In the beginning of email marketing there was this influx of activity, books, seminars, and courses on the subject, all of them signifying how to avoid taking the tedious time of earning the sale. But then after many spam protections and laws went into place many people had to reconsider their humanity. How should we treat our customers or leads? This isn’t to say that there are people who haven’t received the message yet but they don’t believe maintaining their humanity at all in their business. I believe it isn’t just something we should ask ourselves but a bearing on where we decide to take our business when presented with multiple options. Do we take a high road and preserve our customers’ sensibility and trust or the low road and attempt to maximize profits? Is this to say that there isn’t a happy medium but only a lonely road of high moral and ethical ground? No. There is most definitely a middle-ground which can be attained. Marketing to people through social channels should look more organic and grow out of existing customers.

Email marketing is the older sibling to social media marketing, they left some important lessons to learn.

They want information on what you sell.

Ensure they know what it is you sell, very plainly and concisely.

They want to hear from you.

People click the Like or Follow button because their interested in what you have to say.

They don’t want to be sold on the company.

They know who you are, now tell them why they need you.

They want reasons to stay in love with you.

My father told me that falling in love is easy, it’s staying in love that’s difficult. Sound business advice in my opinion.

Reward dedication.

They don’t have to follow you, they have other things to do in their life.

Make it easy to connect.

If you wanted to respond, it was simple and natural.

Be authentic.

People can see through bullshit, just stop it.

Driven by stats.

Human behavior drives stats, if you don’t have the desired stats, change what they’re clicking on.

Give hope.

Deliver what they’d hoped for.

We must never forget our humanity.

When I was fourteen I started attending computer classes at my local community college, one of the basic theories was whether computers would ever become self-aware. This fascinated me, at that time I was thinking that all of the sci-fi books I’ve read could possibly come true. In hindsight, that would have also meant the enslavement or extinction of the human race but when you’re fourteen that isn’t on your mind. As we began to talk about every element of what makes us human versus mechanical elements the sense of hearing was discussed. The professor began to talk about how as humans we have the ability to hear everything but can essentially tune out what is not relevant to us at the current moment. Computers have a much more difficult time to distinguish which sounds are relevant and then to eliminate the irrelevant sounds from current processing. This has always fascinated me, we innately understand what to do and how to do it. This got me thinking about the social web, of course, we are all listening to who’s talking about our brands or keyword interests but that still creates a lot of noise.

It’s funny that even in our attempts to filter out what matters most to us we still find ourselves inundated with useless noise requiring us to separate the chaff from the valuable information. I began looking into what I do on a daily basis for listening services and general search alerts, even though I’ve been able to reduce a lot of the chatter I still find myself passing by or looking over the relentless data because it is no longer relevant. Then it dawned on me that even though I was effectively eliminating the noise I was neglecting to adjust for constant relevance. Relevance is much more difficult to monitor and adjust than signal-to-noise ratios. Just like hearing, we don’t listen to the same aspect of our surroundings all of the time, we are still looking for what is relevant for us. Sometimes that means widening our scope to hear it all and sometimes that means pin-pointing our focus to only hear one specific thing.

In the world of social web listening a big factor is being able to cut down the signal-to-noise ratio and while this is an ever important aspect to daily business life it isn’t where we should stop. Relevance changes for many businesses on a daily basis, you may be seeking one segment of a market but then your competitors make a shift and that changes things for your business, this makes new things relevant and others obsolete. How often are we adjusting what is relevant? Not just what is keyword is relevant.

Being able to focus what people are saying in your most obvious categories is great but is that relevant to your customers. Is the industry creating the buzz and traffic of keyword searching or is the customers? To give an example, for our industry of design, I could search for people wanting to change designs but the problem is I have to filter through the chatter of every other design company talking about how customers should be using design in their business. This almost eliminates the value I would receive by that type of keyword searching and filtering. If I adjust my relevance to find people who are seeking to set up their own website or who are commenting about industry news sites that cover design then I am instantly limiting the amount of noise and increasing my relevance factor. This allows me to find the exact type of potential customer rather than the hundreds of thousands of people who are simply talking about design and websites.

This is the difference between listening and finding relevance amongst your data.

Social media sites are all the rage right now which means many people are diverting their attention from email newsletters to things like Twitter and Facebook. Spending time on social media is not only a sound business decision but you can see real return from it. That doesn’t mean that we should be ignoring our email newsletters.

For too long people have been chasing email newsletters hoping to see real movement for their sales. Many have now abandoned their newsletters because they feel they can see more action in social media. Too many people confuse endless chatter with actionable/meaningful conversations. I’m not saying to ignore social media but you need to focus on your email newsletter.

If you haven’t been seeing the action you’ve been hoping for on your email newsletters then you’re either doing something wrong or you need to change things up a bit. Change the layout, make it easy to navigate, think of how much extra time in a day you have to read email newsletters. Take that and apply it to how you layout your email. Update your design, if you’ve been using the same design for more than a year than it’s stale, you don’t like buying a car that has the same look from the 80’s, you’re customers need to be reminded that you’re still alive.

Along with your design you need to address your font choice. I’m not saying you need to become a typographer or a designer becoming passionate about fonts. However, you need to either limit the amount of different fonts you use or consider expanding if you’re only using one. Remember, you want to guide the reader through your newsletter having them read what is most important at the right moment. Fonts can influence people, making them think more or less of certain topics almost solely due to font choice. Think about this the next time you do a product comparison, the lesser would have a font that devalues the product, while your product would have a commonly used font that is associated with higher-end brands.

A picture can say so a great deal about your company. So why use old clip art or out-of-date stock photography, what people see in a picture is often how they will associate the work you perform. With so many stock photography sites out there, consider dropping some cash on stock photography that makes your company look high-class.

I know that for most companies it’s difficult to switch to something new, that’s why we suggest doing A/B testing. A/B testing allows you to test both designs simultaneously within one delivery. This information will help guide you in what new changes are working and what is not. Measurement is one of the most important aspects of business, don’t forget to apply it here. Once you have the stats in hand, do something! Too many companies will take the numbers from one email and hope for better numbers next time. If you aren’t making changes based on the numbers than you are wasting not only opportunities but your time, leaving your competition one step closer to crushing you.

Email newsletters are just as important now as they once were, even more so now due to spam filtering. If your email is passing spam and getting opened then that means people actually want to hear from you. Give them something worth reading, stop hoping for sales from lazy email newsletters. Up your game, your competition has.

I then thought about these chefs and their cookbooks that they sell every twelve months and why people buy them. What gives them an edge? What defines them as special or the real thing? It can’t always rely on their celebrity, it can’t only rely on the ingredients required. So what is it that draws people to repeatedly buy cookbooks that are written by the same chef who only explores in detail one or two cuisines?

I broke down what I believe to be the key to successful chefs and successful cookbooks and why they become successful outside of celebrity. First, let’s break down the aspects of most cookbooks. They always have ingredients, measurements, awesome photography (food porn), a reason to make the book, and finally certain techniques and skills you’re going to need to accomplish the recipes successfully.

So I began to breakdown what makes a chef successful, which in turns helps a cookbook become successful. A chef has acquired skills, essentially the tools of their trade, they know how to use them with expert craftsmanship. Some are better than others in different areas but for the most part they are well equipped to handle the tools of the trade. Next, it is equally important for chefs to have an intimate relationship with the ingredients they use to make great culinary dishes. When they understand the building blocks of what makes great food and how to build on them they become more successful at their craft. To only know how to wield a knife or how to make great dough but lack knowing what tastes great is only half of the equation. Same if you know the ingredients to combine to make a great dish but lack the knowledge how to transform that raw product into a finished meal through timing, heat, prepping, mixing, and blending; you will inevitably fail. 

But when a chef can combine the tools, ingredients, and skills together that is when you begin to see what makes culinary art. I once heard that most chefs, whether they know it or not, are working from some modified version of recipes crafted from Larousse Gastronomique and Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire which are over 100 years old. So with thousands of ways to make the same dish all derived from roughly the same mother recipe how do chefs define themselves with new cookbooks. Partly, they continue their search to blend and manipulate skills, ingredients, and varying cuisines to make completely new, relevant dishes that make people excited.

This is quite the long way to make my point but here it is. Too many people focus on the technologies (skills, equipment, the knives and blenders) that they forget they need great content (ingredients, fresh and exciting). Also, many people only focus on great content but lack the technology to propel their ideas to the right people. It is truly the fine mix and constant reinvention of both worlds that help business succeed. How can you be an expert of one without understanding the other? Great communication artistry is never self-proclaimed and is always doing what they do because they are passionate about what the end result brings. Great results is the combination of great people who know how to help you connect to the right people at the right place at the right time. Don’t trust experts, trust passionate people who have the skills and ingredients. Like food, the best often comes from places you would never think of and are created by passionate people who commit their lives to giving you their very best.

Who Needs Control?

Everyone needs a sense of control, stability, and sanity to your business. I’ve been using a multitude of programs lately in an attempt to wrangle my business functions and to be honest there is so much out there that work okay but nothing that really worked great for me.

What Was I Looking For?

The software had to handle contacts (not my Address Book but my business contacts), businesses, appointments, projects, opportunities (sales), tasks, calendar, and miscellaneous notes. Also, I wanted something that could interface with my email as that is where the majority of where I spend my life when I’m not actually working.

What Did I Find?

After looking through dozens of applications I decided to use one that integrates with my billing software, Billings 3, made by MarketCircle. They have a great application called Daylite, if you haven’t checked it out you should. I had downloaded it before but never really got to using it because it always seemed disjointed from the way I work. Basically, I had to change the way I work to work with it and I always hate doing that with software.

What Did I Do?

I did what everyone does only years later after struggling through use of a great software, I read the user guides. To be honest I rarely do it because most user guides are so very simply telling you where the menu is and to be honest, I’m not that dumb. Well, I guess I was. But regardless of that, I found their Concepts Guide and that was very helpful. Obviously it told me what was what but it went into short detail about how one would use each feature and how implementing the way you work into the software can help you really find the power in the software.

So I Set It Up

I took a trial copy I had downloaded before and installed it clean and began setting it up to run my business. You can import any of your contacts out of your Address Book via vCard. Getting everything set up was pretty simple. Then I installed the Daylite Mail Integration module, this is where things got fun!

What’s So Cool About DMI?

The Daylite Mail Integration module hooks into Apple Mail application so easily it’s amazing! Now I know many of you run from Apple’s Mail application and I get it because you use Gmail or something cool like that. Well, I use Gmail for our business, you know the free one that you can get your domain hooked up to? If you read a little and follow Google’s instructions on how to successfully set up Mail for use of a Gmail account whether for your @gmail.com or @yourdomain.com you’ll find that Mail works wonderfully.

But enough of Gmail for now, back to DMI. You can toggle the DMI module by pressing control+7 and a little window slides out from the left side of Mail. As you click on each one of your contacts the window will change. If that client, employee, vendor, etc. is not in the database it will ask you if you want to add them, just a button, not a pop-up. If they are already in the database, it will show you a check box that you click to add the email to the database as a note. You can also choose to take the attachment with it or strip it out of the email. The DMI is really helpful when you are tracking projects in which your primary communication is through email.

Overall

This software works very well if you setup it up right from the start, they warn you about just using it and trying to change the way you work mid-way through. Mainly because it will break your reporting, to me reporting is very important so I decided to take the little time needed and set it up right. There are some huge benefits of the software that can help every business but one downside that I can’t stand, I know it’s petty, but for the company that makes Billings 3 (which is beautiful), Daylite is just okay looking. I’ve seen worse but they have a standard that they set themselves. One of the best features I look forward to is the iPhone integration which from their blog seems to be right on track.

One More Thing

They have this additional module called Daylite Delivery which in their words

…You can share andschedule PDF reports for automatic delivery to your inbox. And because the reports are delivered via email, you’ll receive them wherever you are. They’ll also look great on your iPhone. There is no need to worry about being in front of the computer, schedule it once on the server and forget it.

I haven’t used this feature but when you are always out and about it would be nice to have the reports in your mailbox every morning. This feature would be very powerful for firms who are not in one geographical location or a firm who is always in and out of the office.

Daylite Shines On Your Business

I really look forward to the next thirty days while I use this software, good things can happen when you have your business under control. Having your business tamed will help you keep your business mind like water allowing you to be productive, effective, and hopefully really, really profitable.

Did I Mention GTD?

If you’re a Getting Things Done nut like almost everyone these days you should know that they have a guide to help you setup Daylite to match GTD practices. This was a big seller for me as I use Things (which is the best program by far that I’ve used for GTD) but it is just not enough, it lacks so much on the “everything else I do” factor. I might begin to slowly transfer over to using Daylite as my GTD trusted system.

It brought up an interesting point while attempting to deliver your product to your customer. Where do you draw the lines? When you release new features do you release them so your customers have the newest, coolest feature or do you wait until they are fully stable. Obviously, I think most people would go for reliable, cool features but at what cost? How long will that take to release some new feature fully stable? So, then a company must decide what the consumer tolerance is. How long will a consumer deal with a poorly released feature?

Take a page from Apple’s playbook recently, they released the iPhone 3Gwith software and features that weren’t ready for primetime. They hedged those concerns by limiting supply and allowed consumers to waddle in a pool of core features that did not work well. Dropped phone calls and browsing your Contacts worked when it seemed like it felt like it. It was a good thing that you never call people or need to find their information on your PHONE. But what was Apple to do? They had to please consumers and shareholders by releasing new features over stability. However, how long would it take if Apple waited for a complete stable iPhone? A few months after they release of the iPhone 3G and stability was just now promised today!

However, that being said I don’t believe many consumers or shareholders want a company to wait, they want to move product.

How would you suggest companies balance this out?