Imagine a prospect walks into your place of business and offers you a card. “I’m not ready to buy, but I’d be happy to receive more information about special offers, new products, or other news. Here’s my contact information,” the prospect says.

Would you refuse to take the card? It’s not a trick question.

Every day, prospects visit your virtual place of business when they go to your web site. They’re interested in what you sell, and they’re willing to share their contact information. If your site does not offer them an easy way to join your email list, you are “refusing the card.”

Creating the virtual fish bowl to collect contact cards is easy. Here are four steps to make your web site a list-building machine:

1) Select a reputable software service that enables you to create, deliver, and track commercial emails. These services include built-in sign-up forms that you can drop into your web site.

2) Place the form in a prominent spot on the front page of your web site. Don’t bury it where visitors have to scroll to find it.

3) Give prospects a reason to subscribe. Explain what’s in it for them. Describe the great content you will send them.

4) Assure prospects that you’ll protect their privacy. Promise that you won’t share or sell their information and keep that promise.

When a prospect joins your mailing list, you can share your message with them when you choose. If you “refuse the card,” you can only hope that the prospect will remember you later.

This article first appeared in St. Louis Small Business Monthly for which Tom Ruwitch writes a monthly marketing column.

I recently met a business consultant who includes a stack of recommendation letters from happy clients with every proposal he writes. Over the top? Perhaps. But this guy has the right idea.

Recommendations influence buying decisions. You have happy clients. Encourage them to share their happiness, and you will sell more.

As soon as you complete a transaction with a client, solicit feedback. You can do this in person, over the phone, via email, or through other channels. You also can solicit feedback regularly via online surveys that you promote through your email newsletter.

If the feedback is positive, ask for permission to quote the client in a testimonial you’ll publish. If you’re with the client, ask if you can shoot a quick video that you can embed in your web site and post on YouTube and other video channels. And ask the client to post a five-star review on your local business listing on Google and Yahoo.

If you don’t have a local listing with the search engines, it’s easy to create one. Go to http://google.com/places and http://listings.local.yahoo.com to establish your local listings, and then direct your happy clients to those sites so they can spread the love.

The positive reviews will appear in your search listings and help you rank higher in the search engines. Video testimonials will also help with the search engines and drive more traffic to your site.

Of course, don’t forget to publish lots of testimonials on your web site, and include stacks of them in the proposals you write.

This article first appeared in St. Louis Small Business Monthly for which Tom Ruwitch writes a monthly marketing column.

I recently met a small business owner who proudly described his marketing strategy to me: “I’m focusing entirely on social media because it’s free.”

“What do you mean by free?” I asked.

“Well…” he said, “I don’t have to pay for postage or advertising or email software or anything like that. I just set up accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and go from there.”

“How are you updating those accounts? Who’s posting the updates? Who’s devising the strategy?” I asked.

“We all chip in when we have time,” he said.

“How’s it going? Are you seeing good results?” I asked.

Long pause…”Hard to tell,” he said. “I’m not sure.”

When it comes to social media — or any form of marketing for that matter — there is no such thing as a free lunch. Executing a social media strategy requires good planning, lots of time and effort, and careful analysis to determine return on investment. None of the above is free.

You have to calculate the cost of your employees’ and your time. Sure, you don’t pay to set up a Facebook account. But you pay your employees. And, if you’re thinking you can run a successful social media campaign with an unpaid intern (or your teenage son when he’s not doing his homework or playing video games),  you’re setting yourself up for failure.

I understand the need for businesses to control costs. And I understand the benefits of lower-cost digital marketing channels. Indeed, email marketing is a great medium, in part, because it costs less than other mediums.

But free is not really free when it comes to social media or any other marketing channel.

When devising a marketing strategy, you have to consider the return, not just the cost. I’d rather spend $500 to make $600 than spend $10 to make $11.

Social media should be part of your marketing mix, but not because it’s “free.” You should integrate social media with other marketing channels — email, your web site, offline media, etc. And you should be prepared to invest some resources to make it work — either dedicated employees who can generate positive return from the effort or third-party consultants who can do it for you.

As you drive to work tomorrow, consider this idea: Get rid of your car and walk to work each day. If you walked from your home to your workplace each day, you would save huge sums of money. No gas. No car repairs. No insurance. Getting to work would be free! But would your business be better for the cost savings? Would you accomplish as much each day?

We hear from many small business people who want to save a few bucks on their email marketing program and do it without a paid service. They say, “I can do the same thing you offer by creating and sending emails through my desktop email software. I create the email; paste the email addresses in to the BCC line; press send, and I’m done. It easy, and it’s free.”

Here are nine reasons that’s a bad idea and using a reputable and reliable email service provider like MarketVolt makes sense: 

While eating breakfast this morning, I was browsing through my online news reader on my computer when I came across the following headline: “Among Affluent Americans, Print Media Is Tops; Death of Traditional Outlets Has Been Greatly Exaggerated”

Print is number one!? That’s enough to make an online marketer choke on his Cocoa Puffs. Then, out of nowhere, the song started playing in my head, the old ’70s hit: “Torn between two lovers. Feelin’ like a fool. Lovin’ both of you is breakin’ all the rules.”

“I love online marketing,” I thought. “I can’t love print media, too!!!”

Or can I?

My wife will be pleased to know that I prefer monogamy when it comes to my love life. But when it comes to marketing, I have to spread the love.

So does that mean I use print advertising for affluent Americans and online media for others? No. It means I use print and online together for all audiences.

Affluent Americans may prefer print media, but they also have email accounts, browse the web, and use social media. So I might advertise in a print publication they read, but use that print advertisement to build my online subscriber or friends lists.

In previous posts, we’ve stressed the importance of marketing to the maybes. Your print advertising should do more than merely promote your brand. It should entice people to join your email list or follow you on Twitter or friend you on Facebook. That affluent American who reads your print advertisement will be a better prospect if you can also connect with her through online media.

So live it up, marketers. Have lots a lovers. You’d be foolish if you committed to only one.

After lots of false starts and failed attempts, Google has returned to the social networking space with its Google+ project. Google+ combines some of the best features of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, and it adds innovative features the others don’t have.

But instead of celebrating , many small business people are moaning, “Just when we thought we had this social networking thing figured out, Google has crashed the party and complicated the game.”

It is a dilemma. Should you add Google+ to your social media mix?

I wish I could tell you to ignore Google+ and forge ahead just with your existing social networking platforms. That might make your life simpler. But you cannot ignore Google+.

Google announced on July 14 that it had more than 10 million Google+ users. That’s still far-fewer than Facebook’s 750 million. But Google’s growth rate is staggering. It reached 10 million in just a few weeks, with an invitation-only release strategy. Facebook launched in February 2004 and took more than two years to reach 10 million users. 

Two years ago I wrote about Twitter in this newspaper: “Ignore social media at your own peril.” I offer the same advice today. Ignore Google+ at your own peril.

Start slowly. Join Google+ and simply observe. See how others are using it. Discover the possibilities. Then begin to consider how you can provide value to your prospects and customers through the content you post.

If you’d like a Google+ invitation, please send me an email (tom@marketvolt.com) with the subject line “Please invite me to Google+.” I’ll be happy to oblige. 

This article first appeared in St. Louis Small Business Monthly for which Tom Ruwitch writes a monthly marketing column.

A few months ago, I wrote a post recommending against image-only emails because many email clients hide images by default. Today, I received an email that reminded me the hidden image problem can bite you even if your email is almost entirely text.

The email had several short excerpts of articles on the organization’s web site. At least they seemed like excerpts. The problem: I couldn’t find any links to “read more. ” The email snippets just seemed to stop abruptly with no way to continue on to the web site.

I discovered what was wrong only after I clicked the “Display Images” button at the top of my email software. When the images appeared, I discovered that all of the “Read more…” links were clickable graphics (like the one to the right).

The link looks nice (a lot better than just some clickable text) — IF you can see the image. That’s a big IF when major email clients — including Outlook and Gmail — hide images unless you click a link to display them (or change the software’s default settings). I’m an email marketer and this email befuddled me for a while. How many recipients never discovered how to click through?

If you insist on using images for your links, you can avoid this problem by entering “ALT” text for the image. When creating an email in MarketVolt, you can edit the properties of any image you insert in an email. One property is “ALT” text. When a recipient opens the email with software that hides images, the ALT text will appear where the image otherwise would appear. If you’ve made the image clickable, the ALT text will be a link. So if you want a “Read more…” image, add “Read more…” ALT text.

Guest Blog Post by Dixie Gillaspie

I used to do this little mental two step every time I sat down to craft a newsletter:

1. One Step Forward – I have some awesome information to share (write article)
2. Two Step Forward – I have an announcement about a new event, service, product or other offering (write promo copy)
3. BIG Step Back – I don’t want to promote, pitch, sell, annoy, harass or generally tick off my readers
4. Repeat first three steps until exhausted and frustrated
5. Leave the dance floor in defeat

As you might have guessed, the people on my mailing list often forgot about me between mailings. I’m sure that when my newsletter arrived, their first thought was often, “Dixie WHO?”

I needed to be dancing to a different drummer, so I turned to a little red book, one I’ve read so many times I nearly have it memorized. It’s called “The Go-Giver; A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea.” It’s transformed the way I approach problem solving in my business and life.

I’ve been coaching, teaching and speaking from this book for more than three years. I’ve worked closely with the authors, Bob Burg and John David Mann, to create coaching and teaching materials that are now being used by Certified Go-Giver coaches around the world. I have found that The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success which the authors, Bob Burg and John David Mann, teach in this little parable, hold the answer to almost any business dilemma (and pretty much any personal one as well.)

It made sense to ask myself what my newsletter communication strategy would be if I applied those Five Laws.  So let’s see…

Law #1 – The Law of Value

“Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.”

Everyone knows that your communication strategy should be to “add value.” But how much value? How can a FREE newsletter add more in value than you take in payment? What is the cost to your reader to read your FREE newsletter?

What about time, attention and energy?  Let’s call it “bandwidth.” How much bandwidth will it cost your reader to read your content?

Answering that question for myself gave me a yardstick for a minimum amount of value. This allowed me to stop second guessing myself about whether or not I’d offered enough value to justify asking my readers to welcome my communication. Then I did my best to pile it on.

Law #2 – The Law of Compensation

“Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.”

Remember that the first law tells us how our value is determined, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be paid what we’re worth.  This law tells us how to get paid.  Make no mistake, I want to offer lots of value, but my newsletter is first and foremost a business strategy and that means I want the end result to be income.

One of the key benefits I find in working with MarketVolt as a partner in my communications strategy is that they understand that relevancy is valuable. Their automatic segregation of sublists based on interests (as indicated by click-throughs) is brilliant!

So I can create reach (the number of people I serve) through offering tons of value to people who subscribe (right now you can download a 20 minute audio that gives you the Five Essential Elements to Writing Your Own Success Story – it even includes a clip of an interview I did with Richard Bach, author of “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.”) Then I can make sure I serve them well by following up with relevant information (and offers) based on the interests they self-report by clicking on the inks in my original mailing.

Law #3 – The Law of Influence

“Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.”

This was one law I found I was already satisfying. My newsletters create influence for me, both with my readers and with my strategic partners because I often include information and opportunities that have nothing to do with me.

So my readers know that if I find something of huge benefit, I’ll share. (And they know that on those rare occasions that I act as an affiliate, I am extremely transparent about it.) So they know I’m putting their interests first by delivering quality recommendations rather than just pushing what I offer.

Of course, I gain influence with my strategic partners, and often gain new strategic partners, when I provide links to their events, products or profiles and give them a testimonial in my newsletter.

Law #4 – The Law of Authenticity

“The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.”

I used to try to write “right.” Now I shoot for good punctuation (which makes a piece more readable,) but I don’t obsess over grammar. I want people to recognize my voice, get a sense of my philosophy and my humor, and generally feel like I’m inviting a dialog rather than broadcasting a monologue.

Once I gave up being “perfect” I started having fun. Somehow, people seemed to think the “fun” me was a lot closer to perfect than the “perfect” me. Go figure!

Law #5 – The Law of Receptivity

“The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.”

Ah, receiving. Getting a return. Isn’t that just what we complain our newsletters don’t do for us, provide a return?

In “The Go-Giver,” the mentor, Pindar” says to the frustrated go-getter, Joe, “In life, you often don’t get what you want. But, here’s what you do get – You get what you expect.”

Now we’ve all sent newsletters hoping we’ll get new business, we’ll get sales, we’ll get people coming to our websites, to our stores or to our events. But how can we expect that unless we’re really clear what we expect?

Now my rule of thumb is to be clear about one thing I expect readers to do. One thing.  You’ve heard it referred to as a “call to action.” I think of it as an “offer to engage.” For every message, one offer, not always of something to buy, but always of a way to engage with me at a more meaningful level than just reading my newsletter.

Finally, I learned to dance with the idea of “selling,” It was actually the follow up book to “The Go-Giver,” a book called “Go-Givers Sell More” (if you read it carefully you’ll find that I’m even featured in it, by the way) that gave me the grace to step into that one.

In “Go-Givers Sell More” we’re told that the root of the word “sell” is actually an Old English word; “sellan” which literally means “to give.” We “give” value, we receive “return.” We call it “selling” and all of a sudden we’re terrified of overdoing it.

You can’t over-sell. You can over-push, over-manipulate, over-persuade. But you simply cannot over-sellan. Not if what you’re “giving” is value.

**********

Dixie “Dynamite” Gillaspie helps entrepreneurially-minded people blast through their brick walls and tap into the energy and clarity of their own passion and purpose in order to achieve stratospheric success. You can learn more at dixiedynamitecoaching.com

I have a distraught client. He called me a few days ago to report that only 26% of his 500 recipients were opening his emails and that fewer than 5% were clicking any of the links. “It’s not worth it,” he said.

I replied by asking how much his email program cost. Counting software fees and personnel costs, the company invests around $100 per month, he replied. “If just one of your recipients responded to your offer, how much revenue would you net?” I asked. “Several hundreds of dollars. Maybe thousands,” he replied. “Still think it’s not worth it?” I asked.

Email marketing can be humbling. The vast majority of recipients won’t open your emails. Averages vary by industry, but in any industry, 20% to 30% open rates would be fine. That means 70% to 80% are not opening the emails, and that’s OK.

Indeed, those are ego-shaking numbers. But your business goal is not to maximize your open rate. Don’t worry about the ones who don’t open your emails. Focus on the 20% to 30% of people who open them.

Apply the questions I asked my client to your campaign: How much does the campaign cost, including software and personnel? How much revenue would one sale net? How many sales do you need for net revenue to exceed campaign cost? How many sales can you attribute to this campaign? In most cases, that equation will generate happy results for you – even if more than 70% of your recipients don’t open your email.

(This article first appeared in St. Louis Small Business Monthly which publishes a monthly column, High-Voltage Marketing, by MarketVolt’s Tom Ruwitch.)

Imagine walking into a networking event with 1,000 people in the room. All of a sudden, the sea parts. And on one side of the room, you see 500 people who have absolutely no interest in what you sell and what you do. On the other side of the room are true prospects who have some interest. Which side of the room will you visit?

What if you could do this — identify the true prospects and separate them from the suspects — so you could focus your precious time and energy on visiting the side of the room where the interested parties reside.

Email marketing helps you do this. In this video below, I explain how.

This video was shot at an Experts 4 Entrepreneurs event. Experts 4 Entrepreneurs is a unique business community, committed to sharing mission critical resources for entrepreneurs and family businesses. I’m one of more than 30 experts who volunteers my time and shares my knowledge to help those in the community build their businesses successfully. Our goal with e4e is to give you a community with which you can connect so you don’t fly alone.

Our “Don’t Fly Alone” seminar series is designed to help you focus on taking action that leads to success.

Go to www.e4eCommunity.com to join the free online community where you can connect with other small  business people and meet the other experts.