Posts from — July 2009

While cleaning up my files, I ran across my “rules for survival.”  These have been evolving since I turned 20.  Yes, that’s a long time ago.  Here is one “rule” written in pencil on the tattered list…

“When things are at their absolute worst, that’s when the least amount of extra effort will pay the largest dividends.” 

When things are good, it is easy to work long and hard.  It may even be fun.  But, everyone else is working hard too, so your efforts as compared to your competition will not have as big an effect.  Mathematically, when you put in 110 units of work when everyone is putting in 100, you are only 10% ahead. 

It is when the situation is so bad that nobody wants to do anything, that any extra effort can swing the tide.   When things look terribly bleak, or it is too cold to move, or everyone is too exhausted to do anything,  that is exactly the time when your effort will be leveraged many times bringing you out ahead of your competition.  If your competitors are sulking around feeling hopeless and only putting in 5 units of work waiting for better times to return, and you put in only 10 units of work, you will be 100% ahead of your competition. 

Who doesn’t want to be 100% ahead of the competition in the business arena?  

The trick of leadership is to show that the deepest, darkest, bleakest moment may yield the greatest reward with some extra effort.

I’ve had several people ask me recently about my thoughts on email as a social / new media / business tool.  Email is the “killer” app of our age.  When grand-parents are comfortable  emailing pictures and stories around the world, no one can question the efficacy of email as a communication tool.

When you start emailing larger and larger groups, the list management can become quite a problem.  That’s where the email service providers (ESPs) step in.  As with most things, there are a range of prices for a range of services.  Here is a list of a few that I am familiar with.

• Cheetahmail
• Blue Sky Factory
• MyEmma
• Constant Contact
• iContact
• Aweber
• Yahoo or Google Groups

Cheetahmail, at the top of the list, is an enterprise solution.  Some of its customers include Sears, Borders Books, H&R Block, and even some airlines.  You can see by the brands, millions of customers means millions of emails.  Cheetahmail uses robust systems to ensure the delivery of those millions of emails while providing dynamic creation tools, specialized segmentation tools, and powerful administrative, management, and reporting capabilities. Cheetahmail has a full service staff able to help with dynamic content creation, creative material creation.

Blue Sky Factory and Emma are more of a “boutique shop” provider.  They will provide highly personalized service at a medium price for a mid-size email list.

I will clump Constant Contact, iContact, and Aweber togather in the bottom tier.  They are very much a “self-service” providers.  This doesn’t mean their services won’t provide a very useful improvement over a Google or Yahoo group email list.  Some of these lower tier services will allow unlimited emails for a fixed cost per month.  I know many people who are happy with these services. 

In a future post, I’ll explain what these Email Service Providers actually do for you.