Don’t Underestimate Technology

Lisa Jeffries Nobling on November 12, 2008

I was just reading up on the Simply Stated: Technology blog this morning where the writer talks about the advantages of predictive text and how it enables smart phones to facilitate faster texting, emailing, etc. It got me thinking about one of my biggest pet peeves: advertisers who don’t accommodate for new technologies.

How many times have you heard or read an advertisement, or even just a supporting document, that instructs you to dial “1-800-TEC-HELP” (or something along those lines), but because you have a Blackberry (and the copywriter forgot to provide you with the 1-800-832-4357 below the easy to remember phrase)… you just couldn’t! Unless you have a traditional keyboard phone handy, chances are you forgot to follow-up on the task at hand later.

As common place as technologies like this are becoming , we are moving away from standard formats. If businesses don’t accommodate for these changes, we run the risk of losing interest and potential business.

The Mother of All Blog Giveaways

Lisa Jeffries Nobling on November 9, 2008

…which no, I am not hosting (but I definitely think it’s worth acknowledging in my business blog).

One of my favorite personal blogs to follow is Lauren’s at Adventures of a Southern Newlywed. A few weeks ago, she posted about how her husband had gifted her with a Keurig – one of the coolest cup-at-a-time brewing systems – something I’ve seen popping up in corporate world since last winter and now personal worlds… a lot lately.

They really are a neat little system with very little mess (see the official Keurig website for how it give you lots of coffee/tea/beverage choices in little pre-packed cups and brews them each individually) for brewing beverages, but at cup-at-a-time rate – which is great for cutting down on waste and costs (which is my guess as to the source of the backbone of their success in business settings).

Anyways, back to tying this into business – lots of brands are standing up and taking note of personal bloggers and their influence on their followers and offering up free products for the bloggers (usually females, as I’ve noticed) to give away on their blogs in a contest for one of the lucky readers who make themselves known and leave a comment.

Keurig has offered Lauren their Platinum home model – which at $199.95 MSRP – is no small gimme!

My question for business-followers out there is this – are you participating the blogworld, do you know who is talking about your products (or would be interested in your products), and are you turning that into a revenue stream?

If not, it’s so worth a shot. (You can’t tell me you haven’t heard the old addages about the power of word-of-mouth.)

“Media Guerilla points to interesting research from Intelliseek that finds that consumers are ‘50% more likely to be influenced by word-of-mouth recommendations from their peers than by radio/TV ads.’”
Source: Business Week

Enough said.

(Note: As always, this is not a paid endorsement of Keurig, just an observation from my own personal Google Reader subscriptions of how businesses are leveraging the power of social media.)

Two Years Later – Really?

Lisa Jeffries Nobling on November 7, 2008

Email marketing tip of the week: always build your contact list, but please… don’t wait two years to send the first communication!

During January of 2007, about 20 of my sorority sisters and I visited Washington, D.C. for a weekend of celebrating the installation of a new chapter of Pi Beta Phi at GWU. During this time, we chose to stay at the D.C. Hampton Inn (which is not my preferred choice of hotels, but the D.C. HI was nonetheless very nice, well-equipped, centrally-located and very well-priced).

I made my reservation online, received the confirmation emails, etc. and went along my merrily. A great time was had by all and the weekend was a great success.

Point of the story? Here I am in November of 2008, nearly two years later, checking my email when what should appear in my inbox other than a promotional message from “my friends at the Hampton Inn – D.C.” – the first promotional message at that.

Seriously?

The most ironic part is that I was actually just in D.C. last weekend. Luckily, I stayed with friends and didn’t need a hotel, but wouldn’t it have made better sense for the Hampton Inn to occasionally contact me every few months or so after my stay instead of two years later? Just imagine how many times I could’ve realistically visited D.C. since.

Long story short: building an email list is great. Waiting two years to put it to good use? Slack.

PS – Since making my January 2007 reservation, my email address has changed as I’ve migrated away from my ISP-specific email address (here’s hoping I’ll one day be able to get away from the mini-monopoly that is Time Warner Cable). Luckily for the sender, I have it forward to my Gmail address, but MANY emailers aren’t that tech-savvy… I wonder what their bounce rates were like!

GoDaddy.com

Lisa Jeffries Nobling on October 17, 2008



GoDaddy.com because of their cheesy superbowl advertising with less than classy depictions of women, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say I can look past that when they give me the capability to call them at 3am on Sunday morning to fix my website.

If you’re considering DIY-ing some (or all) of your website/email/domains/etc. (which you should – your phone company/website provider/whoever should NEVER be able to hold any part of YOUR business hostage and prevent you from maintaing it on your own, should you so choose – but that’s beside the point), I highly recommend GoDaddy.com for domains and hosting because honestly, I find it incredibly useful to have everything grouped together in one nice place with one username, password, and passcode* and be able to instantly have someone answer the phone who can ACTUALLY HELP you.

LOVE IT.

*Ever tried to get anything done through a vendor’s customer service only to be blocked because you don’t remember whatever random word you’re supposed to say? Insert frustrated face there.

PS – Seriously, take a “intro to web design” or “web design for the real world” class (and even better, big ol’ series of classes) at your local community college and learn to do some of it on your own.

PS 2 – While it’s super easy to learn to maintain sites on your own, I do recommend getting a freelance or small agency “designer” to build your layout… it’ll be a lot prettier.

A Possible Alternative to a Smart Phone

Lisa Jeffries Nobling on October 11, 2008

If you just can’t make the switch to a smart phone, but you hate being disconnected from email (or you suck at checking your email – be honest!), this might be a good choice for you with no long-term service contracts.

From Simply Stated – Technology: Email and Nothing Else

I’m way too much of a techy (and have umpteen email addresses), so this wouldn’t work for me… but it might for quite a few others I know!

We’ve Said it Before…

Lisa Jeffries Nobling on October 9, 2008

Both Peggy and I constantly preach about the necessity of a branded email address and yet still… some folks are missing the boat. Check out her blog post from today that covers another reason to brand your email address: because AOL, BellSouth, and Yahoo aren’t paying you for the free exposure you’re offering up!

While we’re at it, if you engage in any sort of email promotion or marketing, please take 30 seconds to familiarize yourself with the guiding principles that are the CAN-SPAM Act. (No one wants to be fined up to $11,000 by the FTC.)

Prime Example: Since activating my NC real estate license, I have received numerous unsolicited emails about property listings that not only don’t include opt-out methods, but when I’ve contacted the actual sales team, they can’t come up with a concrete answer for how they actually received my email address (although they swear the TMLS didn’t sell it to them… I am a bit doubtful and will be making a few calls today).

What kills me is that they are for properties that are available for sale in areas that not only am I not any sort of interested in, but neither are any of my clients. Having your email address marked as “spam” by Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, Bellsouth, and Road Runner personal email users will get you automatically sent to the spam folder very quickly. (And let’s not even mention the black-hole that is emails that are automatically blocked by these ISP before the ever even get to the spam folder…)

Working on the Go?

Lisa Jeffries Nobling on October 6, 2008

I shared this on my personal blog today, and thought it is incredibly relevant for business travelers, too!

How cool is it that you don’t have to get on the super slow internet on your phone (or worse – no internet at all) or listen to the ads on “Free 411” (1-800-373-3411) anymore.

Once again, thank you Google for making life just that much easier.

1-800-GOOG-411 (466-4411)

Put it in your cell phone address book/contact list now if this is the first time you’ve heard of this!

Oh Nextel…

Lisa Jeffries Nobling on October 5, 2008

…you merge with Sprint, we forgo amazing customer support, AND our new phones still take 2 years to come along?!

Absolutely can’t wait for this new Blackberry to make it on to the Nextel network. I will have a full keyboard for emailing/texting (although not so PC for business) from the boat, the bar, or … eek… while in the car and not from this modified keyboard on a brick!

Naturally, my Nextel partner-in-crime sent me a email the other day with only this info:

From: Brandon
To: Lisa
Subject: new bb info

https://www.sprintenterprise.com/newphones/curve.html

No other explanation needed.

From the tech world – they must have been thinking about me exactly when they wrote this:

“Sprint today unveiled the BlackBerry Curve 8350i Push-to-Talk for its cute little Nextel customers. Our wild guess is that this is a limited run, aimed at the last four people on earth who somehow need a real business smartphone but still use Nextel.”Absolutely, spot on.

I have also dearly missed the built-in camera feature for those random times when my digital camera is nowhere near:

“The BlackBerry Curve 8350i smartphone offers a 2 megapixel camera with video recording and a microSD memory card slot, which ensures that you will have plenty of storage for pictures and music. The handset features on-board GPS navigation, an integrated music player, and Bluetooth A2DP stereo connectivity.”No pricing and no date info yet? Bad form Nextel/Sprint… bad form. Basic principles of services marketing tell us that consumers respond better to a given wait time up-front than no estimate at all – they even interpret the wait as long than actual experienced when they aren’t given an approximate wait time.

10/5/08 Update: Video preview!! Please, please, please let this be here before Christmas so I can get one in my stocking!

Are Your Emails Outlook 2007-Proof?

Lisa Jeffries Nobling on August 19, 2008

Quick Tip: Be sure that any email communication you’re sending render as expected in Outlook 2007.

I recently upgraded to Office 2007 (which definitely slowed me down by at least a week with all the freakin’ changes to the appearance) with the purchase of a new laptop and in the last month have unsubscribed from at least 30 email subscriptions that I use to at least skim if nothing else.

Luckily (as I see it), they were all random big corporation ones, so I’m not really missing out, but for any of you small business folks out there… be sure you’re getting what you expect (or pay for, if you’re using Constant Contact, etc.). Many of the online services have taken action to try and make their templates compatible… but one I used today happened to not be… so always just double check – especially if you’re paying for a service.

If you want to test yours before sending them out, I’ll be glad to review it for you – just email me: Lisa.Jeffries@gmail.com.

I won’t even try to be a definitive source on what makes an email Outlook 2007-proof… but here’s a good place to start: CampaignMonitor.

Blogworthy Update

Lisa Jeffries Nobling on August 14, 2008

A while back, I wrote a post about “business as usual” and what a shame it was that such glaringly awful mishaps are taking place in the business world on a regular basis.

I’ve just updated the above referenced post with a link to another clever business blog written by a fellow female entrepreneur… with just as many ridiculous business world stories to share. Be sure to subscribe to her feed so we can all enjoy a little laugh and learn from the downfalls of others… so that we can hopefully keep ourselves from every making any of our own blogs on “how not to do business”.