From 2008 sometime…….

The other day I got an email in my inbox. It said in part….

Dear Lynda Partner,

Hi, this is Nick Longo the CEO of CoffeeCup Software, you have been selected
as one of the few that I would like to personally invite to become a CoffeeCup Ambassador. This is an exclusive club of our biggest fans, best users, and closest friends.

If you would like to become an Ambassador please Click Here:

……..

Please join us today. We need you as a Fan and Evangelist to spread the word
about CoffeeCup Software.Thank you so much for participating. I am honored to invite you.

Nick Longo
———–
CEO | Founder
CoffeeCup Software

My first thought was “I don’t know any Nick Longo”. My second thought was “How did this person get my email address?”

Sound familiar?

It took me awhile but it turns out that when I opened a web hosting account recently, the hosting provider offered a free download of Nick’s software. I  did not download it.

So how did they get my email address and why were they sending me emails I didn’t want that did not even have an opt-out link.

Fearful that my brand new, shiny clean email address was out in the big bad world of impolite marketers, I wrote back an equally personal email to my new friend Nick.

Dear Nick
I did not opt-in to receive email from you. Please remove me from your list immediately and confirm that I have been removed.
Thank you
Lynda Partner

OK, so maybe I wasn’t as flowery was he was in his email, but why waste his time with marketing speak? At least I was clear, and, giving him the benefit of the doubt, didn’t come right out and call him a spammer.

The answer came two hours later

Lynda
When you selected to download the software from CoffeeCup you became a user of our software. You can unsubscribe from our e-mail news letters at www.coffeecup.com/email
Scott

Hmmmm, looks like I’ve been bumped off the special CEO list. Nick has passed the baton to Scott. Now if you read the beginning of this article, you know I did not download any software. Even if I did, downloading software is not opting in to get email. I am now a bit peeved – when someone writes to you telling you they didn’t opt-in and requesting that they be removed from your list would you not remove them and send a nicely worded email apologizing?

I decide to pull out my credentials to see if that makes any difference. As my husband says “My, what big credentials you have dear.”

Scott

1) I did not download your software
2) Sending me emails that I did not request is called spam
3) Your unsubscribe link does not work

Why won’t you just take me off your list and confirm back to me?

Lynda Partner
- Founder and former CEO of GotCorp – permission-based email marketing software
- Past Board member of CAUCE Canada (Coalition against Unsolicited Commercial Email)
- Member of the Anti-Spam Task Force for the Canadian Federal Government
- CoFounder of the Email Service Provider’s Coalition

So now Scott has an unhappy well-informed person emailing him 1) that his unsubscribe method is flawed or at the very least unclear to the person using it, and 2) that for the 3rd time they’d like his company to remove a name from their list

What does Scott do next? I know you are waiting with bated breath…

Hi

As I said you did download the software. The IP address information all
matches up. I would agree that many you did not know what you were
downloading, but never the less the download occurred and this is how you because a CoffeeCup member.

You can also unsubscribe at any time through http://www.coffeecup.com/email
Scott

What would possess him to use  “As I said..” in a customer service email. Is this guy well? How many times would one of your prospects have to ask to be removed from a list before you’d do it for them? And signing someone up as a member does not give you permission to send them emails.

I confess at this point, I am no longer hoping he’ll do the right thing and restore my faith in him. I may have been a bit terse in my next email to him.

Did you even read my email?

I clicked your unsubscribe button. I want you to confirm
that  (email address spelled out) is not in your database any
longer – Today please or I will be obliged to report your company to
the many black list spam sites in my database

Lynda

At this point he does write back confirming I have been removed from his list and because my mother raised me to be polite and I am a little ashamed of my last outburst, I send the following

Thank you – after 5 requests we are finally where I wanted to be before I ever heard of your company.

I strongly suggest you change your practices – they are going to come back to bite you, especially if I ever get another unwanted email from you.

I figured we were done right? He finally did the right thing and removed me from his list. But no, a few minutes later I get the coup de grace.

I would also suggest you contact LP (the hosting company they are partnered with) because we show clearly that your account accessed and downloaded our software. You should have them cancel your account or you will still receive e-mail from us.

Scott

So I need to cancel my hosting account to avoid being spammed by a third party software vendor?  What can I possibly say at this point, except dear readers, the importance of following best practices (or even common sense) when sending emails to your prospects and customers. If not, it could be your company in a blog posting.

Such a little thing, such a big negative impact.

The survey is done, and I find myself unable to push the GO button because I am afraid.  There, I said it.  I AM AFRAID.

I am afraid that nobody will complete the survey
I am afraid that nobody will retweet my posts
I am afraid that I’ll annoy my followers if I talk about it
I am afraid that my voice is so very tiny that nobody will even hear it, and that will hurt

Where did this fear come from?  Since when did I become too polite and too timid to “Just Do It”.  I think it must have something to do with using a personal brand instead of a corporate brand. It’s MY NAME on this project.  If it fails, it’s all on me.  It’s like that feeling when you throw a party and for 30 minutes before people show up you are convinced nobody will.

Or is this a Canadian thing?  Too polite and too timid to “Just Do It”?  Is that why Nike is not a Canadian company? But I digress.

Now don’t get me wrong, I also truly believe that far too many people (especially marketers) jump into things prematurely – throwing up a website without thinking through who the target audience is and what they want to do on it, opening a twitter account and only tweeting about themselves, writing press releases in 20 minutes that are so full of Blah, Blah Blah text that you couldn’t pay a reader to understand what they’re saying.  The real challenge is finding that perfect balance of Preparation and Planning vs Doing It without thinking.

I know I am too far on one side of that continuum.  I have been sitting on this project, coming up with reasons why I should delay – It’s the 4th of July, Summer is a slow time, It’s raining, I have a headache – you get the idea.  Then I watched Danny Brown run a live 24 hour Tweetathon to raise money for charity. Now that took guts. He had no idea if anyone would show up and 24 hours is a lot of dead air to fill if they didn’t.  But he did it, he pushed the GO button. I actually have no idea how successful he was but I think that’s my entire point.  I have no idea how successful his event was but I am left admiring him for not being afraid, for believing in what he does, for going out and asking people to participate, for Just Doing It.

I  have never met Danny except on Twitter,  but he was my inspiration, the one thing that got me over my fear of failing, the person who virtually put his hand over mind and helped me push that Go button.

There – I’ve done it.

Now we’ll see what happens but for better or for worse, I am no longer afraid.

I hope you’ll join in and take the survey.   This survey is for us, the curious people who use social media.  It will tell us more about us, who are we, what we have in common.  It’s a not-for-profit project, all the results will be shared with anyone who asks and all the questions were contributed by folks like you and me.  Instead of a prize, I have also decided to donate $1 for every completed survey to Danny Brown’s 12for12K charity of the month, so why not do some good – for you and for others.

1. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get a blog going”. You ask who is going to blog about what. They say “Nobody has time but we can just summarize or talk about other people’s blog posts”.

2. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get on Twitter”  You say OK, what will we tweet?”  They say “Our press releases and product info of course, what else would we tweet?”

3. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get on Twitter” You say OK, who will tweet?”  They say “Everyone in the company, but we’ll need legal to approve each tweet first.”

4. Your CEO or client says “We need to get everyone talking to each other” You say OK, what do you have in mind? They say “We just sent out a link to < latest corporate social media platform >, that ought to do it.”

5. Your CEO or client says “Let’s get on Twitter” You say “OK, are our customers and partners on twitter?”  They say “Why does that matter, we just need to say we use social media”.

Here are 5 questions to ask when they say they need to get some of that social media stuff going.

1. What part of our corporate strategy does this contribute to? This is the key question, ask it first and don’t go any further till you agree on the answer.

2. Who is the intended audience? Are the people we want to reach (customers/prospects/partners/influencers) using it?  If they aren’t, who do you think will hear and engage with us?

3. What do we want to accomplish with our use of social media? Is it to nurture leads, provide support, do market research?  Knowing this is critical.

4. Are you prepared to invest in this program for the long haul?  Social media is not free, just like real life relationships they need ongoing nurturing and engagement from the company.

5. How will we know that our programs have been successful? Spend the most time on this question – be sure everyone agrees before you start.

The answers to these questions will tell you 1) if you should be using social media, 2) if you are ready to use social media, and it will start you down the path to deciding what form of social media makes sense to you.

The bottom line is that social media, like all marketing programs needs a plan, a budget, and an ROI. It is not just something you just start “doing”.  We know it, now we just need to share this knowledge before too many companies waste more time and money.

Twitter pros, this article is not for you but feel free to forward it to all the newbies you know.

Twitter newbies, come on in – the water’s great!

As you join the revolution, you will most likely experience these 4 stages. Fear not, you’ll get through them quickly and hopefully painlessly.

Stage 1 – Feeling Lonely

After I opened my Twitter account I sat there and looked at the page for awhile. I sent my first tweet, which I am 100% sure is pretty much the same first tweet as the majority of first timers. It was something like “trying out this twitter thing” or “hello out there”. Nothing came back. I am not sure if I was expecting anything but I do so long for instant gratification, so after about 30 seconds, I tweeted again. Carefully answering the question “What are you doing right now?”, I said something totally inane, like “eating a peanut butter sandwich”. Nothing came back. I decided to be bold and tweeted “This twitter thing sucks”. Nothing came back. Twitter was clearly over-rated as a connecting, friend-making, info-sharing tool. I left, feeling unloved – didn’t come back for months.

Stage 2 – Finding the patience to Listen

You don’t have to talk to enjoy Twitter – a recent study says 90% of people just listen. But to listen you need to find people to follow. There are two ways to do this – find lots of people fast (and you’ll eventually spend lots of time unfollowing them later), or find fewer of the right kinds of people more slowly. Both methods work, and the bottom line is that you need to follow people to hear anything.

So at the very least, here is what I recommend to get started:

• First pretend you have lots of followers already and tweet a few things, what you are working on, a link to an interesting article, something interesting you saw or heard – this is important as people you follow may look at your recent tweets to make sure you are legit and interesting before they decide to follow you back.
• Then consider any or all of these tactics:
• Go to www.wefollow.com to get some ideas on who to follow
• Use the Find People feature at www.twitter.com to follow your favorite celebrity, chances are they are on Twitter
• Follow your friends, and the thought leaders are in your space, the ones whose articles you read, whose blogs you follow
• Follow local twitter users – try www.twellow.com/twellowhood or www.nearbytweets.com for local
• Follow your favourite brand – like @starbucks, @sears
• Follow your favourite news outlet – like @cnnbrk or @theonion
• Do a search at search.twitter.com for a subject you are interested in, like marathon if you are interested in running, then check out the people who are tweeting about running and follow the ones you find interesting. You can also try www.twollow.com for ideas.
• Follow @guykawasaki – many call him annoying but he does tweet about a wide range of often interesting things. You won’t be bored.
• Let Twitter give you some ideas http://twitter.com/invitations/suggestions
• Use www.MrTweet.com for ideas. I’ve heard that he’s slow but gives good ideas. He took 28 days and came back with nothing when I tried it.
• Follow me – @lpartner.  Chances are I will follow you back and I’ll certainly respond if you mention me in your tweets.

Now you’ll have all kinds of tweets coming in, and best of all, a lot of these people will automatically follow you if you follow them. That’s important if you ever want to talk and be heard.

Stage 3 – Getting a response back – the hardest stage

To get a response, you need to be heard. To be heard you need people to follow you. While some people set up their accounts to automatically follow anyone who follows them, others are more discerning. Once they hear about you, they’ll go to your page and check you out. They’ll read your bio (very important that you complete this carefully with words that both reflect you and might interest others – use all the space available!), and they’ll look at your last few posts. They are trying to figure out if you are interesting and genuine and if you’ll add to their twitter experience. Do the same in reverse. When someone follows you, check them out and if they look interesting, follow them back. Don’t worry about following too many interesting people, when you get to Stage 4 you’ll know how to manage thousands of follows.

Now is definitely the time to start tweeting. In my humble opinion a good mix of tweet types is often the most appealing:

• Show your personality – if you just ran your first marathon, tell everyone, they’ll be happy for you. Others searching on keywords like “marathon”, or “running” will see your post, check you out and start following you.
• Add value to the community – If you just read an interesting article on-line, tweet a comment and a link to it so others can enjoy it as well. People checking you out will be looking to see if you bring value.
• Pass it on – Re-tweet (RT) other people’s interesting tweets. RT is like forwarding an email to your group of followers. People love to see their tweets forwarded on – think the feeling you get when someone hands you a small gift. Most people track retweets and most will follow anyone who retweets their posts.
• Reply to tweets to show that you are interested in engaging – be genuine. People who check you out will want to see that you are engaged and not just passive.
• Don’t pitch your product or services, at least not very often.
• Don’t say anything you wouldn’t shout out in public to a group of strangers.

This is the longest stage. Be patient. Keep going, don’t stop, be consistent. Enjoy others’ tweets and add your own over time. Celebrate the times that someone retweets or replies to your tweets.

Stage 4 – Build out and enjoy your experience

Now you’re following a lot of people and chances are you’re worried about missing replies or tweets from the people you enjoy the most.

Get organized

• Use a twitter organizer like www.TweetDeck.com or http.Seesmic.Desktop.com so you can easily see your RT’s and replies. It also lets you group selected people so you can focus your limited time on the people you most enjoy.

Keep following people –

• Check out who your friends are following and follow them too.
• Look at who your favourite followers are talking to in their tweets and check these people out. If your faves like them, you might too.
• Follow those who follow you whenever possible. A recent tweet from @stephanie2c – “Twitter Term of the Day: Twitterphoria – The elation you feel when the person you’ve added as a friend adds you back.”
• Look for #followfriday referrals from people you enjoy
• Use a tool like www.topify.com, which will send you by email enough information on everyone new who follows you that you can decide on the spot if you want to follow them back. If you do, it’s as easy as replying to the email

Take your twitter experience up a notch

• Enrich your sharing experience with photos using www.twitpic.com
• Organize a tweet up and meet your twitter friends in person
• Track your twitter grade on twitter.grader.com or your rating on mrtweet.com

And with all of this, it’s just the beginning of a journey to finding friends, getting feedback and ideas, learning, generating new business, getting your ideas heard and much more. We’re all learning as we go, some of us just have a few months head start.

Oh yah, and why not follow me at @lpartner!

1. CRM - contact and lead tracking, sales and contact management, sales pipeline management and forecasting, customer service and business management. Keep yourself organized! Free version available from www.freecrm.com, from $7/mo at www.sugarcrm.com
2. Market Research – Google Alerts is a “must-have” clipping service. Set up your favorite key words and www.google.com/alerts finds and delivers articles about any subject of your choosing to your inbox every day. Watch for news and mentions of your own company, your customers and your competitors. Free
3. Creative Design – Want a design for a new logo, brochure, website or business card? Go to either www.crowdspring.com, or www.99designs.com, upload your requirements, run a contest and pick your favourite. You pick the purse size, I’ve seen contests get dozens of great results for only a few hundred dollars.
4. Marketing Collateral – Want fast eay printing?  Upload files for brochures, business cards and stationary. These companies, www.overnightprints.com and  www.vistaprint.com, will  print and ship – too easy.  vistaprint.com is also available in Canada at www.vistaprint.ca
5. Permission-based Marketing – create and send opt-in newsletters, deliver and track blog posts and updates to customers, prospects and colleagues. www.campaigner.com starts at $10/mo, www.constantcontact.com starts at $15/mo
6. Accounting – track your time and expenses, manage contractors, send and manage your invoices, totally on-line, getting rave reviews. Join the wave at www.freshbooks.com, pricing starts at $15/mo
7. Conference Calling – when you need to convene a meeting (and look professional doing it), you can get free reservationless conference calling at www.freeconference.com
8. Remote PC Access – for those times when you need to get to a file on your computer but your computer is in your office and you’re not. www.gotomypc.com starts at $20/mo
9. Long Distance Calling – www.skype.com offers free or very low cost long distance calling (works best with headphones), and it can also do conference calls
10. Project Management – web-based project management software that marries time tracking and task management in a collaborative online space with powerful reporting.  www.myintervals.com is $20 for up to 15 projects
11. Taking orders/selling stuff – the dead easy way to accept credit cards on your website, www.paypal.com only charges you when you sell, a transaction fee up to 3% of sale value
12. Keeping track of it all – make notes on anything on the web or on your computer using www.evernote.com and have these memory joggers available (and searchable) at any time – free
13. Sending really big files – www.yousendit.com – for when you need to send a really big file that your customer may not be able to receive otherwise, or when you absolutely need to know a file reached it’s intended recipient – yousendit has a pay as you go option or plans from $10/mo
14. Virtual Fax – if you deal with Fortune 1000 companies you know how they love their faxes. www.efax.com lets you receive faxes in your email account instead of on a fax machine – way more convenient. You can also send scanned docs as faxes using the same service. Starts at $17/mo
15. On-line Meetings – www.dimdim.com makes your meeting almost as good as in-person and much less expensive than airfare. Use it to deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards and web pages and share their voice and video over the Internet. Free and $20/mo options
16. Virtual Receptionist – an Internet voicemail system accessible by phone, email, or the web. an auto-attendant that acts as your virtual receptionist. You can create virtual mailboxes for your employees and enjoy voicemail call forwarding, call transfers, call routing, voicemail notifications, and much more…. www.my1voice.com from $10/mo
17. Transcription – For those people who just hate to type but love to talk, you can record your messaging, upload it to www.speakwrite.com and receive a typed doc back via email in about 3 hours.
18. Sharing your thoughts – absolutely the best way to publish your powerpoint presentations on the web and share them with others – www.slideshare.com is free
19. Document sharing and collaboration – my personal favorite, docs.google.com allows you to upload word or excel files and work on them collaboratively with selected people. Takes all the hassle out of emailing docs around for comments. – free
20. Running an event? Use www.eventbrite.com to create a webpage for your event, accept and manage registrations and even publish who has RSVP’d. Free if your event is free, 2.5% of ticket price for paid events.

Over 60 people from the Marketing Executives Networking Group MENG and my great group of Twitter friends contributed to this list and once we were done there were at least 2 services I hadn’t heard of (but have since tried and enjoyed). How about you? Which ones are new to you? Which ones do you love? Which ones are we missing? If I get enough comments, I’ll do a Part II.

I like examples, especially simple ones that you get right away. My simple mind perhaps? Whatever the reason, because I have been researching successful B2B uses of Twitter lately I thought I would share this example of how Twitter helped at least one company make a sale.

It all started with a tweet (once upon a tweet?) from someone I follow.

I hadn’t heard of crowdSPRING so I checked them out. Now it turns out that I was a few days away from using their competitor 99Designs (who by the way I had used before with great results), but hey, if my colleague who I respect was using Crowdspring, perhaps they were better yet?

So I replied to him

And here is where it gets interesting. I did not hear back from him but within 5 minutes I got tweets from both 99designs and crowdSPRING, literally seconds apart.

Clearly they had staff running an ongoing search for any mention of their company, and both took the opportunity to try to influence my buying decision – good on them!

Takeaway #1 – every company should be using Twitter to search for opportunities to react to people who are shouting out that they are interested in their products.

It’s also interesting that while my tweet clearly referenced 99designs, I shortened crowdSPRING to cspring, which means they were searching, not just for their company name but for at least one variation of it – really smart.

Takeaway #2 – search not just for your exact company name but for variations on it, especially abbreviations.

Lastly, as I read their tweets it also occurred to me that a new skill is required from salespeople – pitch your product in no more than 140 characters, but more on that in a future post.

Both companies reacted quickly and well and I did end up buying a service from one of them, you gotta believe the ROI on that tweet was huge! You don’t need many people like me to justify using Twitter, at least for this purpose. By the way, I am curious – which one would you have picked based on the tweets from the companies?

The perfect event marketing ROI presentation shows how profits realized from product or service sales as a direct result of an event-based marketing program exceed the cost of the program. It’s actually a simple formula, but there are some challenges. To explain, here’s a story to show why calculating event ROI is more like dating than hooking up and its all about getting more than one touch to be successful.

In a perfect event marketing world, a consumer attends an event where he or she learns for the first time about a product or service and makes a purchase right on the spot. The profits realized from sales exceed the cost of the event by a comfortable margin and it is clear to you the event was key to making the sale.

If you are thinking, “As if,” well, you’re not alone.

Part 1: Joe works the crowd

Think of your brand as a potential mate. Let’s call him Joe. Now imagine someone walks into a party, meets Joe for the first time, finds him really attractive, chats for a couple of minutes, and then when Joe asks her out, he gets a resounding and immediate, “Yes!” Sure, there may be some people, just as there are some brands, who enjoy this kind of success. But most do not.

Most purchase decisions, like relationships between people, are complex and require time and nurturing. The journey from awareness to purchase is often on a long and winding road.

A more realistic scenario at our party unfolds like this: Joe is a nice guy with lots to offer. He hasn’t had a serious relationship for awhile and is determined to meet someone. He goes to a party with the intention of finding as many interesting women as possible. He moves around the room, striking up conversations with several women. He takes the time to ask each a few questions to determine their likes (demographics), their interests (is she a qualified buyer?), why they’ve never met before (is she aware of your product?), who they know in common (what other complimentary products does she buy?), and who she has dated recently (what’s the competition?)

Joe discovers quickly that most of the women at the party have never heard of him and while most are interested in the same things that he is, they don’t like his jokes.

CONSUMER KNOWLEDGE IS A CRITICAL INGREDIENT FOR ROI. Once Joe connects with the fact that the women don’t like his jokes, he fine-tunes his conversation and behaviour and notices that the remaining women he converses with are more interested in him.
You will never reach the “buy” stage if you don’t interest people at the “hi” stage. The sooner you receive feedback on your approach, the faster you can work on securing the next relationship or re-establishing connections with others.

Part 2: Joe gets the girl’s phone number

PERMISSION IS CRITICAL TO AN ONGOING RELATIONSHIP. Joe is aware he doesn’t have a lot of time to get to know the women in the room. He works hard to interest as many women as possible with his story telling. Then he politely asks if they’d like to hear how the story ends. Most are interested and give him their phone number or e-mail address.

Joe knows that finding his soul mate is not going to happen instantaneously, so he wisely tells each woman at the party only part of his story (a bit of value) and then offers to end the tale at a later date (follow up with more value). He measures his success that night by how many women were interested enough to want to meet him again and to continue the conversation. The measure of his success at the party is based on the number of phone numbers and e-mail addresses he collects. He knows if he calls them all, at least some of them will want to see him again.

How does this translate in the real world? Always include an opt-in option for participants who want to continue the consumer relationship. Count these opt-ins as part of your ROI calculation.

Part 3: Joe gets the girls

DON’T DROP THE BALL ONCE YOU’VE BEEN INVITED TO PLAY. Joe doesn’t rest on his laurels after the party. He knows his chances of success are greater if he acts quickly to follow up. The very next day, he contacts all the women who expressed an interest in hearing from him. He carefully tailors his message to the level of interest of each woman: a softer message for those who were not ready to jump back into dating, a stronger offer for those who were clearly ready for something new. Luckily for Joe, he has an incredible memory. Each message referenced something he had learned about each of the women and included an offer geared to their interests and timing preferences. Joe invited those who were the most interested to dinner.

How does this translate in the real world? Continue the relationship beyond your event. Send an e-mail or text message to thank participants for coming. Customize the message according to what they’ve told you in the survey. Offer the most qualified a special incentive. Measure how many of them stay connected to you – another part of an ROI calculation.

CROSS THE FINISH LINE. Joe is thick in the middle of the dating scene now. His relationships with the many women in his life are at various stages of seriousness. He still hasn’t “sold” anything. For Joe, that will happen when he finds his soul mate.

This is where our ROI analogy starts to fall apart, as polygamy is frowned upon!
How does this translate in the real world? In the case of event marketing, your final ROI comes when you can track people from the time they attend your event to the time of purchase and, even better, when they repeat purchase. Your ROI is then:
“The total profit associated with the products purchased by the attendees of your event minus the cost of the event, divided by the profit.”

The bottom line is to imagine yourself as a “Joe,” to connect with as many people as possible, and to ask them permission to continue a relationship. Carefully nurture that relationship, by offering meaningful, timely followup communications, and follow through to sales numbers for each of the visitors at the event.