Carol Abrahamson, a new reader and owner of ExtraordinaryHomes.com, recently wrote in to Michael Katz to ask him some questions about the e-newsletter she’s developing. Their conversation reveals both Carol’s unique and vivacious approach to marketing, as well as Michael’s understanding of e-newsletters.
If you have questions for Michael, visit his expert page.
Carol:
I am a new site owner (www.extraordinaryhomes.com), and get tons of national press about my expertise (Atlanta Journal Constitution, Akron Beacon-Journal, El Paso Times, San Jose Mercury, among many others in the last several weeks). I’m also a few weeks away from trying to self-syndicate a newspaper column. The articles (and I hope the column, too!) drive people to the website, where I get to tell them about my current consulting services as well as my upcoming PDF reports (coming in 2-3 weeks), newsletter (coming this summer) and book (coming in 2005).
Michael:
Thanks for your email! Overall, you’ve given this a lot more thought than most people who are up and running, so my congratulations on creating such a well thought out process. You are doing many, many things right (keeping prospects warm, paying close attention to what they want to hear about, collecting data on who they are and where they came from.).
Carol:
Many visitors use our Contact Us form to tell me which of my projects they’re interested in (almost all of them want the newsletter plus info about at least one other item). As they submit from the Contact Us page, I immediately send a welcome email responding to whatever their interest area is, while also mentioning in passing my revenue generating services and their value proposition. (I can supply my standard welcome letter modules if you like. Half the time I add a sentence or two to respond to something specific the visitor has told me.) I am not asking them to confirm their opt-ins, since most are asking for other info as well, and are telling me a lot about themselves (see below). I also mention their unsubscribe option at the top of every email, just in case someone gets on the list who does not want to be, so that is another reason I am not confirming opt-ins after they first submit.
As an aside, it might also help to know 84% of them have given me their full postal and tele info plus answered my eight Contact Us form questions about their next remodeling or building project — I never expected so many to give me so much info about themselves at the start of our relationship! I use FileMaker Pro to create a record for each person I hear from and to capture all I know about them as well as everything I send them or that they buy over time (I can send that record format to you if you like). From their inbound dates and their physical locations, I also can often guess which story about me they read, and that goes in their record too. I never know when I might get to talk in person to any of these people, if they should ever call me or if I ever present a seminar in their town, and I want all their info available at a glance! I also want to be able to research trends and find patterns after I have over 1,000 of them on file.
Michael:
Carol:
While they are waiting for the newsletter to start this summer, I am currently sending monthly emails that offer them more of the content that caught their eye in whatever initial article they read about me. To “keep ’em warm,” and to open the communication channel so I can remind them of my consulting and reports regularly. (These emails are also helping me get in the habit of trolling for content my readers might love to see, which must become second nature to me if I am to be a successful newsletter publisher.) The second of these was sent last week, five weeks after the first one was sent to those who were on the list at the time.
I plan the newsletter as a quarterly that will be archived on the site, with interim, near-monthly, informal-in-tone emails (like what I am sending to them now) to the same list, that will include content I would not be inclined to archive on the website and that also will include soft-selling in the form of updates about how my business is developing. (To have the formal newsletter be a qtly affords me some flexibility if I get too swamped with other work to get a full monthly issue out regularly. This also means I will have two vehicles with somewhat different tones and voices, to insert content into, as is appropriate — instead of just the one I would have if my official newsletter were a monthly.)
The opt-in list currently has about 100 names, and their addsses are NOT identified on the emails I send. That list is called “Extraordinary Homes E-newsletter Subscribers” on what each person receives. I have not been able to figure out how to configure my email’s “From” line to do anything other than have my name and carol@extraordinaryhomes.com addss (same as what you see above on this email). (If you know how I would do that on Mac OS9 using Outlook Express, I would be grateful.) As the list scales to thousands, I will automate the modular welcome emails and give up adding the personalization in the process. (What else shall I consider doing as the list grows?)
Michael:
Carol:
I want to avoid as many mistakes as I can, or seeming amateurish. Would love to hear your ideas before I really crank things up with a big-time PR and radio talk show campaign. (I want to get the bugs out and my procedures established while my list is still small, while it is easier to make changes and to correct things that are wrong.) I also need to know when this best goes into the hands of a webmaster who does newsletters vs. doing all on my home office MAC: is it just when I scream from feeling overloaded, or should there be other triggers for that transition? Also, what other questions do I need to be asking/things to be thinking about regarding using my website, emails and e-newsletter in tandem to make the business grow?
Is there anything else you need to know from me?
Thanks a million-billion!
Carol
P.S. When the new e-commerce pages are added to my site in May, a Privacy Statement page that is linked to from every page in the site will appear, and I will add a few questions to the Contact Us form about newsletter subscribers’ interest in Word attachments on emails and/or links to other sites inside emails (vs. pasting content in, as I have been doing). And I’ll ask if they have any preference about emailed text newsletters vs. emails with links to webpage newsletters that allow for a more eye-appealing presentation. I will also ask where people learned of me (including which search engine and search query they used), since I am doing so well collecting info from these people so far. Anything else I might ask them?
Michael:
Anyway, you’re doing great and you obviously are a natural at threading the pieces together which is a big part of making all these tools work for you. Just keep going and I’m sure you’ll continue to do wonderfully. Be sure to email me if you have any more questions.
Michael J. Katz is Founder and Chief Penguin of Blue Penguin Development, Inc., (http://www.BluePenguinDevelopment.com) a Boston area consulting firm that helps clients increase sales by showing them how to nurture their existing relationships, and that specializes in the development of electronic newsletters. He is the author of the book, E-Newsletters That Work.
