I get asked this question quite a lot, or worse, I talk to clients who just presume that it’s okay to send a commercial email without consent on the basis that “If they don’t want to receive my emails, they will un-subscribe”.

The bottom line is that it is illegal accordingly to the Australian Spam Act 2003 to send even one commercial email to one email address where you don’t have the prior consent of the recipient to receive commercial emails from you.

Part of the confusion over this stems from the fact that the anti-spam legislation most commonly discussed on the internet is the American legislation (usually referred to as CAN Spam). The Amercian legislation allows organisations to send unsolicited commercial emails as long as they adhere to 3 basic types of compliance in the areas of: unsubscribe, content and sending behavior.

So, just to be very clear, the Australian Spam Act legislation, which applies to emails of a commercial nature, sent to anyone in Australia or emanating from Australia, does require you to have consent of the recipient prior to the email being sent. There is a concept of ‘inferred’ consent in Australian Spam Act legislation, and there is also a concept of ‘conspicuously published’ email addresses that don’t carry the same requirements for prior consent. If you wish to rely on anything but express consent, it is worth careful investigation to ensure you aren’t breaking the law: further reading on the topic of consent.

A final point is worth making: the onus of proof of having consent is on the sender.

My humble predictions for 2010, in the area of technology for small business are as follows:

• use of iPhones and other Smart Phones for browsing the internet, collecting mail, etc will increase at a steady pace (I took up an excellent mobile offer that included an iPhone just before the end of December, so give me a call if you want to hear about my experience).  This doesn’t mean that you have to rush out and change your website for very small screens because the smart phones handle full size websites fairly well, but having an alternative version of important data access areas of your site could be worthwhile e.g. for data searches / operational data entry / ordering functions and the like.
• larger businesses, who to a large degree have held back from embracing the internet and electronic channels for marketing, will employ email and sms marketing to a greater degree, integrating traditional media and web-based campaigns to reach out in a meaningful way to their target market and existing clientele.  This will take away some of the competitive advantage that smaller, more agile businesses have had over their larger competitors.  It will also mean that your marketing campaigns have to be even more focused on delivering value and unique messages, not just selling.
• more and more people will use Google to find things on the web, and generally use the internet as a research tool.
• social networking sites will gather more momentum in the business arena, primarily through LinkedIn, Plaxo and Xing (rather than Facebook and Twitter), but I think there is still a long way to go before their use in this realm becomes imperative, and level of use will vary dramatically between industries.
• cloud computing / software-as-a-service where you utilise internet-based servers to run shared software applications and store your operational information will continue to grow at a slow-moderate pace, as businesses still prefer the bricks and mortar approach of having control of their data and applications within their own environment.  
• Finally, it’s fairly clear that Broadband speeds and computer processor speeds will continue to get faster and cheaper and hard disk capacity will increase while the physical size of the disks will reduce and become cheaper per gigabyte.  Will we use all this extra cheaper speed and capacity?  I expect to see the improvement in technology infrastructure paving the way for a myriad of innovative gadgets and software applications to make it easier to do common tasks, from anywhere.  Perhaps one of these will be the next “killer app”.

What’s your thoughts?  Found a killer app lately?  Add your comments below.

I have noticed an increase in the rate of un-subscribes over the last few weeks. I believe that is at least in part due to the increased work levels across the board as people try to achieve as much as possible before Christmas and the end of year.

So, what can you do to reduce the likelihood that your contacts with un-subscribe at this time?

Value is king - providing value in your emails is always the most persuasive reason people have to stay on your email list. The question for you is what do my contacts perceive as value. It might be any of the things listed below, or something entirely different, the important thing is to know what your contacts value:

• special offers, especially when they are only available to people who receive the messages
• free shipping of products - this is especially appreciated by Christmas shoppers short of time, but not wanting to spend more on shipping. We’ve added a new Free Shipping image into eNudge to help you communicate this to your contacts.
• information that helps your contacts achieve more with less, or save time
• information that gives your contacts an edge
• information that enables your contacts to solve a problem they have e.g. don’t know what to buy someone for Christmas!

Make Skimming Easy - including a table of contents at the top of your email helps your contacts to consume your message, finding the items more important to them, more easily. Using topic headings also helps to make it easy to find information. If you make it easy to read, people are less likely to un-subscribe.

Keep it short - if you have a lot to say, put that information into a web page, and include just a teaser to it in your email. This also contributes to making it easier for people to skim through your email.

Make it Personal - if your contacts feel like you are having a 1 on 1 conversation with them, they are also less likely to un-subscribe. You can do that through personalisation e.g. including their name and company in your email. If you have a bit more time, you can also include a personalised paragraph in your message. It’s not hard to do with eNudge.

Target your Emails more Carefully - that is, if you have different types of people in your contact database, go to the trouble of creating different emails to send to these different groups. A very obvious example is a Christmas message to your customers will be very different to a Christmas message to your suppliers. This consideration is also related to the first point above - adding value. What is valuable to one segment of your target audience, may not be valuable to other segments.

Add Humour - if you give your contacts something to laugh at, even if they don’t feel that a particular email is of value to them, they will be less likely to un-subscribe.

Ensuring People Know they Have Joined Your List - this applies to any time of the year, but especially at this time. Make sure that you not only get consent before sending messages to your contacts, but make sure each person knows they have given you consent - don’t hide it in fine print, and don’t assume.

Though it’s been around for over 10 years now, the concept of Software-as-a-Service model is becoming more prevalent, helped by the increasing launch of new web based applications such as Google Apps, and dare I self-promote, eNudge!

So what is Saas? Wikipedia describes it as “… a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand. SaaS software vendors may host the application on their own web servers or download the application to the consumer device, disabling it after use or after the on-demand contract expires.” The model is pay as you use, for what you use.

There are lots of benefits, the most common being: cheaper software costs, paying for software just while you need it, without high costs of installation and purchase, and easier to work with others and remotely from your organisation through web-based applications.

I know that some of you are using SaaS applications to assist you to collaborate with virtual teams e.g. Google Calendar. So, I have three questions:

1/ Are you satisfied with the reliability and performance of the applications?
2/ Have you found them to be value for money?
3/ Are you considering utilising more SaaS applications in future e.g. are you considering using Google Docs (the SaaS ‘equivalent’ to Word, Excel and Powerpoint), Gmail for Business (rather than Outlook)?

Share your answers by posting a comment below.

Microsoft launched Windows 7, the new 64 bit operating system, on October 22nd. Windows 7 is said to provide:

• a faster operating system, particularly if you have 4Gb of RAM or more on your computer; Windows 7 will actually enable to you utilise the extra RAM
• easier search for files and emails, straight from the Start button
• pin and jump lists to help you quickly access programs and files you use most often
• aero snap feature that allows you to easily put two windows side by side to compare their contents
• aero peek feature allowing you to see what’s on the desktop without minimising everything; the open windows are made transparent. Similarly an aero shake feature, to minimise all the windows and then bring them all back again to their previous position by shaking a window from side to side
• a stronger firewall, anti-virus and anti-malware solution
• tools for creating and sharing videos on YouTube

In addition, Windows 7 takes up 1/2 the room on your hard disk compared to Windows Vista. Developers and manufacturers are expected to be interested in Windows 7 because of the many new capabilities it provides, including touchscreen support. For more information you might like to read the Top 10 reasons to buy Windows 7 put together by Microsoft. In addition, Microsoft already has a new section of it’s website dedicated to Windows 7.

Unfortunately, you can’t upgrade directly from Windows XP to Windows 7, so if you’re like me you would need to do a fresh installation of Windows 7, which will probably give you a better result anyhow. You could of course temporarily upgrade to Vista, and then upgrade to Windows 7.

Some analysts are suggesting that this could be Microsoft’s last operating system, with the prospect of operating-system-less computers becoming more likely. Perhaps the question should be, will Google be successful in bringing out their Google Chrome operating system to replace the heavy-weight Windows operating system? You might like to read Google’s vision for their light-weight operating system.

When I’m talking to people who are considering starting up a regular e-newsletter, I often ask “how many contacts do you have in your client database” [I only ask this to demonstrate how many messages they can send for what price]. The response is very often almost an apology such as “oh, I only have a few hundred, but I intend to increase it”.

I would like to say here and now, there is no shame in a list of “only a few hundred”, and the size of your list should not delay you in starting your regular email newsletter.

An email campaign to the 200 person list, where every one of those 200 people personally know the business owner, and the services they are providing, could deliver a much better response rate than the same campaign to a list of 2,000 people who subscribed to a list ‘accidentally’ or ‘by default’, and have never used the business’ services.

I see this born out all the time with eNudge Subscriber’s campaigns. Those businesses with lists that have grown organically over time, or where they have grown rapidly through obvious interest in a particular product or service, produce much better results than purchased [Spam Act Compliant] lists or lists developed by ‘tricking’ people into consenting. The sooner a new business starts their e-newsletter, the better. It has a number of advantages including:

1. Provides fresh content for your website, which will help your search engine rank on your area of expertise.
2. Gives your contacts something easy to forward onto people whom they wish to refer to you.
3. Reminds your contacts of the things they want to do with your business.
4. Gives you a forum to educate your customers to make it easier for them to do business with you.

In our edition of eNudge News describing 4 Keys for Business Growth in 2009, the 4th key was:

Mix up the communication & follow up responses: make sure you act in a timely manner when people respond to your communications, don’t forget to occasionally ring your key prospects, or send a hand written note in the mail. In addition, using personalisation (more than just your contact’s first name) in your messages and more targeted special messages outside your regular ‘news’ messages also helps to connect better with your contacts.

Tips for helping you to mix up the messages:

1. When you’re reading news and industry articles - keep your customers top of mind. If you’re thinking about them (as well as your own interests) as you are reading the news, you will undoubtedly find information that will be very helpful to a customer. Scan the article, and email / fax it out.
2. If there is a key date in one of your client’s businesses, diarise a week before that date and send a hand-written note, give them a quick call, or send them an email about that date; your communication might be a reminder / a good luck / a ‘yell out if I can help you’ / a congratulations type of message.
3. In your Christmas message, you can use the unlimited personalisation feature of eNudge to add a personal sentence to each message. Refer to our ‘Extending your Message Personalisation’ tutorial for more details on how to do this.
4. Consider SMS as the vehicle for sending a special short message to your key clients announcing an important event that is date sensitive / a success you have achieved / a success of one of your clients to which you contributed.
5. After a meeting with your client, on occasion send a hand-written note thanking them for their time. You can get some great personalised or company branded note cards created for this purpose from Note Côuture.

Tips for helping you follow up inbound responses:

1. Have a process for how you are going to handle responses, including a script (for a telephone response) or a set of possible written responses, ready before you send out the message that you expect to ellicit a response.
2. Assign a staff member to handle the responses, and set a time frame in which the responses must be made / sent.
3. Manage the process to ensure that it is being followed.

It’s very easy to put all your effort into creating the message, and then not having any time left to plan for the response. This is a recipe for handling responses in a tardy or unprofessional manner.

How have you handled large volumes of response from your marketing efforts?

In our edition of eNudge News describing 4 Keys for Business Growth in 2009, the 3rd key was:

Continue to grow your List by promoting your communications in all your customer touch points. This is very important as it does two things: 1/ ensures that you keep focused on your communications with your customers. If your emailing / sms list is continuing to grow there will be less chance that you will tire of sending your messages, and 2/ adds new prospects to the start of the sales process. Most people need to feel that they trust you and understand what you can do for them before they will be ready to buy.

Here are 10 ideas for ensuring you are making the most of all your customer touchpoints:

1. Invoices - one of the most neglected touchpoints in terms of promoting the benefits of your products and services. You should use a portion of your invoices to:
   describe the benefits your products or services offer, or
   draw attention to other products that the customer is not currently purchasing, or
   promote special offers.
2. At point of sale - supermarkets do this with the chocolate bars and magazines sitting at the check outs. If you have a shopping cart facility on your website, are you suggesting related products to your customers just before they checkout? Amazon has been doing this for years. If you have a retail store, ensure that your sales staff ask customers if they are on your mailing list so that they know when the latest products come into store, and so that they hear about sales.
3. New Customer Telephone Enquiries - when the phone rings and it’s a new enquiry, part of your standard process for handling the enquiry should be to ask if you can add the person to your mailing list. Make sure you describe the benefits of receiving the messages, and how frequently they will be delivered. If you describe these things and then ask for permission (and the person’s email address), if the caller is at all interested in your products or services 9 times out of 10 they will be happy to be placed on your mailing list.
4. Meetings with Prospects - at your meeting to discuss a potential new client’s requirements, make sure you ask them if they would like to go on your mailing list. Again… advise them of the benefits and frequency of messages, and most times they will be happy to be added to your list. This gives you further opportunity to build trust with the prospect.
5. Written Proposals - make sure you add a section at the end of your proposal that promotes other products / services you provide, which may also be of interest to the prospect. Describe the benefits of being added to your mailing list in the proposal, which will also act as a trigger for you to ask for their permission to be added.
6. Business Cards - if there’s space, include your unique selling proposition and how to sign up for your mailing list perhaps on the back of your card. You can also have cards printed that have a perforated, tear off section that a prospect can fill in to give you permission to add them to your list. As you hand your card to a customer or prospect, that will also act as a prompt for you to ask the consent question.
7. Letterhead and other Stationery - include a statement of the benefits of your products and services, and a web address to sign up for your newsletter - again describing in brief the benefits and timeframe for sending.
8. Printed / Online Directory listings - depending on available space, your slogan or statement of benefits of working with your organisation should be included in the listing.
9. Meetings Prospects at Networking Events - if you meet a person who is genuinely interested in your products or services, but might not be quite ready to transact with you yet, ask them if they would like to be added to your mailing list to hear about what your other customers are doing / hear about special offers etc.
10. Front page of your Website - this seems obvious, but many businesses who have a mailing list don’t promote it well on their website. It should be on the front page of your site, allowing a visitor who is interested in your offering but not yet ready to transact, to still connect with you.

Out of 10, how many ideas are you already employing? What have we missed?

In our edition of eNudge News that included 4 Keys for Business Growth in 2009, the 2nd key was:

Execute [Your Marketing] Plan without fail.

Of course, you can’t keep to your marketing plan if you don’t have one. If you don’t have one, stop reading this now, and instead read our article that takes you through a step by step process for creating a email communication plan - you can expand that to include all your marketing communications; e.g. letter drops, newspaper ads, Google Adword campaigns etc. Then come back here and keep reading!

To help ensure that you execute your plan:

1. Keep in mind the following points:
• if you are not communicating with your customers and prospects on a regular basis, your competitors might be talking to them instead.
• if you provide a wide range of products and services, it is easy for your existing customers to be unaware of some of the products and services you offer. Increase the understanding of your clients through value added ways of talking about the breadth of your products and services.
• even if your audience doesn’t read every element of every one of your communications, they still get the message that you are thriving, and are interested in them.
2. Use the eNudge Communication Plan function to store details of your future electronic messages. This allows you to add to the information when useful input comes to hand. It’s a great help having lots of useful input and ideas when you start writing your message.
3. Diairise the job of writing your communications, giving the writer plenty of time to get it ready.

What are your tips to help others execute their marketing plan?

An article I read recently about shopping carts has radically changed my view on the best process for the final step of checking out. The Contact Point shopping cart requires a customer to ‘register’ with the website or log in with their email address and a password if they are a returning customer, in order to finalise their purchase.

It turns out that many many people are put off by the requirement to register, but by simply changing this screen to give the customer one more option - to continue their purchase without registering - provided an online business an increase of 300 million dollars (that’s USD) in sales over a one year period.

This quote from the article sums up my [previous] view of the issue:

The team saw the form as enabling repeat customers to purchase faster. First-time purchasers wouldn’t mind the extra effort of registering because, after all, they will come back for more and they’ll appreciate the expediency in subsequent purchases. Everybody wins, right?

Instead, their research showed that the requirement to register was resented by a large percentage of their test audience, who felt that they weren’t there to be in a relationship; they just wanted to make a purchase quickly. Returning customers also had issues because they couldn’t remember their username and password, so a large number of return visitors ended up registering again; thus making it harder for the retailer to do anything useful with the data on return visits.

We’ve taken this research on board in the Contact Point Shopping Cart, and have already implemented a change across 3 shop sites, allowing customers to purchase without registering. For an example, check out the Melbourne Storm Shop.

Some of our client sites will still want to ensure that customers register, for reasons of additional functionality such as shopping lists, and storing sensitive information. In the remaining circumstances, we will be in touch with you over the next few weeks to discuss implementing the change.

What do you think? Has the requirement to register ever put you off from making a purchase online?