When I first started creating, writing and designing companies’ e-newsletters, we simply adapted the format we marketers had used for print newsletters. Now, however, with a huge proliferation of e-mail marketing out there, we have to be more strategic. Here are three quick tips for making your e-mail marketing work:

1. Build your list slowly. The print newsletter model allowed us to mass-mail, but that is heavily frowned on in the e-mail world. Instead, slowly build an opt-in list of people who actually want to hear from you.

2. Avoid graphics. This is hard for me to say, since I love graphics, but with so many handheld devices acting as people’s main form of e-mail retrieval, graphic-heavy e-newsletters can actually work against you. Stick to simple text, and you have a better chance of getting your e-mail read while someone is waiting for their flight or sitting in a doctor’s office.

3. Keep it short and simple. This is also hard for me to say, since I love to write, but there simply isn’t time in the day to read all of the information that passes through our e-mail boxes. Use bolding and bullets so that your readers can quickly skim your e-newsletter.

Virginia Ginsburg is an entrepreneur and business & marketing consultant who delivers strategic, affordable marketing services through her company accordionmarketing. She also writes a blog called Body > Mind > Business, which discuses the connection between business health and personal health, and the struggles she faces in pursuit of work-life balance. Virginia has an MBA from the University of Southern California and is currently (slowly) pursuing a Ph.D. in Psychology at UCLA. She has more than 12 years of experience as a senior marketing consultant, and has served as a trusted partner, coach and consultant to more than 100 sole proprietors, partnerships and corporations. 
Virginia lives in Santa Monica, CA with her husband and daughter. As part of her passion for working with entrepreneurs, Virginia is actively involved in small business development projects in the U.S. and in developing countries.

Here are the three most commonly asked questions about Twitter:

1. What the heck is Twitter?
Twitter is a free social-messaging tool for staying connected in real-time. It is sometimes called a “micro-blogging service” that enables its users to send and read other users’ short (140-character) updates, known as tweets.

2. Why should I use it?
The jury is out on this, but proponents say it’s a great way to begin and maintain a direct dialogue with your customers. This value really depends on your customer base, though and whether they are on Twitter and following you. At the very least, when done correctly, Twitter can increase your search engine visibility, but again, this only matters if your customers are the type of people who are searching for you online.

3. How can I get started?
The best thing to do is to sign up for a Twitter account (it’s free) and start following some other people on Twitter. Start with any friends or colleagues you know who are already on Twitter (I’m @virginiagins), then check out Twellow - the Twitter directory for people in your field or industry to follow. Once you have a feel for how/what people tweet, dive in and give it a try!

Virginia Ginsburg is an entrepreneur and business & marketing consultant who delivers strategic, affordable marketing services through her company accordionmarketing. She also writes a blog called Body > Mind > Business, which discuses the connection between business health and personal health, and the struggles she faces in pursuit of work-life balance. Virginia has an MBA from the University of Southern California and is currently (slowly) pursuing a Ph.D. in Psychology at UCLA. She has more than 12 years of experience as a senior marketing consultant, and has served as a trusted partner, coach and consultant to more than 100 sole proprietors, partnerships and corporations. 
Virginia lives in Santa Monica, CA with her husband and daughter. As part of her passion for working with entrepreneurs, Virginia is actively involved in small business development projects in the U.S. and in developing countries.

A great article about accountability by Denise Michaels a fellow ryzer and marketing consultant. Enjoy!

Being held accountable isn’t always fun. However, the benefits are amazing. Accountability can help you achieve the results that have eluded you. If you’ve avoided important goals and tasks in your business it’s not always because you need more how-tos. It’s probably because you need someone to hold you accountable for your results. Agreeing to be held accountable means agreeing to have someone ask you – about your results each week – and support you in getting them.

Here are seven important secrets to how accountability will help you build the business you want so you can live your dreams.

Reduce Procrastination: Being held accountable by one person or a small group of supportive people reduces procrastination. A great thing about owning your own business is no one’s breathing down your neck to “get it done” by a certain date. On the flip side, one of the challenging things about owning a business is no one pressures you – even in a nice way – to complete tasks and goals. If you’re not constantly self-directed or, if you are in some ways but not others – being held accountable will help you stop putting off what you need to do.

Make Real Progress: If you work hard in some areas of your business but other areas your business can only make limited progress. If you’re busy developing new products but not selling – your business can only go so far. If you sell like crazy but don’t set up records to track cash flow – your business can only grow to a certain point before problems surface. If you keep researching but haven’t written and implemented a strategic plan – you don’t have a business you have an idea. Accountability will help you wear all the hats, or, help you decide to delegate work you can’t do to someone else.

Feel Encouraged Again: Maybe you’re avoiding certain tasks because they aren’t the highest and best use of your time or they make you uncomfortable. If asking for the sale is painfully difficult yet you know it’s something you should do – a person to hold you accountable to your goals can make a world of difference. Many people keep asking for more how-to’s and ideas when what would help even more is to return to the basics and actually do the things that work. Owning a business is an amazing personal growth journey. Growing more comfortable and then confident doing the things that formerly gave you “the willies” is a great way to grow and increase your cash flow.

That Extra “Kick” of Motivation: When you are held accountable by someone who cares about your success and your progress – you won’t let them down. Some people spend big bucks attending seminars for a kick of motivation. Three days later they’re back in the same rut. Ongoing support and accountability means you get that positive push in the right direction on a regular basis, usually weekly. Not all at once – and then it fades away a couple days later.

Get to the Real Reason: Sometimes we lie to ourselves about why we aren’t doing what we should in our business. I had a participant in my Masterminding for Success group who believed asking for a sale was wrong. I’ve had others who felt picking up the phone to make initial contact made her look weak or desperate. The real reasons usually boil down to fear. The sooner you face your fear with the support of others, the sooner you can grow beyond it once and for all.

Build Your Confidence: When you do something you wouldn’t do previously your confidence grows a little every time. Our comfort zone is the boundaries around which we operate in. For many business owners our comfort zone is way too small. Expanding your comfort zone might expose you to a little temporary fear – but it will also open you to amazing new possibilities you never imagined. You become the courageous person you always dreamed of.

Make Your Dreams Come True: You started your business because you wanted more independence and freedom than you could have ever experienced as a person with a job working for someone else. Opening up to being held accountable will help you make those dreams come true in your business. If you’re dedicated to create real success open up to the possibility that you can be, do and have more. All you have to do is claim it, be willing to be held accountable and enjoy your success.

Contact me today if you are ready to explore the benefits of accountability coaching!

In Balance,

Shann

ATTENTION: You can get rich quick online with no investment and in no time at all!!! I did it and you can, too!

It’s amazing to me how many people I’ve met recently who have been scammed online by the very same type of marketing schemes we saw on TV in the 1980s and 90s. “Get Rich Quick” schemes, wherever they are marketed and whatever they entail, might work .01% of the time, for .001% of the population, but it breaks my heart to see so many desperate people getting scammed and losing their money and their self-confidence when the promises simply don’t come true.

This is like the weight loss industry promising that you can lose 20 lbs in two weeks without diet or exercise. Even if it were physiologically possible, it could not possibly last.

Lasting success is based on behavior, not trickery. No quick scheme in the world, whether for making money or losing weight, will be successful in the long-term unless you learn to incorporate daily behaviors (habits) that will maintain success.

Yesterday we went to an Indian Casino with my husband’s 88-year-old grandmother. She had the time of her life! I can’t say that I really enjoyed the casino – there were clouds of cigarette smoke everywhere and I’m a horrible gambler – but I did observe some classic marketing techniques:

1. Call to action! Nowhere have I ever felt such a strong internal drive to participate in something as I did walking onto the floor filled with slot machines. Everywhere you look, there are colorful machines begging you to take a chance – and just 5c a try! How can you resist? The pull is actually physical!

What a marketer can learn: always have a call to action – your customers should know exactly what they are supposed to do at all times.

2. Sensory control: Casinos are well-known for controlling our sense of time, space and reality. There are no windows to the outdoors, and the lighting stays the same whether it’s noon or midnight. There are no comfy chairs or places to relax – the only thing to do is play their games.

What a marketer can learn: if you have a retail store or restaurant, remember that the lighting, decor and sounds will drive your customers to behave in certain ways. Take advantage of the opportunity by thinking carefully about what you want them to do.

3. Possibilities: The fundamental drive to gamble is the opportunity to make a lot of money, but ask any casino owner the truth, and you know that the house always wins. In our group of five, all of us lost between $15-$100. We had also all been up by between $50-$300 at some point in the day. It’s the “up” moments that drive us into the “down” ones at casinos – we think that if we try just one more time, we may win it all back (plus more!).

What a marketer can learn: always have something aspirational that your customer can “reach” for with your product. The diet industry and get-rich-quick schemes are other good examples of this.

Sometimes ideas come gently, and sometimes they smack you on the side of the head like a tidal wave.

I have been working on an idea recently that is so big and beautiful that it has shaken me up considerably. Usually when this happens, I move as quickly as I can to get the idea implemented. I am always about action, action action. The thrill and adrenaline of action towards a big idea is heady and intense. Sometimes though, it feels as if I’m rushing, always racing towards the next idea as soon as the last one loses its luster.

With this new idea, I’m nurturing it slowly. Letting it percolate and build. Allowing it to gradually develop in my head before committing to any action on its behalf. It’s truly the strangest, most beautiful experience I’ve ever had with an idea!

How do you handle ideas? Do you race to implement them before you can see any obstacles and get disappointed? Do you consider the obstacles and drop the idea out of fear? Do you slowly consider each obstacle and weigh it against the potential opportunity, gradually making steps forwards and backwards until you feel confident that you are ready to run?

“Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” – Anonymous

This brings up some important questions about marketing and advertising – is it possible to sell without expecting people to ‘lose their heads?’

The most obvious execution of this style of marketing is the infomercial (TV) and squeeze page (online). You know – those slick direct marketing campaigns that appeal to our animal instincts. They overwhelm us with clever copywriting, amazing testimonials and questionable statistics combined with a 100% guarantee to spur us into desperately needing something that only a few minutes ago we would never consider.

These campaigns are designed to suspend human intelligence and instead appeal to our animal intelligence – those deep-seated desires of needing to be part of the group, wanting bright, shiny objects, and making decisions from your gut, not your brain. These are decision-making skills that do have great value in our lives, especially when we are in danger, but they can also be easily exploited.

I have recently had some direct experiences in which intelligent, smart products and services that appeal directly to the working intelligence have failed miserably, while those that have almost no real value but appeal to the animal intelligence have flourished.

As marketers and as consumers, we must wonder sometimes who is really in charge: the sophisticated human, or the tribal animal.

Do you have a life plan?

Although I’m very goal-oriented, I have always had a really hard time setting long-term goals. They feel so fantastical and even a little silly sometimes. It also seems to me like setting firm goals can put you stubbornly on the wrong path sometimes.

I heard someone talking about goals (again!) last week, and it finally sunk in that my goals don’t have to be concrete. They also don’t have to be perfectly clear. I also realized that I do have long-term goals, it’s just that because they are a little fuzzy I wasn’t really calling them goals, but ideas.

Here was his analogy: it’s like you’re in a room with a big door. You’re standing at one end of the room, and outside the door you can see an even larger room. From where you are, you can see a few details of the larger room, but not many. As you walk closer and closer towards to the door, your view of what is in the next room gets bigger and more detailed. Your view does, in fact, change, but the core elements are probably still there. Thus, your long-term goals are constantly growing in detail and size.

I tried the concept on for size and, lo and behold – recognized the long-term goals that have been with me all along.

Let me know if it works for you!