One of the ways I gauge entrepreneurs or business executives’ effectiveness and efficiency is how they respond to their emails. Without requiring ‘instant responses’, within one week of correspondence I can identify the ‘top 10%’ from the bottom ‘90%’.

This is 2012. We are in the 21^st century with email at the nucleus of our communication paradigm. Business people who struggle with technology and especially emails are ‘dinosaurs’.

Now that’s a bold statement to make, but it really is THAT important.

Allow me to contrast the top 10% versus the bottom 90%.

The top 10% respond within a reasonable time frame. It can be within the hour, the day, but rarely ever more than 48 hours (unless they are on leave or otherwise occupied with a project/event). One thing is for sure – you’re never wondering if they got or lost the email.

The bottom 90%…

• Claim to ‘lose’ or not receive emails
• Ask for emails to be re-sent because they accidentally deleted them
• Actually do have problems receiving emails because of their spam folder settings that are too strict
• Are challenged with their spam and junk mail folders – reviewing them only ‘every once in a while’ even though many important emails end up there
• Have hundreds or thousands of emails in their inbox
• Respond to emails erratically sometimes immediately and then are ‘offline’ for days with no communication
• Don’t use meaningful subject lines
• Don’t maintain message threads that are important – creating new emails with each new response
• Use TXT acronyms trying to be “hip or groovy” instead of clear in their explanations – creating the need for additional threads to find out what they meant to say
• Subscribe to every free email list available fearful that they will miss something.
• Don’t read their emails – instead skimming and overlooking the most important and time sensitive information
• Have multiple emails that they don’t monitor appropriately
• Share emails with others so everyone gets the email and multiple people responding with conflicting suggestions
• Don’t have folders for their emails – so can’t quickly locate what they need when they need it. Even though emails are now indexed, not having folders is like not having a filing cabinet for your physical documents.

Poor email management is one of my strongest pet peeves, but the reason I mention it here is because it’s also symptomatic of poor business management.

Without needing to become a Productivity Powerhouse – lack of effective email management skills (and tools) can be an important obstacle to your overall business success.

Anecdotally, over the past 10 to 15 years, I have noticed that the top business people don’t just manage their emails – the MASTER and CONTROL them with an adeptness that is remarkable.

If you’re struggling to grow your business – just look at your inbox and the list above. It’s a quick and easy problem to solve.

If it isn’t – you now have the SOURCE of the real problem!

I recently published this 2-minute link optimisation tip to avoid a common mistake a lot of people make.

This is 2011. Forget the Information Age, we’re in the Information Overload Age. I see it every day. People just can’t keep up with it all (even though many waste more than an hour a day on Facebook, but that’s a rant for another day).

As a business person, you need you to read the emails that are important – you are losing a lot more than you know by not reading them.

The problem or challenge is that you have too much junk or spam in your inbox. This is 2011 – DEAL WITH IT.

But let’s face it, it’s not really spam is it?

You’re on everyone’s opt-in list and you don’t want to miss anything that’s FREE…

Well guess what?

It’s not FREE – it’s costing you, dearly.

Each time you or someone who needs to reach you has to re-send an email, it DOUBLES the communication effort. It’s not trivial – with many people sending/receiving more than 100 emails/day, that’s a lot of wasted time and effort ON BOTH SIDES.

In some cases, I stopped dealing with people who can’t respond fast enough. In one supplier’s case it was worth more than $1,000. Gone. Not to mention additional on-going sales or referrals…

You need to find the SOURCE of the problem and get rid of it (excess emails).

For the emails you do need to receive -

Are you skimming them?

Are you distracted when you read them?

In this day and age, I can tell you (anecdotally) that I can gauge someone’s success (or lack thereof) by the efficiency of their email communication.

Simple as that – I know what a ‘reasonable amount of time is to respond’ and when that extends beyond the ‘acceptable’ I know it’s symptomatic.

Symptomatic of a lack of discipline.

A lack of organisation.

A lack of responsiveness.

Lack, lack, lack.

As a business coach, mentor and Exponential Growth Strategist, I figure if you can’t deal with emails you’re not anywhere close to being ready to grow your business.

As you are receiving e-mail, it’s wise to remember how easily this wonderful technology can be misused, sometimes unintentionally and with serious consequences.

Consider the case of the Michigan man who left the snow-filled streets of Detroit for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick e-mail.

Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her e-mail address, he did his best to type it in from memory. Unfortunately, he missed one letter and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher’s wife, whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her e-mail, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fell to the floor in a dead faint. Hearing the scream, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen:

“Dearest Wife,

Just got checked in.

Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow.

P.S. Sure is hot down here!”

During my recent Business Blogging For Sales Lead Generation event tour in Adelaide, the Gold Coast, Melbourne and Sydney, participants heard a preview of my rant on Privacy Pirates which I’ve been proselytising about for quite some time. Karen Bonanno, a 2011 Exponential Entrepreneur Of The Year Award Winner, sent me the infographic below that I just had to share with you.

I will expand on this in an upcoming Do It Yourself Google Sales Lead Generation For Small Business series of workshops… But in the meantime have a good read of this infographic. You’ll start to get a sense of where I’m coming from and how I am guiding my clients to avoid being victims of the Privacy Pirates.

Even though small businesses in Australia lag in Internet adoption with most small businesses either not having a website established or not having a fully integrated, functional website, in contrast, Australian consumers are quite techno-savvy.

According to recent research, 37% of Australians use smart phones and is predicted to be 50% by the end of 2011. 92% say they use smart phones while consuming other media; 46% while watching TV, 43% while listening to music, 36% while online. A whopping 26% say they have purchased something on their smart phone. Average number of apps is 25, with 8 being purchased. Nearly 50% browse the web every day on their phones.

Nielsen research shows Australians are #1 in usage of social networks

Neilsen reports that Australians spend 7 hours 17 minutes per person each month on social networks and blogs. Australian social media usage was highest for the second year running, out of Nielsen’s Internet-metered markets including: Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, U.K., and U.S. This means Australians used social media 25 minutes more per month than the previous year. That’s quite a bit more.

Most small business owners still don’t fully appreciate the value of social networking for business purposes.

A lot of it is due to ignorance (not knowing) and confusion. For example, there’s a common misconception that links last a lot longer on Facebook than Twitter, because the newsfeed moves slower than the stream, but recent research confirmed this is not the case.

The half life of a link (i.e. the time it takes to receive half its total clicks from when it’s first shared) is on average 2.8 hours on Twitter and 3.2 hours on Facebook – not a massive difference, although on YouTube links last considerably longer.

What’s more interesting is that a link pointing to a topical news story – like an earthquake – is likely to have a lot shorter half-life than a link pointing to something oblique (like lolcats).

The graph below illustrates this phenomenon, but once again ignorance (not knowing) can be damaging. The concept of the half life of a link is important if you’re in the news business, but if you’re a business looking to stay in business for years to come, what is important and relevant to you is the value of the individual links established, not the half life.

Half Life Of Internet Links In Social Media Networks

This is a vitally important concept we will cover at our Business Blogging For Sales Lead Generation event, it’s an exclusive by-invitation-only event that you need to contact us if you want to attend.

Why is a blog important for business?

Blogs are used to establish contact and communication with a business. A website by design is static, whereas a blog and Facebook are interactive, engaging the prospect. More importantly, he/she can read and assess the type of communications others have had with you/the business.

In this day and age, it’s not a nice-to-have sales and marketing tool, a blog is a must-have sales, marketing and customer support and brand building tool.

Let’s face it, if you’re not blogging, you’re just not serious about sales lead generation.

In a recent article,”Companies in the dark over converting web traffic into sales” it was reported that sixty per cent of Australian companies with an online presence have no idea how to convert website visitors into customers.

More than 300 Australian marketers were surveyed through independent research with the report also revealing 89% of companies don’t use tools to assess how people use their sites.

Moreover, the companies surveyed spend 40% of their budget attracting traffic to their website.

Some 30% of marketers either do not evaluate the success of their website or only evaluate on an annual basis.

A further 25% assess their website biennially. This lack of engagement and measurement of their websites means most marketers have no idea what small simple changes could be made to their websites to increase sales.

Isn’t this alarming?

So how do you stack up to these stats?

If you want help to grow your online presence and bottom-line results, give us a call. We have a RESULTS GUARANTEED Platinum Program that will have you out-performing and out-selling your competitors in no time – if you qualify!

According to a recent survey, personalised emails generated 42.7% more click-throughs on average to the web copy than non-personalised email.

Personalised emails generated 403% more sales on average than non-personalised emails.

Personalised emails generated 42.8% fewer un-subscribes on average than non-personalised emails.

Email Personalisation is not new, the question is does it still work?

Should you expend the effort to personalize your emails?

You should TEST to see what happens. Surveys and reports are great to give you ideas, but you need to test the findings with YOUR suspects, prospects and clients.

Don’t just believe everything you read.

Whitelisting your email is something that many Internet beginners still struggle with. With the proliferation of spam and junk emails, it’s still something that’s important to do.

Having people whitelist your email will improve your email delivery and conversion rates.

That’s why this explanation really stood out as a great value-creation tool for clients. I thought would share it with you.

You’re welcome!

A lot of people debate the pros and cons of Social Media, what I have come to call Social NOTworking – where people waste countless hours exchanging posts, chats, pokes, photos and other electronic elements with people they wouldn’t be caught dead with face-to-face. But that’s my personal bias AND I am not saying that Social Media is not worth doing – it is, but not for the reasons MOST people think…

That’s a discussion for another day and one I reserve for my paying clients to help them out-perform their peers by doing out-of-the-ordinary things that create extra-ordinary results.

Results that baffle their competitors – BECAUSE they (the competitors) have no clue…. Shhh! It’s called Stealth Marketing and means they can’t copy what you’re doing!

In support of my bias, I came across recent reports that continue to show that website traffic from social media networks is still pretty low.

SeeWhy studied 60,000 ecommerce transactions across a variety of sites in February 2011. Since running an online store is about selling things, they looked at only the people who actually loaded items into their shopping cart. Here’s one of the summary results:

Email Marketing Generates More Buyer Traffic Than Social Media

Email Marketing Still Outperforms Social Media

As you can see, email brought in the most traffic, with direct and search significantly less. Social media came in at only 4.3%, not great, but better than display advertising, so that’s something to think about.

Next they took that info and charted the percentage of people from each source who completed their transaction. In other words, the people who handed over their credit card number and hit submit.

Email Marketing Converts To More Sales Than Social Media

If you want more sales, send more emails!

In the above pie chart you can clearly see that email and direct hits to the site still resulted in the best sales conversions, social media picked up a dismal 2.11% of the overall, but look at display advertising. Yikes, only 0.53% conversion rate? Maybe you should be spending money on your Facebook page rather than on display ads, but once again that’s a discussion for another day. Social NOTworking does have its place, but not where or how you might think. We explain this in our Killer Konversations™ Workshops if you’re interested…

At the end of all of this, SeeWhy does put in the usual disclaimer. Your mileage may vary and different types of ecommerce sites will have different results. While I understand that this is a study of ONLY 60,000 transactions, it supports my bias that email marketing still is the primary source for online sales.

There’s a fundamental reason – it’s a privileged conversation that people still value – as long as it’s not violated.

If you’re asking yourself why email marketing isn’t in the news more often, it’s because it simply isn’t as new and trendy as social media marketing.

The news “media” are always searching for new trends and buzzwords to fill their empty pages.

My clients don’t care about the buzz and hype – all they want is more people buying their products and services.

If that’s what you want – send them more emails – but not just any emails… That’s considered spam. You need to know what to send to whom.

That’s what we teach our clients to do – become a client today. Contact us now and we’ll help you avoid making mistakes that cost money and lost sales.

Google Instant is not new, but it is having a dramatic influence on how people search….

As you can see when you use Google, the search results change dynamically AS YOU TYPE. The suggestions DO influence what people will type in – this is having a dramatic effect on Google Adwords…

Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours sent this Google Warning article link to me several months ago. I shared this with my clients giving them hints and suggestions, but those are beyond the scope of a blog post.

If you’d like ‘instant’ access to tip and tricks to make sure you avoid mistakes and are kept informed in ‘real time’ – contact us to join one of our many programs.

Every once in a while I come across something that stands out. Today’s post is an example of a subtle question (13b) that puts the previous question into context. It’s the BEST SURVEY QUESTION I have read in several years. Leave it to Apple to do it – they know the value of feedback. They also understand and respect the CONTEXT and INTENT in which it’s given.

From Apple

When I meet with my clients, I go into substantially more detail than just highlighting something like this. There are two psychological constructs in play here that were outlined in substantial detail in two recent books I read. Books you would not come across in your airport or local bookstore.

This is what I do as The Exponential Growth Strategist – I seek out distinctions, nuances and explanations so my clients can tailor outstanding examples like this one in their businesses and/or careers. If you’d like to be coached or mentored and access this level of expertise, contact me. If you qualify, we’d love to have you in our RESULTS GUARANTEED Platinum Program.

Recently, I was reviewing infomercials (they are a great source of creative ideas). A popular TV pitchman had the audience repeating the mantra, “just set it and forget it!”

Set And Forget Might Work For BBQ Chicken, But Not Your Website

While this might be an exciting idea for a dinner appliance, it’s suicide for your website. Like a car or a house, your website requires regular, on-going maintenance.

What is “Website Maintenance”?

I define website maintenance as both the art and science of keeping a website current in both technology and (Killer Kopy™) content. That means assuring proper functionality (how users move around the pages), verifying the accuracy of copy, fixing any broken links and images as well as performing an overall brand/positioning assessment of the site to make sure it reflects how you and /or your company wants to be perceived online.

An easy metaphor to explain website maintenance is home maintenance.

You can take a look at your home for light bulbs that need to be replaced, look to see if there are any new cracks in the foundation, maybe a room needs some new paint, tiles or carpet.

The same is true of your website. It’s good practice to review your site at least once a month.

Website review tips:

• Check date sensitive content such as an announcement of an upcoming event. After the date passes, it should no longer be “upcoming” and the date or deadline changed. The longer the old date remains, the more out-of-date your website appears to your visitors.
• Even though computers “don’t make mistakes”, functional elements of your website including contact us forms, event registrations, product purchase links and other e-commerce and database functionality should be checked. Often, these break due to an indirect parameter being changed somewhere else on the site. You don’t need to check everything each month, just run a random spot check or pick a section of your site each month to review.
• Check external links (links to other sites) on your site. There are several free utilities that can provide this function for you. Recently, I had someone send me an email with a link in her signature that was broken…
• You should review as many pages on your site as you can, paying special attention to the links in the navigation bar(s), make sure the visual elements appear correctly on all pages. This can be done very quickly to find the most obvious errors.
• Check for images that are not displaying correctly or have the dreaded “red x”. This can usually be done by skimming the pages quickly – you may realise that some images load too slowly (all you need to do is reduce the file’s resolution to a web optimised format.)

I highly recommend taking notes as you do your website review. You’ll get ideas for immediate and future improvement that can become part of your tactical and strategic deployment respectively.

What do you do when you find an issue?

Read More »»

Google has made recent changes that significantly affect your SEO effectiveness. One of them I discussed recently, called Google Previews. Today’s post is regarding Google Places – another attempt by Google to fend off Facebook’s domination by forcing you to put additional information into Google to increase Google’s ranking – not necessarily improve your own SEO results. In fact this complicates the process in a zero sum game. More work, effort and cost for the same or WORST outcome than you previously had.

Contrary to what they want you to believe, Google is in business for themselves and Google Places I am sure you’ll agree is yet another task that you have to undertake to not lose whatever presence you previously had.

As a blog reader and subscriber, I want you to know about these shifts. If you want to know what to do about them, you’ll need to become a client. We have a wide variety of Internet programs and products to choose from. Contact us and we’ll discuss the various available options.

I don’t want to leave you completely in the dark so here is a link that explains the potential negative impact of Google Places. Ray Keefe of Successful Endeavours originally sent it to me.

(Psst! Thanks Ray!)

Earlier this week, I blogged about how Vaseline and radioactivity are related to make a point – well actually, to illustrate how William Tucker has been able to reduce the fear mongering propaganda of the mass media to simple, easy-to-understand metaphors and analogies that any 5th grader can understand.

Mt Tucker recently added another article to his on-going explanation regarding Infant formula made from Tokyo tap water.

His brilliance is simplifying the otherwise complex into something easy for the layperson to grasp.

One of the key strategies that I will be teaching our elite VIP and Platinum Members this weekend is how to do this systematically.

How to leverage tools like the one below that Mr Tucker shared with us in one of his recent articles.

Every business has hidden assets like this – the key is to know how to use them effectively within an automated approach.

We’ll miss you this weekend.

Japanese Earthquake - Radiation Dose Chart

Psst! If you’d like to give your business results a non-radioactive boost, contact us to discuss our business coaching options and we’ll have a chat about how we can GUARANTEE RESULTS in writing…

In a previous post, I explained the benefit of using a great illustration or photo to explain a step-by-step process. Sometimes the image can be a page of text – like this one for mobile phone recycling… One page says it all in a very attractive layout, with the necessary links.

I just blogged about Internet use on vacation on my Professional Mastery Blog – you should go there now and check it out. It’s something to consider, but it’s not what you think.

I came across this insightful article by Dudley B. Dawson

Below are seven habits that consistently appear at offices across the world. If you have additional examples, please feel free to provide them in the comments below.

1. Including email signatures that include credentials like “MBA” or “HRMS” after their name. Existing readers are well aware of the distaste for credentials in email signatures as described in “Email Signatures: Adding “MBA” after your name is very telling“. [Note – I disagree in principle with this, but will leave that for another blog post – this article is about Dudley’s list, not mine.]

2. Adding clipart to your email. Often the work of administrative assistants, human resources, or other corporate cheerleaders. To think that when these people attach the clipart they imagine recipients smiling. This is called reputation distortion. Those who think others believe them to be a cheery person are actually the people most despised by the office. Clipart photos are to corporate cheerleaders as rainbows are to the GLBT.  Immediate and universal identification. Read More »»

Well, this is the last day of the Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamp… What an exciting 2 days it’s been – hundreds of ideas (most of them free) to get more online traffic that converts to sales. Here’s the last thing I want to say about this last edition of this version of the Bootcamp.

With like-minded people in the room, there is a magical experience that gets created – it’s called The Exponential MasterMind Experience. It’s special because it works like magic. We’re actually ‘doing it’ live at the Marriott Hotel in Melbourne… You’re unfortunately not there – your fallback is to get the audio program and determine if an Exponential Mindset™ is for you.

Click here -> to get the Exponential Mastermind Program.

You’ve been left behind, this will help you get back on track to catch up – IF you want to produce results that baffle your competitors and impress your friends and colleagues.

You have to believe it works, otherwise, you’re right – it won’t work for you.

But when you believe, the results are well… E-X-P-O-N-E-N-T-I-A-L.

Ka-Ching!

I am sure you enjoy this and my other blogs. They are filled with information that would otherwise take you hours to find and in many cases, there is no way you would ever find them on your own. The reason is that I have HUNDREDS of contributors to my blogs from around the world… Take this blog post about 10 You Tube URL Tricks You Should Know About. Unless you were searching for that, you’d never even think of it.

That’s why it’s valuable to have a business coach, advisor or mentor who does this for you, automatically and systematically.

In my case, I am The Exponential Growth Strategist which means I find stuff that makes the difference and gives you options to choose from. Like this YouTube Channel link.

The question then becomes – are you ready to take these tips to the next level and make them work for you to create exponential growth for your business and/or online sales channel?

If you are, then consider the Exponential Internet Marketing Bootcamp – when you attend as a VIP Ticket Holder, we’ll guarantee that you’ll make $30,000 GUARANTEED in the next 12 months.