Today’s post is from John Wechsler, President of FormSpring. The company, which recently partnered with Email Center Pro, focuses on data collection and management through the use of Web-based forms. As a service, FormSpring ties together improved customer relationships with business success. Sounds very much like the Email Center Pro approach.

“What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”  This romantic view of the world espoused by Ralph Waldo Emerson can be adapted to business to help us stop looking at past and future customers and focus some love and attention on our existing customers.  It is, for most of us, much less costly to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one.

Increasingly, an enterprise’s long-term viability will hinge on the strength of its relationships with its customers. So where do we start when it comes to getting closer to our customers?  Tim Berry, president of Palo Alto Software, suggests that “unless you are a new business without a customer base at all, your market research should begin with learning as much as possible about your present customers.” Berry goes on to advise that businesses learn the following about their customers:

•    Who are they?
•    How did they find you?
•    What do they like about you?
•    What don’t they like?

Oftentimes a simple online survey is effective in letting customers know you care about them while also helping you learn a few things about your customers that will help you better serve them.

Traditionally one of the biggest challenges of getting so close to your customers has been purely logistical. This included: developing and designing a survey, printing and mailing it and compiling and analyzing the results. Any one of these tasks was difficult to manage “back in the day.”

Today the management barriers are largely removed. Online tools make it easier than ever to collect and manage data online.  There are no excuses for not understanding who your customers are, what they like and dislike, and what they think about your company.

When you’ve made the decision to start getting closer to your customers by using online surveys, it’s important to remember a few rules of the road.

K.I.S.S. (Keep It Super Simple)

When designing an online survey you want to keep it simple. Keep questions clear and answer choices easy to understand.  Spend time thinking about the flow of your survey. Do the questions progress in a logical and thoughtful manner? Once you think you’ve nailed it, take the survey yourself from the beginning.  You’ll probably see a few more things you can improve.

Make it easy for your customers to use

Make the exchange of information easy.  Keep required fields to a minimum so it’s easy for people to participate.  Be careful not to use unnecessary CAPTCHA (a challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer). The easier it is for someone to actually submit their information, the more you will learn and the better your customers will feel about interacting with you.

Make sure your forms are secure

Lock down information that you collect that is of a sensitive nature or could harm your customers if compromised. Use SSL for a secure browser connection (the URL will start with https://). Also, encrypt data stored in the database. Since your forms provider or IT department won’t be able to retrieve your data, don’t forget your password.  Finally, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a way to encrypt emails to ensure that only the intended recipient(s) see emails that are meant to be secure. Make sure to use PGP for email privacy if you are receiving notification emails of the submitted data.  It does not help you or your customers to make a secure connection online and encrypt data if you then send emails without the protection of encryption. Alternatively, don’t send the actual data via email, instead just send notices that a submission has been received and use the security of an SSL connection to log in and view or download your data.

In Summary

Making your contact forms, surveys and other online forms simple for the user to complete, easy to access and use, and secure are three steps towards building strong relationships with your customers. It’s best to take the initiative now to ask your customers what they think than to wait for your competitors to do it!  With this knowledge, you will be on your way to creating an environment that helps you achieve the maximum lifetime value of your customers.

John Wechsler is president of Indianapolis-based FormSpring. With nearly 20 years of business experience including extensive startup experience, John is uniquely qualified to comment on many aspects of running startup, early-stage and high-growth organizations. John can be reached via email at john@formspring.com.

Tags: basics, email, fundamentals, Marketing, news, Small Business, survey
Posted on July 17th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

I try not to get too upset by the texting-based trend of contracting perfectly good words to a rebus of sometimes indecipherable characters. But mostly I just shrug it off because I don’t use those gadgets and tools that specialize in reducing communication clarity.

But sometimes I get a chuckle or good laugh out of the concept. Just the other day I laughed at the May 27 installment of Adrian Raeside’s comic The Other Coast. There the cell phone texter had eliminated almost all the vowels. “omg u r my bfflnmw u qtpi.”

The next day in Working Daze, by John Zakour and Scott Roberts, one of the characters says that she’d save more time if she eliminated all the consonants instead. “AY I EE O EE OU O”.

In keeping with the trends, and moving them forward, I think I’m going adopt both these strategies, removing vowels and removing consonants for my texting, blogging, IMs, and the like. So, you’ll know it’s me when you receive the cogent, succinct, efficient
“

.”

I look forward to your response, in kind.
Steve Lange
Senior Editor
Palo Alto Software

Tags: cell phone, communication, email, IM, mobile, rebus, spelling, text, Texting, tweets, Twitter, words
Posted on June 2nd, 2009 | 1 Comment »

It’s nice when Guy Kawasaki writes about/alludes to/makes cursory mention of the product or service into which you pour a significant portion of your waking hours.

It means more than enjoying an influx of traffic to your website (a handy side-effect, no doubt). It’s also an encouraging validation that you’re taking some steps in the right direction. This is especially true when the praise comes for the method of evangelism as well as for the actual product or service.

Guy has built an ecosystem of success based as much on evangelism methodology as on the services he creates. Truemors, for instance, is a cool concept. But the story of how it came to be might actually be better known. Kawasaki built, developed and registered the site for a few thousand dollars.

So it’s nice when he folds your technique into his own as he did in this article that features Email Center Pro.

It’s an added bonus when the topic at hand is something about which we’re so passionate: Telling the story of our service as quickly, succinctly and creatively as possible. This is something on which every small business should focus. The marketplace is more crowded than ever. It’s vital to explain in two minutes or less what you do and why that matters.

Jason Gallic
Product Manager
Palo Alto Software

Tags: email, Email Center Pro, Guy Kawasaki, Marketing, video
Posted on March 20th, 2009 | No Comments »

Every so often (a rather ambiguous date range, don’t you think?) the demise of email is predicted.

It’s a pain.

It’s a spam-laden nightmare.

It’s archaic and clunky.

It’s possible that you, too, see email through this lens. But I’m going to hazard a guess and say that, regardless, email is still an essential part of your business and of your life.

In fact, I’ll go a step further: Without email, your overall communication plan (business or personal) would be irrevocably stunted. This is nothing to be ashamed of (though it seems many are). Without the keyless entry on my car, I’d drop a lot more groceries. I don’t think this makes me a bad person.

The latest fad in the “email is dead” game is to claim that social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace will replace traditional email. Status updates, it is said, will suffice for passing along the critical information that travels through email. Check out this BBC article to prove it.

If this appears to be a sleek, trendy, agile solution to the headaches associated with email, well, it’s a bit premature. There is a long list of interesting and useful business applications possible with social networks. Conveying developed pieces of information necessary both internally and externally as part of the business process is not one of them.

That’s still the job of email.

• Email is a place where you get more than 140 characters to decode your message (unlike Twitter, for instance).
• Traditional email (as opposed to Facebook messages, for instance) is a credible, go-to business communication channel. It’s still a vehicle for CEOs to reach out to one another and for customer service reps to personally engage your customers.
• With 210 billion messages sent every day (a large percentage spam, I know), email is a part of our communication fabric, tied undeniably to much of what we do.

Want to make email even more useful? Check out some tips and tricks by clicking here.

Jason Gallic
Product Marketing Manager

Tags: communication, email, Email Center Pro, emailcenterpro
Posted on March 17th, 2009 | No Comments »

In our Bplans.com newsletter, we’ve been publishing a series of articles from iContact about email marketing. This first in a series touches on the basics of having and running a newsletter for your business.

iContact’s Brandon Milford focuses on the basics of using a newsletter to reach out to your customer/client base. Brandon Milford is the Vice President of Marketing for iContact, based in Durham, NC, and he writes about Entrepreneurship, Marketing, and Design on his blog at www.brandonmilford.com.

iContact allows businesses, non-profit organizations, and associations to easily create, publish, and track email newsletters, surveys, blogs, autoresponders, and RSS feeds. We are thrilled to be able to share their expertise with you and give you an opportunity to use their best-in-class email marketing software for a special 10% off the lifetime of your account.

Your Newsletter: The Basics
by Brandon Milford, VP of Marketing, iContact

When designing your newsletter always keep in mind the amount of time you can expect your reader to spend viewing your newsletter. Everyone today is information hungry, but always in a hurry. How you display your content within your newsletter can capitalize on this assumption.

What Information Should I Include in My Newsletter?
Obviously, this will depend on your business and the audience in which you are marketing, but here are three recommendations:

• Announcements: Include recent information about your company and/or products that impacts your readers. For instance, you can include a link to an upcoming trade show where your company will be exhibiting or perhaps a seminar that your company will be sponsoring.
• Article: Include an article that relates to your products or services and helps your readers. It is also a great idea to develop a resource library that contains additional articles and provide a link for your readers so they can find more information on similar topics.
• Case Study: Provide an example of a client who has achieved great results while using your products or services. This will help build credibility with your readers. Again, provide a link where your readers can view additional case studies.

Those are three key items to include in your newsletter. If you include these, you are keeping your readers up to date on recent information about your products or services, including an article providing value on topics affecting them and by providing a case study you are proving to your readers that others are achieving success by using your products or services.

Making Your Articles Easier to Digest
Think of how we read newspapers; the same holds true for how we read material on the Web. We skim headlines looking for something that interests us and only then will we begin reading an article. We also stop to view photographs and any visual cues offering greater insight as to the information held within an article. I see far too many articles within newsletters that are very long (greater than 900 words). When writing your article try to keep it at 800 words or less and break each section into smaller, easy-to-read blocks with bolded headlines over each section. This will encourage your reader to skim your article and stop at each section they find interesting. If you are finding it impossible to trim your article simply find a good point within 800 or fewer words and provide a link to a webpage that contains the article in its entirety.

Sharing Your Newsletter with Others
Always give your readers a reason and a means to share your newsletter with others. By providing valuable and relevant content to your subscribers, they will be inclined to share this information with others by forwarding your newsletter. Email marketing software, like iContact, provide a “Forward-to-a-Friend” feature that inserts a link within the footer of your message allowing your readers to easily forward your newsletter. The goal is to obviously reach out to as many people as possible by providing valuable, relevant, timely content and an easy way for your readers to share this information with others.

Learn more about iContact and sign up for the special 10% off for the lifetime of your account at www.bplans.com/icontact

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

Tags: email, icontact, Marketing, palo alto software
Posted on October 8th, 2008 | No Comments »

The science behind email behavior is extensive, I’m sure, and not something that I purport to know much about, from a factual standpoint. Most of the email-based thoughts and assumptions I make throughout my day are driven by a fair bit of intuitiveness — with a dash and a half of instinct and a peppering of intelligence gathering.

I would hazard a guess that most people fall into my category — that is, if they think at all about email as anything more thhan simply a communication medium.

But not Kaitlin “Ducky” Sherwood. You can click on her name to read her full bio, but I’ll give you enough information to establish context. She’s written two books on overcoming email overload, was the first Webmaster at the University of Illinois (during the Mosaic creation days) and just recently earned an MS in Computer Science.

I got to spend an hour on the phone with her, aggressively asking for her opinion on email and cautiously tip-toeing into her thoughts on Email Center Pro.

Sherwood speaks with confident conviction about all manner of topics, but, for my purposes, focused most of her energy on email. Much of what was said centered around the idea that, as yet, the perfect email system doesn’t exist. And the reason for that is that no provider is meeting all of Sherwood’s standards — many of which have to do with efficiently and effectiveely moving through email in a reasonably organized way.

She chuckles at the notion of “Inbox Zero,” the popular concept that basically mystifies people into thinking they’ve properly dealt with all of their messages just by clearning their inbox. But, have they? Have they adequately addressed that communication channel, or have they simply shifted it from one place to another so as to better manage the guilt associated with 100 unread messages?

Sherwood argues for the latter, asserting that the psychology of seeing “0″ as an Inbox tally is ggiven disproportionate weight in relationship to proper management of email as a communication vehicle — creating a false sense of security, if you will.

Much of that, Sherwood continues, is driven by the passionate pursuit of perfect filtering. Users constantly seeking to compartmentalize the various buckets of information flowing into their Inboxes chew up time that can’t possibly be recovered through the convenience associated with “more easily” scanning through those folders.

In essence, filters/folders/etc. are not effective means of organizing data — given the existence of an uber-powerful search function. Wiith the reality of virtually limitless data storage, it no longer makes efficient sense to try to organize things the way we needed to when filing cabinets held all of our pertinent paper work. Without proper paper management, I might lose a week looking for a single document. Now, I type “2006 tax returns” into the search bar and PRESTO!

In light of that, it’s comforting to know that an advanced search functionality provides the infrastructure for version 2 of Email Center Pro, which is scheduled for release in the next couple of weeks.

So, do the psychological aspects of email resonate with you? Do you struggle against the rising tide of email overload? What is your method for managing your inbox?

Jason Gallic
Product Marketing Manager
jason@paloalto.com

Tags: , e-mail, email, Email Center Pro, organization
Posted on September 25th, 2008 | No Comments »

I was in San Francisco two weeks ago for Office 2.0 conference. The effort was the third installment of Ismael Gahlimi’s pledge to bring together leading minds in the Web 2.0 space for a 3-day discussion about moving the duties associated with work off of the hard drive and onto the Internet — exclusively.

That means all of it, from data storage to accounting, and everything in between. It’s a radical shift in concept. Moving all of a business’ operations into “the clouds” gives pause to some (data security junkies) and brings smiles to others (whomever might be concerned about the bottom line).

Whatever your feeling about moving organizational functionality into a hosted state, the fact that it’s gaining momentum is impossible to deny.

Thankfully for those of you who need to use email (please don’t overlook the sarcasm there), Email Center Pro is a product with its eye on “the clouds”. And that’s probably one reason I felt so at ease while scrolling through the demo booths last week in San Francisco. Yes, there were plenty of cool applications on display. But were any of them attempting to do to email what we are? No, not that I could tell.

With a rich feature set that’s only sweetening as we approach the public release of version 2, it was nice to see that Email Center Pro might be standing in the gap between the obligation of email and the genuine usability of a collaborative tool.

Jason Gallic
Product Marketing Manager

Tags: business email, cloud computing, collaboration, email, Email Center Pro, hosted software, SaaS
Posted on September 15th, 2008 | No Comments »

As small businesses get more Web savvy they are being told to understand email marketing and to use it as a great way to reach their customers. For the first time in a while I see great advice about email marketing: if you send it out — be ready to reply to it. Seth Godin has a post that is right on the mark, titled: If you don’t want to get email…don’t send email. He advises businesses, especially small ones, to be prepared to respond to customers, clients, partners, or whoever emails after you send them a marketing message in an email. It seems like obvious advice when you read it, but you would be surprised at how many people don’t deal with the full circle of email marketing. If you are sending out a message to your customers, aren’t you inviting them to respond to you? Don’t you WANT to hear from them? After all, you are the one that is opening the communication channels with them. But time and time again I hear business owners complain about the headache of dealing with their customers’ incoming email communications.

I think one of the problems that small businesses face is a lack of the right tools to help them deal with new technology and their communications with customers. There are lots and lots of different low priced, quality, easy to use, small business email marketing systems and services out there — but what are missing are the low cost, easy-to-implement email response management systems. Large companies like Amazon and Microsoft spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on CRM and Help Desk systems that have tools for their customer service reps to handle incoming emails. Small businesses though, need to look to spend thousands of dollars per year to get any sort of quality solution — that is until recently, when Palo Alto Software launched Email Center Pro.

Never before has there been a low-cost, high-quality, easy-to-implement, full-featured email response system. Now you can send emails out to your customers until your fingers fall off from typing messages and know that you have a great system to help you answer each one of your customers replies. You can get ECP for free, or as low as $19.00 as month. Our highest priced solution has unlimited users for a mere $149.00 per month. And yes this is a shameless plug for our product. BUT, I truly believe that it is the missing piece of the puzzle — the tool that Seth Godin left out of his post, that can help you make sure you never leave an email from a customer unanswered.

Sabrina Parsons aka Mommy CEO

www.emailcenterpro.com

Tags: email, management tools, Small Business
Posted on July 16th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

I want to thank John Jantsch, marketing guru extraordinaire, for writing up a great blog post on Email Center Pro: Making Sense of the Email Madness. Its nice to see people understanding what a good email service can do for a small business. Thanks John!

Sabrina Parsons aka Mommy CEO

www.emailcenterpro.com

Tags: email, management tools, Small Business
Posted on July 11th, 2008 | No Comments »

I am very intrigued by the “Hide your email address from spammers” post yesterday by Gina Hughes: The Techie Diva on Yahoo!Tech. She’s talking about how spammers use automated tools to search websites and harvest posted email addresses.

“You’re probably familiar with CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) since most websites with logins and forms use them, but until now I haven’t seen one for individual email addresses,” writes Hughes.

The folks at Carnegie Mellon University have created an application called Mailhide to help you hide your email address. Your address is displayed with the … ellipsis, and if someone wants to view it, they must solve a test to prove they are a human and not an automated address gleaner.

This looks pretty interesting, and I’m going to give it a try.

Steve Lange
Senior Editor
Palo Alto Software

Tags: , addresses, captcha, email, protect, recaptcha, spam
Posted on April 17th, 2008 | No Comments »