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Hello and welcome to this week’s Monday Minutes. Each week in this series I am going to share simple tips that you can implement quickly to help your business become more successful.

Monday Minutes

This week’s tip is all about email deliverability and we're going to go over a few tips that will help you get your emails opened and read by your subscribers.

Deliverability: is a way to measure the success at which an email marketer gets a campaign into subscribers' inboxes. It involves anything that touches email delivery, like ISPs, MTAs, throttling, bounces, bulking, and spam issues ~ Mailchimp

FACT: You spend a lot of time each week writing emails to your subscribers, but none of that will do you any good if you don’t have a decent delivery rate.

If your emails land in their spam folders, you don’t have much of a chance of making a sale or building a relationship with them, so in this post I'm going to share some easy to implement tips that will help insure that your emails actually make it to your subscribers’ inboxes.

First, use a reputable service

Using a reputable autoresponder service is the single best thing you can do to improve your chances of avoiding spam folders. Companies like Aweber, Mail Chimp and GetResponse work hard at making sure they are white listed with the big Internet Service Providers and email providers like Gmail.

Most autoresponder companies will list their delivery stats. In addition the good ones will make sure your emails are compliant, provide you with tips and tools that will help keep you out of hot water.

Set expectations

Your chances of staying in the main inbox are high when your subscribers regularly open your email. The best way to insure that outside of providing great content that your readers look forward to reading is to set expectations from the beginning.

An easy way to do this is to let them know early on when and how often they can expect an email from you. You can also let them know when they will hear from you again at the end of your email. For example, look for another email from me on Monday where I will share some more great tips with you.

Once you’ve set those expectations do your best to meet them. Of course, things happen every once in a while. In general though, do your best to keep your promise and email when your readers expect it.

Doing this regularly will improve your open rates and your overall deliverability.

Clean your list regularly

Another good habit is to clean up your list regularly. If subscribers haven’t been opening your emails for the past six month, chances are they're no longer interested in what you have to offer, so delete them or move them to another list where you can try to revive their interest without hurting the deliverability rates of your main list.

If you aren't sure how to do this check the help files of your autoresponder service to see how you can go about deleting or moving anyone that hasn’t opened an email from you in the past six months to a year depending on what type of business you have.

Following these tips and keeping an eye on your email deliverability rates in general will make sure your emails are being read by your subscribers and that’s the point of email marketing, isn’t it?

If you like this post please comment, share and fill out the short form on this page to subscribe to my list so I can send you even more tips, information and blog updates that will help you grow your business online!

Thank you for reading,
mysig1

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Hello and welcome to this week’s Monday Minutes. Each week in this series I am going to share simple tips that you can implement quickly to help your business become more successful.

Monday MinutesThis week’s tip is all about tech support and we are going to talk about busting through technical roadblocks that holding you back.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main" ~John Donne

No one can know and do it all. And when you’re in business, you know there are a lot of things that all have to be managed. Websites, shopping carts, email managers, video editing, copywriting, and file storage and the list goes on.

And here’s where many new (and even some established) business owners lose a little bit of control. They try to bootstrap everything. Need a new website? They build it. Starting an affiliate program? They install it. Creating a video training series? They buy Camtasia; spend weeks learning it, and more weeks recording and editing video.

While there’s a lot to be said for self-sufficiency, there comes a point where you simply have to decide which tasks are giving you the best ROI, and let go of the rest.

As my friend and mentor Nicole Dean from Awesomization Nation says, “If you’re a fish, stop trying to fly. Do what you’re good at, and let others handle the rest.”

And here’s why. You’re wasting valuable time and energy trying to do it all yourself. Take a quick look at this free calculator to find out what your time is really worth, and you’ll very quickly discover that paying someone to edit your videos or update your website is a worthwhile investment.

Now that’s not to say that you shouldn’t know anything about the techy stuff that runs your business. You absolutely should. It’s nearly impossible to outsource work if you don’t have some idea of the work that needs to be done.

What that means is, you need to have an overview. You need to know where you’re going and have a basic idea of the steps that will get you there. You need to know that these things are possible, but you don’t necessarily need to know how to do them.

For example, if you’re using Infusionsoft, and you want to send an email with a link that, when clicked, will automatically add the reader to a new campaign, then all you need to know is that it can be done. You don’t have to understand the mechanics behind it or be able to set it up yourself.

That’s what your VA is for.

And if you’re really thinking ahead (and I know you are) then you’ll also have your VA document the steps she’s using to complete the task. As part of her job, she should be helping to build your operations manual. That will make it easier for everyone on the team to get more done in less time, which in turn will save you money.

So stop fighting with technology. Learn only what you must know to do your job, and hand the rest over to someone who can do it faster and better. Then you can spend your time bringing in the money.

If you like this post please comment, share and fill out the short form on this page to subscribe to my list so I can send you even more tips, information and blog updates that will help you grow your business online!

Thank you for reading,

mysig1

Check out last weeks Monday Minutes here!

Don't forget to check out this weeks sponsor White Label Perks

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Hello and welcome to this week’s Monday Minutes. Each week in this series I am going to share simple tips that you can implement quickly to help your business become more successful.

Monday MinutesThis week’s tip is all about Money Matters and we are going to talk about how to systematize everything in your business from invoicing to tax preparation.

There’s an all-too-common scenario: A seemingly successful entrepreneur is hard at work growing their business. They are working lots of hours, and their hourly rate is respectable. But the cash flow is slow or unpredictable.

Why?

Because they are working so hard that finding the time to actually take control of their money is impossible.

Invoices don’t get sent on time. Past due balances are ignored. Taxes aren’t done. And maybe worst of all, they have dozens of recurring payments that go out automatically each and every month, and they have no idea what they are or if they are even using the programs they are paying for.

Sound familiar? Sadly, that’s exactly what a lot of “successful” businesses look like. When you work at home, and you’re accountable to no one but yourself, it’s far too easy to let these little things slide until, like an avalanche, they have a devastating effect on your business.

The good news is, cleaning it up is easy, when you take the time to
put some trusted systems in place!

Start with your billing.

Sign up for (and use) a system like Freshbooks or Harvest, which will automate your timekeeping and produce invoices with a single click of a button. Then put your billing day on your calendar as an unbreakable appointment.

Log into your timekeeping app, generate your invoices, and click send. You’ll be done in a jiffy. Not only that, but most billing systems automatically send follow-up messages for unpaid invoices, so you don’t have to worry about tracking down those slow pays.

For expenses, use a single system. That might be PayPal or a dedicated credit card or even your business checking account. Whatever it is, be sure it has a reporting feature that will allow you to send monthly statements to your accountant.

At the end of every month, bundle that up with your sales report and your receipts, and send it off. When tax time rolls around, you’ll be sitting back with your feet up while everyone else scrambles to find documents and update their accounting system.

If you do your own taxes, then look for tools that will talk to each other easily. For example, you can download a Quickbooks file right from PayPal for super-fast reconciliation at the end of every month. That alone will save you hours of “doing the books.”

Two Simple Systems

Just putting these two simple systems in place can easily save you 10+ hours per month, but the even larger benefit is that the money work will get done. And what that will do for your cash flow is priceless!

If you like this post please comment, share and fill out the short form on this page to subscribe to my list so I can send you even more tips, information and blog updates that will help you grow your business online!

Thank you for reading,

mysig1

Check out last weeks Monday Minutes here!

Don't forget to check out this weeks sponsor Piggy Makes Bank

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