On Wednesday,March 31, 2010, I enjoyed attending a Constant Contact workshop by Pamela Adams and sponsored by Ladies Who Launch.  I ended up winning the book – yeah for me!  I have already been utilizing Constant Contact as a tool for both Virtual Harvest and other clients.  I would like to share with you some of the best practices and tips that I notated, which will enable me to even more effectively conduct email marketing.

1.    Avoid spamming – There are implied and explicit permissions.  You want to be careful to comply with the laws. Constant Contact helps you to stay in compliance with unsubscribe and removal options.  If a domain categorizes you as spam, your email address can be blocked from even everyday communication.  For instance, AOL could block you from emailing any of their users. For more details about the Can’t Spam Act, go to http://www.FTC.gov/Spam.

2.   Share your knowledge & expertise– Equate emails to magazines as your audience will put up with ads for the exchange of information.  It is helpful to collect content and information throughout the month or in between your distributions.  You may also consider serializing your high interest topics. Be sure to set yourself up as an expert in the industry and share the current trends and resources in your industry. 

3.   Don’t put full articles in your emails– Avoid lengthy articles or link your article to the full article on another site like your blog site or another online location. 

4.   Schedule distributions appropriately– Understand when your recipients will review their emails.  Most businesses experience the best results between Tuesday and Wednesday during the hours of 10am-3pm.  This avoids the start of the week and day rush deletes.  Constant Contact makes it easy to compose the emails in advance at your convenience and customize your schedule.  Do what works and be consistent as they will come to expect and anticipate your email, which is a challenge for me as I get sidetracked with client work.  Along with establishing consistency,determine your frequency.  Monthly is usually best depending on your content, but no less than quarterly.

5.   Short& sweet, but specific “From” & “Subject” lines – Statistics show that 60% of people open emails based upon the “From” line while 30% of people open emails based upon the “Subject” line.  Do your recipients recognize your name or your company name?  What email address do they trust?  You can set your reply address to any email you prefer.  It is best to limit your subject line to 45 characters or less. Get creative.  Customize against spam messages.  Add numbers to increase attention.  Formulate action statements about them.  Focus on benefits rather than just the features.  Avoid the use of the word “FREE” and other emphasis characters as they get caught up in spam filters.

6.   Effectively use the white space –Utilize the white space for calls to action and advertising.  Make sure the banner is not too high.  Do not distribute graphic only emails.  Understand the concept of “before the scroll”as what the reader sees as content to entice to scroll down.  What is the email about for them to further interact and read your email?

7.   Embed video – Perhaps the most valuable tip I learned during the workshop was how to embed video.  The use of YouTube is on the rise and more people are utilizing video to communicate to their customer base.  Link to the location online to avoid the video being stripped from the email and also to track the views.  Capture and save the image.  Download a play button, insert over the image as a watermark, and resave it.  Copy the video address online.  Upload and insert the image to your desired place within the email.  Make the image clickable and paste the link.   Voila! You have embedded a video!

Constant Contact is very user friendly, but if you need help please let me know.  It can be time consuming managing the contacts and arranging the content.  I would also recommend attending one of the workshops by Pamela Adams.

It was a great privilege to attend the Georgia Technology Summit, Wednesday, March 24, 2010. Forty innovative companies in Georgia were showcased and the top ten were featured and given three minutes of special time in between the keynote speakers. The keynote speakers were outstanding:  Tom Koulopoulos, Carlos Dominguez, and Bert Ellis. In addition, an informative update was presented on the State of the Technology Industry in Georgia by Technology Association of Georgia President, Tino Mantella. Lastly, Kenneth Byers of Byers Engineering Company was inducted into the Technology Hall of Fame. While the entire event was exceptional with hundreds in attendance, each of the keynote speakers captivated the audience.

Tom Koulopoulos, President and founder of The Delphi Group, and also a known author, futurist, and leader in the technology industry, centered his speech on building connections. He defined an invention as an idea, while innovation creates value. He also pointed out that technology used to be what we did not grow up with and now it is what we do. Technology has become a behavior used for collaboration. It has become an experience about sharing. One major example he explained was the evolving avatars, specifically he demonstrated the Land’s End Avatar used to tailor and order clothes. In light of the technology evolution and the unpredictability in behaviors, he emphasized that leaders have to learn to adapt to the changing behaviors. Leaders must provide latitude for ...

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As I have been taking the time the past couple of days to read up on some articles and review some training, I have learned about a very effective marketing and networking strategy called joint venture partnerships. Joint venture partners are people who have the same type of customers as you do, but they are not competitors. For example, an effective joint venture for me would not be a virtual assistant that provides the same services as I do. Rather a profitable joint venture for me would be with small business owners, solo entrepreneurs, and independent professionals that provide other services to other small business owners, solo entrepreneurs, and independent professionals.

A healthy joint venture creates complementary services and solutions to their mutual set of clients. As I thought more about this, the largest of companies have joint ventures that feed off each other. For instance, a potato chip company needs sandwich shops to help sell their product. Or restaurants need beverage companies to help their customers enjoy their specialties.

As of today, I have added it to my marketing strategy to further identify, research, network, and market joint venture ideas. I have had one in place with Shari of Smart Solutions as mentioned in a prior article. We just were not thinking in these exact terms. Today my client, who is also an author and speaker, attends various networking functions. ... << MORE >>

When I first started exploring home business opportunities a few years ago, I learned right away to be careful.  There are tons of get-rich-quick schemes out there and scams running rampant out there.  I think the Better Business Bureau and federal authorities have their work cut out for them trying to regulate and control the scam artists.  Most of them are operating outside the country in hard to track areas and move around frequently. 

They are getting more and more creative and clever in their attempts to lure innocent, naïve, and desperate individuals into their money making traps.  Have you gotten these emails claiming you have been a beneficiary to some inheritance or someone in some far off place like Africa needs your help to process some funds?  All you need to do is wire them some processing money?  Uh… yeah… right!  Or you have won the lottery in Europe that you did not even enter to win?  Let’s use some common sense.  Those are easy email requests to immediately delete and do not even entertain.

A little more deceiving is a fabricated company advertising an opening on job boards.  They respond back that you have been selected for a position in so many words to conduct money laundering and check fraud.  They just need you to process payments and checks through a US bank account for faster customer service.  You take a nice percentage for your processing fee.  What’s that saying?  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  This is another illegitimate business to immediately ignore and do not send them any personal information.

Do your research before divulging your personal information.  Get as much information on them as you can.  It is risky applying for jobs online.  Companies want to limit their information just as much to better manage the responses they receive.  Nevertheless, they should be willing to share about themselves and provide you with all the information you want, especially in an interview process.  If they are vague and only interested in your information, then halt the process immediately.  They should also never require any application fees or any tasks that require your credit or debit card information. 

The sophisticated scammers and spammers may also misuse your information to spread viruses and capture information.  Be careful opening up emails, especially with attachments.  It is a wise investment to maintain a good anti-virus program on your computer constantly updating with the latest viruses to protect your computer.

If you get pulled in through their increasingly creative and deceptive practices, you can report them to the proper authorities and file complaints:

·         Federal Trade Commission:  https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

·         Internet Crime Complaint Center:  http://www.ic3.gov

As Craigslist is frequently misused, they have a great resource page to help you understand the types of scams:  http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams. 

Shari Shipman and I first met in an online virtual assistant training course three years ago. We became instant business partners exchanging services. We have yet to meet in person, but we have been able to correspond effectively through instant messaging and conference calls.

She is very creative and I have been completely satisfied with the logo she developed for Virtual Harvest. She was very sensitive to match the design to my expressed thoughts. She has applied her talents to develop images for me that I have been able to utilize in numerous other forms of documents and electronic distributions.

She has been meticulous in thinking through the details as we have worked together in our shared projects. She is an excellent project manager with great interpersonal skills. She is very organized and has worked with me to accomplish my goals.

Shari is very professional and dedicated. I know I will always be able to count on her to assist me in my marketing and promotional needs.  She has written the following testimony about my work:

I have known Carla Still for three years, when we took an online course together in Virtual Assistant Business Management. Even though we have never met face-to-face, a very close business relationship has developed between us.

Carla has an extremely conscientious and professional work ethic. Her ability to find the best solution to solve a problem or make a process work better is a rare gift that she uses without hesitation. This talent has been extremely valuable with the projects we have worked on, primarily, when she assisted with developing my website.

Carla is very knowledgeable about Web site development, internet navigation, and online networking sites and applications. She is not timid about exploring new realms and is always ready to take on a project with a positive attitude and enthusiasm.

It is always a joy to work with Carla. I can rely on her expertise, knowing that she'll put my interests firsthand with any project. She will continue to be an asset to my business and a vital business associate for years to come.

I would like to add a recommendation that you check out her greeting cards at Art Expressions by ShariArt.  She is a talented artist and you can preview her work and portfolio at her Web site (http://www.smartsolutionsreno.com).

Just like cars depreciate in value as soon as you drive them off the lot, so do computers when you take them out of their box – and perhaps much faster.  I have learned it does not pay off to buy brand new computers.  If you take the necessary precautions to protect your computer, you might do well to stretch the life of it 3-4 years.  Alternatively,you can buy refurbished and used computers for half the cost or less and upgrade more frequently at lesser risk levels. Many local computer stores and auction sites offer great deals.  There are several risks that threaten the life of computers.

Lesson 1:  For brand new computers, you risk new technology with bugs that have not been thoroughly tested and patched.  Most brand new computers come with at least a one year warranty with the option to purchase an extended warranty.  I would recommend purchasing the extended warranty to ensure the longevity of the computer.  I had a computer fan go out and fried my hard drive on a brand new computer just shy of 2 years old.  I had settled for the warranty coverage of only one year.  Another solution to this problem, especially for laptops, is to purchase padding to rest your computer and provide air circulation.

Lesson 2:  For all computers, it is vitally important to protect your computer with the appropriate and updated anti-virus protection.  New viruses form and circulate on the internet daily.  There are a number of programs out there to choose from with varying degrees of cost for varying degrees of security levels.  Do not open up emails and attachments from strangers and email addresses you do not recognize or with subjects that do not match and are out of character for the sender. It is also important that you have the appropriate security levels set on your computer to prevent hackers from monitoring your keystrokes and logging into your computer remotely.  Hackers can access sensitive information from the other side of the world.

Lesson 3:  Do not leave drinks out open and food unattended near your computer.  A laptop is more at risk than a desktop.  Eat then work.  Do not try to eat and work simultaneously.  Costly accidents happen.  The drink spills over onto the keyboard leaking through to the motherboard creating irreversible damage.  If you have cats that jump around and play, keep the computer well protected from their harm.

Lesson 4:  Backup, backup,backup.  Regularly perform backups ofyour computer onto an external drive like a thumb drive, a CD, and/or anotheronline based system.  Keep all software uploaded listed and CD restoration disks readily available for easy computer restoration.  I rarely use my computer as the sole source for storage of client files. Aside from the fact that it is hard for clients to mutually access the files, I cannot guarantee my computer will not crash or go down for one reason or another.

Lesson 5:  In the event the computer does crash, have an extra computer on hand to utilize.  Either maintain a second computer for use or familiarize yourself with the computers at the local public library.  It is more convenient to maintain a second computer, but less costly to go to the local public library.

The larger your household and company may be, the greater your need for security and the greater your requirements may be for contingency plans. In the area of computers and technology, it is much better to be safe than sorry.  Our dependency and use of computers is growing.

Other Recent and Related Articles:

• How to Fix A Computer Crash by Lisa Nobles
• TroubleshootingWindows Errors:  Computer Crashes by WindowsSupport.org
• How to Save Yourself Before Your Computer Crashes by Alexia Petrakos
• These Services Make Backing Up Your Files Safe and Inexpensiveby Walter S. Mossberg

A remarkable specialization has naturally evolved in our business services.  A common thread in my work with clients this past year has been developing Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).  This skill began while I was working with the federal government.  There was a need to have all the specific procedures and processes in writing.

Why is it so important to have a developed SOP?  What if the time came for me to move on to another opportunity and into another position?  All the other secretaries, executive assistants, and I working with the federal government understood the importance of coverage and supporting each other.  What if one of us had a medical or family emergency?  How would we know how to fill in and properly provide the assistance to the staff they supported?  Of course, in general, we answer the telephones, arrange conference calls, set up travel, serve as timekeepers, provide the necessary assistance with training, sort mail, and other administrative duties.  However, what is often misunderstood is the fact that each office has a different personality and set of preferences.

While a generic SOP of contacts and general procedures can be copied, it must be properly detailed and tailored to the needs of each specific office environment and supported staff.  What are the travel preferences?  What are the routine ...<< MORE >>