Email Subject Lines

Entrepreneur.com has a great article
on email subject lines

Some of the tidbits?
Keep it less than 41 characters.
Personalize it.
Write it as though it was sent from a friend.

If you’re emailing your contact list,
emails should read as though you’re talking to a friend
because they’ve given you permission
to address them as friends.

An interesting tidbit?
More and more of us are using the preview screen.
“Statistics from MarketingSherpa show
that 26.6 percent of consumers read e-mails that way.
And 69 percent of people reading e-mail at work do so
with the preview pane turned on.”

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Categorized as Marketing

What Not To Delegate

The Four Hour Work Week
has prompted a rush of delegation
via personal assistants.
Some people feel you can delegate everything.

I disagree.

A buddy has a book coming out.
I was excited about it
until
I got an email from his very nice personal assistant
talking about ways I could help
with the book launch.

The assumption was that based on our relationship,
I would help.
The issue is
I have no relationship with this assistant.
None.
And my buddy didn’t value our relationship enough
to tell me his assistant would be handling
the book launch.

Your contact list and your relationships
are too important to delegate.

How To Piss Off Women

If you’re getting flowers this Valentine’s Day,
I suggest you source them
from a florist other than Teleflora.

Although I didn’t watch the Super Bowl,
I’ve received a few hundred email pleas
to boycott Teleflora.
I’ve since watched the commercial
and wow, this is a great example of a company
NOT knowing their market (women).

Either
Teleflora didn’t know women watched the Super Bowl
(in 2008, 39% of viewers were female over the age of 18)
or
they didn’t know
women don’t like to be insulted
(men are open to it, women are not)
or
they didn’t know that most women read romance novels
(64 million Americans read a romance in 2004)
and/or have a cat
(34% of Americans have a cat)
or
they didn’t know that negativity is usually not the emotion
you want associated with flowers.

No matter what,
that very expensive spot was a miss for Teleflora.

An interesting tidbit…
15% of women send themselves flowers on Valentine’s Day.

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Categorized as Marketing

Controlling The Leakage

What no manufacturer will tell you
is that a little leakage is a good thing.

The No Name Colas keep cost conscious consumers
drinking cola.
When consumers have more money,
they move up to Pepsi or Coca-Cola.

Illegally copied eBooks increase awareness,
helping with the marketing of authors and novels.

Knock off purses give the impression
that ‘everyone’ has one.

The issue is not with leakage,
the issue is with the extent of leakage.
How to control that?
Give the consumer a reason
to prefer the original.

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Categorized as Marketing

George Foreman On Integrity

Master salesman and former heavyweight
George Foreman
shared some gems with Success Magazine.

“The greatest asset,
even in this country,
is not oil and gas.
It’s integrity.
Everyone is searching for it, asking,
‘Who can I do business with that I can trust?’ ”

Why?

“You don’t want to lie about anything.
And it’s something that people will be happy about
once they get to know you.
Because people count on you.
You know, a contract you can easily break.
I’ve found in business,
everyone signs a contract to make a business deal,
and they always leave a loophole
so they can break them. ”

Having integrity is a great long term business asset.

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Categorized as General

First Book Release Lessons

I tried a variety of promotional methods
to build awareness of my first novel,
Breach Of Trust.

Now, with my second,
Invisible,
I’m concentrating on the one
that works best…

Giving the book away to ‘noisy’ people.

It is ironic
that as the publishing community fights free books,
I’m giving mine away.

It has to be done.
You don’t talk about a novel you haven’t read
and some brave reader has to be first.

With the first novel,
I gave away my book randomly.
With the second novel,
I target readers who talked about my first book.
The buzz is already building.

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Categorized as Marketing

Super Bowl Ad Prices

When I hear about times being tough
and about businesses being cost conscious,
I scoff.

Why?

Because a 30 second advertising spot
in yesterday’s Super Bowl
cost $3 million
and some advertisers,
including Anheuser-Busch,
consider that a bargain.

When businesses talk about being cost conscious,
that means they don’t waste money,
not that they don’t spend money.

Ensure that your product adds value.

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Categorized as Marketing

Framework Matters

Today, my second novel, Invisible,
was released.
It is a dark book about identity theft
and financial abuse.

You wouldn’t know it was dark by the reviews.
Reviewers, fans, and other authors
found it refreshing, entertaining, humorous!

Why?

Because although I’m tough on this blog
and in business,
personally I’m known for being a happy person.
I love to make people laugh.
These readers expect humor in my novels.
They look for it.
And they somehow find it.

The framework of your message matters.

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Categorized as Marketing