Email Newsletters, or simply newsletters, are an extremely efficient way to communicate your brand, message or whatever you want to say clearly, easily and economically. My Internet consulting firm, Dunkirk Systems, LLC, now offers newsletter services, and we have started a newsletter for our clients. As great as they are, most every one has a fatal flaw that can cause subscribers to be involuntarily unsubscribed without them knowing.

Have I scared anyone yet? It may or may not be that big of an issue, but it needs to be recognized. Just about every newsletter has an unsubscribe link which will almost instantly block the subscriber from ever getting another email from the sender. This is a good thing. Not only does it help people manage their email, but it complies with the CAN-SPAM Act. The link to unsubscribe is usually very prominent in a newsletter, and can even be in multiple places. The link is most always built into the design, and the key words there are “built into” as this means that link will be passed along with the newsletter if the email message that delivered it is forwarded to others within an email program or Web interface.

In other words, if you receive an email from someone containing a forwarded newsletter, if you click on the unsubscribe link in the newsletter, you have unsubscribed that person from it! As my 15-month old daughter would say, “uh-oh.” It is not to say every time a newsletter is forwarded this will happen, rather it is to say there is a reality it can happen and everybody needs to be aware of it.

So how can this be prevented? The person who received the newsletter and wants to forward it to others can simply delete the link from the message before they send it. That is, if they remember to. For the newsletter sender, they can always add a “forward to a friend link” to the newsletter as many email marketing services offer this, including Dunkirk. Some may either ignore this or may choose not to use it, namely as the forwarder may not want their recipients tracked. Plus it’s much easier to hit the forward button in an email program and enter a few auto-completed recipients and press send instead of using a forward function of a newsletter.

Just some friendly advice for readers of The Hot Iron, as well as a call to action to email marketing services to brainstorm ideas to prevent this. In case you were wondering if I have ever unsubscribed anyone from a newsletter inadvertently, I plead the fifth!

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Business • Technology • (3) Comments • Permalink

Upon returning home from even a short shopping trip – be careful, be very careful. As you open up your wallet or purse, do it very slowly as you could be seriously injured. Why? The larger-than-necessary register receipts you got at each retail establishment can spring out and surprise you!

Of course this is an exaggeration, but have you noticed the length of the receipt you got at the retail store lately? It isn’t just a record of your purchases anymore. It will include large branding, upsell offers (though you already checked out), enticements to enter contests to win prizes by completing a customer service survey, among other verbose information. In most cases, this “extra stuff” takes up more space on the receipt than the list of items purchased. The pictures receipt, from Walgreens for a few items, is over a foot long.

There has to be a better way. Many stores know exactly who you are for many reasons – they will ask you directly, you have a “membership” card for the store and some even track information about you based on your credit card number. You already get information from stores by email or post mail, why not do the same with your proof of purchase?

Rather than give you this monstrous piece of paper, why not just email it to you, or make it available in a Web portal? There may be some local laws which require a receipt upon purchase. How about send it by SMS (or as we say in the US, text message)? The message will have the purchase Id, which can be looked up online or at the kiosk in the store. If I am registered with the store, I can receive an email with an attached PDF of the receipt or my purchase detailed in the message body. All purchases would be available online. Hey, can’t you do this already with Amazon.com?

There are many reasons to do this, and here they are in no particular order. One is environmental, saving paper and ink. The other is convenience, so people don’t have to have all kinds of slips of paper stuffed away. Most important to me is organizational – if I need to submit a receipt for an expense, I have it available to me at anytime and from any device on the Internet.

So brick-and-mortar retailers, are you in? I hear Apple stores already do this, which doesn’t surprise me. How about the major grocery conglomerates like Supervalu, Kroger, Ahold and Wal-Mart? Help the consumer save a tree, space and time all while being forward-thinking and trendy like Apple.

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Business • Technology • (3) Comments • Permalink

When I was given a copy of Upbeat: Cultivating the Right Attitude to Thrive in Tough Times by a friend who had no connection with the author or publisher, one word in the title caught my eye – thrive. Many times we see books and get advice in how to just get by, especially these days. What also caught my attention was the cover was bright yellow. The author, Rajesh Setty, is trying to get a point across.

Upbeat is a small book and a quick read, but carries a positive message about reaffirming what to do to keep motivated. The book is in 2 parts – the first is narrative, the second is a summary, almost a checklist, for one to follow. Though many of the messages are not unique to this book, the reaffirmed takeaways I have had from other books.

My greatest takeaway is that you cannot do it alone. You need to have a network of people, as well as a mentor. Many entrepreneurs who work solo can easily fall into a quagmire as it is just them. Working and connecting with others will help gain perspective and help you see good in the bad.

Another takeaway is to remember to take care of yourself. A healthy body contributes greatly to a healthy mind. This is one I need to continuously remind myself of.

Everybody operates differently. Some have internal energy sources nobody can quite understand, even the person themselves. Others need a little help to keep motivated. If you are the latter, reading Upbeat might be the nudge you need.

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Book Take-Aways • Business • (1) Comments • Permalink

There is no shortage of business books available to read. All of them offer some unique perspective on one or many aspects of business. As is shown from an entire category here at The Hot Iron on book takeaways, I enjoying reading a variety of business books and manage to take something away from them. With some books, something resonates with me strongly, even if it is a reaffirmation of something I already know.

This was the case for me with The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. It is considered a “classis” small business book as it talks about the dilemma most entrepreneurs (what the “e” stands for) get into, where what they thought was creating a business was more creating a job. Gerber, in a narrative style, takes the reader to the point where they are, and guides them out of it and back to leading a business.

In this description I have oversimplified the details of the book, as there are many to go through, plus I did not want to give too much away as I am hoping anyone who owns their own business reads the book! There is certainly a lot in each step of Gerber’s process, especially as he has developed a consulting firm around helping people do so. I will share with you my takeaways from this book.

My greatest take away from The E-Myth Revisited is to write is down, and write down everything. I am not just referring to to-do lists, rather I am talking about writing everything from a business plan to operation plans to logins and passwords. Many people will confirm with me that if it isn’t written down, it will never happen. This rings true especially for business planning. Why many people don’t write things down is because they believe they do not have to, that it is in their heads and that is good enough. However you will get to a point that you wished you wrote it down, so you have something to look to at all times as a barometer at how successful you are.

An equally important takeaway is to determine what you want out of your business. For most entrepreneurs, including myself, going on your own meant you wanted to do things the way you felt they should be and not how you did them working for someone else. Where this is true, one thing you probably didn’t want to do was work 20 hours a day, every day or balance your business’ books on a regular basis! In E-Myth Gerber calls this your Primary Aim, and defining it even several years down the road is important for you to do. I know, I did it myself.

Note both of these takeaways are not necessarily earth-shattering revelations you could only get from the book. Perhaps it was the style of the book, or when I read it personally, that made these points resonate with me.

The E-Myth Revisited was recommended to me by many people. I purchased my own copy and was personally compelled to write this post. My only regret with reading it is that I wished I read it very early on in the starting of my business. After reading it, myself and a colleague decided to go through defining our Primary Aims and we shared out discoveries. It was a soul-searching experience, not to mention important activity. Needless to say I recommend this book to anyone who is thinking of starting a business or even someone who is already in business who has not read it yet. I consider The E-Myth Revisited a must-read business book, with the likes of Barry Moltz’s You Need To Be a Little Crazy: The Truth About Starting and Growing Your Business. Note the links to books in this post are affiliate links to Amazon.com.

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Book Take-Aways • Business • (2) Comments • Permalink

The FTC has released new guidelines related to endorsements and testimonials in advertising. What is new and alarming to some in these guidelines is the inclusion of blogging and bloggers. In summary, if a blogger gets something for free or is asked to write about something and does so, they must disclose this in their blog post or face monetary fines.

I say in summary as I have read the 81-page guidelines published by the FTC and I am still digesting it. I am not a lawyer, but fortunately the language in this government edict is relatively straightforward. I am working on a full post and opinion on this, which I hope to complete for next week.

In the meantime, people are obviously talking about this, some citing examples of situations which will require them to state disclaimers about their relationship with whom they are writing about. One such example is from billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who wrote in his blog about having his breakfast comped at IHOP. Where his writing style is tongue-in-cheek, according to the new FTC guidelines he would have to mention he received something for free when he talks about them.

The cost of breakfast at IHOP is under $10 - what about for something of more value, say a trip across the globe to Finland? That happened to me and about 3 dozen others when we attended Nokia OpenLab last September. As part of the trip I got a free round-trip coach ticket, 3 nights in a boutique hotel in Helsinki, meals, entertainment and a loaner Nokia E71 device. I would guestimate the value of all of that was over US$1,000. Does this mean every time I mention anything about Nokia – the company and or its products – I have to disclose this trip, as it could be considered influential to anything I say positive about them? Unfortunately there is nothing I found in the FTC guidelines to specifically address this.

For the bloggers out there, have you looked into these guidelines? What is your take on how it will impact how and what you write? Have you consulted an attorney about this? Will this change the face of blogging forever?

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Business • (2) Comments • Permalink