take them off your list and keep sending them your e-mails, you are now sending them spam mail.

When you are reported as a spammer, you and your business can get into a lot of trouble. You can be reported to the authorities and maybe blacklisted by many internet service providers. You will lose a lot of subscribers this way and many more in potential subscribers.

3) Do not provide pornographic or shocking and disturbing content in your newsletters. It is hard to decipher the age of the recipient and many complaints may stem from these. Controversial issues also are to be avoided to not be branded by your subscribers. Stick to the nature of your site and business.

Always remember these tips in this article so that you can have a healthy relationship with your subscribers as well as be kept within the boundaries of what is allowed in sending mails to an opt-in list.

• The Company Name
• Your Name
• And a short phrase like how may I help you?

Okay, easy enough right?  Now that you have them on the phone and they know who you are what next?  When I answered the phone as a home inspector… the most common question from potential clients was:  ”How Much Do You Charge?”  Used to drive me crazy…………..until I realized that they didn’t know anything about home inspections other than they were told to get one.  So what else could they ask?  So being the nice guy that I am I would fill them in pronto.

When they call and  asked “how much do you charge?”  I would go into my “get the sale now” script, which goes something like this:

Thanks for calling,  I will need to get a little more information before I can quote a fee to inspect your new home.

Can you tell me the square footage of the home?     How old is the house?  How did you get our number… who referred you to us?    Do you have any specific concerns about the house?  See we are asking you about your concerns not telling you what we think we will find or our concerns (age, location etc)

After getting this information…notice we are building rapport with the client and we don’t even have the job yet. I ask them have you ever done an inspection before? (NO) Well let me tell you a little about what we do. I proceed to tell them what it is we do and also mention our strengths in the process. (yes)  Great, you will really appreciate the awesome job we do and the big difference between us and our competitors. Then tell them same thing as the no answers.

At this point 90% are sold and we book the job without ever mentioning the price.

What about the ones that say they want to shop around?  When they tell me this I am the most helpful guy in the world.

“absolutety you should shop around. but let me help you out here.  Here are the questions you should be asking!”

Then I give them my prepared list of ?’s they should ask of my competitors.

• Are they insured?
• Hoe long have they been in business?
• Are they a member of a professional association?
• Etc.etc   each industry has different ones and you know what yours are.

Of you can answer all of the questions  in the most positive way.  :~)    Whenerever possible include your own Unique Selling Proposition.  The thing that makes you different from your competitors.  They can’t possible answer that one right!

At this point I usually get about 8% of those remaining.  When I ask them why they choose us here is the most common answer; “You were trying to help me out even before you got the job, I figured you would be really good if I hired you!”

Of the 2% left usually about half of those will call back and book the job because the others they called couldn’t answer the questions right.  The one percent that we do not get are the ones that call back and say I got a lower price but would prefer to use you, can you meet that price?  I politely tell them that we do not negotiate our fees.  We offer a premium product at a standard price.  I have a Wednesday morning or Friday afternoon open which one would you like?  IF they say I have to go with the cheaper one, I wish them luck and remind them that spending hundreds of thousands on a house and saving $30 on the inspection may not be the wisest decision but best wishes, hope it works out for you.

Frankly we don’t want to work with the folks that are price shoppers, they only appreciate low prices not quality work.  So they are tough customers when value is not part of their vocabulary.

So selling on the phone is easy when you do the same things every time.  So write out your script and use it until you get it down.  Make note of the things that work and more importantly, those that don’t  Adjust your script as you need until it is perfect,  THEN LEAVE IT ALONE and follow it faithfully.  It won’t be 100% but it will be close and the ones you lose will be a nightmare for your competitors!  I love when that happens.

Tell me about your script, or if need help with one leave a comment.

Those  are the people answering your phones, servicing your clients, and talking to perspective clients.  If one of these unhappy folks were to answer the phone when they got to work, what do you think the client would hear?  Unhappy, bored, not really there, who cares attitude is likely.  That is not good business.  People can sense  that on the phone, even more so in person such as a sales or service call.

So how do we get these folks out of their I hate traffic, my kids are driving me crazy, I am too busy, my spouse never helps out at home  mindset and into the happy customer oriented, customer service guru mindset?  Let’s look at some ideas.

Tip # 1

Listen to music.  Is there music playing in your workplace?  Allow music to be played in the workplace, in service vehicles, in shops, wherever your employee work.  Most experts agree, that music is a spirit lifter, it helps us forget the day to day drudgery that life sometimes presents.  Obviously there are some situations where music can be detrimental or a safety hazard.  I don’t think blasting AC/DC at a customer home on a service call is a great idea.  Or probably not good for warehouse workers listening to Ipods while forklifts and trucks are moving about.

So with some good common sense music can help us all have a better day!

Tip # 2

Shape your inner voice.  You know that voice that says “this call is going to be a complaint.  I can’t deal with this today”?  Yeah me too I hear it all the time.  But if you direct that inner voice by changing the approach the difference can be amazing.  Same call new you “This call is probably a client with a problem, I can’t wait to get in there and help them solve that problem”.  Can you see how this will change the way you feel and how this will impact your business?   If you practice this technique, you will not only change your business but your life as well.  Train your employees or hire someone to train your employees on this technique.  Put up reminders in your shop, office, vehicles, wherever you or employee can see it all day.  VERY POWERFUL TOOL.

Tip # 3

Start your day doing what you like.   This will help you get into the mindset we discussed in Tip # 2.  I do this by writing in the morning.  After breakfast, some coffee, taking my daughter to school, and some stretching I am ready to work.  When I am working at home I like to start the day writing.  It wakes up my mind and gets the blood flowing.   I don’t look at email, read regular mail, or check my calendar.  I start the day doing what I like to do.  It gives me an incredible boost and makes the rest of day just flow.  Starting the day doing the stuff you hate will make it a bad day every time!  Adjust your day so that you can get the ugly stuff done before going home and start the day doing the tasks you enjoy.  Your day will start off happy and that shapes your day!

Tip # 4

Give yourself a mental boost first thing.   Do you watch or listen to news in the morning?  Stop it!  It is so depressing, and can even make you angry!  Use that time to listen to your favorite music.   Use that time to stretch, meditate or do yoga. Eat breakfast. Go for a walk.  We have all heard this advice before, so why don’t we do it more often?  I  don’t know either, but I do know that some yoga in the morning, even just 15 minutes make the day a whole lot brighter and gives me something to look forward to in the morning.

Tip# 5

Positive thoughts.  Similar to # 2 above.  As you begin to think about your day start the exercise of thinking thoughts that are positive.  Most people have seen real estate ads,  ”Cozy!”  means 400 sq ft.  ”Quaint” means built in the 1800’s” “close to shopping!”  means on the corner of a busy street near the mall. etc. etc.  You get the point.  But take the lesson here.  Turn a pumpkin into a carriage, just by changing the way you look at things.  How can you look at your business differently?  Can a change in thinking change you and your business?  Positive thoughts are contagious, spread them throughout your company and to your clients.

It take practice and disciple to change the way we think.  The results are always worth the effort when we change in positive ways.

Use these simple 5 tips to help you become  happier.  Use them to make your company happier.  Use them to make your clients happier.  When all those folks are happy the bottom line will make the accountant happier!  Hope to see your smiling face on my way to my daughters school!

Enjoy Your Day!

We are remodeling the powder room in our house.  The past few days we have been shopping for a vanity light.  The purchase of this light has held up the whole project.  We need to know the finish and size of the light before we can purchase a faucet, towel bars, mirror etc.   So apparently a big decision.  We went to the big boxes first.  Home Depot, Lowes and Menards.   Nothing really jumped out at us and we were never asked if needed help or offered any assistance at all.  Most of the lights were on and all the heat and light was really distracting.  NO PURCHASE

Our next stop a few days later was a at a local light store.  Tons of lights, many choices, good prices.  Still little assistance.  We even asked a few questions which were kinda answered, but from a distance, if you know what I mean.  NO PURCHASE

Last night we went to another local lighting only store.  We were warmly greeted at the door and asked if we were looking for something specific.  We told Amy that we were looking for vanity lights and she showed us where the lights were located, then showed us how the displays were configured so we could turn on any set of lights to see how they look illuminated.  The other stores did not offer this!  Then she said she  would check back with us after we had a chance to look around.

So we started looking, good selection, nice to be able to see the lights when on and off!  Prices were so/so, but ok.  We still didn’t know what we wanted.  Amy came back and asked if we needed some help.  (Probably saw the deer in the headlight look on our faces.)  We told her we were looking for a vanity light for a powder room.

Then the magic started! She asked what kind of finish was on the other fixtures.  We explained that this was for a remodel and the light was the deciding factor.  She continue to ask about colors, styles and sizes of the vanity, sink top etc.  So, with Amys help we decided on a finish and appropriate size and style and instantly narrowed our choices down to two lights.  Then it was a simple matter of picking one.  We choice a light and Amy said she would see if they had that size and finish in stock.  They did, and we purchased it.  Oh and some bulbs too!

What Amy did was all customer service.  Seizing an opportunity to help a customer by utilizing her experience, she help us with a difficult decision which we knew little about.  She asked the right questions.  She told us about the typical sizes of lights compared to the Vanity and Mirror sizes.  We had no clue what the proportions of all these things should be.   She gave us great advice without talking down to us.  She was confident, knew her stuff and it showed.

She made a sale and  gained a good customer for life.  We need to change a lot of outdated light fixtures in the house we just moved into a few months ago.  This one incident will likely result in the sale of several more fixtures not to mention the referrals she is likely to get from us as customers, and me as a home inspector!  This one Golden Moment in customer service is likely to generate a lot of revenue for this company.

If you live in the Twin Cities area and need light fixtures send me a note and I will tell you who to see!

Seize your Golden Moments and become the service business of choice in your community.

Care to share some your experiences?

As I work with more and more companies to develop social media strategies, blogging inevitably comes up. As it should. But this post isn’t about why a company should be blogging, it’s about how we can make that blog grow legs and turn it into a major traffic and activity driver for your business.

Setting the Stage: Create Good Bait, Find Your Fishing Holes

Before you start throwing your blog content blindly into cyberspace, you need to think strategically about the content that your target audience will find valuable (your bait). What assistance do they need? What are their pain points? Which formats might work best (written posts, video, audio, etc.)? You also need to do your homework to sniff out the best social media ponds in which your targets are swimming. For example, if your business is trying to reach C-Level executives in your local market, then using Twitter as your main promotional vehicle may not get you many bites.

Blog Post Promotional Tools: 11 Step Checklist

1. SEO / Keyword Integration – Your content may be good as is, but a little keyword research and keyword integration effort can have a big impact on search engine traffic. Scan through your content and pick out the main topics covered in your post. Plug those terms/phrases into Google Adwords free keyword suggestion tool. Take note of the most popular search terms and variations is phrasing and verbiage. Go back to your content and try to beef up your post title, content, description and tags with those popular terms/phrases.
2. Syndication – For the purposes of this article, I’m going to skip the “What Is RSS” content and focus on how you can leverage your blog’s RSS feed (assuming your website/blog has one) to expand your reach and save you hours of time. Also note that this step is more of a one-time setup. Once you have established RSS connections on your social sites, you shouldn’t have to do it again. Quick explanation: when your RSS feed is plugged into your social sites, hitting “publish” on your new blog post initiates an automatic “syndication” of that content to those sites. To get started, locate your blog’s RSS URL and plug that into the following:
   • Facebook Fan Page – Use your “Notes” or “Social RSS” applications to publish your content to your FB wall automatically.
   • LinkedIn – Look for “Blog Link” or “Wordpress” in the applications section (left-side nav bar) to auto-post your content to your LinkedIn profile.
   • Plaxo – Plaxo’s new aggregation functionality makes it really easy to “add a feed” and plug in your blog.
   • Ning Community Sites – If any of your fishing holes are built on the Ning platform, you can plug in your feed using the “Add RSS” widget included on your profile page.
   • Other Social Networking Sites – There are probably many other social sites that allow you to plug in your feed. Scour your sites for this option.
3. Shorten the URL – This step used to only apply to posting links on Twitter, but with the addition of analytics (click-through tracking) on many of the URL shortening services, posting a shortened URL on any of your social sites is a smart strategy. Here’s how it works…Copy your new blog post’s URL, paste it in a URL shortener that offers analytics (Bit.ly, Tr.im, BudURL, Ping.fm) and then use the shortened URL in any status update, link posting or teaser you plan on executing. After your link has been up a while, check your shortener account for click stats, geographic and referring site data.
4. Status Updates – While this one may seem pretty obvious, it’s not that simple. Sure, you could just type your blog post’s headline into all your social site’s status boxes, include your shortened link and call it good. But this might not get you the most clicks. Realize that each social site is a bit different (different environment, social etiquette, audience demo/psychographics). Tailoring your status/headline for each community could make a big difference. No time for that? Use Ping.fm. Plug in all your social networks and use Ping.fm to shorten your URL and launch your new post to all your sites in one step. Twitter-Specific Strategy – When you tweet your new blog post, realize that only a small percentage of your followers will be on Twitter at that moment to see it. To maximize the likelihood of your followers seeing and reading your new post, you may have to tweet mulitple times on different days and at different times. I’d also recommend using different headlines each time. If your content covers multiple topics, create a different tweet for each topic and then spread those out over the course of a few days. Don’t forget to ask your followers to retweet the link. Productivity Tip: use a tool like TweetLater to set up and schedule your tweets to go out throughout the next week.
5. Content Teasers on Other Sites – Most social networking sites and online forums allow content promotion as long as it’s valuable and objective in nature, and not blatant self promotion. A few examples: LinkedIn group forums, LinkedIn Answers, Facebook groups, Ning community group forums, general business forums. A great strategy is to write a compelling headline or question as your forum post title, then include an excerpt from your post followed by your shortened URL. Lastly, ask for readers to provide feedback on the forum to continue the discussion.
6. Social Bookmarking – Posting your content to popular social bookmarking sites (Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc.) can be a great source of traffic, backlinks and overall exposure. Think of social bookmarking as peer-reviewed content. If others bookmark/digg your content, the more exposure you get and the more opportunity you have for others to link to you or reference your content on their sites.  
7. Seek Out and Comment on Other Blogs with Similar Topics – Providing helpful, valuable comments on other blogs can be a great way to build a following and generate backlinks. And if you’ve just finished a post on a topic, now is the perfect time to do a quick search to find other blog posts on the same topic. Are the other posts lacking something that you covered in your post? Add your viewpoint in a genuine, non-self-promotional way. If the comment form asks for your website URL, paste in the full URL to your blog post.
8. Seek and Assist on Twitter – Genuine assistance is one of the best ways to build a community of loyal Twitter followers. Let me use this post as an example. When it’s posted and I have my shortened URL, I might jump on Twitter and do a search for a phrase like, “need help promoting my blog”. Scanning the resulting tweets will probably offer me several opportunities to help people who are reaching out for help. I reply to them with some genuine advice and the shortened URL. The result is often a new Twitter follower, a new subscriber to my blog and a blog comment. Is there such a thing as opportunistic warm and fuzzies?
9. E-mail Signature – Another powerful little technique is to add your latest blog post headline to your e-mail signature. You never know when a prospect, vendor or client might read a post that sparks a conversation or creates an opportunity.
10. Share it With Target Customers – You’ve just created a blog post that you know would be beneficial for certain customers…What are you waiting for? Send them the shortened URL with a note, “thought this could really help your business”.
11. Ask Other Bloggers to Mention Your Post – Building relationships with other bloggers in your space and asking them to blog about or link to your post can be a great way to expand your reach. Reciprocating promotional efforts can have a big payoff in the form of high-quality backlinks and big jumps in blog traffic and subscribers.

The First Time is the Hardest

As with most tasks in life,  the first time through this list might be tough and time consuming. Setting up accounts and getting to know the interface and functions of the various social sites might make your brain hurt. But it will get easier. I usually dedicate an hour to blog post promotion after each launch. Also note that most of these tasks can easily be outsourced to a social media specialist.

Immediate, Trackable Results

If you’re utilizing the shortened URL and have analytics installed on your website/blog, you should see your hard work pay off almost immediately. I typically see large spikes in traffic and conversions on the days I’m promoting a new post. Multiply all this by a blog post per day and you should see a significant increases in activity, traffic, rankings, reach, opportunities and overall sales.

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Not Enough Hours in a Day

If you’ve been dabbling with social media for a while, you understand the time-consuming nature of the space. For many companies, their commitment to social media has forced them to either add dedicated staff or outsource the effort. But we, as small businesses, don’t typically have the resources to do either of those,  so we’re relegated to spending the time ourselves, or we just don’t.

The main thing we all need to realize is that your friends/followers/connections are constantly throwing out sales opportunities. In fact, I’d argue that most status updates or tweets are sales opportunities for someone or some company. Here’s a Twitter screen shot I just pulled straight from my stream to help explain my point (in red)…

Bottom line, sales opportunities are there for those who are listening. But listening takes time and most of us can’t afford to sit there and wait for something relevant to appear. But we’re in luck… There are ways in which we can leverage the built-in technology of these social sites to do the listening for us and deliver those opportunities to our front door.

A Quick Social Media Strategy Lesson

One of the key exercises that I walk businesses through in my social media strategy sessions is to figure out which words or phrases your customers would use in conversation that relate to your product or service. For instance, a chiropractor may want to listen for such phrases as “my back hurts” or “my back is killing me”. I call these “money words” and it’s important to identify your money words/phrases before diving blindly into your social ponds. You can then use these terms within your social media profiles and as filtering mechanisms when working with RSS feeds provided by social networking sites.

What are RSS Feeds?

RSS is the mechanism by which websites make their content available for syndication. In a recent post, I described RSS as the DVR of the web. So then an RSS feed is what makes a website “DVR-enabled”. For example, a blog comes with an RSS feed, which allows people to subscribe and pull the blog’s content into their RSS reader (think DVR menu).

Social networking sites also provide RSS feeds that can be pulled into your RSS reader. Such content as Facebook status updates and Twitter keyword searches can be delivered directly to your reader for review whenever you get around to it. BUT, upon doing this, you’ll notice a lot of noise and irrelevant junk. This is were your “money filters” come into play.

Mine Facebook for Sales Opportunities

Let’s say you have roughly 200 “friends” on Facebook, including old high school and college friends, family, former coworkers and clients. Facebook’s status update functionality (“What’s on your mind?”) gives you a steady smorgasbord of content on your Facebook homepage. If you wanted to, you could pull that RSS feed into your RSS reader and get every update from your Facebook friends, but that would be like your DVR recording hundreds of TV shows everyday. Instead, we want to filter those status updates to deliver only the updates that might be sales opportunities for you.

So how do we find that RSS feed? Well up until a few months ago, it was a simple link on your “Friends” page. But for some reason, Facebook removed this link forcing the tech community to figure out work arounds. So put on your “hacker” hat and let’s go hack into Facebook (its actually simpler than it sounds).

Here’s how to pull and filter your Facebook friends’ status RSS feed:

1. Log in to Facebook, type “notes” into the search box (upper right) and click the Notes drop down button.
2. On the Notes page, look at the bottom of the right column for “Subscribe to these Notes”. Click the “My Friends’ Notes” link with the little blue RSS icon.
3. Your screen should change into a standard RSS subscription page with “(YOUR NAME)’s Friends’ Facebook Notes” as the title.
4. In the address bar, you should see a URL that looks like this: http://www.facebook.com/feeds/friends_notes.php?id=XXXXXXXXX&key=XXXXXXXXXX&format=rss20
5. In the URL, change “friends_notes.php” to “friends_status.php” and hit enter.
6. You now should see the RSS subscription page titled “(YOUR NAME)’s Friends’ Facebook Status Updates”.
7. Go back up to the address bar and copy the URL.
8. Now go to www.feedrinse.com, create an account, then start the process by importing (pasting) your RSS feed in the designated field.
9. Once imported, create a few filters by typing in your money words/phrases.
10. With your filters set, export your “rinsed” RSS feed and plug it into your favorite RSS reader (Google Reader is my fav).

You now should see only your Facebook friends’ status updates that include your money terms. Quick Tip: If you have an iGoogle customized homepage, you can add a Google Reader “gadget” to your page, which will give you a quick reference to the RSS feeds to which you’ve subscribed.

Mining Twitter

Fortunately, Twitter makes things a lot easier. Their advanced search functionality allows you to do searches for each of your money terms and returns tweets that match your query. When I’ve shown this function to people who just “don’t get Twitter”, this is typically when the light bulb turns on. If your search results seem to be relevant sales opportunities, then you can pull the RSS feeds of those search queries into your RSS reader. Here’s how:

1. Go to http://search.twitter.com/advanced
2. Type in one of your money words/phrases. Also note that you have the ability to narrow your search with many other filtering tools on that page. One in particular is the “places” filter. If your market is local, you might want to plug in a zip code or city, which will then only pull tweets from people in that geographic area.
3. On the search results page, click the “Feed for this query” in the upper right.
4. Copy the feed URL in the address bar and plug that into your RSS reader.
5. Then go back to Twitter search and plug in your next term. Rinse and repeat.

Pro Tip: For you tech-savvy individuals with many networks, products and services, you might want to consider Yahoo Pipes for more robust consolidation and filtering tools.

The Social Sales Approach – the Hard Sell or the Soft Touch?

If you’ve managed to get through this marathon of a post, you should now have potential sales opportunities sitting there staring at you. Time to go in for the hard sell? Absolutely not. One key thing you HAVE TO REMEMBER is that these people are not expressing their needs or desires with the intent of being sold to. Quite the contrary. They don’t want to be sold to and more likely are just venting, making small talk or trying to spark conversation.

But if you are strategic in your approach, you can start to plant a seed with a well-timed, soft touch that could come in many forms. It could be as simple as starting to follow them on Twitter and having a helpful article positioned as your latest tweet. Or you might post a genuine comment on one of their recent status updates or family photos. Often times these timely tidbits are the soft touches that get you on their radar or prompt them to click on your profile to find out what you do professionally.

Bottom line…When you genuinely engage with prospects and become a valuable resource for them, you’ll have a much better chance of capitalizing on those sales opportunities, a.k.a. being at the right place at the right time.

Thanks for reading this post. If you would like help setting up your social profiles, RSS filtering mechanisms or your social media strategy in general, we’re here to help.

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…but are best practices always the way to go?

I recently saw an email newsletter that made me wonder how far we should follow best practices. While the newsletter and website follow a lot of email marketing best practices, they definitely break at least one (and maybe more). Normally I’d chastise them for it, but… I just don’t know here.

Have a look and tell me what you think.

Stuck In Customs’ Email Newsletter

Stuck in Customs is a travel photography site (and email newsletter) by Trey Ratcliff with some really impressive, eye-catching work on it. According to the about page, it’s visited by about 350,000 people per month.

In the sidebar of the site, you’ll find an email signup form:

You can also sign up for the newsletter from a dedicated newsletter signup page. It’s helpfully linked from the sidebar form in case you want to learn more about the newsletter before joining.

Best Practices Watch

A few good things about this form:

• They keep the form relatively short (I’m not sure how necessary/useful it is to use 2 fields for “name” but it’s not the end of the world) and easy to fill out (the text inside the boxes clears out when you click inside it).
• All of the text above the form is clickable to the newsletter signup page. (Does this make up for not being able to see it’s a link until I hover my mouse over it?)

And a few things I question:

• It’s not clear from the copy here what is in the newsletter! Presumably it’s related to the site, but what’s the draw of the newsletter? Why should I sign up?
• I can’t tell right away that there’s a link to the newsletter signup page. (It’s all of the text above the form, but none of it looks like a link until you move your mouse over it.)
• This website is really wide – so much so that on a 1024 x 768 monitor, the newsletter signup form doesn’t even appear – you’d have to scroll sideways to see/find it! (More on side scrolling later on…)

The newsletter signup page itself is really impressive:

Click image above for full-size version.

• It clearly conveys the benefits of subscribing.
• It tells you how to subscribe.
• It promises that you won’t get spammed.
• It shows an example of what the newsletter looks like.
• It even includes some social proof via the map of subscribers included at the bottom.

Really cool all around. So no complaints about best practices here.

But then I subscribed. This is when I started to get conflicted…

Holy Gigantic Newsletter, Batman!

I can confidently say that Stuck in Customs has the largest emails I have ever seen in my life. Nobody else even comes close.

And they start you off with them from the get-go. Here’s what I saw when I opened their welcome email in Gmail:

Click image above for full-size version.

Yeah, it side-scrolls. Even on a 1280×1024 monitor. Heck, it’s even wider than Gmail’s built to accommodate (look at the upper right-hand corner of that image). I simply cannot view the whole email all at once, and unless Stuck In Customs’ subscribers have huge monitors, neither can they.

And we’re just talking width here… what about the length?

• Here’s the full email.

For the record, on my monitor it takes 17 presses of the “Page Down” key to get from the top to the bottom of that email. That’s one big message.¹

Best Practices Watch

What I like about this email:

• The content is awesome, and exactly like what’s on the website. If you’re into travel and/or HDR photography, I see no reason to think you wouldn’t love this content.
• The design of the email pairs beautifully with the website, and it renders well in Gmail (I didn’t test elsewhere), which is impressive, given how poorly Gmail tends to render email.
• While it’s an image-heavy email, there is some text. Not a ton relative to the size of the email, but some. The email isn’t one big image.

What I don’t like so much? The sheer size. Whether you look at file size, dimensions, side scrolling, how many times you have to hit “Page Down,” whatever… this is a gigantic email.

Let’s break it down in more detail:

• How is someone supposed to load this on a mobile device? What about slower internet connections?
• Doesn’t having to scroll side-to-side make the email less usable and a poorer subscriber experience?
• Will subscribers realize they have to side scroll? In 1024 x 768 you can’t really see the note on the right-hand side of the newsletter.
• Do the images have to be shown in their full size within the email? Why not link smaller, low-res versions (none of those images are clickable, by the way) to hi-res versions on the Stuck in Customs website?

My Thoughts on This Email & Best Practices

Stuck in Customs breaks a number of best practices, mostly related to size (of the emails) and location (of the sidebar signup form – it’s off the screen on a number of monitor sizes).

But in spite of that, and my years of exposure to best practices, studies, etc… I can’t say they’re not doing what’s right for their audience.

Starting from scratch, I would never have made the newsletter like this. I would have made it no more than 600px wide. I would have put low-res versions of the images in the email, and linked them to high-res versions online.

But Trey did it the way he did it, and he has a lot of subscribers, none of whom (from what I can see) are complaining to him about the size.

Part of this may be his audience, but I’d bet it also has something to do with his newsletter signup page, which sets expectations so well.

Questions For You To Think About

• What do you think of Stuck in Customs’ email?
• What best practices matter most to you?
• Do you think there are some best practices that can/should be ignored at times? Which ones?
• Which best practices are sacred and inviolable?

I’m curious to get your thoughts on this… share them below!

No, the irony that I wrote a really long blog post about a really long email is not lost on me.

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It’s not easy. You’re out making your products, raising capital, or finding the right supplier or accountant, and sometimes the customer problems seem like, well, problems. That is exactly where a leader steps in and declares problems to be opportunities.

For example, our lawn service recently burned our lawn and our neighbor’s lawn with chemicals. We had to argue that they had done it, and that they should make it right. The clue was the fact that the brown streaks stopped at the property line with a neighbor who doesn’t use that service. There was an opportunity for the owner to apologize and immediately make things right. He eventually did, but you can be sure my neighbor is already talking with other lawn companies, offering them not one but two new customers for next year if they can give us a good deal. And we’ll be looking for customers who’ve used them and getting recommendations.

Today I’m off to cover the Blog World Expo in Vegas. I needed reprints of my business cards. I contacted the firm I used the last time, which I won’t name, but which promises a quick turn around. They delivered on time, but the cards were all cut wrong, with a 1/16 or 1/8 inch white line in the colored bar at the bottom of my cards (see photo).

I’ve spent several hours via email arguing that they should reprint and overnight them. They want to charge me for the overnight shipping. I say, correct your mistake and make me the customer advocate. If they did that, their name would be here in the column and they would look like heroes.

I was recently at a client’s site, and their customer service manager told me “We think of every problem reported as a gift. It is an opportunity to make our products better, and to keep a customer.” Wow. I want to work there, don’t you? It is one of the best things I’ve heard in a long time. Of course, I don’t know how it plays out in real life, but noting that this company is in a highly regulated industry where their problems are tracked by government agencies, I suspect it is more than lip service.

Who gives you great service? What do you do to make sure your customers are happy? Share your ideas below, please.