Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

July Pop Culture Round Up

by //

The longer summer days make pop culture consumption a no-brainer for me. Sit outside with delicious beverage, read, throw ball for Norm, repeat. July has been busy with friend and family visiting, along with my BIRTHDAY and a trip to the coast for some cooler weather for a few days. A lot of pop culture has been consumed, here’s a few of my favorites…

Listening

I love The Roots, so when I saw they were coming to the zoo the night before my birthday you’re darn right I was not going to miss out! I had a great birthday -eve listening to great music with a fantastic live band and ELEPHANTS walking around behind us. Zoo concerts are my new favorite. If you want to go, my answer will always be YES please.

This means I’ve been listening to a lot of The Roots lately and I’m also enjoying the new Chance the Rapper singles that came out a few days ago. And I’m going through a big The Beatles phase again.

As for podcasts, the usuals still stand (that Roe v. Wade 2 parter on The Daily was awesome!) For a mental break I’m really enjoying The Good Place Podcast still. And The Wilderness from Jon Favreau is really great and I’m learning a lot.

Reading

I’m still making my way through Dan Pfeiffer’s book Yes We (Still) Can. While I love the foot notes in the book they’re kind of distracting!

I love Marisha Pessl, she’s a fantastic and kind of weird author. Her first book Special Topics in Calamity Physics is one I think about when recommending books to avid readers. Her second novel Night Film was also fantastic and weird and had me up till 3 am reading it on vacation a few years ago. So I was THRILLED to learn she had a new book that came out just in time for my birthday! I started Neverworld Wake on vacation this past weekend and hoping to get some good patio time to finish it in the next week or two!

In comics, I have the new Nancy Drew series from one of my favorite comic writers, Kelly Thompson. And FINALLY the return of Captain Marvel! I can’t wait to dig in to these two series…

Watching

I finally finished the second season of The Handmaids Tale and it was crazy dark. I saw a lot of reviews that didn’t like it and didn’t think it was redemptive, which is true, but they have a 7 year plan here, not 2…

I enjoyed this season of Colony as a good summer sci-fi series. I always love a show that takes place in Seattle and the ONLY reason you know that is because the streets are wet because it “just rained” on a backlot in Vancouver…

I’m halfway through the new season of Orange is the New Black and it’s OK. I didn’t totally remember what happened last season so trying to remember what I should know and what’s still unknown is always fun. The abuse and darkness are getting a little tiring. I’m hoping somehow it redeems itself this season – I am excited to see how things come together with Frida.

What else are you reading, watching and listening to this summer?

A Summer Hiatus

by //

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

by //

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?