Newsletters are the Most Popular Type of Email

Almost three-quarters (74%) of survey respondents said that sending newsletters is their #1 email marketing choice, says a new study from GetResponse and Smart Insights. That and autoresponders (61%) (e.g., thanking subscribers for signing up) are way ahead of all other options in their recent survey of 1821 marketers worldwide. Other option results: Multi-step welcome…

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The Gratitude Tool That Works Every Time

Long before the rise of email and social media I was extolling the virtues and value of saying “thank you” with handwritten notes. While certainly not an original idea (whose Mom didn’t make them write thank you notes for gifts?) they remain—in my opinion—one of the best ways to express gratitude and make another person…

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The Power of Female Leadership: 3 Important Behaviors to Adopt

We’ve all read about the qualities it takes to become a great female leader: how to “lean in,” what language to use in order to show an attitude of cooperation, the importance of personal flexibility. In addition to some of these overt actions and the content of what we say, subliminal messages have an underlying presence. Sometimes…

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Provocation or Obnoxiousness?

The concept of provoking our customers, getting them to think about their businesses differently is a key element of providing insights. Paraphrasing Brent Adamson, to help our customers “unlearn” we have to show them what they are currently doing may be wrong. That is, there may be different ways of operating that will produce superior results, or…

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Leadership Skills: How to Provide Corrective Direction

When discussing the “How to’s” of building an engaged culture, we hear lots of talk about “reinforcing the positive” and “catching people doing things right,” but what happens when people are doing things wrong and we need to provide corrective direction? Specific steps need to take place to get the person moving in the proper…

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Closing the Sale

Earlier today, I was interviewed for an article on “Closing The Sale.” The article is in a publication focused on small business owners. As we concluded the conversation, the interviewer said, “Your answers were completely different than I expected.” I think too many of us, entrepreneurs and sales people, alike, have mistaken impressions of closing…

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7 Superb Communication Solutions for Small Business

One great thing about running a small business: communication can be immediate and effective. At the enterprise level, communication is slower. Employees are often inundated with emails while talking on social media, instant messaging, and texting. Small businesses can take advantage of their size to ensure an advantage. This can happen in a number of…

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How Difficult Is It to Reach You?

Is your organization’s telephone number and email address buried deep in its website? How difficult is it for people to reach you? The last thing you want is for existing and potential customers and partners to give up on your business (or nonprofit) because you made it too challenging for them to communicate with you. Yet, there are so many…

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15 Web Tools to Help Small Business eCommerce

As the number of people using the internet grows steadily, as cell phones and tablets become more affordable, eCommerce has definitely become the norm. With 91% of adults in America owning mobile phones, physical stores are no longer needed as we can buy anything online with our mobile devices. Websites, once a novelty of the…

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