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(This scares the heck out of me)
When social networking fledgling giant Twitter began to pick up speed and gain popularity last year, all I heard from clients was, “I don’t want to get on it because I couldn’t care less when someone goes to the store, sees a good program on t.v. or is sitting on their porch doing nothing.
I couldn’t agree more.
But then we all started hearing how staggeringly useful it was when a hotel was bombed by terrorists in Southeast Asia – the “tweeters” getting the story out to the world before the media could comprehend what had happened. Again, when unrest hit Iran and their government imposed a media blackout, Twitter was asked by the U.S. government to delay their maintenance cycle so that the flow of information from that beleaguered country was not impeded. I myself used Twitter to warn locals of a water main break and to avoid that area like the plague and recently to warn my clients of the health warning of a salmonella outbreak in eggs across the United States.
What does all this tell us?
That Twitter is a force for either good or evil, depending on who you follow in your network.
It is easy to blame the other guy for their tweets, but since we cannot control the actions of others, doesn’t it make more sense to take the responsibility of harnessing Twitter’s power for good and choose who we follow more carefully? Take a few seconds when considering whether to follow someone or not and do a quick scan of their last few tweets…are they garbage or are they useful, inspiring, uplifting and motivational information? Choosing to association with people that tweet with care will also reflect better of our character to others who choose to follow us. No one with a busy networking schedule wants to follow someone who follows gossipers and time-wasters, or worse, someone who constantly swears…if you really need to follow people like that, get a private Twitter account and follow such people anonymously. You will find it will make life a lot easier.
Follow me at: http://twitter.com/civicsitedesign . If you tweet responsibly, I will gladly follow you back.
When posting to forums, learn which symbols mean a topic is “hot”, i.e. one that is viewed and commented on A LOT. It might be a picture of a piece of paper on fire, or even the word “HOT” to the left of the title of the post. Commenting on these topics will get your posts seen more often than posting anywhere else in that forum.
Another tip…some forums (like one I discovered tonight), actually tell you how many people are viewing that topic RIGHT NOW. Go there – post, comment, participate. That will get you noticed.
Come back and tell us how that worked for you. We want to know!
First off, you might be asking some serious questions like these:
1. What are online newsletters, or eNewsletters as they are commonly called?
2. How are they done and what is their purpose?
3. How do they get me more customers, leads and/or sales?
4. Why should I go with a hosting company for the email lists I will be sending them to?
Let’s address these questions before going further. I promise you these answers will be quick.
1. What are online newsletters, or eNewsletters as they are commonly called?
Remember that newsletter your school class used to put out?
Ever see a newsletter sitting among the magazines at your doctor’s office? One that praises their hard work and shows off their knowledge in their field of specialty?
Or, did you get a flyer in your grocery bag that had tips on how to cook for the upcoming holiday and what was on sale right now at your local grocery store? (Gelsons supermarkets chain puts out a very nice flyer/newsletter, by the way. Check it out for a great example.)
These are all examples of newsletters. An “online” newsletter, or eNewsletter as we are going to call them from now on, is simply a newsletter that is available to view through email or by browsing the internet.
2. How are they (eNewsletters) done and what is their purpose?
eNewsletters are done two ways: either through a web page editor such as Adobe DreamWeaver, or through a program which, for the purpose of this discussion, is one that is hosted by an internet company such as Net Atlantic or Constant Contact.
Their purpose is simple: you use them to advertise your business and to keep in touch with your current customers.
3. How do they get me more customers, leads and/or sales?
Once your business starts taking off, a large percentage of your sales will be in return customers. You can use an eNewsletter to remind them of who you are so they keep you in mind the next time they go shopping, or need to use the type of services you offer. Customers will read your eNewsletter and if you have written it well, they will be impressed by your knowledge or drawn in by any images you have inserted of your merchandise. Leads will naturally follow if your readers know of someone who can use your product/service because people love to forward emails and if you have sent your eNewsletter via email, it could very well reach many more people than just your target customer!
4. Why should I go with a hosting company for the email lists I will be sending them to?
Heh, well, if you are new to this, the answer is simple…because you don’t know what you are doing at first (let’s be honest about this!). Veterans that have sent eNewsletters before will also know it streamlines the process of creating them. Using a hosting company’s tracking reports to see if customers are even opening them and/or forwarding them to friends is also an important way to see if this whole eNewsletter business is really for you, or is just a waste of your time. These reports are helpful and vital. You NEED someone else to do this work for you – a company that is an expert in tracking email blasts and campaigns. Honestly, you are in business to sell jewelry/create websites/sell real estate…why would you take more time away from that than you need to by doing this the hard way? You don’t, so do it the easy way and let someone else handle the tasks you can’t while you are learning the ropes on how to do all this!
So that’s it…eNewsletters. What they are, why you need them, how they work. If this is enough information to get you interested in their potential usefulness to your business, then see our review on two companies that handle eNewsletters distribution in the world of the Internet – Net Atlantic and Constant Contact.
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I did a cost analysis for a client last year when they were shopping around for newsletter hosting sites. They had heard about Constant Contact and currently had Net Atlantic and asked me to do a comparison. Here are the results of that analysis:
Pricing (the thing everyone wants to know first) -
1. An option to build your own templates and include surveys with a “survey wizard” are already included in the price for Net Atlantic, BUT there is an additional charge for the survery option with Constant Contact.
2. With Constant Contact, pricing runs cheaper at smaller numbers of subscribers, but becomes more expensive the higher the subscriber base. For example, at 1,000 subscribers, Constant Contact is less expensive than Net Atlantic’s. This does not even include the additional price for surveys and use of more than 5 images at a time.
3. Hidden Cost – also with Constant Contact, “Image Management & Hosting” has a hidden cost. The customer is limited to 5 images at a time per their “standard image hosting and management” package. Adding more is an extra $5/month and is limited to 25mb of storage. This fee was not immediately apparent. I stumbled across it in my indepth research of the website. (http://www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing/email-campaign-creation/manage-images.jsp)
Ease of Use -
1. Constant Contact appears to be a program that anyone can use – both online newsletter editors looking for an easy, quick alternative, and professionals that do not know/work with html code.
Template Limitations -
One drawback to Constant Contact is that as an easier, quicker alternative, it also means that the choices are more limited. There is also a question of whether the images in their templates can be left off the design completely. This was not answered on the website.
Free Trial Limitation -
In Constant Contact, the “free trial” is limited to accounts with lists under 100 contacts. They say that if “your list exceeds 100 contacts at any time during your trial, you will be prompted to upgrade to a paying account”. (http://www.constantcontact.com/pricing/index.jsp)
Constant Contact’s Pros -
1. Preview and tests of an email campaign can be conducted.
2. Campaigns can be scheduled.
3. Selection of one contact, many or multiple contacts or contact lists.
4. Names can be imported from a spreadsheet or Microsoft Outlook.
**All of these pro points already exist with Net Atlantic’s “Discussion Group Email List Hosting” account level.**
Constant Contact’s Cons -
1. The “free trial” is limited to accounts with lists under 100 contacts (see under “Free Trial” topic).
A further analysis of the breakdown of Constant Contact’s available templates:
“SpeakUp email marketing product” -
1. Email Newsletters (http://www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing/html-email-templates/email-newsletter.jsp) -
As in the case with the “Business Newsletter” template (http://www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing/html-email-templates/email-newsletter.jsp), there are choices for two top images which they call the “Left Column Image Block” and the “Right Column Image Block” but it does not say if these images can be left out or not. Would we be stuck with them even if we didn’t like them?
2. Email Promotions (http://www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing/html-email-templates/email-promotion.jsp) – is geared more towards retail with their ability to insert Paypal Buy Now links, promotions and coupons. All of these items can be inserted into enewsletters created with Net Atlantic, but not as quickly and the code needs to be written for them first. Once an item is created for either your Net Atlantic account or for Constant Contact, however, it remains available to use in the future.
3. Email Cards (http://www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing/html-email-templates/email-card.jsp) – has an ability to add any background image in the users library. Coupons can also be used.
4. Email Event Invitations (http://www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing/html-email-templates/email-event-invitation.jsp). Again the question arises if the images can be left off and this question could really be applied to any of the above four products.
5. Association and Nonprofit Templates – (http://www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing/html-email-templates/association.jsp) – another choice for templates not in their menu. I found it in the non-guided tour of their products. If, during the 60-day trial period, one can find a good or perfect combination of graphics, color schemes and choices for their needs from what is available, then Constant Contact will serve the purpose nicely. If, however, Constant Contact cannot meet a new or unexpected future need by their clients, if they have not upgraded their system to allow more choices and/or the uploading of the users preferences, then they will not do.
A helpful tip – you learn a lot by reading some of the comments in a company’s forums and message boards.
http://community.constantcontact.com/forum
Let us know if you agree/disagree or have any additional comments or experiences with either company, especially with Net Atlantic.
Thank you for reading!
The WebMistress
I did a review of evite.com for a local networking group I co-run. We use evite invitations every week and I thought it would be neat if everyone knew how useful it can be. I like to use it in addition to my Outlook Business Contact Manager. When I have customers I need to follow up with in my networking group, it’s faster to look up the information in evite and not sift through the 269 leads and clients I have in my Outlook program. When I update my notes in evite, it’s just a simple copy & past over to the Outlook BCM program to put in the important stuff to keep track of. The social details I keep separate in evite so as not to clutter up BCM, which unfortunately, has a word limit on notes entered in the notepad files it keeps linked to the contacts.
I hope you find this information useful…please leave a comment if you do.
Kristine
evite perks:
1. evite is free
2. Has an address book function.
A. Addresses can be imported from AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, MSN Messenger, Outlook or “other” program.
B. By clicking on the “Name”, you can add typical address fields such as your contact’s, name, email address, phone #, street address, birthday, add them to a “group” and add notes.
C. When clicking on the “Email Address” field, evite will take you to your default email program and set up the name in a new email ready to send out.
D. If there is information in the “Info” field, when clicked on, you can view their personal stats such as as a photo they upload, their age, birthday, location, interests, favorite party drink, favorite party song AND what “shared” upcoming events you are both invited to, and events they have been to in the past that you have invited them to.
3. Has premade invitation designs AND an ability to make your own designs.
4. Can view up to the last 3 events you created or were invited to.
A. Tells you who said, “yes”, “no”, “maybe”.
B. Copy Invite, email guests, send thank you cards, view all past invites.
C. Photos of events can be added.
5. If you sent the invitation, you can tell who viewed your invitation and on what date. Good information to have to see if your invites are being opened…are they effective?
6. Under the “entertaining” tab, includes party ideas, planning tools such as a drink calculator, budget estimator & party checklist. Budget Estimator keeps track of your estimated costs on drinks, “DECORATIONS, FOOD, ENTERTAINMENT” and has an addable field for CUSTOMIZABLE CATEGORIES.
7. Can add their blog items to “del.icio.us”, “digg.com”, “technorati.com” and “StumbleUpon”.
8. Can send eCards in their designs or personalize one of your own.
9. “evite mobile” allows you to:
A. Send event details you can access the dates and locations of your invitations right on your phone.
B. View your upcoming events, get event details and see who’s coming, send QuickVites to friends and reply to eVites you’ve received.
10. Can add their blog items to “del.icio.us” (http://del.icio.us/), “digg.com” (http://digg.com), “technorati.com” (http://technorati.com) and “StumbleUpon” (http://www.stumbleupon.com).
review © by Civic Site Design – www.civicsitedesign.com
