. list up the people!

Some are naughty and some are nice. But some have been very nice!

Every year there are those who stand out as giving me more than I can repay. Sometimes they are small efforts and sometimes large but in the end the people on my list have somehow made our company and products better.

Ardath Albee – Marketing Interactions: Ardath is the CEO of her firm and is a B2B Marketing Strategist. I have had the pleasure of talking with her and gaining insight into my own marketing approach. Her first book called eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale was recently published. I have found it very informative. Be sure to check it out. Thanks Ardath!

Norma Bartruff – FAHE: Norma is the Office/Benefits Manager at FAHE an award winning nonprofit organization which provides access to capital that creates housing and promotes community development in the Appalachian area. Norma has given me insight into the benefits calc{list} can bring to nonprofits and her enthusiasm helps keep me motivated. Thanks Norma!

Jeff Ginsberg – The eMail Guide: Jeff is the Chief Email Officer at The Email Guide and The Email Company with over 10 years experience in the email marketing industry. Jeff has helped me understand the email marketing arena better and has helped me shape our marketing effort. Thanks Jeff!

Kevin Halbleib – Crown Packaging: Kevin is an Industrial Packaging Specialist and puts the “Pro” in Sales Professional. He really knows how to take care of the customer and becomes one of the team. Kevin is helping me understand the needs of a sales force and has strengthened my understanding of the value of contacts in an organization. Thanks Kevin!

Paula Hanson – Dean Dorton Ford: Paula is a Partner and the Director of Tax Services. DDF is a full-service accounting and business advisory firm. Paula helped me reach out to other professionals and taught me how to sharpen my networking skills. Thanks Paula!

Mike Lancaster – Noshok: Mike is the Engineering Manager and holds three patents in the pressure valve industry. Mike has helped me work through some patent issues for calc{list} and has been very encouraging of the entire calc{list} project. Thanks Mike!

Anne McEwen – Dean Dorton Ford: Anne is the Marketing Director and is tasked to get the word out about all the professional services DDF provides. Anne has shown me the everyday stresses and needs of a marketing department and how contact lists are a vital part of the marketing equation.  Thanks Anne!

Jason Miller – Dean Dorton Ford: Jason is a Partner and the Director of Technology Consulting. He has built a thriving business technology extension to DDF that services small to midsized clients. Jason has shown me the key to success is to listen closely to your clients and the people around you. Thanks Jason!

David Pitts – Classic Graphics: David is the President and Co-Founder. He built his business from the ground up through great service and a keen eye towards changing the way the printing and graphics industry perceives itself. David keeps me aware that hard work can payoff for even the smallest startup. Thanks David!

Craig Rouse – LexNet, Inc: Craig is the Founder and Owner. He has built a great technology firm that provides service, support and training across multi vendor platforms to solve real business problems. Craig has been instrumental in helping us find clients for calc{list} and has advised me on many business issues. Thanks Craig!

Thanks to all and to all a good night!

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I came across a great blog post by Kristen Gregory with Bronto “Simple Questions to Shape Your Holiday Marketing Plans”. She has compiled some great links and combined them with pertinent questions that may help your holiday campaigns.

One thing that struck me was that a holiday planning post should probably proceed the holiday by a least a month or more, which makes this post late too. But there are some last minute take-aways you may be able to use and some lessons to be learned.

Expanding upon Kristen’s 10 questions, I think it is important to note that 4 of the questions are related to better targeting and list segmentation.

1. What did you do last year that worked and is worth repeating? What failed?

Although this is a broad question, I think a serious review of your email results during the period is crucial. This is why I stress the importance of capturing the Three Core Lists (TCL) for each of your campaign emails and storing them for future use.

2. When/how often do you plan on sending your emails?

Part of Kristen’s answer includes better targeting. This is basic list segmentation. But savvy marketers go beyond simple demographics like age, gender and zip code into persona types. Persona marketing is about truly understanding the targets perspectives and influences.

5. What different angles/navigation paths can you use to highlight gifts and make decisions easier,  such as featuring gifts by recipient type…

This question also speaks to the importance of persona marketing. Organizing, segmenting and maintaining your lists is important for future campaigns. With practice you can combine a multitude of lists for specific personas and customize emails for these groups within a single campaign.

6. Can you send some targeted promotions based on past purchases?

Great idea! Be sure to capture the Three Core Lists (see above) so you can create promotions targeted for people that like jellybeans and popcorn but don’t like peanut brittle. This is just another example of leveraging your email lists.

Ultimately I think Kristen’s post is worth reviewing before every email campaign. They’re great tips to keep in mind.

My perspective is that there is so much more that can be done to better target our customers. Email list management is too important to be left to simple spreadsheets or email service providers. Your lists are one of your company’s greatest assets. Shouldn’t you treat them that way?

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In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey the HAL 9000 was the most reliable computer ever made and controlled virtually every aspect of the mission.

Does your business need HAL?

Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Dave: What’s the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

I think instinctively we all seek to find the “HAL” solution that can help us complete all the tasks we face each day. We even have several names for this: we search for the “Magic Bullet”; we’re trying to find the “Killer App”; our heart skips a beat at the mere mention of “Breakthrough Technology.”

But can the HAL syndrome sometimes hurt a company instead of help?

Take the hard working marketing manager of a small business who has the sole responsibility for all the marketing activities. Her days are very busy with copy writing for the company blog, developing email marketing campaigns, and producing great looking proposals for sales.

One day she comes across a new software system that she thinks could really save her time and help her create better email campaigns. After testing the free trial she’s excited because it’s super easy to use and has features that could help workflow activities with other departments too.

Armed with a proposal detailing costs and expected benefits she requests approval for purchase of the system at the weekly managers meeting. After her presentation she was happy to see that everyone agreed it would be important to move forward.

The president asked the IT manager to review the technical aspects and the final approval would be confirmed at next week’s meeting. Little did she know that the HAL syndrome had just been set into motion.

Of course, most of you know what came next. The IT manager returned the following week with an elaborate plan to implement a new CRM system. He said, “It will do just about everything the other system will do and more! The big system will generate great reports once we get everybody trained.”

A year and a half later, the big system training finally complete, our marketing manager struggles to keep up with the additional work now required by the new system. She’s skeptical of its benefits and has never seen a decision based on those pretty reports. She thinks back fondly to that simple system she proposed…

Free People To Do!

Savvy business leaders are embracing a new breed of software and techniques that empower the workforce. These new techniques are summarized well in the Enterprise 2.0 approach which was first presented by Andrew McAfee currently at the MIT Center for Digital Business.

Sure there are all types of E2.0 systems competing in the marketplace – generally for larger businesses – but it’s not about the software it’s about attitude. The best businesses find ways to embrace helpful technologies instead of excluding them.

It’s hard to avoid the HAL syndrome, I know because I’ve done it myself. I’m not saying these big systems should be avoided but sometimes simple solutions can be as effective or better at improving the bottom-line.

Energize your company by changing the “Thou Shalt” to “You Can Do!”

HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

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Twitter lists are all the rage and bring lists of “people” into the mainstream. Many are predicting that it no longer matters how many followers you have but how often you appear in lists. So add me – @calcBob – to your list right now. Ok, stop looking at all your tweets and let’s continue…

Categorizing or grouping  people is so easy and natural to us that we do it without even thinking. Who needs to be in today’s “Meeting”? Who are my “Customers”? Who do “I Need to Call Today”? And in the twitter world; who are “Influential Marketing Bloggers” or who is “Associated with Nonprofits”?

My focus the last seven years has been on how we can use “people” lists. As the inventor of calculating lists I can tell you lists of people can be very powerful for any business. Calc{list}® does for contacts what twitter lists are doing for tweeters – they both answer our “Who” questions.

Benefits and Parallels of Twitter Lists and Calc{list}

Twitter lists are a hit because categorizing tweeters makes it easy to follow a specific group’s activities. You can use other people’s lists and they do all the work. This is huge! Need a list of great accountants? Find someone maintaining just such a list.

Ayelet Noff, contributor to The Next Web blog, has a very keen insight into the potential of people lists. In fact, she believes twitter lists are revolutionary. Her post “The Brilliance of Twitter Lists and Suggestions for Improvement” suggests many of the features already incorporated into calc{list}.

One of her suggestions is to be able to combine lists. With calc{list} you can combine lists but what’s even better is that lists are dynamic and can calculate!

In the twitter world this would be something like:

• @myname/no-fluff-tech = (   @louisgray/toptechbloggers + @technabob/cool-gadget-sites   ) - @Scobleizer/tech-company-executives

In the contact world calc{list}’s calculating lists can be used for contact-based activities like email marketing:

• {Newsletter} = ( {Customers} + {Prospects}  ) – {Opt-Out}

The “dynamic” part is that when a new contact is added to the {Prospect} list the newsletter is re-calculated to instantly reflect the change. Ultimately, both contact and twitter lists have many uses.

Twitter List Uses

Mashable’s Sarah Evans: “10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists”

1. Industry Peers and Professionals Lists
2. Experts Lists
3. Recognize and Reward Customers Lists
4. Niche Lists
5. Employee Directory Lists
6. Political Campaign Lists
7. Location-Based Lists
8. Event Attendees and Live-Tweeters Lists
9. Self-Serving Lists
10. Promote Your Affiliation Lists

Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch: “5 Reasons to Use the New Twitter List Feature”

1. Monitor without following
2. One button list follow
3. Promote your lists
4. Filtered by an expert
5. Build a bigger following

Calc{list} Calculating Contact Lists

1. Marketing Campaign Lists Management
2. Email Marketing List Segmentation
3. Customer Relationship Management
4. Email Automation
5. Office Automation & Workflow

All the opportunities that you recognize in twitter lists are available in your business contacts and more! People lists are the “untapped resource” your business is looking for.

Now what’s going to happen when twitter names are matched to calc{list}’s contacts? Hmm…

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For many, the idea of creating customer personas seems to be feasible only for big time marketing experts with billion dollar budgets. Yet increasing numbers of in-house marketing managers and local advertising agencies are finding persona marketing more affordable and important than ever.

Demographics like industry, location, job position, etc. have always been used to define our customer profiles. However, today’s customers are educating themselves with information on the internet. This freely accessible information is framing their purchasing decisions.

Smart marketers are using niches and personas to tailor their message to the specific needs of customers through relevant conversations. Personas extend beyond demographics. They define the characteristics, current conditions and influencers of your audience. Ultimately personas give us a way to recognize and talk the “language” of the many types of people that our products or services can help.

Thinking about these facts I realized it was time to really define our company niches and personas. I’ve always had them “in mind” but it wasn’t until I actually wrote them down that I started to understand the benefits the process can bring.

Creating Our Company’s Personas

The first thing I did was to open my trusty spreadsheet and define our niches. Niches are different from personas and are a subset of your customers providing a narrow focus for better content targeting. There can be many personas in a niche.

Once I defined some of my top niches I moved on to define the personas for our Email Marketing niche. Right here is where I had my “duh!” moment. I realized that what I was trying to create in my spreadsheet was an outline with deeper and deeper levels of detail that defined my personas.

My “duh!” was that calc{list}’s outline lists are perfect for this. Just like everyone else my natural reaction is to put everything in a spreadsheet. Using calc{list} makes defining personas much easier and can be later used for organizing campaigns themselves.

Create Niches & Personas

In calc{list} I created the {Marketing Niches} list and entered persona types for each niche. For brevity we’ll focus on our “Email Marketing” niche. Its five personas are the types of professionals that would be directly interested in our product for that niche.

Create B2B Persona Categories

Ardath Albee’s new book “eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale” is a complete guide to creating content that captures your audience’s attention and moves them through the sales process. She has a great chapter on persona building that I highly recommend.

In her book she explains how B2B personas are different from consumer personas. She says; “Personal characteristics are important, but B2B personas must recognize that the prospect’s professional standing and priorities will hold additional sway over what catches his attention when it comes time to solve a business issue.”

She continues to expand upon her B2B persona definition which I used as the framework for six personas categories. I will later expand upon each category with reference to our product. A quick synopsis of the six:

• Problems Needing to be Solved: These are problems that tend to remain on the forefront of their mind and possible pain points.
• Current Environment: Are there any obstacles to taking action on purchasing our product? These may include political conditions, lack of consensus on how to fix a problem, budgetary constraints, etc.
• Strategic Business and Career Goals: Are there viable business outcomes that achieve company goals? Also, will it help personal career advancement?
• Preferences and Aversions: What is their predisposition or perspective to solving the problem? Do they favor opportunities or risk mitigation?
• Competitive Considerations: Does our product help them differentiate their company from the competition? Does the solution create an advantage or make them equal to competitors?
• Influencers: Who can influence the buying process? Colleagues, stakeholders, users, champions, consultants, external peers.

I created my six standard persona categories for each persona type. These categories help me develop a more complete persona definition.

Create Persona Details

Now remember each node in our {Marketing Niches} list is also a list. This means that we can simply double-click any node to open up that particular list. Below you will see that I have opened the {Small Business Owner} and {Marketing Professional} lists.

Notice that my {Small Business Owner} list’s description area holds a short story about the Owner which is used to further focus our persona details.

Next I filled out the final details of my personas. When comparing them side by side you can easily see that my “Small Business Owner”, who manages the company’s marketing activities, has a much different perspective than my “Marketing Professional” persona.

As you work through all the categories you’ll see your personas come alive as real people with specific needs. Be sure to approach them from the perspective of your customer. It’s really kind of exciting.

Persona Grata

Persona Grata: Fully acceptable or welcome. Defining niches and their personas will indeed be a welcome new tool to help your marketing content reflect the interests of your customers. This will go a long way to moving your buyers further down the sales cycle. I know personas have really given our campaigns a boost.

Remember we’ve created these personas to use as a guide to create marketing content that will be more engaging and relevant to our customers. Revisit your personas often and don’t be afraid to change and refine them as time goes by.

Much More…

As you know, calc{list} is much more than a way to create outlines. In fact, one way I’m going to use our new {Marketing Niches} list is to actually store and organize contact results from campaigns. This will take another post to fully explain but in effect I’ll be able to review and compare my personas to our marketing results.

A hint for you calc{list} experts: I can simply drop any list that our campaigns produce wherever it is relevant in the {Marketing Niches} list. Example: Place our {Email #1} list into both the {Lead Generation} and {IT Department} detail lists because this email addresses both of these persona issues.

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For those of you who are contemplating or have started Permission Based (Opt-In) email marketing it can be a scary proposition; especially if you have a new or startup business. You know you’re doing it right by choosing Opt-in over blasting and spamming but *gulp* how do you build a nice plump email list quickly?

The great thing is that companies like Constant Contact®, iContact and MailChimp® make it easy to create a professional email opt-in form. Just place a “Join our Email List” or “Subscribe to Our Newsletter”  link on your website to the opt-in form.

With the opt-in links on your website the email addresses will come rolling in. Well, maybe. So what do you if they don’t? Ah, here comes the BEgg…

Networking is the age old technique of gathering contacts. Typical networking venues  include trade shows, seminars, industry groups, etc. After a networking event send a short email message to all the people you spoke with. Be sure to include a recap of your conversation then ask permission to add them to your email lists.

You may have an existing collection of customer email addresses, business cards and event sign-up sheets. Using these may be considered “Implied Opt-In” but it’s dangerously close to spam, so be careful. There are many who believe that, if handled properly, it is a legitimate means of list building. See article by Page Duffy.

Janine Popick’s article “29 Ways to Collect Email Addresses for Your Business” presents some great tips for email list building. Here are her top five:

1. Put an offer on the back of your business cards to get people to sign up for your newsletter.
2. Tradeshows – Bring a clipboard or sign-up book with you to tradeshows and ask for permission to send email to those who sign up.
3. Include a newsletter sign-up link in your signature of all of your emails.
4. Send an opt-in email to your address book asking them to join your list.
5. Join your local chamber of commerce, email the member list (if it’s opt-in) about your services with a link to sign up to your newsletter.

And finally, give your customers great educational content. Become the go-to source for information in your industry. Give them ideas on how to work better, faster, cheaper. Relevant content, not just about your product, brings them back for more; like a hot, savory, rich bowl of homemade chicken soup. See article by Ardath Albee.

In the end the BEgg usually comes first but growing an email list the right way will let you place a beautiful golden brown chicken on your table.

I hope this post gave you useful ideas on how to get your email list growing and please sign-up for our newsletter. How’s that for my BEgg?

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(Part 1)

Now that we have created our Triple Core Lists (TCL) and used calc{list}’s outline list type to organize our  “New Product” campaign let’s prepare for our second mailing.

Right off the bat we know we want to use our first email’s TCL to split this next mailing into two relevant messages; one for those in the {Opened} list and another for the {No Action} list. 

We are going to intrigue the first email respondents with some additional helpful content and a gentle nudge further down our sales cycle. So we will create another outline list called {Email #2 – More New Features}. This will be the container list for our #2 email’s TCL.

After we do that let’s create a new list called {Sent – Email #1 – Opened} and drag our original {Opened} list from #1 email into it. Now when it recalculates it has the same contacts as {Opened}. Effectively we have created a second list to rename* the original {Opened}.

To finish #2 email’s TCL we drag and drop {Sent – Email #1 – Opened} into our container list {Email #2 – More New Features}. Whenever we return to our {Email #2 – More New Features} list in the future we will quickly see that we sent the email to people who opened Email #1.

Now what do we do with the people that did not respond to the #1 email? Maybe they just didn’t notice it or didn’t have time to open it. We could just re-send the original but I would suggest that you send them the same email with a different subject line. Subtle changes can have a large impact on your email performance. 

So to set up our #3 email’s TLC we go through the same process as we did for #2’s but this time we use the {No Action} list instead of the {Opened} list. Our {Email #3 – New Revised} list will always show us that we sent the email to people who did NOT open Email #1.

Our email campaign can now continue sending both the 2^nd & 3^rd emails out at the same time. We have effectively branched our campaign using our #1 email’s Triple Core Lists. By doing this we have created target messages based on customer response.

Of course, the branching process doesn’t stop here. We need to capture the final TCL of the 2nd & 3rd emails when the results are in. Even if we don’t want to continue with this specific email campaign, the TCL may contribute to a future campaign.

This was a very simple example of how we can capture and organize our contact email lists. You can develop the naming methods and list organization that best suits your needs. You may even want to incorporate Opt-Outs, Clicks and Forwards into your branching strategies.

There is virtually no limit to how you can use and re-use your email lists in calc{list}. So make sure you’re capturing the Triple Core Lists to make all of your campaigns relevant and profitable!

If you use email marketing services like iContact, Constant Contact® or MailChimp® you can be sure calc{list}® will make your campaigns easier to manage.

Does this give you any ideas?

* There is a special type of calc{list} called “View” which is much more efficient for list renaming but to keep the example simple I didn’t want to introduce a new list type.

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After every email you send it is essential that you capture and evaluate to whom the emails where sent, who opened them and who didn’t open them. I call these the “Triple Core Lists” because these lists will help your follow-up emails offer greater value and relevance.

In short, you need to engage and nurture your customers with targeted relevant content. This means your campaign should branch or take more than one path based on how people respond to your original emails.

In this post I will review how to create and organize your Triple Core Lists for effective list management and improve your email marketing campaign performance. Please review the post “Ready… Fire!” for a full discussion on the importance of targeted email content and persona building.

We’ll begin our example with the assumption that we have an email that has already been sent. If you used calc{list} then rename the original list to {Sent}. If not, just import the recipients into a list called {Sent}.

For the second list you need to import the people who opened your email. We’ll call this list {Opened}. Now we have two out of three of our TCL by simply importing.

The third list {No Action} is important because we want to continue our campaign differently for those who did not respond to our first email.

Let’s put calc{list}’s calculating lists to work. Create a new list named {No Action}. Drag and drop both {Sent} and {Opened} into {No Action} and mark {Opened} to be Removed. Now calculate and we have the final TCL {No Action} that holds all the people that did not respond to our email!

Now we need a container list for our Triple Core Lists. Create a new list but this time create an “Outline” list which does NOT calculate contacts. It is used to store and organize other lists. Let’s name it  after the email we sent {Email #1 – All New!} and drag the TCL’s into it.

At this point we have successfully created our Triple Core Lists for our first email “All New!”. It was quick and easy. Remember we are capturing these lists so that we can use them anytime in the future to better target our marketing content.

Let’s add one additional list so we can organize and manage our entire campaign. We’ll create another outline list called {New Product Campaign} and place the {Email #1 – All New!} inside. So as our campaign progresses we will continue to add TCL for each email we send.

This last screen shot shows {Email #1 – All New!} in the expanded view. You can quickly open any of these lists with a simple double-click. Are you starting to see how we use calc{list} to not only capture and calculate email lists but also to organize all the lists that we need to manage?

In Part 2 of our post we will examine how to use the Triple Core Lists to send out our next New Product campaign emails. Can you guess what we’ll do next? Hint: Take a branch of history…

+BAL

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You’ve probably never thought about calculating contacts but you do it all the time! Let’s say you’re going to have a meeting. In your head you think; I need to invite Sam and Jill from Marketing, in Engineering I want Mike but definitely not Nick, and finally Matt, Tammy and Sue from production.

There, you are calculating contacts. You chose people from various groups (departments), included some and excluded others. That is how calc{list} works too.

Calc{list} is a list of people: your contacts. The list name defines the group, category, task, activity, or stage people are in. The lists can be combined to make new dynamic lists that automatically calculate to a new group of people.

Take a look at the calc{list} in edit mode below. Notice that the {Newsletter} contains both contacts and other (nested) lists such as {Customers}. Additionally, some lists are marked to indicate how they should be calculated. For example, contacts in {Opt Out} are to be excluded from the final list.

On the right is the {Newsletter} after it has been calculated. The thing to remember is that a calculated list always returns only one instance of a contact. So if a contact is in several of the lists, contained in the edit area, the contact will still only appear once in the final calculated list.

EDIT MODE                                                    CALCULATED

Pretty simple, right? Now let’s dig a little deeper and look at how lists can be Static or Dynamic. If there were only contacts listed in the {Newsletter} edit area the list would be considered static because after calculation the list would never change without re-editing the contacts in the edit area again.

However, our {Newsletter} is dynamic because it contains other nested lists. This is exciting because what this means is that when we add new contacts to the {Customers} list our {Newsletter} list is re-calculate automatically and includes the new contacts. List management has never been this easy!

Are you starting to see how powerful calculating lists can be? Keep exploring, there are many more features to calc{list} with Passive Automation.

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I recently ran across an excellent blog post by Annie Cooley at Swiftpage entitled “Excel- The Ultimate Email List Manager”. She said;

“No matter what type of CRM or contact database you use, Excel can play a crucial role in keeping your email contact lists and campaigns in healthy, working order.

For every campaign you send, survey results you receive, and every single call list you make, you can simply put each set of contacts and results into their own unique spreadsheet. This makes archiving and tracking down specific groups of people, just about as easy as it gets. Essentially creating your own intertwined library of what contacts go with which campaigns and which survey results.”

Annie’s article goes on to explain why email marketers need Excel to help manage their campaigns. Of course Annie, like most, has not yet heard about calc{list}®. And so the myth of “The Ultimate Email List Manager” continues on.

The problem is that Excel was designed for handling numbers and not people! Its claim to fame is letting you do “What If?” numeric calculations. How did it become the de facto standard for email lists?

Calc{list} was designed from the ground up to be a contact list management system. In fact, it lets you calculate contacts! I like to say it lets you do “What Who?” with contacts.

Performing list management in Constant Contact®, iContact and the others is simplistic and tedious at best. That’s why so many have turned to spreadsheets; yet they too struggle with list management.

In future posts we will explore how calc{list} makes it easy to organize, combine and automate email lists. It even assists your entire team with built-in collaboration and workflow; there really is nothing else like it.

So, it’s now time to thank Excel with a nice gold retirement watch and move on to a truly professional contact list management system.

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