When should you send email newsletters, blog posts or postcards? There are going to be some common sense tips here but my biggest tip is “when you can!”

I have been in marketing A LONG TIME and conventional wisdom gives us times that are set in stone for sending things out but I want to bust some myths and bring some sanity to the process!

When To Send Direct Mail Pieces or Postcards

I always heard that the best time to send direct mail pieces like postcards or hard copy newsletters was Thursday. The thinking was that if you went to the post office with first class mail, it would take a couple of days to get there so the person would receive it Saturday. So let’s bust this one wide open:

• They are talking about slowing down the mail service and so that could no longer be true
• Now-a-days we have mailing lists that don’t just include local peeps, we have connections with people all over the planet and they could get it Saturday, Tuesday or even the following Friday depending on where they live
• Are you sending direct with a stamp or is it going out bulk? Makes a difference you know in how long it will take to get there

So here is my take on this, send them out when you get done without worrying what day it is. If you are having an event, make sure they are in the mail at least a couple of months before for a “save the date” kind of thing with a follow up reminder no sooner than 3 weeks before the event. People are super busy and stressed and are not planning things months in advance anymore so you need to give them notice but remind them when the event is drawing near.

When To Post Blog Posts

Okay, here is a secret. I am writing this post because I have a hard and fast goal to post 3 times per week. In a perfect world, I would post on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday early in the morning to give me the best shot at getting sharing and readers. That having been said, stuff happened and this is not going to post until well after dinner time. SOOO, had I decided that posting on the “right” day was more important than getting something out there, I would have waited to send this until next Tuesday (5 days away).

In the real world, many of you will find this post on the internet by doing a search. You will not know that it posted on the right day, but the wrong time. So, my advice is (again) post em while you have them and have a plan to post on the right days for you (check your google analytics) but DO NOT wait for the perfect time if won’t work for you today!

When To Send Email Newsletters

You should send email newsletters Tuesdays for sure! The people are over the weekend and ready to read. Or Saturday, definitely! Then they are at home and have more free time. Oh, oh, oh in the morning, but not too early or they will be in shower, not too middly or they will be on the Facebook. Rats, are they B2B customers or B2C customers? Stay at home moms or small business owners?

Get my point? You should have a plan of when to send your newsletters (weekly, monthly) and a general idea when your open rates are best from your email provider BUT DO NOT NOT send them because you missed an arbitrary deadline you set for yourself. You are not behind, sending it today instead of yesterday puts you ahead of your competitors who who are waiting for the perfect time to send theirs (ps – there is never a perfect time!)

When Should You Post On Social Media?

I saw a study that said the perfect time to post on Facebook is 11am. Okay, 11am my time (Mountain) or 11am Eastern (even though lots of my peeps are out here). So I figure out the 11am thing (going with Eastern because 47 percent of the US population lives there while only 5.4 percent live in my timezone) but darn, I am going to be teaching a class then so, guess I will forget it for today and plan on doing it tomorrow when I can hit the “right” time.

Thinking that there is a hard and fast rule is a sure way to let procrastination and sloth into your life. Much like getting pregnant never comes at a good time, it is never the right time to post on social media every day. What I do is schedule it for first thing in the morning, check my Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube, then go on with the rest of my day. I schedule about 20 minutes tops. If I have time later in the day I will pop back in, but better to have some solid time early before the day gets away from me.

So why this rant so late in the day? Last week I had another marketing person approach me and say that we HAD to get a press release out by Monday. Okay, but Monday was a national holiday so many people would not be at work. Sooo what about Tuesday? Well Tuesday was the day back and people would be inundated with left over messages and mail so we looked at Wednesday.

What became clear to me was that no thought what-so-ever had gone into this scheduling at all and that common sense was lost. I want common sense back! A blog post like this one will not die on the vine just because it is going out late, it is well SEO’d, pretty long and full of information. I am proud of the fact that I am accomplishing my 3X per week blogging goal and did not give myself permission to fail.

So, if you get anything out of this post at all I would hope you take heart that I teeter on the edge of failure like everyone, but fight on to the end. I keep integrity by doing what I say will. AND I would rather send out 20 okay blog posts, emails or postcards than never send one because the time is wrong, or there are misspellings or I am working on getting it “just right”. Instead of just right, just do it!

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1. Writing Great Blog Posts Strike While The Words Are Hot
2. Writing Blog Posts Do Good Grammar and Spelling Matter
3. Writing Evergreen Keyword Blog Posts

When I think of small business marketing solutions like our Thrive Client Contact Program, I am reminded that if you do not implement your technology it is worthless! I read the other day that a good open rate for free email newsletters is 30% and that a good open rate for PAID email newsletters is 50%. HALF OF THE PEOPLE who pay are not even opening the message!!

So what are Obstacle Illusions? I think, as humans, we often look for ways NOT to do something rather than just buckling down and getting to it. Look at April 15th – until legally FORCED to submit their taxes, most Americans will wait and send them in at the last possible moment (some even wait until 11:59pm). 

When it comes to Marketing I see LOTS of obstacle illusions…

Rule: You must send out your direct mail piece on Thursday. It seems to me that some people think that their marketing message will die a horrible unproductive death if it is not going out on Thursday. I can tell you that I have sent out direct mail pieces every day of the week and gotten great results – mostly better than anyone else because I actually sent something. If you have to send out your message on Thursday and you don’t get it out, you have just delayed your mailing a week. Then it is Thanksgiving so you can’t set out your message the next Thursday. Then the last week of November is a bad time to send out your message. Then you want to be poised to send your message the EXACT right time before Christmas but that doesn’t fall on Thursday this year….arggggggggggg! In the meantime, I have sent out 3 imperfectly timed messages and gotten more clients!!!

Another thing I see a lot is that their small business marketing database is not ready yet. It is not perfect. Some people don’t have emails. Some people don’t have direct mail addresses. The categories have been defined yet. I spoke with an agent yesterday who hasn’t sent an email yet because he isn’t ready. READY FOR WHAT? Cut and paste the Thrive info into an email and send it!!! Do it half-way but DO IT. 

If you are waiting for something to be perfect, I have a newsflash – it will never be perfect! Send out a message with a typo and be okay with it – I can guarantee that one of your readers will CALL YOU and tell you there was a typo. Talk to that person and make a sale!

Thanks to Dave Jenks (of Millionaire Real Estate Agent fame) who wrote a post about how it has to get worse before it gets better which made me think of this great idea!!!

Related posts:

1. Whew – How do you work ON your business when you are IN your business?!?!
2. What is database marketing? Solving small business marketing problems!
3. Small Business Marketing Goals Make A Huge Difference

According to Wikipedia, database marketing is “a form of direct marketing using databases of customers or potential customers to generate personalized communications in order to promote a product or service for marketing purposes”.

Wow is that not helpful! My definition of database marketing is to have all your clients, potential clients, prospects, vendors, friends and family all in one place that you can use to send out direct mail, email marketing and generate call lists. Currently on my “marketing TV tray” I have a post-it note with a name of someone who I need to add to my database, two business cards and a sign in sheet from a class that I taught. If I do not add them to my database today I will

• lose their name entirely
• find them in three months and forget why I had their card
• find them in six months and be too embarrassed to send anything because they won’t remember me (I KNOW I won’t remember them!)

So how do you use your database for marketing?

Send out emails to your database – This is FREE! You can start a bi-monthly newsletter and send your marketing message out WITH a nice piece of information that will be of value to your readers. For home service people that might be tips on how to winterize their home, ways to clean their grout or even a list of associated vendors they recommend. For real estate professionals it might be market stats, information about first time homebuyers or how to prepare their home for staging. Whatever you send, make sure that you think – “would I be interested in reading this”. If not – write something better! (if you are stuck on what to send, check out our Small Business Marketing Solution –  Thrive Client Contact System)

Make phone calls – Each month pick a couple of letters (A-C, S and T) and print out your database people whose last name starts with that letter. Carry your list around and when you have a couple of extra minutes call your people!

Send direct mail marketing pieces to your database – You can mail your clients a monthly piece of newsletter marketing, marketing postcards or even your personal brochure. Please note – if you are going to judge the effectiveness of your direct mail campaign by 1 sent message don’t bother. You need to send out your direct mail message for at least 3 months in order to be able to find out if will work! If you can’t afford to send out to your entire database, cut it in half and send half of your people a letter, newsletter or postcard each month, rotating the names so EVERYONE gets something at least every other month!

Some other things you can do with your database:

• Collect Birthdays and send a nice card out a couple of days before (I am BAD at this – you WILL NOT get a card!)
• Make notes about what you talked about – your people will think you are brilliant when they realize you remember all their personal info! Just pop in and take a peek at their notes BEFORE you call them!
• Upload relevant documentation and attach it to their record. You can attach their invoice, sales receipts, contracts etc. by scanning them into a PDF and then uploading them to your database.

If you will commit to using your database, adding EVERYONE you meet the day you meet them, you WILL get more business and make more money!!!

Related posts:

1. Your Database – A How-To!
2. Your Database – How Use It For Emails!
3. Small Business Solutions – Obstacle Illusions

Video starts running automatically BUT you can pause it if you like! The content is an amazing act of customization, worth the 30 or so seconds!!! See fascinating article below

So I was reading my email today and my friend Lori Crawford, Realtor extraordinaire in Trinity Fl, sent me the absolute best email! Lot’s of people tease me and call me a Princess (my so-called friends and family) and so this viral marketing campaign from Disney is BRILLIANT. I was enthralled that my name was plastered all over Disney World and that Goofy even said my name once!

So what IS personalization?
Personalization can be done in a number of different ways:

• The most basic is to have a person’s name in the greeting of your email. BUT every email program does not have the capability of adding a recipients’ name. You might want to consider using a newsletter template company like AWeber. While I know that many of you have Database programs that SAY they perform this function, few have really acceptable HTML formats. It will save you LOTS of time to use a third party solution!
• Another way is to have the person’s name on a direct mail piece. You can use MS Publisher or Word to accomplish this OR use a reputable printer to do it professionally. I got a custom postcard from a local jewelry company that was addressed to John and Shelly. My husband’s name IS John but who the heck is Shelly?!?!?! They obviously had moved the Spouse’s name one place down – this is NOT a great situation for the mailer so make sure you spend a little bit more to have it done RIGHT!
• These two aside there are a MILLION ways to personalize your message to your clients, use a hand written note, make a card that has pictures from magazines that you think your client would like, create a website that registers a persons name and calls them that throughout (obviously a high tech, high cost option).

So what is a viral campaign?

A viral campaign is something that spreads like the flu – person to person. This Disney campaign is BRILLIANT and VERY expensive to program originally, but may reap HUGE rewards for Disney! I sent it right out to my Mother In Law, a friend and a child I know. So Lori’s original message resulted in 4 direct new emails BUT then I blogged about it. You may be going – “How cool I should send it to X”. If just two of my readers resend it to 5 people we are now up to 15 people from Lori’s original email – zoinks!

So why does it work and how can you do this? Well viral campaigns are hard to start and even harder to sustain. For my small business clients (and myself), we do not have the capital to take a roll on spending $10,000-$50,000 that can support a technical viral campaign that may bomb.

Instead, write great content and then recommend that your client’s spread it! If you have a referral system, recommend that your clients use it. It may seem like they should KNOW that they could refer your stuff out, BUT THEY DON’T!

FYI – if you know any small business owners that would like this post, please do not hesitate forward it to them OR send a link to www.MarketingArtfully.com so they can sign up for automatic updates!

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Small business success! So you think you are an expert? Who says? Sometimes people are “crowned” an expert on TV, Doctors are experts through training and education, and sometimes you can join a business association or get a designation within your industry.

More often than not though, it is what you DO that makes you an expert!

Books – Conventional wisdom says that if you want to become an expert on something read 3 books. That seems a little light to me BUT if you read three books and it sparks you to read 2 magazines and visit 5 associated websites AND talk to a human, I think you can consider yourself an expert.

Time – If you like something for long enough you will be come and expert! My father has a VW “Thing”. It is old and he doesn’t drive it very often BUT he has had it for a while so he has gone to VW meetups, he gets catalogs, he has read A LOT about it, he used to get a VW magazine. He knows A LOT about an obscure car that few people care about.

Interest – We think of computer guys as nerds, they think of themselves as geeks! They are REALLY interested in computers and how to make them work. They have websites like SlashDot.com where they can gather for the latest geeky news. They have causes like “Open Source” which means that everyone can contribute to programs to make them better because they have access to the source code. The great programmers that I know have rarely taken a computer science class. They don’t have time for it because they are too busy playing around on their computers!

Channels – You can even PICK what you might be interested in! I work with two great realtors who have decided to focus on Short Sales. Julia Fishel (The Pinellas Peach) works these in the Palm Harbor area and Deb Ward who works them in the middle of Pinellas County (TampaBayBankForeclosures.com). The interesting thing is that they are only about 10 miles apart BUT because of the nature of real estate are not direct competitors! Both have taken every class they can to learn about the current rules of short sales, they have found a great title company who can support them (Star Title) and they are actively looking for that kind of work!

Because I Said So – This is the one that seems the hardest to get a handle on! To be an expert, you just have to say that you are an expert and it will become so. If people think you are an expert, it makes you want to find out more about your chosen topic so you don’t look like a schmoe when people ask you about it. You will start to get mail about that subject. You should start a blog. You could join an association. But most of all the universe will say “dang this woman likes marketing and training, let’s give her some opportunities to do both!”.

Do Something – Make sure to do something (preferably everyday) that reinforces your expertise, write a blog post, attend an event where you tell people what you do, send out a direct mail piece that tells people what you do, SING IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS!

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So Mary Dado of Business Writing, Ink and I have been on a whirlwind tour of 4 South Florida Keller Williams market centers. We went down there to talk about the Fab 5 Contest our region is having and the 33 Touch Program that we developed to go along with it. What the heck is a Fab 5 Contest you ask?!!?

Our region of 29 offices is competing to be the best at sales and lead generation! We KNOW that if we call, email and direct mail to enough people our business will grow. (On a side note – I LOVE lead generating because it gives you the chance to have people call you, it gets you lots of opportunities and it allows you work with only people you like and can truly help!)

Marketing Frequency

100 Calls – You should be making (at least) 100 calls to your sphere, your clients, your prospects and your vendors each month. This ALWAYS seemed overwhelming to me, but now that I am doing it, not so much! I made 12 calls in one day, got two opportunities and one appointment – go figure!

Email – You should email your database each month. This is FREE and if you send interesting and relevant info, people will enjoy getting your emails. I do not advocate sending more than two emails per month unless you are working with a targeted group like investors, since you can overwhelm them and get on the “send to trash immediately” list! If you send a weekly newsletter and do not have a huge drop off rate for your list, you can send two emails IN ADDITION to the newsletter because that will be your baseline for starting.

Direct Mail – I know, direct mail is dead, everyone is using the internet and emails. Except they aren’t. There are many segments of the population that are not online 24/7 to read your information. Also there are people (like me) who get a gagillion emails a day and delete most of them unless they are TREMENDOUSLY relevant. If you send a mailing out to people’s home address (preferably) they will see it and notice it. If you send relevant info they might even stick it on their fridge! Make it a personal note and watch out!

Learning Something

So I was roaming around “pontificating” as Mary Dado says (meaning she can’t get me to keep my mouth shut if I can get 5 people in a room to listen to me!) During these sessions with other Realtors, I asked what they were doing to grow their business. I got LOTS of great answers and learned a few new tricks!

It reminded me that NO ONE knows how to do everything! I make sure to surround myself with interesting people, who cumulatively might know ALMOST everything. We have a “Mega Chicks” mastermind group with 6 intelligent, determined women. I have an internet mastermind group every other week. I hang out with people who are smarter and funnier than I am so that I can learn from them. I ask for help and appreciate when I get it.

Some of the people that we talked to were VERY receptive to trying something that might make their business better. They were not POSITIVE that it would work but were willing to give it a shot – hey what do they have to lose? And they might wind up with a thriving business in a tough economy.

On the other hand, some of the people were SURE that it was not for them. They would NEVER send anything out, or they would NEVER make 100 calls, or they had tried this before and it did not work at all. They didn’t want to be accountable to anyone else for having said they would do something. If this is YOUR knee jerk reaction, is it holding you back? Could you TRY doing something different and SEE if MIGHT work rather than rejecting it out of hand?

I was just sitting here wondering if that was too strong a statement against people who have a closed mind (I don’t want to offend someone I might have met in the last couple of days). But then I realized they won’t be interested or open minded enough to read my blog anyways…:)

No related posts.

No this is NOT about psychics or charlatans! This is about what YOU think works and how that affects what you DO.

Now to give you some background on where I am coming from, before returning to marketing, I built my highly successful real estate business in Clearwater by using direct mail marketing pieces and networking. I am more than willing to drive across town to visit someone in person rather than call them on the phone and I hardly ever send marketing or informational emails to my clients.

I was sitting in a meeting this week with a realtor who ONLY sends email, no direct mail and who also networks very well. She is adamant that direct mail does not work, she has tried it before and got nothing for her effort. I told her that I had tried email before and it didn’t work AT ALL. Come to find out that both of us had sent ONE or TWO pieces, MONTHS apart and then decided that it didn’t work.

I hate to talk on the phone so I assume that everyone hates to talk on the phone. She LOVES email, the internet and all things technology related and so she thinks she has the best chance of getting her message across by doing what makes the most sense to her.

What we found out is that one way doesn’t provide a whole message. Some people who you communicate with will get the most from your emails, some from direct mail and you can never go wrong talking with someone on the phone or face to face. The key is to talk to them EVERY month in EVERY medium to remind them that you are still in business and still want to serve them!

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