Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

A Summer Hiatus

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I’ve been thinking about taking a short break from my blog and after writing the same blog post almost twice in the past two months I decided maybe my mind needs a summer vacation to get the creative juices flowing again.

So, next week you’ll see my July Pop Culture Round Up, and at the end of August you’ll see my August Pop Culture Round Up. But in between I think I’ll take a quiet break to get ready for fall. I promise I’ll be back with more great content and snarky pop culture references to keep your small business marketing habits in check this fall!

In the mean time, drop me a note if you have a suggestion for content!

Enjoy the summer, maybe take a break from something in your business that could use a month off… Let’s all try it together. Let me know what you decide in the comments…

3 More Ways to Increase Your Newsletter Open Rate

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A colleague of mine recently reached out to help figure out why the open rates on a clients email were lower than they had hoped for. They were able to share some analytics with me and I was able to help give some recommendations. I wrote a few months ago about 4 Ways to Increase Your Newsletter Open Rate and today I have 3 more ideas to share with you based on our conversation.

  1. Change the Day – This client is a retail location and they were sending on Thursday’s during the day. My exact suggestion was since it’s a retail location don’t send mid-day Thursday’s. People may be thinking about needing to shop at this store but probably won’t have time to really consider it till Thursday evening when they’re home and know they need to get it done this weekend (a great time to send) or even Sunday’s as they’re planning out their week.
  2. Review Your Reporting – MailChimp has a LOT of great reporting tools. Download your sent campaigns report and start to look for trends. With this client, Thursday’s had their worst open rates. I had a client who didn’t like her open rates (BTW they were ridiculous and I’d kill for them) but we looked and found Monday’s at 11:45 were the best open rate. We’ve moved back to that time (for now) and the numbers have increased again which is great.
  3. A/B Testing– How’s your subject line? Test it. Maybe it’s your delivery time (7 am? 5pm? Tuesday? Sunday?) Test it. MailChimp makes it easy to test a lot of different variables. I would suggest testing ONE thing at a time not three, but make sure you test to make sure you’re sending WHAT and WHEN your subscribers want it.

What do you do to up your newsletter open rate?

Schedule Time to DO the Work

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Schedule Time to do the workA few weeks ago I received an email from someone who had downloaded my Monthly Marketing Calendar.

“I have a calendar, I have content, but putting it all together is overwhelming, so I am very inconsistent. Thoughts?”

As per the usual, I have lots of thoughts on this! Here was my response:

It’s time to schedule time to do the work. That’s my best suggestion – block time on your calendar to write and post and schedule social media/blogs/etc. It sounds like that may be the missing piece.

For some people (me) having a to do list is enough to ensure that your tasks get accomplished each week. My first two items on my to do list each week are 1. Blog 2. ZOHO (my CRM). This way you’re always guaranteed a blog post (you’re welcome) and I always make sure to do the follow up with my contacts and leads that I manage in my CRM.

For other people the to do list isn’t enough. You may need to block that TIME in your calendar. That’s why I recommend when you attend a networking event you also schedule time to do your follow up after the event. That way it gets done. Maybe it’s 30 minutes a day of marketing and follow up to start. Then you’ll start to see you don’t need it every day, or at least not as much time. Great! In time you’ll start to see just how much time you specifically need to do your marketing tasks and you can get them done.

Also consider WHEN in the day/week you want to do your marketing tasks. Monday is often an office day for me so I get a lot of my marketing/admin tasks done on Monday. I also know right after lunch isn’t always my most productive time so maybe some admin tasks are good to schedule then.

What do you do to ensure that your marketing tasks are accomplished each week?