It’s an election year. And an apocalypse year. I’m beginning to think the two may be related. Perhaps our collective anger will cause the world as we know it to implode or something.

Each day, I check into Facebook a few times, eager to see what my friends are doing, look at photos of people having fun, check out links to interesting articles, see who is playing Words with Friends, and all the other happy stuff that Facebook puts in front of me so that I don’t have to deal with the tension of working for 15 minutes.

What I see instead are acrimonious debates about abortion, Trayvon Martin, the Affordable Health Care Act, women’s rights, religion, corrupt local governments, and on and on. Don’t get me wrong: I think healthy debate is a good thing. But what I’m seeing far too often cannot be described in any way as healthy. There is name calling, shouting of accusations, emotional ranting…it’s worse than when I taught middle school. At least there, the arguments were over things like who should get a cookie. When a discussion about the politicization of the Supreme Court, or the death of a teenager, or homelessness, is reduced to nothing more than pointless shouting, the situation is a bit more disturbing.

It doesn’t matter what “side” you are on. It doesn’t matter if your position is the one you think God would take. No matter what the other person is entitled to disagree with you. Yeah, that’s important enough to warrant being both italicized and bolded.

One of the things I have discovered via Facebook is that a great many of my acquaintances hold opinions quite opposite from my own about all kinds of things.

Important things. Things like whether or not homosexuality is acceptable, whether or not health care should be available, whether or not corporations should have the same rights as individuals. Unless someone insults me because of my opinions, I don’t mind.

This does not mean that I won’t “unsubscribe” from their Facebook stream. Just because they are allowed to have a different opinion doesn’t mean I have to listen to them talk about it. If you don’t like what’s playing, change the channel. I have “unsubscribed” from all sorts of people because it felt like they were shouting all the time. Even if I agree with you, shouting becomes tiresome after a little while.

The fact that we live in a society of people who hold diverse opinions should be a good thing. It gives us all a chance to be exposed to different points of view, and most of the time there is something to be learned from examining a way of thinking that is unfamiliar to you. It may help you see why people think the way they do, or help cement your own opinions.

You may be wondering how any of this has to do with writing or marketing or operating a small business. When you meet with a new client, or you attend a networking event, or you hire someone, you probably don’t know their political, religious, or social views. You probably studiously avoid talking about those things, particularly if you are trying to build a relationship or make a sale. In my experience, if you do end up building a relationship and things go well, people tend to get comfortable.

More than once, at this juncture in a business relationship, I have found myself being insulted. It is natural to assume that someone you connect with and genuinely like will hold the same opinions as you. After all, only an idiot would believe that fill-in-the-blank-here-with-anything-you-find-really-disagreeable, right? And this person is clearly not an idiot. I’ve made this mistake before, much to my own discomfort, and so have some of my associates – again, much to my discomfort.

After it becomes painfully clear that you do NOT share political or religious or social views, how do you handle the situation?

You could decide to not discuss said issue, and carry on working together. (This only works if both people decide to avoid it.)

Since the other person is clearly misguided, you could point out all the reasons they are wrong to think whatever they think. (I hope you don’t do this!)

Unfortunately, lots of people decide to tell the other person how stupid it is to think something different than you think. (If you do this to me, expect to never hear from me again.)

You could pretend to agree with everything your customer/client/colleague thinks. (Sleazy? Probably.)

There are all sorts of ways to handle it. Since I’m a non-confrontational sort of person, I try to avoid topics that could cause friction. On several occasions I’ve flatly refused to answer questions or reveal my opinions. Part of me feels cowardly in doing this, yet I don’t think that a business relationship is the right place to champion my causes. And it works, most of the time. I’ve had great working relationships with plenty of people who think differently than I do about all sorts of issues, but I have also left jobs where I felt out of place because of my opinions.

To me, the key is respect. Even if I think you are crazy to believe what you do, I respect the fact that you do believe it, and the fact that you are entitled to believe it. I may not like it, and if you shout it out often enough, I will slowly, quietly withdraw from our relationship. Unless we are personal friends, I will not try to convince you of your wrong-headedness.

Have you discovered that a client or colleague has radically different views than you do? Do you think that running a business makes difference when it comes to sharing opinions on political, religious, or social issues? If you found out your accountant of the last 15 years was a member of an organization you find deplorable, would you look for a new accountant? What if your chiropractor vehemently supports a political cause that you vigorously oppose? 

I realize that “professionalism” should come into play somewhere here. But if we are being honest, we must admit that these things do matter, even if we don’t want them to, and even if we use the mantle of professionalism to hide the fact that they do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A few months ago, I wrote a post offering a few suggestions for your newsletter template. Even if you are sure your template is awesome, you might have dismal open rates. People have different ideas about what a “good” open rate is. I had a client at one point who was perfectly satisfied with an open rate that was consistently around 15%. The average for my clients is around 30%. I’ve talked to business owners who have open rates above 90%.

Most people worry  more about how many addresses make up their lists than about how many people actually read their newsletters. It is better to have a list of 20 people with an 80% open rate than a list of 1000 people with a 10% open rate. You are far more likely to find that email marketing works for you if you begin with a smaller list of people who really want to hear from you, than you are if you

begin with a list of hundreds who might have heard of you.

If you do it right, your list will grow. People will open, read, and, most importantly, respond to your newsletter. It’s the getting-it-right part that is hard. A few tips to help you keep your carefully-crafted newsletter out of the trash:

 

You use it like a sales circular. I subscribe to a newsletter from a local pet supply store. Every single week, they send out an email to advertise A BIG WEEKEND SALE!!! Things like 10% off all gerbil food do not excite me. After two or three weeks, I stopped opening it.

It’s okay to use your newsletter to let people know if you are offering a special or a discount, but don’t make that the only thing your newsletter does. It’s boring – especially when your “sales” are only going to appeal to a tiny segment of your subscriber list. Make sure that any offer you make will have broad appeal, and that there are, at least sometimes, other reasons to open your newsletters.

 

It’s all about YOU. One of the biggest reasons to use email marketing is that it builds your relationships with your customers. It gives them a small window into your company’s culture, or even a chance to know more about you personally. People are easily bored, though. Relationships require balance. When every issue is about you, but you never address your readers’ needs, values, or priorities, they are going to quit opening.

The key to avoiding this mistake is to make sure you are writing with your ideal customer in mind. Write as if you are having a conversation with that person. There’s nothing wrong with letting your customers get to know you – just make sure you are  keeping them in mind.

 

It’s the same thing, again and again. There have been so many times I’ve subscribed to newsletters and been delighted with the first 4 or 5 issues that hit my inbox. Then, after a couple of months, less delighted. Then, bored. If every issue is an interesting personal anecdote, followed by a customer testimonial, with a great coupon only for newsletter subscribers at the bottom, people are going to get bored.

When you find a combination that works, it’s tempting to stick with it. What you need, though, are four or five or six combinations that work. Keep surprising your subscribers and you will keep them interested. Send a link to a news article related to what you do, then a personal story, then a product offering, then a link to a video about your company. Try keeping a log of ideas, so that you always have something to turn to when it’s time to write the next issue, and so that you have a place to keep up with “extra” content for the future.

 

You need a proofreader. Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve re-read this post approximately 50 times and found a mistake every time. Feel free to point out those I miss in the comments – because I’m sure I will miss some. However, when your newsletter is so riddled with misspellings and poor grammar that it makes my head hurt and my pulse race, I’m going to stop torturing myself by reading it.

There are people, ahem, who will proofread your stuff for a small fee. If you lack confidence in your writing skills, paying someone to proofread or edit your newsletter is well worth the money. No matter how laid-back your customers are, you can bet there is at least one grammar nut on your subscriber list. You can sell her stuff, too, if she is not so annoyed with you she fails to see what you are selling.

 

You are overwhelming. Smarter people than I have done studies that show you can send email to your list daily and not suffer a significant drop in subscribers. If you send me stuff daily, or even every-other-daily, I’m going to unsubscribe. First I’m going to delete everything you send me without ever looking at it for a couple of weeks, then I’m going to unsubscribe.

There are a few types of newsletters that can get by with daily sends, but not many. You have to gauge the tolerance of your subscribers for yourself. Sometimes weekly works perfectly, sometimes bi-weekly, and for some businesses, sending randomly works best. You can do some testing, and you can even ask your subscribers their preference.

 

There’s nothing personal. I love Mini Coopers. I used to own one and hope to own another some day. When I learned that Mini had a newsletter, I was excited, but the excitement faded within a couple of issues. There was just nothing in them that I could relate to. Once, there was a link to a blog written by someone who was testing an electric mini, and that was interesting, but that was the only thing that got my attention in ONE YEAR of receiving the newsletter.

The scope was just too big. Mini has an international audience, and their newsletter attempts to appeal to lots of different kinds of people. It rarely has anything in it about the cars, or about the people who drive them. It is clearly written by a large marketing department for a large audience. Mini would be better served by email marketing by making their newsletters more relatable. If you are running a small business, embrace the fact that email marketing is personal.

 

There are plenty of other reasons newsletters fail. Do you have an email pet peeve? What is one of the worst mistakes you have encountered in your inbox?

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I am not a huge fan of making resolutions on January 1, but I am a huge fan of resolving, so I usually end up setting some sort of yearly goal. This year, I didn’t really set a SMART goal. Instead I just sort of vaguely thought, “I  need to do better at everything,” with everything including running more often, marketing more efficiently, visiting with friends regularly, and probably most importantly, cleaning at least now and then.

A surprising thing has happened. Despite the lack of a defined goal, I have been superduper busy. The kind of busy where you occasionally forget to eat. The first week of the year, several past clients got in touch with new orders, and a few referrals metaphorically knocked on my door. My invoices for the month of January were double my best month of 2011.

When I realized that January was the best month ever for Smiling Tree Writing, I was shocked.  The last quarter of 2011

was terrible. Both my father-in-law and my grandfather were diagnosed with terminal illnesses, suffered rapid declines in health and passed away during that time. From August until December, my life was about family, terminal illness and grief. In many ways, just living felt like a slow, tortuous climb.

Luckily, my three longest-term clients were understanding and I was able to continue working with them, but pretty much everything else business-related was put on hold. As a client once told me, “Personal turmoil is never good for your business.”  I didn’t do any in-person networking, participated only in the most minimal way in social networking, sent no query emails or letters, certainly made no cold calls, and fully expected to more or less start from scratch in January.

You can imagine my surprise when my accountant handed me the numbers for 2011 and I found that my income from writing had almost tripled it was in 2010. You may be imagining now that I am getting close to that fabled “six figure income from writing at home!” That is so far from the truth it’s embarrassing -BUT! Holy moly! My business was growing, even with all the difficulties of 2011. Who knew? I certainly didn’t.

Things are settling down, and I am once more marketing and networking and query-ing. Oh, and posting on this blog, which has been sadly neglected for a month. A few others have reported being similarly busy in January. What about you? Have you experienced a noticeable increase in your workload so far in 2012? 

 

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Living in a small community means you often know things about strangers’ lives: who he’s related to, where she works, who her kids hang out with, where else he has worked, and a myriad other odd details. At the same time, you might not really know that person – around here people say, “I know of him.”

My family knew of one man who was a Dollar General cashier. He had another job as well. All four of us had a positive impression of him. He was always friendly and particularly polite. We even know that he lives on our street because we see his truck at a house about a mile away from ours. When we heard that he was fired from his second job for being rude, we were really surprised. We felt it was probably unfair. After awhile, he didn’t work at the Dollar General anymore, but showed up in the convenient store across the street. Again, we felt bad for the guy. He was clearly a hard worker, and willing to do whatever he needed to in order to have a job. Third shift in a convenient store can be a tough gig.

Then, one night, we were headed out of town and needed a bag of ice. We stopped at the store and the friendly cashier was working.

There was a group of teenage boys in line in front of my husband, who really just needed the key to the ice chest (really? people steal ice? geez.). My husband asked for the key. The nice man we thought so well of suddenly turned rude. He refused to give my husband the key, and acted like we were going to steal the ice.

 

Maybe he was afraid he would get in trouble for just handing over the key. Maybe he was worried about the group of teenagers stealing something. Regardless, he didn’t have to be rude. But he was. It ended up taking over 15 minutes for us to buy a $2 bag of ice, and we felt like suspects or something.

That one interaction changed everything we thought about this person. Now instead of saying “the nice cashier who lives down the street,” we say “that weird guy who used to work at the Dollar Store.” After hundreds of positive encounters, this ONE ugly one wiped away our good feelings toward this man. It didn’t have anything to do with customer service, although it was a bad experience on that level, too. What I’m talking about is much more personal.

Now when we run into this guy, or he is our cashier, we feel wary. We don’t know what to expect. Will he be nice? Will he imply we are thieves? How is he feeling that day?

It amazes me that one bad experience can outweigh hundreds of good ones. But, since the night we bought ice, I’ve observed the same sort of thing with other people – you think you have a comfortable – if shallow – relationship with them, then all of a sudden, things aren’t so comfortable.

As the owner of a small business, I’m finding an especially important lesson in these observations. Everyone has “off” days when we are maybe snippier than we realize. It’s scary to think that on one of those not-so-fabulous days I might unwittingly change how a long-term client views me and my business. Some client relationships take months or even years to build, and while I hope that after that much time, both parties would be a little more lenient with judgement, you never know.

Of course, I work hard to make sure my relationships with clients go a little deeper than my relationships with cashiers who work at stores nearby. But in one way it doesn’t really matter. A bad interaction can color the relationship, making it so that either party is looking for the negatives – and that is bad for a service provider who bases her prices partly on providing outstanding overall service.

I’m not sure there is a way to guard against coming across rougher than you intend to once in a while. The best we can do is try to understand when someone else does so in the hopes others will do the same for us. I’m going to try to think of the “weird guy” as a “nice guy” again, and just imagine that he was having a bad day and that he didn’t really think we would steal the ice.

Have you ever had one incident change the nature of a sales or customer oriented relationship?

 

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Your email newsletter design is similar to your business card design. You need it to grab attention, deliver information and make the person looking at it want to know more. While I am a writer, not a designer, I have looked at hundreds of email newsletter templates, and I’ve seen some really bad ones. Here are a few reasons your email newsletter template sucks:

1. It’s ginormous. If all I see on the screen when I open your newsletter is the name of your company in five-inch-tall bold lettering, I’m annoyed. I have no idea if I want to even make the effort to move my finger and scroll down. Usually, I just hit delete. Sorry.

If I do go to the trouble of scrolling, and your font is so big that I have to keep scrolling and keep scrolling to read your content, I’m going to be annoyed. Annoyed prospects are less likely to buy from you. I know how to adjust the size of the text on my screen, so you really don’t have to make the text of your newsletter huge.

2. The colors are painful. Just because you can make the background orange and the text blue, doesn’t mean you should. In fact, when you do those kinds of things, your newsletter appears unprofessional. Color is fun. Fonts are fun. But they are also dangerous.

If you want orange in your newsletter, try using it in a border. If you want to use a “fun” font, use it in a title. Otherwise, you risk making your message harder to read, and people are busy. They are not going to put in any extra effort to read something that makes their heads hurt.

There are people who will help you design a template for future use, and their services are often reasonably priced. Get in touch. I’ll be happy to help you come up with something functional that won’t cause your prospects pain.

3. Your images are weird. If you don’t know how to manipulate images so that they don’t appear flattened or stretched when you put them in your newsletter, you might want to consider leaving them out. The best thing to do is invest a little time in learning how to make them work. Most email distribution services have great tutorials and help sections on their sites, and quite a few have really good customer services reps who will help you by phone.

4. Columns. Or lack of columns. Personally, I like two columns, but personal preference varies. Some folks don’t like columns at all, and that is fine, though a table of contents or a “what’s in this issue” section is nice. However you decide to go, make sure it’s easy to navigate your newsletter and that it’s easy to see whatever you want recipients to see.

Do you want people to click through to your site? Then make sure the link is obvious. Want people to “like” your page on Facebook? Then don’t bury a link to your page at the bottom of your newsletter. When you have too much “filler,” you end up with clutter, and then people don’t even see your wonderful offer or your excellent article.

There are lots of reasons to market by email. There are not many excuses for sending out horrible newsletters. Before you even begin putting together a template, you should think about your reasons for sending a newsletter at all. What do you want to accomplish? How can your template help you achieve that goal?

Of course, all of this ranting could just be evidence of my steadily increasing crotchetiness. Do you find horrible email design an assault to your inbox? Maybe other people love seeing all the bright colors and nifty fonts. Please, chime in. I’m curious if this bugs other people, too.

 

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