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Finally succumbed to Twitter. I've gotten a few emails asking if I twittered... ok, now I do. You can find me @jennrice. I resisted for a while because I knew that I'd spend all day on Twitter if I started (same reason I don't... (04/14/09 09:01 PM)

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The Primary And Most Important Thing You Will Ever Learn In Sending An Email To Your List Of Subscribers !. Dear Friend,

Before I start what I'm about to tell you, I would like to offer a public and belated thanks to:

Pheak Tol from http://pheaktol.com/ for sending a personal Email... (03/14/09 09:01 AM)

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Email vs. Phone vs. In-Person Meeting? Four Viewpoints. To what extent can emails be used in place of phone calls and face-to-face meetings when maintaining and developing relationships with clients and other important network contacts? Four bloggers have all agreed to post their answers to the email question... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

Coming on September 22: Email vs. Phone vs. In-Person Meeting? Four Viewpoints. To what extent can you substitute emails for telephone calls and face-to-face meetings when maintaining and developing relationships with clients and other key market contacts? The answer to this frequently-asked-question affects how you spend your precious business development time and... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

Lead nurturing putting the human touch into action with video and email. I had a great time doing my webinar on putting the human touch into lead generation sponsored by Citrix Online and we had almost 1600 people register. Wow! In my presentation I emphasized how lead nurturing is about timing, consistency... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

Webinar on Putting the Human Touch into Lead Generation. There are numerous tactics for generating leads these days — everything from the traditional email or phone call to the explosively popular social media craze. However, the real challenge is not necessarily in generating leads, but more in truly connecting... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

Lead Nurturing Best Practices Research and Data. MarketingSherpa just published data on lead nurturing best practices based on a survey of 1,000 marketers. Sherpa's research focuses on the following nurturing best practices: Using multiple tactics rather than relying on email only. Timing of teleprospecting response to web... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)

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I realized how big we've gotten at our Bazaarvoice holiday party.. Posted via email from samdecker's posterous (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

Social Media Marketing Best Practice Tip.

I'm fond of saying that social media doesn't have 'best practices' per se, we just have 'current practices'. Those things that we know are working right now with very, very limited play in a real market. That said, I see that Mitch Joel, Six Pixels of Separation, has started a blog meme on pulling together the best practices and has challenged bloggers to write one post. I also see that Toby has already contributed some outstanding insights. Here's my take

Social Media Best Practice Tip:

Alignment: Yes, that's it. Alignment. If your organization is considering (or is well on their way) pursuing social media in your tactical marketing plans. It (social media) MUST be in complete alignment with your strategy and differentiator as an organization and in complete alignment with what you're already doing in your marketing plan.

Strategic & Differentiation Alignment:
If you've not yet read Seth Godin's book, Meatball Sundae, I highly recommend you check it out. In a nutshell, it gets after this very issue. If you're in charge of marketing for any organization that does not (and is not likely to in the future) embody openness, sharing, trust and all of those things that are required in a customer-owns-your-brand world that is social media, this might not be a strategic fit for you. Should you change, perhaps, but that's not the issue here. Just as I would rarely advise a B2B startup client to advertise on network television, there are some companies that aren't going to align on social media. One last thing - even though your company has some aligning characteristics...if your legal department doesn't, your social media marketing plan may have a hard time getting off the ground. I'm just sayin'...

Marketing Plan Alignment:
This one's a bit easier, but still a challenge, and we're still talking about alignment. If you decide to setup a Twitter account because it's cool, but you're not blogging and you're expecting things to just explode for you, that's unrealistic (but, you already knew that...) You need to align social media vehicles with that you're already doing and plan appropriately for their launch. If you have a customer database but you've never sent an email, maybe do that first...then put up the videos, then email your customers again, then get the blog going, then seed you customers with that and get the real conversation going... I'm still bullish on data and collecting it on prospects and customers (RSS subscribers and video viewers are not success metrics in the end) and employing that data in your marketing and social media efforts.

[UPDATE] One more thing... This 'social media thing' is new, and it's not...you know what I mean...right? Well, here's what I mean. Companies that do well in social media are those same types of organizations with the criteria identified by Jim Collins in Good to Great. They would meet the test of social media readiness. Examples of that criteria include: humility, acting as a servant leader, being able to accept brutal honesty, availability, a willingness to share credit (ideally, give full credit to others) and take sole responsibility and blame for failures.

(02/24/09 09:00 AM)

How an 8-Year Old Became Co-CMO. I have to share this story…it’s about how my son got offered the job of Co-CMO for Bazaarvoice.Last week we had kids-at-work day. I brought in my 8-year-old son Kyle and 11-year-old daughter Haley in for half a day to experience my work. They were very excited, however, I had a number of meetings and conference calls. During these meetings my daughter colored, read, and ate ice cream. My son, on the other hand, walked the halls and started offering advice to our employees. Soon, our Partnerships Director suggested he interview for a job. So, Kyle typed up an introductory letter and started interviewing with our recruiter and several Bazaarvoice managers. I still have no idea this is going on. Soon Kyle gets into Brett’s office (our CEO). Brett interviews him and soon realizes that his skills of giving “tips, advice and opinions” on things like pricing and how to sell products align well with marketing. So he offers him the Co-CMO position -- actually senior to me -- paying $50/mo and 100 shares! In the video below I compiled some clips that I and others collected that day, showing his interview with Brett and examples of the advice that he was giving me and our VP of Business Development, Brant Barton. None of this is staged for video, we just captured what was happening. He came up with all of this himself. It doesn’t stop there. He collected 15 business cards and since Wednesday he’s been emailing my employees... (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

Social media: It's all about risk, resources and rewards..

In countless discussions about social media, digital marketing tools and "what's next," I've determined that it's critical for all marketers to put a framework around their decisions on what tools to use, when to use them and how to get started. I put these decisions into a general "3-R" framework.

Risk: What's your tolerance?
Whether you're catapulting your brand into the social media sphere by simultaneously starting a blog, moderating a customer community and twittering, or if you're simply monitoring social media to get a glimpse of how the world sees you, there's a certain modicum of risk involved. You need to determine how much risk you're willing to take.

Social-media risk can manifest in the following ways:
> Exposure to issues that you'd rather not confront in a Web-based public forum.
> Suppliers and competitors watching your every move and your every flaw.
> Legal ramifications of customers commenting on bugs, defects, recalls, etc.
> Sharing control of your finely crafted brand message with passionate, yet misguided, fans.

Organizations that are ethical, honest, have strong brands and a strong sense of self will prevail and enjoy a low-risk environment in their social media endeavors. However, if your organization is secretive, insecure and does things you wouldn't tell your mother about, then you'll likely find there's simply too much risk for you in social media.

Resources: Do you have them?
This is probably the number one question I hear: "What does it take to do this stuff (blogging, social media, podcasts, etc.)?" For most companies, the cost of technical resources is the least of their worries. In fact, a majority of marketers who deploy social-media campaigns find it's the least expensive part of their budget. It's much more important to have the right people in place to help with your social media efforts. Whether that's a knowledgeable person in-house or a paid consultant, human resources are the most important aspect of putting social media to work in your organization.

Rewards: What do you expect?
Let's be serious. The only reason we're in marketing is to pursue capitalistic rewards. If we really want to pursue social media as part of our marketing - with low risk and few resources - we can certainly have at it. In the final analysis, however, we need to show substantial rewards in order to make it worth our while.

The ROI of social media depends on your overall goals. Most marketers define social-media rewards in the following ways:
> An increase in Website page views from social media sources.
> A larger network of customers and fans on social networking sites.
> Growth in your prospect email database.
> Increased conversation about your company on the Internet.

When considering social media as a component of your marketing mix, remember the three R's: risks, resources and rewards. By vetting your plans against these criteria and asking the right questions, you'll be on the path to social-media success.

(02/24/09 09:00 AM)

Cool! A glimpse into the life of Norm Abram.

You can file this post under "things most people reading this blog don't know about Dana." I'm a huge fan of woodworking, tinkering, welding and anything mechanical. My "real" dream job is to be a high school shop teacher. No shit. Really.

So, I was pretty excited today to see a glimpse at an upcoming interview with one of my "TV heroes", Norm Abram of the New Yankee Workshop and This Old House. Oddly enough, I had a chance to see Norm, live and in person, as a small coffee shop in West Virginia this year. Wild!

Anyway, for those of you that have even a passing interest in home renovation or things relating to woodworking, this article on the Wood magazine blog is a great bit of insight into the life of Norm Abram.

*** By the way, most of the "marketing related" blogging is moving over the MarketingSavant.com site, while this blog will soon morph into a blog that's more about Dana's speaking engagements and such.

(02/24/09 09:00 AM)

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Cool! A glimpse into the life of Norm Abram.

(12/31/08 09:00 PM)

I realized how big we've gotten at our Bazaarvoice holiday party.. Posted via email from samdecker's posterous (12/30/08 09:00 PM)

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Social media: It's all about risk, resources and rewards..

(10/01/08 09:00 PM)

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Social Media Marketing Best Practice Tip.

(09/11/08 09:00 PM)

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HTML Emails. Both of the mail clients I use, Outlook at work and Gmail for personal, strip images out of HTML email... I think most mail clients are doing this now. So, why do people continue to send HTML emails that depend on images? I got this today from a vendor that I've given permission to email me: There was no text in the email, just links to pictures. In todays world of limited attention, why assume... (06/25/08 09:01 PM)

Isn't 'effective targeting' the point of e-mail marketing?.

I received this promotional email this morning from Makita Tools. For those of you that don't know, I'm a hardcore DIYer and LOVE powertools (in fact, I love tools in general...maybe I'll upload some tool collection pictures at some point). So, of course, I subscribe to the email newsletters of any power tool manufacturer that has one, even though I'm partial to Makita.

Have said all that, I find their email marketing efforts to be lacking in precision. As you'll see in the email screenshot below, they combine English and Spanish in the same email. I have nothing against Spanish - I spent 4 years of my high school and college life learning it - I do have something against poor targeting when you know that you can (and should) do better!

By simply asking for 'language preference' on their email signup form (which, by the way, is a pain in the ass to get to and is hidden under the "Team Makita" link that's hardly visible at the top of the page), you could not only eliminate the annoyance of a dual-language email, but be much more prudent in targeting by doing everything (including the subject line, which was English only...go figure).

Part of the value of email marketing is being able to tightly segment and market to your house list. Makita is missing out on a significant (though I'm not sure how big their house list is...it could be much, much larger if it were easier to sign up for!) opportunity to really communicate with your target audience!

(06/09/08 09:00 AM)

Government Grants and Free Money.

With the economy in bad shape like it is these days, many people are experiencing financial hardships. As a result, the scammers are out in force, advertising their books and CDs that promise free money from the government for everything from paying your bills to getting out of debt, and more.

I'm getting a boatload of emails from people who want me to help them write a letter to apply for a government free money grant. Many others write to say that they need the right form to apply for a grant or that they have written a proposal but don't know which government agency to send it to.

If you need help, you may be eligible for various types of government benefit programs, which are often called grants. Most of these programs are administered at the state and local levels. You don't need a special book to find them, and you don't need to write a letter or a proposal to apply. But you will probably have to meet certain income or other types of requirements, and you'll need to be realistic -- despite what the scammers and books tell you, the government is not going to give you a handful of free money to pay off your credit card bills.

Below is a list of categories of benefits and assistance offered by the government. You'll find this listing along with links to specific programs in your state as well as federal agency programs and other resources. Just click on the link to go to the website.

clipped from www.govbenefits.gov

Select categories of interest.

Select categories of interest. (Check all that apply)

Career Development Assistance Child care/Child support

Counsel/Counseling Disability assistance

Disaster relief Education/Training

Energy Assistance Food/Nutrition

Grants/Scholarships/Fellowships Healthcare

Housing Insurance

Living Assistance Loan/Loan repayment

Medicaid/Medicare Social Security

Tax Assistance Veterans-Active Duty

Volunteer opportunities

(04/14/08 09:00 AM)

Isn't 'effective targeting' the point of e-mail marketing?.

(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

Brands taking advantage of 'twitternecking' behavior.

For those of you on Twitter, you're now all too familiar with the "so and so is now following you on Twitter!" emails. I love these emails. Since I'm late to the game on Twitter, it's especially pleasing when I notice someone is following me on twitter.

This is where it gets interesting. This Sunday, I received an email telling me that someone that I didn't know was following me on Twitter. So, my natural reaction was to check them out and return the favor by beginning to follow them. I know, over time, I'm sure that the reciprocal following will die down, especially among internet celebs with a high profile, as they simply won't want to follow everyone... However, Twitter phenomenon seems to be a lot like rubbernecking (you know, in traffic, it doesn't concern you, but you look on anyway). Or, what I'll call, Twitternecking. While rubber necking is "To look about or survey with unsophisticated wonderment or curiosity," Twitternecking is likely "to blindly follow another Twitter user for the simple reason that they began following you.

Brands reaching out and banking on the twitternecking effect are smart, at least at this stage. If you avidly follow, say, 2000 people, and 500 of them twitterneck (I have no idea what the reciprocal follow rate is on Twitter...this is just a guess, but I'm following most everyone following me) you now have an audience of 500 people that are tuned in whenever you say something...for now...

So, who is the company in question?

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Rystique
Website: http://www.rystique.com/

Greater minds have already written lots about Twitter for marketing:
What Web Marketers Should Know About Twitter by Jeremiah Owyang

Starter Kit for Grassroots Campaigning: 5 Tactics to Improve Results With Web 2.0, Email & Mobile on MarketingSherpa

(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

Social Shopping and Getting Your Share of the $600 Stimulus Check.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of social shopping sites. Several times per year our family, just like everyone else, is tasked with purchasing various gifts for relatives, Christmas, birthdays and other such moments. Like most guys out there, I rarely, if ever know what to buy!

Enter social shopping sites. According to a recent AP article on MSNBC "Web surfers buying into social shopping sites":

Social shopping sites with such names as Kaboodle, ThisNext, Wishpot and StyleHive combine two of the Web's most prominent activities: engaging in commerce and chatting with like-minded folks. The sites don't directly sell things, but encourage users to share links to good bargains, obscure finds, products that work and ones that don't.

All of those sites are pretty sweet, if you ask me. While not a 'social shopping' site per se, I'm partial to using Gifts.com as well. I've gotten some solid ideas from there as well.

With Valentine's Day just around the corner (hmm...what should I get this year???), now is a great time to test out all of the social shopping engines to see what kind of goodies they recommend.

Personally, Kaboodle and Gifts.com had the most ideas for gifts I'd likely purchase. However, the others had some good ideas as well. Wishpot is actually powered by results from Shopping.com.

Now, how does all of this have anything to do with the likely "stimulus package" that we're about to receive? (If you've not tuned in to the $150B economic stim pack banter, here's a square assessment from the WSJ[sub]). Well, if you believe that Americans will follow a similar behavior pattern following tax refund time (Tax-refund season helps kick off the spring shopping season. Last year, retail sales jumped 12% to 20% in March), there's going to be a portion of us, 12% to 28% of us, depending on who you ask, who will go out and immediately spend the money, it's a marketer's world and the smartest marketer will win when seeking their fair share of the potential 'windfall' check that consumers are likely to receive this late spring to early summer. Here's where really knowing your customers and their behavior can pay off. A few ideas:

Go back to your customer or buyer profile and figure out who in your customer base will be getting the lion's share of the stimulus monies. For reference, families with <$110K in earnings and individuals with <$75K will be getting the most, while the lowest income and highest income segments of the population will be getting the least. Needless to say, this won't be the time to go after your high rollers who just got a check for $200...
Run a contest or a survey or something to get inside the heads of your customers. If you're doing a regular email newsletter, throw in a survey question or two that takes a fun approach at getting after "what they're going to do with their checks". Segment out those that intend to 'spend it' for a separate marketing effort around the time that checks are distributed.
Be mindful of all of the recession talk. People might not splurge on that big gas grill they've been lusting over, but they might be interested in securing a raft of gift cards or gift certificates to kick off their Christmas or birthday shopping. Now would be a great time to mention that yours have no expiration date and that they're a great way to stretch their dollars for themselves and their loved ones

Whether or not you agree with the efficacy of the stimulus package, if you look at this from the perspective of 'customer behavior' and tap into the most 'likely to buy' segment of your customer base, you're setting yourself up to capture your fair share of the $150B that's likely to be doled out.

(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

Private Bid Notification Services.

In addition to the government's bid notification services from FedBizOpps and Grants.gov, there are many private firms that provide these types of services. You can find some of these firms by doing a Google search on phrases such as "find RFPs" and "bid notification."

Although you have to pay for it, there are several advantages to using a private bid notification service:

Many of these services can also provide you with information on solicitations issued by state and local governments. While more and more state and local governments are putting their bid opportunities on the Internet, not all of them have geared up to do this.
Since FedBizOpps and Grants.gov may not cover all all bureaus and departments within each federal agency, you may be able to get access to these bureaus' bid opportunities via a private service rather than having to search for them by going to individual websites.
If you are interested in seeing bid opportunities at two or three levels -- federal, state and/or local -- you can may be able to receive these opportunities via daily e-mails or through online access. This can be a real time-saver.

One of the private serices that has been around for a long time is Bidnet (see clip below), which offers customizable packages to meet your specific needs and interests. However, since Bidnet is only one of many private services, it will probably be worth your while to research and compare these services with respect to their prices and offerings.

clipped from bidnet.com

With BidNet, you will have access to Government Bids from thousands of Federal, State and Local agencies, and see bid opportunities you won't find anywhere else. Our diverse network of agencies will give you the competitive intelligence needed to compete effectively for the nation's largest buyer of goods and services - governments across the nation and right in your hometown.

(04/02/08 09:02 AM)

Government Grants Notification Service.

When I wrote earlier about the FedBizOpps notification service for contracts, I should have mentioned that the Grants.gov website has a similar service for government grants. To sign up, go to the Grants.gov site and click on Grant Email Alerts on the right side of the page. You can then sign up to receive one or more of the following types of emails:

Updates to the website.
All grant notices.
Grant notices that you select based on specific criteria.
Grant notices by funding opportunity number.

These notifications are great timesavers because you don't have to keep going to the Grants.gov or FedBizOpps website to find or track the bid opportunities you are interested in. Instead, they come right to your mailbox.

(03/31/08 09:00 AM)

Site Update and New Feature.

This weekend I spent some time adding some great new resources to my site. Check out my What's New Page to see what I've added.

I've also instituted a new feature for these and subsequent new resources. Recently, I discovered Clipmarks, a tool you can use to clip and stash snippets from Web pages. I've been trying to come up with a way to incorporate Clipmarks on my site and decided to begin using it to highlight the new additions. A possible other use might be to incoporate it in this blog, maybe for a "Site of the Week" or "Site of the Day" feature. I'm still thinking about this, so stay tuned.

Now what you will see when you go to a page on my site where I've added a new resource is something like what is shown at the bottom of this post -- a clip from the Foundation Center website.

To see the clips for the new resources, go to any of these pages:

Business Plans
Grant Writing
Small Business
Grant Subjects
Grant Samples
Legal, Financial & Contracts

What do you think?

clipped from foundationcenter.org

"The subject of this short course is proposal writing. But the proposal does not stand alone. It must be part of a process of planning and of research on, outreach to, and cultivation of potential foundation and corporate donors."

(03/24/08 09:01 AM)

Deborah's Proposal Writing Blog is Back!.

I'm not going to go into all the reasons that I stopped blogging. But now I've decided to resume. If you were a former subscriber or if you are new to my blog, you now have the option of receiving new postings by email. You'll find the subscription box at the top of the page. So please sign up!

What have I been up to since I last blogged? Proposal writing, of course -- sprinkled in between with a few other things like proposal reviews and criitiques, editing and the like. For the past few weeks, I've been revamping a major manual for one of my clients. This has been a rather interesting but frustrating experience. I've written a lot of manuals from scratch, but this client wanted an updated version of an existing manual that is about 250 pages long.

The first step in the process involved gathering the info that they wanted updated. Sounds easy, no? Well, it started off being easy. I was given some written materials to start with. What the client wanted me to do was to take this 250 page document and lay it out so that when you opened it, the proposed changes were on the left page and the original version was on the right-hand facing page, so that it looked like this:

Hahaha. Just try doing something like this in Word with a 250-page document. Some of the comments and proposed changes were so long that they went on for 2-3 pages. When this happened, everything shifted so that the orginal pages or parts of them sometimes ended up on the left side instead of the right side and vice versa. Never, never, never try to do anything like this.

More to come on this exciting task.

(03/01/08 09:01 AM)

Deborah's Proposal Writing Blog is Back!.

More to come on this exciting task.

(02/21/08 09:01 PM)

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Lovely E-Mail.

I get quite a few e-mails each day. Some are from people asking about my services, others want me to answer their questions, and still others write rather lengthy stories about various hardships that they want to overcome by getting grants that don't exist. Then there is the e-mail I received yesterday asking for a donation so that the sender could attend a conference in Las Vegas, which she can't pay for because she doesn't have any consulting work. Hmmm, I would like donations so that I too could go to Las Vegas.

But every so often I receive an e-mail that just plain makes me happy. I got one of those yesterday too. Here it is:

I am 30 yrs old with little to no experience in writing up
proposals. I am currently working in a middle management position in a
small company. I feel I have an idea that would greatly benefit the
company I am currently working for. After approaching one of the senior
management with it, he told me he liked it and to write up a proposal.

I have been searching the internet for the past week and a half
attempting to gain insight and advice into how to create a quality
proposal. I am not the type of person how expects, or even wants, to
have someone else do my work for me. Most of the sites I found offered
to create a proposal for a fee. It is my belief that unless
circumstances require otherwise that a person should learn to do things
for themselves. It was a nice surprise to find on your site a starter
list of sorts that I could use to begin to make a proposal on my own.
Your "Proposal Preparation Checklist" and Proposal Pointers and
Pitfalls" are wonderful tools and I wanted to take a moment to thank you
for freely distributing them. It is a welcome relief when someone sets
forward information to allow people to empower themselves. The links
you have provided to other websites are also wonderful. Just skimming
over the Checklist and Pointers, I have already noticed some points I
would never have considered.

So again, thank you so very much. I really appreciate the effort you
have put into your site and also the information you have offered freely.

What a beautifully-written thank-you note. And to boot, it expresses my own mantra -- "do your homework" -- just perfectly.

It's just so nice when something like this pops up in your mailbox!

(02/20/08 09:01 AM)

Deborah's Proposal Writing Blog is Back!.

More to come on this exciting task.

(02/17/08 09:01 AM)

Prioritizing Marketers Top Priorities. This morning I got a research brief from Mediapost summarizing the findings from the Marketing Effectiveness Networking Group (MENG) and Anderson Aanlytics study. This study surveyed marketing executives to identify key trends and strategies of effective marketing. The subject line of the email said: "Marketing Execs Say Basics Are Most Important in 2008". By "basics" I thought they meant strategies such as becoming measurement-oriented, shifting ad portfolio, investing in email infrastructure, build operational data warehouse, and improve web site. However the 'basics' by definition from this study were more customer-centric and more concepts and objectives rather than strategies. And unfortunately for most companies, they're not all that 'basic' in achieving success. 60% of marketing executives said the following 'marketing basics' were important: Customer satisfaction Customer retention Segmentation Brand loyalty ROI I have a copy of the study. To be clear, the study asked marketing executives to choose from over 60 concepts or buzzwords (such as the 5 above) which were then categorized. Other categories, in order of votes, included: SEO (by itself) Personalization: concepts include Data mining, CRM, Lead Generation, Personalization, Ecommerce, Competitive Intelligence Green Marketing: Multicultural / Ethic issues. Breakdown of old media Innovative Branding Viral / WOM: concepts include viral, WOM, blogging New Media: concepts include Web 2.0, Mobile, CGM, Long Tail, Social Networking Macro Economics Tech Strategy Outsourcing Social Issues Other Now, as a marketer, if I participated in this study I may have answered the same way. After all, the 'marketing basics' are overarching objectives. What... (01/02/08 09:00 AM)

Rethinking Email. http://daringfireball.net/2007/08/rethinking_email (08/28/07 09:01 AM)

What are you listening to??. My friend Chris sent me an email this morning: I need some new songs. Any recommendations? Here are five that I put on my latest mix cd. Can you recommend five of your favorites? Cat Empire – Sly Damien Rice – 9 Crimes Pete Yorn – Life on a Chain Tori Amos – Big Wheel Polyphonic Spree – light and day My reply: Hmmm... 5 current faves... lets see... Travis - Selfish Jean Phoenix -... (07/24/07 09:01 PM)

Do Not Reply. One of my biggest email pet peeves is when companies send email from a "DoNotReply@SomeStupidCompany.com" email address. Sometimes they even repeat the warning near the top of the message: Please do not to reply to this email address. However, there is alawys some email address somewhere in the body of the message where you can direct questions or comments. Not only is this a pain for customers, it also hurts the company sending the message.... (07/18/07 09:01 AM)

Notes on "The Likeability Factor" (Tim Sanders at Austin Texchange). Last week I became president of Texchange, a local association of Technology entrepreneurs and executives. At our June event we had Tim Sanders, formerly of Broadcast.com, Yahoo, author of Love: The Killer App, and more recently The Likeability Factor. He spoke to a June audience of 130 entrepreneurs and shared some sobering statistics, research, and recommendations. Thanks to Josh Toub at BluefishGroup and Secretary of Techange, I can share these notes for you. [Note: if you are an Austin-based technology entrepreneur or in a Austin-based startup, email me to join]. Biology behind increased importance of emotion in business and everyday life The amygdala (part of brain in charge of emotion) has grown ~1% in the lat 35 years Makes liking the people you do business with much more important than it once was EVP When Tim evaluates a company to invest in or do business with, he evaluates three things: What is the emotional value proposition What is the emotional cost of ownership What is the emotional compensation plan Did research at Yahoo about the essance of loyalty--it's all about emotional attraction In life, the likability factor is almost always the tie break Every presidential election since 1976 has been won by the likability factor. What is likability? Not about charimsa Not about being popular It's about reciprocity, not attraction Emotional Attraction (EA) Leadership An emotionally attractive salesperson will gross 40% more than a neutral person 3 benefits: Reduced risk Doctors who smile are much less likely to get sued... (06/18/07 09:03 PM)

The strange allure (and false hope) of email bankruptcy. http://www.43folders.com/2007/05/30/email-bankruptcy-2/ (06/07/07 09:01 AM)

Rich HTML email signatures straight from Gmail. http://5thirtyone.com/archives/821 (05/25/07 09:00 AM)

5 Tips To Profit From Your Customer List. My last article - Small Business Fundamentals - The List - discussed how important it is to maintain lists, in particular a customer list. Hopefully you already have a list or two in your small business or at are putting into place plans to build some lists. Once you have started to build a list of customers it's time to consider methods to leverage that list to produce more customers. In my case my list is completely online and based on email subscriptions and I occasionally send out broadcast emails to make use of my best assets - my existing... (04/06/07 09:01 AM)

Internal blogs -- want to share knowledge?. From talking to companies, I realize more and more than the main business use of corporate blogging will be internal. In numbers, of course, but probably also in result/effect.

Would you like to share your experience?

Can you tell me about your internal blog(s), how they started, how people use them, the most common subjects they write about, if they generate conversations etc?
I will write about what I learn (here, for example) but if you don't want to I won't mention your company.

Would be great to hear from you. My email address is in the column to the right. (04/06/07 09:01 AM)

Let's meet at WOMMA, April 17, New Orleans. I'm speaking at WOMMA's Word of Mouth Basic Training, April 17, 18 in New Orleans. My topic will be aquiring, amplifying and measuring online word of mouth. Cost for the conference is $795, but that's a bargain compared to most conferences that are closer to $2,000. I've been to a few of these now and they are great events. The association has exploded and you will learn a lot and meet some great people who are focused on how to drive word of mouth to drive business results. Drop me an email if you plan to come!... (03/02/07 09:00 AM)

Career Tip #11: Always Can Do. I learned the ‘can do’ lesson early in my startup experience. In 1996 the President of our .com startup suggested I find and email 500,000 people. The word SPAM wasn’t even invented, so there was no depository of email addresses or list brokers. After a week of searching the “Information Superhighway”, I found sources for hundreds, not thousands. I was stumped, and went back to him with the question, “How did you come up with that number? Did you have a strategy or idea on how to get email addresses you could share with me...?” Basically, I was fishing for the answer, and was putting the perverbial ‘monkey’ on his back. His response: “If I have to tell you that, why do I need you kid?”. It was my first month on the job, and it was a wake up call. Your manager doesn’t want a monkey back on his back, and if you bring problems to him you will find yourself with less responsibility in the future. Those with a can do (and “done”) attitude will get more done and get more to do. To complete the story…I resolved to think bigger, and I reached out to big players, like MSN and AOL, to get banner ads and newsletter mentions. I pulled visits to our site, and then captured their email addresses with a sweepstakes and got over 500,000 email addresses, easy!... (01/17/07 09:00 AM)

Career Tip #6: Inform Others. Are you an executor? Do you get stuff done? Great! Now make sure you tell people what you’ve done. Inform your manager and peers about what’s going on. In 1x1s, in email, in staff meetings, make sure you are giving updates and status on projects, action items, and goals. If someone emails you something, respond back that it was received and when it will be done. Then email when it was done. It sounds simple, but this closed loop process builds confidence with your manager, his peers, and your colleagues.... (01/14/07 09:00 PM)

It's so easy. I think the reason we get so upset at astounding examples of bad customer service (at least that's what my email seems to demonstrate) is that most of us have given great customer service and realized that most of the... (12/25/06 09:00 AM)

The wet fish handshake. It's happened to all of us. We meet someone and they hand over the wet fish. I don't know about you, but I'm immediately inclined to flee. Well, now that spammers (and their evil cousin, the PR flak who emails... (12/14/06 09:01 PM)

Sales Professionals - update your e-mail dist. lists. I made a major goof when I sent an email to a pre-existing Outlook e-mail distribution list recently. I hadn't used it for a while, and it turns out that it was out-of-date, so what I did was sent an... (12/12/06 08:47 AM)

Five simple rules for keeping an empty inbox. "If your email volume is anything like mine, it's totally insane. Thousands of messages constantly streaming in and, only a tiny fraction of those are messages you need to see. Surprising then, that only a few years ago I was literally living inside Microsoft Outlook. Rigid folders, the nightmarish rules 'wizard', and that annoying inbox chime that dings regardless of which folder your new distraction message ultimately wound up. I completely believe that Gmail saved my life. Okay, that's pushing it. Gmail didn't save my life. What Gmail (and a little bit of GTD-inspired respect for my own time) did was save my attention span. Some careful filtering and a bit of common sense returned a half hour or more of uninterrupted concentration per day. " (12/12/06 08:04 AM)