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A few months back we ran a survey to track how Toddle.com is performing for our customers. From the results of the survey, we created a Wordle cloud of terms most used to describe Toddle’s benefits.

As you can see, the words easy, use, newsletters and professional jump from the graphic. This got me thinking – easy is hard to do. We built Toddle to ease the pain of newsletter design and sending for small business. And to make sure your message looks great, we test it in over 30 email clients. We take the pain you get the gain. We are really thrilled that Toddle is benefiting our clients every day and thank you all sincerely for your feedback and referrals.

What’s next then?
We are working on new template designs to add to the template gallery and new payment pathways to make payments easier. Find our two newest template designs here. Exciting times indeed!

The Trinity Enterprise Network invited Marketing Consultant Paul Hayes from Beachhut PR to give a talk on building an international brand. And they very nicely agreed to let me come along.

Paul was previously Marketing and Communications Director at Havok and currently works with JoltOnline among others.

Paul had some brilliant advice and war stories from his time in Havok, Pirtomedia, Demonware and Plastinum on how they, as a start up, had go out and sell to the leading companies in games and film. Image it seams is vital but not that difficult… or expensive.

I got a lot of great points to take away from the day and here they are in no particular order.

PR

• Start your PR locally. Use it as your training ground to hone and practice your message before you move international.
• With everything showing up on Google do not underestimate local press. A Wired journalist rang up Paul after a story in the Tipperary Star popped up in his alerts.
• Develop relationships with three key Journalists and publications.
• • THE trade publication of the industry.
  • A national publication
  • One international publication.



• Wired is THE publication for a technology company and it took Havok a year from initial contact to getting covered in the magazine.
• The easiest way to get international PR is to get on a plane and go have a drink with a Journalist and start a relationship.
• Journalists do not write for their readers first. they write for other Journalists and their editor. Remember this when pitching a story.
• It’s easier to get coverage if you ‘promise’ to take out advertising in the future. Most trade magazines are run at a loss to maintain an audience for other business activities, events for example. So do not stress too much if you are unable to take out advertising for a long while.
• Third paragraph PR is better for credibility. The public are very media savvy. They recognise a PR piece about a company for what it is.However if your opinion is mentioned in an overall industry piece it lends more credibility to you being an industry expert.
• You are the best person to tell your story. Do not use a PR firm to be the middle man. It annoys Journalists.

Business

• The first sale was for $1 to get past the ‘First Customer’ credibility problem.It was a marketing deal in return for using the customer in PR, Marketing and Case studies.
• There is value in everything you produce. Watch out for opportunities. Havok had an artwork tool to help users of their main product. 3dStudio Max wanted this for their application and it generated a nice bit of money for Havok over 3 years.
• Paul believes Tradeshow stands are a waste of money. Think smarter or of a ‘Meta Stand’.Instead of a stand Havok would organise wacky transport (with a bar) carrying VIPs from a tradeshow to the afters party and again at the end of the night back to their hotels. A fraction of the cost, and more memorable.

  

• One horror story in the early days of Havok involved 250k on a stand, intending to make a splash. They ended up wedged between Microsoft and Sony who each spent about $10 million to launch their next gen consoles. It almost broke them.
• At a tradeshow in Calais they rented a $20k Yacht and moored it outside the event instead of spending the $200k cost of a stand inside. They also got to save costs by sleeping 8 people and eating on it as well.
• For a tradeshow all you need is you and a laptop walking around. Just as effective.
• In most cases you are not selling your features. What you are selling is reduced risk.Customers assume that your product works. They want to know you will be around in 3 years and will not make them look bad to their piers and boss.
• And last was a question from the audience asking if the Trinity name helped them abroad when making contacts and selling. He said at the time no but after the very successful companies that have emerged over the years including Havok and Jolt Online it can open doors now.

On the day we hit over 10,000 user mark, a big milestone for us, we bring you the results off our recent survey. You have spoken and we have listened. Thank you all for taking the time to take our survey. The information is invaluable to us as we plan on how we can become (and stay) the best darn email marketing service for you.
The survey we used is called Survey.io from the brilliant Sean Ellis and KissMetrics. I really recommend you try it yourself with your own customers. So for the curious and nosey (me usually) among you I have some results below.

Great, relevant content is still the best source of traffic online. Looking at the results above, the Blog and Search Engines results can be combined together, as most search traffic lands on the Blog. I will dig a little deeper into Google analytics and see which source converts better  and get back to you. Thank you all  for reading and commenting. Expect more great tips, advice and research from the team this year and more often.

Of all the questions on the survey this is the most important result to us. According to the research behind this survey a result of 45% and up indicates something special. So thank you for making Toddle something special. It is only from your constant  feedback and input that we are on this path.

Caelen King gave a great talk last year on online business and subscription models. He explained that a churn rate of 20-30% of your customers is to be expected each year. (In his words, “people die” and their focus and circumstances change). A must see talk if you have a few minutes. I remark on this because the number of users above who nolonger use Toddle back up his point. I am just happy to see that we are on the low end of the churn rate.

Survey.io has a great feature where they create a word cloud of the most repeated words across all answers. It gives a great visual snapshot of how your product or business is viewed.
“NONE” in this case is due to the number of people who skipped this question as opposed to them getting no benefits from Toddle :)
“Easy”, “Design” and “Good” are great responses to the key benefits of Toddle. From the beginning we sought to make email marketing easy, simple and fun with great looking professional newsletters that signals you out from the competition. We are more than delighted that you our user agrees with our vision.

Half of you have recommended Toddle. WOW! Sincerely once again, thank you so much. We are honoured and humbeled that so may of you love Toddle so much to refer it to friends and colleagues. We will do our utmost this year to continue to make Toddle a must have business resource that you will be glad to recommend!

Once again your feeedback to this question was music to our ears. We built Toddle to ease the pain point of email marketing for SME’s, Consultansy professionals, small organisations, individual business owners and anyone who wanted to DIY their own marketing material. We are delighted that Toddle has gained such an amazing foothold in this our target market thanks to all of you. The best, most creative response we got to this question  was: “A Breathing one.”

Well this was pretty clear, you want more and it is coming.
Right now we are preparing to move Toddle to new, bigger, faster servers for the next phase of development. Expect a speed boost in about two weeks when the move is complete.
We have more newsletter designs coming out, better integration with your other services, more marketing advice and a few killer features to make your life much much easier.
However,  we are being very careful about what features we are adding to Toddle. As our goal is to make Toddle the simplest, fastest email newsletter application on the planet! The results above show that you guys agree with us. Each additional feature we add to Toddle makes it a little more complicated, so please be patient with us as we test and refine each one to make it the best experience possible for you.

I know I have said it previously, but 2010 is going to be a great year and I am so happy you are taking Toddle on the ride with you.

Kind regards,

Alan and the Toddle team.

Happy new year. I hope you are well rested from the break and that Christmas was good to you. Welcome to 2010. A new year, a new opportunity to try new things and I can feel it in my water, it is going to be a good one.

To jump start your marketing I have put together a wonderfully simple online marketing plan for you for the year. It is put together as a checklist and it has the basics filled in with space for you to add your own twist and cross them off each month. It also includes few tips on what holidays and events you can use each month. It is based on one I have been using last year and I can tell you it helped me focused and on track.

Go ahead and download, print it off and hang it over your desk. This year you are going to be ahead with your marketing!

If you think you could do with some more information on how to get started or improve your email marketing campaigns sign up to our free email marketing course. More useful tips and tricks are found on our monthly newsletter so feel free to sign up below.

Keep us posted and let us know how the plan helped your business and let us know how we can improve it. We will showcase replies right here on the blog.

I was catching up on some reading this morning and the question of buying email lsits came up again. Here is what I think about it. If we are talking about ‘opt-in’ marketing I don’t believe buying lists is of benefit to your business. Firstly, where did the list originate from, are those on the list in your target market and did they give permission for their emails to be disseminated to third parties. Can you be completely sure that they have given permission at all?

In my experience bought lists can cause headaches, namely receivers hitting the spam button and not appreciating the unsolicited mail. If losts of people hit the spam button often enough your messages will not get through. It is far better and far more sustainable to grow your contact lists through opt-ins like sign up forms on your website, from connections made in your business and by simply asking in the first place.

To my mind bought lists are not worth the financial outlay and are in fact a danger to your business. Why take the chance of destroying your goodwill by sending emails to people you don’t know and have no connection with. After all email marketing is about relationships built over time, advice and support given to your user that is valued and appreciated by people who want to read about what you have to say.

It is tempting to try to fast track to thousands of connections but in reality it may turn out to be a very backward step. Makle connections honestly and help your user. Give them information they need and look forward to receiving. So instead of blacklisting you they send your insigntful content to their frienda and family thereby growing your connections organically as a trusted expert and friend!

1. Ask
Sounds simple and it is. You will be surprised how your customers, partners and friends will happily agree. Make it a part of your normal business interaction. A sales call, a first meeting, a network event, before you say goodbye tell then you have information you believe would be useful to them in your newsletter and can you add their email. Now you have promised to deliver good, useful content so make sure you deliver or your customers won’t be long unsubscribing.

2. Blog / Site
I heard recently that up to 80% of a website’s visitors do not return. People simply forget or think they have found the information they need and move on. Email is a great way to hook them in and remind them to come back when you have new news and updates. Your customers have done the hard work and found you among the millions of sites on the web. So grab them and don’t let then go too easily. VERY prominently on your blog or site put up an email subscribe box with a GREAT reason to sign up.

3. Offer a free course
Seth Godin has a great story of a wine merchant, who used free information provided to him, to create a wine appreciation course by email. By putting a single ad in his local paper users subscribed to his course. Newsletter by newsletter he explained the virtues and characteristics of the wines in his shop and along with it, gained the trust and confidence of would be purchasers. The information he gave out was free provided by the wine makers. The upshot: He became known in his locality as an authority on wine; he converted readers to purchasers and ultimately grew his business. Like our wine merchant think of the expertise you have in your field and see how you can repackage it to your subscribers. Keep it simple and relevant to the needs of your clients.

4. eBooks
Very similar to the free course above. For readers who prefer books to courses package up your information into a downloadable eBook. As part of the download process ask them to subscribe to additional information and advice from your newsletter.

5. Competition
I noticed in a local restaurant a big fish bowl by the cash register offering a years free membership to a local gym as a prize. All you had to do was drop in your business card and agree to get a healthy living newsletter monthly.
What a great idea. The restaurant gets a free prize for their customers and the gym gets a list of people who have indicated they want to get more active and healthy. You can offer a competition via your website, local newspaper or try and find out who else is sending newsletters to your target market and team up with them.

6. Free stuff
Incentivise people to sign up. Offer something free. An eBook, as above, a free 30 minute consulting session or a special offer only for subscribers. I noticed a tourist office recently offering USB drives for the first 100 people who signed up. An expensive promotion but it worked with me! Whatever it is make sure you have calculated that you will get the returns. Something else to consider, is your incentive is believable? At this years Marketing Sherpa conference in Boston, a great case study highlighted how a GUARENTEED incentive of $250 received only 12 responses. That is, a guaranteed payment of $250 dollars if a subscriber responded. However, when the same company offered the same subscriber list $7 per sign up they got over 500 responses. People simply did not believe the $250 offer.

7. Ask for referrals
Similar to point 1. Just ask. Most of us are more then happy to refer other people to services, sites or information that they will find useful. If your customers and subscribers are happy with you, then they will only be too happy to refer your newsletter to someone else. Make sure you have a nice big “Forward to a friend” link in your newsletter.

8. Give a talk / network
Events and seminars are great places to meet new people. When you are exchanging business cards ask if you can send your newsletter to them and mark their cards for adding their details later. If you are standing up in front of these people then you are already perceived as an expert in the field and someone worth listening to. So at the end of the talk, tell the audience you can send them more information on a particular point or topic, they just need to drop up their business card.

9. Make your subscribe box pop
You are going to need to test this. Play around with the location, colour and wording of your email subscribe box on your site. You will be surprised but some very minor changes can increase sign ups by up to 400%.

10. Email Signatures
You are sending out hundreds / thousands of emails every year. How many of your emails promote your email newsletter in your email signature. Look at doing the same on discussion forums and social networks.

For every point above there are a few things to keep in mind to make the process more effective:

A.  Tell people how often they should expect the newsletter (people are afraid they might get overloaded with mails daily)
B.  Where possible show them an example / link to the type of mail they will get
C.  Send them a welcome mail as soon as they sign up. A month down the line they might not remember you and unsubscribe or mark you as spam.

Got any more tips? What works for you? Let us know.

Image thanks to atomicShed

Bizcamp Dublin was an amazing day. Over 300 people came to the Guinness Store House to meet, share and inspire each other and it worked.
There was a wide cross section of people, from someone who sold their business for €135m to others who lost their job and are thinking about starting out.
I gave a talk on the day on what numbers to expect when doing sales via email marketing. Of course all business are different and achieve different results but this is something to be used as a guide against your own business and marketing efforts. If you are much lower then these numbers then you need to seriously look at what you need to change.
Keep reading the blog as I will discuss how you can improve and test conversion at each stage with a few tweaks.

The presentation was lo-fi on the day with just a flip chart and a marker. I prettied up the flipchart diagram for you here :)

Thanks to all who attended Bizcamp. You can find the other presentations on the bizcamp.ie site.

Now available in Toddle is this business / office style email newsletter design.

Classical in style this email marketing template is perfect for the more serious corporate business image.

Like all Toddle templates the design will work great in every email client and will degrade gracefully for those email clients that do not support the more advanced design features. Put simply you will look great when your client gets this.

And of course it is great value at only $9. Sign up and start marketing your business.

A recent discussion on Spam on the Enterprise Ireland eBusiness list caught my attention.
The jist of it is, if you send a really wonderful, relevant special offer to someone who did not subscribe but is interested, is it spam? It is a question that comes up again and again, and it is a realy good one. Sender is happy, receiver is happy. How can you lose?

From a person in the discussion:
>> If an Irish hosting provider sent targeted “special deal” emails to
>> Irish companies offering them great savings on their annual hosting,
>> what certain people would classify as “spam”, how many companies do you
>> think would object to being informed about the deal? I’d
>> say very few. <<

It is a strong and valid point. But it is flawed, short term thinking. I replied with the following and posted it here as it is worth sharing.

There are three definitions of Spam.

1. The Law in Ireland
You can send to another business or customer without permission. You must provide unsubscribe information and remove them if requested.
See also UK andUSA CAN-SPAM Act.

2. The ‘Subscriber’
If the person receiving the email thinks it is spam then to them it is spam. This can be because they didn’t sign up, they don’t remember signing up or they are just no longer interested. Unfortunately, for the sender email clients now have a big shiny “This is spam” button.
Statistics have shown that more people click the “Spam” button then the “Unsubscribe” link if they want to stop receiving a mail. Unfortunate but true.

3. The Hosting company, The ISP’s, Spam Filters and the Email Client.
If enough ’subscribers’ hit the “This is Spam” button then to all those listed above your email is spam. This then means that any legitimate email from your company and domain might also be marked as spam.

My thoughts on the above
While you might get away with sending unsolicited email for a while, it seems to me that the numbers are against you over time. Secondly, I don’t understand why you would risk annoying even some of your customers. Don’t you want them all to buy from you? It doesn’t make sense when there are better ways to market your product or services to them.

Thirdly, why on earth would you risk damaging a vital communication channel to your business. The thought that legitimate emails, quotes, and especially invoices being sent to the spam folder (if they even get through) is a scary one.

Now just after posting the above comes a report that shows that one third of consumers admitted to responding to a message they suspected might be spam. The report from MAAWG (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group) is the result of an eight hundred person survey conducted in December of 2008. 1 in 3. That’s a big market. So does that mean everything I wrote above is rubbish? Not quite.
You business needs to survive past one mail shot and one sale. You need to build a relationship with your customers to get them coming back. The more you build your reputation and trust the more a customer will buy from you and the more they are willing to pay in one transaction.

A client of ours tried the Spam route in a previous life. And the amazing thing is that it worked… for a while. He and his business partner started a dating site. A great business. Low maintenance and pretty much runs itself after a while generating revenue. Now the problem with dating sites is to attract customers you need lots of potential dates in the database. But you can’t get the dates in the database without having dates in the database. And no one is going to pay for an empty site. It’s a vicious circle.
So they took what seemed the obvious and easy route and bought a list of 1 million email addresses and sent them an email. Response was about 1% which was fantastic for them. Instantly they had a database of dates and the business was up and running.
But then the complaints started, blog and forum posts started about the spamming warning people to stay clear of this company. These sites and blogs were around a lot longer then my clients site so they started to rank above his listing in search results. In the end the effect was devastating and the site had to close.

Now my client is not a bad man, he didn’t think it was spam, just a great offer. The people who responded thought it was a great offer. Who knows, some of them may have found love, got married and had kids. However enough people did think it was spam to bring the business to its knees.

We always say to clients, spam is in the eye of the beholder. Forget what you think of your email, what will the receiver think of the mail. If you have any doubt, do not send.

Our new business cards arrived today from Moo and they look great! What we think makes them special is, instead of saying how great Toddle is, we let you say it instead. On the back of each card is a random quote from all the great reviews we got from the Tuesday push. I can’t wait to hand these out.

More about the Tuesday Push here.