I recently received an e-mail that had me riveted from start to finish. It contained a true story about two men aboard US Airways flight 1549—the one that crash-landed into the Hudson River. Both passengers had regularly backed up their critical computer data. One did this by transferring info from his hard drive to a second computer, but he had taken both laptops on the plane. The other passenger had used an online backup service called Mozy (owned by EMC)…

Small business owners and entrepreneurs like to jump right in and get started, which is crucial to success, but it’s also important to prepare and plan and set objectives, especially when it comes to email marketing. When you’re getting started with email marketing make sure you step back and think through what you’re trying to accomplish. The best way to do this is to try and see things through your customer’s eyes.

Give a pop quiz to most direct marketers on postal list testing and you’ll find an incredibly knowledgeable group of professionals. Give a similar quiz to the same group on e-mail list testing, and the score may be entirely different.
Just like the proverbial apples and oranges, postal lists and e-mail lists are just not the same when it comes to testing.
Individual knowledge about the nuances of each type of file is essential to a successful outcome. While it’s impossible to cover everything that separates these two direct marketing list tactics, …

What do the best franchise owners know about online marketing that you need to know, too?
With the new year comes new challenges. As business owners and operators, consumers, and citizens, we know that the climate has changed radically in the last year. However, as I indicated recently in my column–there’s no need to panic. I talked then about cultivating stronger customer relationships, and provided tips on how to do so. My advice applied to anyone working to establish and build a successful entrepreneurial venture, whether it be an independent restaurant, a consulting …

The realm of blast emailing tools has been a pretty complicated one. Prices were complicated, features varied, and you really had to think through what you wanted in order to be able to effectively compare.
But with the announcement that VerticalResponse now offers 501(c)(3) nonprofits up to 10,000 emails per month for free, does that change? I think it might. VerticalResponse has been on our list of recommended tools for awhile – it’s well designed, feature-rich, has strong deliverability, and integrates well with other tools (especially Salesforce). Even without nonprofit discounts, …