Monthly Archive for December, 2007

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Suggestions for Success

Published on December 10, 2007 in Motivation and Quotation. 0 Comments

I found this list when I reorganized my old office, I thought it would be great for our Monday morning…

Suggestions for Success by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

  1. Marry the right person. This one decision will determine 90% of your happiness or misery
  2. Work at something you enjoy and that’s worthy of your time and talent
  3. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully
  4. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know
  5. Be forgiving of yourself and others
  6. Be generous
  7. Have a grateful heart
  8. Persistence, persistence, persistence
  9. Discipline yourself to save money on even the most modest salary
  10. Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated
  11. Commit yourself to constant improvement
  12. Commit yourself to quality
  13. Understand that happiness is not based on possessions, power or prestige, but on relationships with people you love and respect
  14. Be loyal
  15. Be honest
  16. Be a self-starter
  17. Be decisive even if it means you’ll sometimes be wrong
  18. Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life
  19. Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do more than the ones you did
  20. Take good care of those you love
  21. Don’t do anything that wouldn’t make your Mom proud

Sales words and phrases to avoid

Published on December 7, 2007 in Sales. 0 Comments

To get the sale, you must use superior word crafting to avoid sounding like an insincere salesperson. If you sound like one, you probably are.

Words and phrases to avoid. Forever.

Frankly – a word that sounds insincere

Quite frankly – a double dose of the dreaded frankly. It makes me very suspicious of the person who ways it

Honestly – a word that is almost always followed with a lie

And I mean that – No, you don’t

Are you prepared to order today? – This is an offensive, stupid, turn-off phrase

Can I help you with something? – The universal anthem of all retail sales clerks

Philosophies to avoid. Forever.

Preaching etchics – Don’t ever say how ethical you are. Let your ethics shine through.

If you are interested to know more, please visit a sales expert that I respect, Jeffrey H. GitomerÂ

Ways to evaluate website effectiveness

Published on December 6, 2007 in Website and Website Metrics. 0 Comments

The graph below shows some ways to evaluate website effectiveness.

Usability is very important, this is the customer experience, this is the way the visitor looks at the site, the way he gauges its ease of use an value to him. That is a perspective that cannot be overlooked. It is also a perspective that has a clear relation to the business effectiveness of the site.

If the visitor find the usage experience satisfactory, the site has a greater chance to be successful in the long run.

Traffic and Audience Measurement is a set of techniques used to provide effectiveness data vital to marketing management.

Site performance is data that is needed by site technicians to gauge and improve performance in terms of the number of broken links and other errors, speed and downtime.

It is appropriate to look at the usability testing first, since its greatest value comes prior to te actual deployment of a site or a redesign. In advertising terms, it is a pretesting technique that is used to ensure that the site works according to user expectation before it is opened to all visitors.

Using Search Engines to Drive Prospective Customers to a Website

Published on December 4, 2007 in Internet Sales and Website Search Engine Optimization. 0 Comments

Virtually all internet users make use of search engines. Few users seem to understand much about seach engines and some of their specialized functions.

Websites can simply register with the major search engines and hope for the best. However, marketers should understand a bit about how the most popular search engines work in order to help ensure that their sites achieve the highest levels of traffic.

There are two key points:

  1. The major search engines do not all work the same way and therefore you must have detailed information about the search techniques of each in order to optimize result.
  2. There are three primary ways search engines locate a site. None of them alone is sufficient; they are at least the basic elements and they must all be used aggressively in order to achieve the best results.
    • Keywords. These are indexing terms that are used by the search engine database to identify content, Marketers should identify all the words potential visitors might use in searching for a topic – and all the likely misspellings of these words! These keywords should appear with as much frequency as possible on the home page and other entry pages to major portions of the website. Copywriter must write compelling copy that includes as many keywords as possible.

    • Title tags. Each page has a title. Having a good, recognizable one is important. Search engine check every word in the title, so each one should be relevant to searches for site content.

    • Meta tags. Except for the title tag, meta tags do not affect how the site is displayed. They are specifically used to provide data to the search engines. Meta tags are used by search engines in constructing their own indices or internal directories, so the quality of the tags is important. The description part of the meta tag is the portion (as short as a phrase, as long as a paragraph, depending on the search engine) that search engines pull out and display to the potential visitor as part of the search results.

Obviously, the actual execution of the tagging is the work of the site programmers. However, the marketer must know enough to ensure that issues that affect recognition by search engines are dealt with properly.

Dealing with people

Published on December 3, 2007 in Quotation. 0 Comments

Here are some insights for our Monday morning about dealing or working with others…

“Natural talent, intelligence, a wonderful education – none of these guarantees success. Something else is needed: the sensitivity to understand what other people want and the willingness to give it to them.” – John Luther

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – John Maxwell

“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Assets make things possible. People make things happen.”

“In getting along with others, 98% depends on our behavior with others.”

Developing an Effective HTML Email Newsletter

Published on December 1, 2007 in Internet Sales. 2 Comments

Some people love HTML email and some people hate it. Some love the simplicity of text-only emails, while others praise the flexibility and good looks of HTML. Should we use CSS or tables? And what do we do when images are “blocked”?

Most of us think that if we can design a web page, then we should have no problem in designing HTML email. Well… almost. There are a few guidelines to follow that can ensure the best results for you and your clients.

The guidelines fall roughly into these recommendations: how you should design your email, how you should code it and finally the essential content you should include. Before we get into it though, let’s get one thing settled once and for all.

These guidelines are for relevant, permission-based emails being sent only to subscribers who have opted in to hear from your client specifically on the topic of the email. So if you’re a spammer, look away now!

Design for images being turned off

Any of your recipients who use AOL, Outlook 2003/2007, Outlook Express and Gmail will never see the images in any emails you send them by default. For some people that can make up at least half of all the people they ever send email to.

Here’s an example of just how ugly things can get. This is an email I received from Apple.


The Apple HTML email I received with images turned off


The same email from Apple with the image turned on

Luckily I recognized the sender and enabled the images right away, but how many of their recipients got the version without images and deleted the email immediately?

We know that images get blocked and that this will affect the design of your email – but blocked images are by no means a show stopper. All you need to do is follow a few simple guidelines when designing your email and you’ll forget that image blocking was ever an issue:

  1. Don’t use images for important content like calls to action, headlines and links to your web site
  2. Ask your recipients to add your sending address to their address book every chance you get. This will ensure your images are displayed by default in a range of popular email environments
  3. Add a text-based link to a web-based version of your email that will reveal your email in the browser in all its glory
  4. Use alt text for any images (which will be viewable in some email environments, especially Gmail)
  5. Make sure you always include the width and height in the image tag for every single image. This ensures the empty placeholder images don’t get stretched and completely throw your design.

To backup these recommendations, here are a few examples of emails that have been designed with these guidelines in mind. Notice how readable they are even with images disabled.

Designed by Jon Livingston, this email looks great with images enabled, but the large, clear title in the header still makes it recognizable to those with images turned off.


River City Church newsletter with images on


River City Church newsletter with images off

By following the guidelines mentioned above, you can ensure the best email experience for your recipients and hopefully the best results for your client.