Phil Lauterjung

Archive for August, 2009

For those that might not be familiar with the term, transactional emails are typically sent to existing customers with information regarding their order process – order confirmation, shipping info, etc.  With a lot of companies these are simply text emails sent from customer service or someone else in your company.  By adding a marketing message or offer these can provide BIG opportunities for up selling and/or cross-selling, and you will start to soar above your competitors.

At the very least, these emails should include your corporate logo and tag line consistent with your website and other corporate marketing communications.  A disconnect between a well designed website experience and a text-based email can do damage to your brand reputation, especially with new customers.  Read more... (494 words, 2 images, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

It’s not often that one can find 50 well-known business bloggers and their collective wisdom in one place.  Usually it takes quite a bit of time and searching all over the web.  But, thanks to to Gregory Go (Wise Bread) and the Open Forum you can.

These aren’t full blog posts, but there are some very good snippets from these 50 bloggers.  There are also links to each of their blogs in case you want to read more.  [After staying for a few minutes to read some of mine first of course ]  Read more... (918 words, 2 images, estimated 3:40 mins reading time)

With every twist and turn in technology there are those who think that every new thing is a passing fad.  Quite honestly, sometimes they are right.  But, then there are broader movements within the overall scheme; and, those are the ones that we ignore at our own peril.

With the recent release of Forrester Research‘s third annual Social Technographics Profile called “The Broad Reach of Social Technologies”, we can now safely say that this Social Media thingy just might be here to stay.  There will be various tools and companies that don’t end up commanding a large presence, and some will fail; but, the concept of doing business using some form of Social Media will be necessary to survive.  Read more... (388 words, 3 images, estimated 1:33 mins reading time)

Have you ever been to an event or party where you meet someone who only wants to talk about them?  And they really are deserving of a plural pronoun because it’s all about me, myself, and I.    I’ve had this come up a couple of times – well… OK a number of times; and mostly I start immediately looking for an “out”.  If you do too, this post is for you – at least if you use Twitter and other social media.  Read more... (526 words, 2 images, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)

Everyone knows that email marketing is the least expensive and most effective form of online marketing available – right?  It’s been proven to be helpful regardless of the size of your business.  Yet, according to an Epsilon and ROI Research study, 55% of e-mail subscribers in the U.S. and Canada unsubscribe occasionally and 14% do so frequently.  Sometimes it can be a tough road.  So what gives?  Why are there such high rates of unsubscribers?

Fortunately, the same study asked the reasons that internet users unsubscribe from permission-based emails.  Here’s what they found:

 Read more... (444 words, 4 images, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

There are plenty of theories about this topic and much of it is wrong.  That is if you accept the findings of a study done by MIT (the brainiac university) and InsideSales.com.  They actually had a professor (Dr. James Oldroyd) with a PhD head the study, so I’m guessing that might have a little credibility with you.

They examined 3 years of data across six companies that generate and respond to web leads, from over fifteen thousand leads and over one hundred thousand phone call attempts.

They focused on one question for this study:  Read more... (562 words, 5 images, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)