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THIS WEEK
Autoresponders are Great - Except When...
ALSO IN THIS EDITION
Autoresponders are Great - Except When ... |
This article was going to be all about how to write powerful auto-responders. Auto-responders are your silent salespeople - keeping in touch with clients and prospects day in day out. They can be one of the best things you can do to grow your business ... except when you have system glitches.
Most autoresponders are hosted by an external company. These companies provide the capacity for you to send follow-up emails and broadcasts to your client list in return for a fee.
The main players on the market include Aweber, Constant Contact, 1shopping cart and Get Response. There are a myriad of other companies on the market that can also provide you with similar services.
I use Get Response to host my emails and ezine broadcasts. Generally I have been happy with them. Yes, there have been the odd small glitches along the way - but most of the time things have moved along pretty smoothly.
This week Get Response conducted a major upgrade of their system - building in a host of brilliant new features that I can't wait to try out. The problem was like many IT system upgrades - unplanned glitches appeared.
In my case this meant most of my web forms where people enter their details, no longer worked and had to be re-coded. The new automatic system coding Get Response provided wasn't working properly, which has meant hand coding some of the forms this morning as a temporary work around.
 How did I know the forms were no longer working? Well I receive a daily report on new subscribers - when I had a zero result for a day I knew something wasn't working. It took a few days to actually pinpoint the problem and put in a temporary fix to resolve it.
This means that for the last few days people looking for the performance review forms, copywriting requests or to join our newsletter have been getting error messages. I have lost sales and missed out on customers as a result.
The GetResponse communication on the lead up to the changeover was great - but then there was near total silence after the changeover. Their blog had some updates on the glitches and how to resolve them - but the updates were not truly useful or informative.
So - What can you learn from this transition? If your company ever upgrades your IT systems you can guarantee that things will fall over. That's the nature of the IT beast. Glitches will appear & unforseen problems will arise no matter how much beta testing you have done before hand.
The trick is to communicate regularly using as many communication mediums as you have, full and thorough updates of information so people can take appropriate action.
Have each communication read and checked by a non-techie before released. You want your communications to be understood by the general public - and not written in geek speak or IT shorthand.
You also need to ensure you have in-built tracking mechanisms in place for your websites and all areas of your business that rely on IT - and that you monitor them regularly. You need to know when your personal systems crash and what you need to do to fix them.
Finally - be flexible. Things may not always go smoothly for your business, but with a flexible approach and willingness to find work arounds you can solve a whole lot of problems.
That's not to say your stress levels will remain low if you adopt thais approach - (I can tell you I am really looking forward to the weekend!) The trick is to allow the stress to move through you and then take another look at the problem and possible solutions over the subsequent days.
If you are still having problems with any of the Heart Harmony forms, please contact me.I appreciate your help!
| HR Tip of the Week - Communicating with your team |
Following on from the previous post, one of the most important things you can do is to always have each communication to your team or customers checked over by a few people before being sent out.
You may know what you mean to say or communicate, but it may not be clear to your readers. You may unknowingly hurt people's feelings, ostracise groups of people or even insult people without meaning to - just by the words and images you choose.
 One manager I worked with used to send very short & direct emails to his team. He had quite an abrupt personality and his writing reflected that style. Unfortunately this was interpreted by some of his team as bullying, and his writing was presented as evidence before industrial tribunals to support their case.
Another manager I knew only used the words "him or his" when referring to people within his team. He also used to select images for his communications that only showed men (and no women). He was perceived as being discriminatory towards women and the turnover of women in his area was significantly higher than the rest of the organisation.
A recent team I worked with on creating their corporate profile are a young, vibrant team made up of mainly men. The photos they selected in their draft proposal showed young attractive women. The problem was that their target audience for their proposal was 40+ white collar males. They needed to amend their images to reflect their target audience.
By having someone check over each corporate communication and ask the question "could this be interpreted in any other way", "have we provided enough information" you can reduce your organisational risks.
If your business already uses Google Adwords, or you just want to learn how to use Adwords for your business before spending a cent, the guy I recommend learning from is Perry Marshall.
Perry is one the gurus on Adwords and has been around for years (which is a long time in the internet business). He knows his stuff and his information is practical, useful and relevant.
One of the things Perry offers is a free 5-day email training on effective Google Adwords. It is definitely worth signing up for - you can save yourself hundreds by learning about some really basic mistakes that most businesses make.
Adwords can be a great way to drive traffic to your business - if you know how to use them correctly.
In this post I discuss the issue of writing from the heart vs writing to the heart ... and which gives you the best sales results.
exuberantly yours
Ingrid
Heart Harmony
PS: This week's Small Business Tips blog included a post about "What businesses can learn from the Insulation Industry "
Legal stuff: This newsletter is intended only a general guideline for Australian businesses. You should seek specific advice for your situation rather than relying only on this newsletter
Earnings disclaimer. Some of the content may include advertorial information, which means I may receive financial compensation for the products I recommend. But - unless I know and trust the product, I will not recommend it.
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