Friday, September 14, 2012

Cookie Dough & Cool Tools

Good afternoon, friends. Hope you are enjoying some good weather
wherever you are. Tulsa broke all heat records this summer with
most days well over 100 degrees. Finally, last night a storm blew
in and we are now enjoying a sunny cool day in the 70's. God is good.

A quick thanks to everyone who expressed interest in helping my
daughter with her fund raiser goals for her school vocal team.
She did manage to raise enough funds for her assigned goal and
she couldn't do it without your kindness and generosity. I regret
the online store did not sell cookie dough as advertised. I was
only able to provide cookie dough to local Tulsa folks. We
ordered some, too. Looks like good stuff!

Today, when I woke up, I was dreading paying the bills. I just
knew there wasn't going to be enough to make a dent in the
growing stack of envelopes on my office desk. I hate paying
bills. Back in the 1990s when money grew on trees, I always paid
early and spent freely. But over the past ten years, I've
struggled daily to hold onto what I have and to keep it working.
It seems even with my return to corporate, money is still tight.

Anyway, as I looked down at the bills this morning I prayed a
special prayer and asked God to divide my money like Jesus
divided the loaves and the fishes to feed the 5000 on the mount.
After an hour of work, I did it. The stack was gone, and
everybody I owed money to either got paid in full or received a
modest payment towards balances due. It was nothing short of
a miracle. Did I say God is good?

This month I wast to share some product reviews of a few cool
tools that have passed my desk. A few weeks ago, the Corel
Corporation asked me to review a bunch of their software
products. One of them is Paint It!. This has the feel of a mobile
app. You simply load a digital photo, choose a type of painting
filter to apply like impressionistic, and then click a button.
The results are very neat. You can see an example of how I
transformed a photo of my daughter into a really cool painting
here:

http://www.cooltoolawards.com/Corel-Paint-It!.html

For those of you who dabble in graphic design and want to update
your logo, you really need to try Logo Creator from Laughing Bird
Software. I've known the creator, Marc Sylvester, for more than a
decade and all of his graphic design tools are fun and easy to
use. Check it out here:

http://www.cooltoolawards.com/The-Logo-Creator.html

If you are looking for a very cool way to make your
logos, brochures, presentations and web pages take on a really
cool personality of their own, then you need to check out Mascot
Creator Toolkit. You can use PhotoShop or GIMP to create your own
male and female mascots. I think this is one of the cheapest,
coolest graphic tools to cross my desk in a long, long time. I'm
playing with it non-stop to create "people" to use in all my
creative projects. Check out the samples here:

http://www.cooltoolawards.com/Mascot-Creator-Toolkit.html

I know many of you like to create your own book covers. You
obviously have two directions to go in - either software or
PhotoShop actions. If you like easy software, try eCover Software
Pro. You can add your own art work and churn out all sorts of
different product shots.

http://www.ebookcovercreator.com/Ecover-Software-Pro.html

If you own either PhotoShop or GIMP (free tool you can download
that mimics PhotoShop pretty well), you should really consider a
membership to Cover Actions Premium. This club adds new PhotoShop
actions every few days, so your annual membership gives you
access to hundreds of unique layout and designs for everything
from books to DVD to jars to banners and much, much more. Check
out the examples on their site and you'll join in a NY minute.

http://www.ebookcovercreator.com/Cover-Actions-Premium.html

Well, that's it from me for now. I've got to catch up on other
things around the house. Again, thanks to those who supported my
daughter, and I hope to be shouting out to you again next
weekend.

Take care,

Steven

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Saturday, September 01, 2012

Importance of Email Marketing

Good afternoon and I hope things are going well for you on your
side of the screen. Life is busy here in Tulsa. The kids are back
to school and life has once again become more hectic and chaotic.
I know once they are grown and on their own I will miss them
terribly, but constantly running from Varsity Pom to Band to
Choir to Tennis and then work 12 hours/day -- help me, Lord! My
wife and I are always exhausted.

This week I want to touch upon the importance of staying in touch
with folks. Folks could be your friends, your subscribers, your
vendors, your prospects, or your customers -- or any combination
of these groups. The key is to touch them and keep touching them
to continuously work at building and strengthening your
relationships with them ... to help cross that invisible border
between acquaintance and friend, from stranger to trusted
authority.

Do you know I have been publishing my newsletters since 1995? I
started on the Internet back before it was commercial. I started
collecting names and email addresses to visitors of my early
sites, and I began to segment them based upon their interests.
And then I started sending out emails weekly. At one point I was
sending out about a half dozen newsletters to over 10,000 people
world-wide.

Why do that, you ask? Simple. I recognized the importance of
communication a long time ago -- back in the 1980s when I first
started my career. I learned that people were more apt to trust
me and buy from me when I provided quality information to them
that they may not get elsewhere. That information demonstrated my
subject matter expertise, and the constant communication built my
relationships.

I actually still maintain friendships with people I grew up with
40-50 years ago. And they are always amazed that I think about
them and make the effort. Effort counts a lot with folks. Are you
making the effort to stay in touch and build relationships?

You have several different ways to do this, but the two most
reliable ways are direct mail and email. Direct mail can be
costly, and if not highly targeted, can be a waste of time and
money. Email, however, is low cost, it is immediate, and your
emails can be personalized.

Email marketing can be managed either through an online Internet
service or through desktop software. I've used both. I first
started out using Infacta's Groupmail. This software is very
powerful and resides on your desktop computer. You can work
offline and manage your email lists and create and write your
campaigns quickly and easily. Then you merely click a button and
your messages can be sent to your lists. You can even schedule
the email blasts for the future. At one time I managed over
10,000 subscribers and 6 different newsletters using this
software. I never had any issues with it and I recommend it
highly. An older review can be found here:

http://www.emailmarketingassistance.com/Group-Mail.html

Of course, many people prefer online email solutions and there
are many to choose from. The three most popular are aWeber,
GetResponse and Constant Contact. I have had accounts with all
three and used them for many of my own newsletters as well as to
manage email campaigns for my customers.

They all share many similar features and interfaces, and the
costs also tend to be fairly similar. Almost all of them offer
the ability to compose messages in plain text or HTML, some form
of template library, the ability to test your email and measure
its spam score, double opt-in, email list importing, social media
links, the ability to embed audio or video, and scheduling of
newsletter publications. Here are links to reviews for the top three:

aWeber:
http://www.emailmarketingassistance.com/aWeber.html

GetResponse:
http://www.emailmarketingassistance.com/Get-Response.html

Constant Contact:
http://www.emailmarketingassistance.com/Constant-Contact.html

I have been a strong proponent of GetResponse. I personally find
their system the easiest to navigate and use, and I like their
support. Your mileage may vary. Every system has its fan base.

Now equally important to choosing an email platform is to
integrate an email capture form to the home page of your web
site. Failure to do this will cost you dearly. I had a client
once who spent $50K on Google AdWords to get 250,000 unique users
to their web site. However, she failed to take my advice to add
an email capture form to the home page of her site, and she was
never able to reach those people again ... without spending
another $50K. Lesson learned?

Most of these email management systems offer you the ability to
copy and paste some code to add a small email form to your web
site. Do it.

How do you encourage people to actually subscribe to your
newsletter when people's email boxes are already exploding with
more crap then they can actually read? The best thing to do is to
offer a free report or discount coupon for your products or
services. Offer value.

You also must make your newsletter appear to be tangible like a
printed newsletter. You need to make it look professional and
worth reading. Product shots of reports and ebooks can really
help ... and you know I offer this service:

Ebook Cover Artist:
http://www.ebookcoverartist.com

Software Box Designer:
http://www.softwareboxdesigner.com

Some people prefer to send messages off the cuff each month while
others prefer to write a series of messages for a full year,
load them into their email systems, and put the entire process
on auto-pilot. I can help you with this, too. I write email
series for $500 for 12 messages.

You can learn more about email marketing by visiting my site:

http://www.emailmarketingassistance.com

Commit to staying in touch with your prospects, friends and
customers. Commit to touching them once a month minimally. Commit
to choosing a platform and adding an email capture form to your
web site. Commit to showing them how you can add value and be
trusted.

Do these things, and your life will be enriched by the
relationships you build, and your bank account will be enriched
by the dollars in time.

All my best,


Steven

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