With more than 1 billion email users worldwide, businesses are realizing email marketing is no longer something they can go without. Instead of spending their time filling a consumer’s physical mailbox, businesses now target inboxes instead. Recent research shows that businesses are dedicating more money to email marketing than any other marketing strategy. From company newsletters to loyalty coupons, businesses are using email marketing in a variety of new ways to connect with their customers. For those just getting started with email marketing, there are a number of services that can provide the necessary software and tools to create and manage campaigns directly from your computer.
Category: Tools and Information
How Entrepreneurs Should Use Their Accountants | Forbes.com
Being entrepreneurial doesn’t end at starting a business; it means constantly striving to perfect your business model and quickly and continually adapting to change.
While “big data” has become a buzz word and the ability to readily capture data to inform business decisions has significantly increased in recent years, overlooked in this data grab is the importance of financial data and accountants, specifically.
You may just think of your accountant when it’s time to file your taxes, but he or she actually holds the secret to how healthy your company is and what to do about it.
What the accountant has is a mass of financial data, and with the right amount of financial data, a good accountant can almost instantly identify a business’s strengths and weaknesses.
Are your costs of goods sold too high? Are your prices too low? Do you have a manager whose team is particularly productive?
8 Recognition Apps Work Almost Like Magic|Scientific American
You’ve probably heard of some speech-recognition efforts, like Apple’s Siri and the dictation program Dragon NaturallySpeaking. But the world is teeming with apps that recognize other sights, sounds and stimuli. Here’s a taste.
Evernote (free; Android, iOS, Mac, Windows): Evernote is the popular notepad-of-all-trades app that keeps your notes synchronized across all of your gadgets. If you snap a photo of something that includes writing (or paste in such an image), even handwriting, its behind-the-scenes optical character-recognition algorithms decipher the writing as text. The accuracy isn’t quite good enough to convert the writing into typed text, but it’s good enough to let you perform searches on handwritten notes. That is, you can pull up the image of your scanned or photographed handwriting by typing a keyword into the search box.
Wearable Solar Clothing | CoolBusinessIdeas.com
These days, clothing is so much more than something to cover you up and keep you sheltered from the elements. Manufactures are making clothes do unbelievable things. The latest addition to this list of functional clothing is Wearable Solar, the brainchild of Gelderland Valoriseer’s Christiaan Holland, fashion designer Pauline van Dongen, and solar-panel specialist Gertjan Jongerden. Wearable Solar is a line of clothing that boasts embedded solar panels wired to allow for personal device charging; basically, it turns you into a walking talking charger! Just plug in your Smartphone and get it charged while you are on a leisurely walk through the park.
10 Ways Companies Screw Up Their Websites | AllBusiness.com
Building a website is like building a house. When built properly, they both combine interdependent components into a functional and attractive whole. In a house, the components are things like plumbing and ventilation; in a website, they’re things like search engine optimization SEO and navigational structure.Both are enormous projects with thousands of variables, and although there may be 10 right answers to every question, there are also 50 wrong answers, which may explain why so many houses and websites turn into money pits. To keep this from happening to your site, avoid these 10 common traps.
1. Imprecise or Improper PurposeWhy am I building this website? Until you answer that question with the eloquence of an orator, do not start grabbing any tools. Many firms have only a vague idea of what they want their site to do. Others ask their site to do too much, not enough, or the wrong thing altogether. Behind every great business site is a crystal clear, sensible vision.
Co-marketing is a powerful lead generation tactic|ducttapemarketing
One of the greatest lead generation tactics around is the trusted referral. I mean, I know you know that, but what are you actually doing to take advantage of it?
photo credit: Wicked LIttle Cake Company via photopin cc
What are you doing to make certain that every single day dozens of unpaid sales calls are being made on your behalf?Sound intriguing? Co-marketing, or getting others to actively market your business, isn’t a new concept, but surprisingly few do it actively.
The basic idea behind it is to form a small network of “best of class” providers who can act as an additional arm of marketing for each other. I’ve seen this done with remarkable results – sometimes tripling and quintupling the number of leads an organization creates – particularly for businesses that operate on a the local level.
Kitchen Appliance Garage | IKEA Hackers.net
Materials: Varde glass door wall cabinet, standard Ikea base cabinets & Ekby Bjarnum wall shelves
Description: We were looking for a built in storage unit/appliance garage to store all of our small counter-top appliances. The problems we were facing were:
1) Cost…highly expensive to have custom built
2) Availability…we could find roller door cabinetry but most was too shallow to house our large kitchen aid mixer and Magimix…so
IKEA to the rescue. We wanted all of the clutter HIDDEN and we wanted something that looked custom built to fit the space.
Broccoli and Banana Smoothie | rawfoodrecipes.com
You may be thinking, “broccoli and banana?!” Yes we know its an unlikely pair, however, this smoothie works out very nicely. The sweet creaminess of frozen bananas helps to smooth over any overly green flavor of broccoli. The spinach and spirulina are hardly even detectable, however they do contribute to the creaminess of texture. Maca and lucuma add a subtle maltiness that is quite delicious. The result is a thick, creamy smoothie packed to the brim with green nutrition! Top with bee pollen for an immune system boost as well as extra protein and B vitamins.
The Next Step After a Mistake | The Simple Dollar
I’ve messed up many, many times along my financial journey. I’m willing to bet you’ve messed up a time or two as well.
I’ll spend too much. I’ll forget a bill and have to face the consequences of the lateness. I’ll try to adopt a new positive habit and then find myself slipping in my diligence with that habit.
Whenever I find myself making a big financial mistake, I feel a ton of regret. I’ll usually find myself wondering whether or not I’m a failure and whether or not I’m actually going to be able to continue on a better path.
Can I do this? Can I really do this?
This is a thought process that I’m far from alone in going through. Almost everyone I’ve ever talked to who has challenged themselves to make a life change has made mistakes along the way, mistakes that left them second-guessing the whole process. They’re left with guilt and doubt and a sense that this whole thing might just be a failure.
It’s not a failure.
Mistakes are a normal part of anything new that we take on. We are not perfect. We make mistakes because we’re trying something different than what we’re used to.
The real challenge is to learn how to handle those mistakes and turn them from being setbacks into being tools for success.
For me, there are three powerful tactics for moving on from a mistake.
15 Ways to Get to Know Your Target Audience – scribit.com
One of the biggest factors impacting the success of your marketing is how well your audience relates to your content. If your audience feels that you understand their needs and can help them, they will be more likely to respond to your calls to action. If your content isn’t relevant, they will tune your messages out.
But how exactly do you get to know your target audience? Understanding their pains, needs and wants can be challenging … especially if you spend all day running from meeting to meeting and crisis to crisis.
Here are 15 ways to get to know your audience:
Dispatches From The Front 