About Last Night – Portland Folk Festival 2024

January 13, 2024 by

Portland Folk Festival 2024

A fun thing happened last night – and it couldn’t have without a lot of different things coming together at once. It all started with an email yesterday afternoon.

I was preparing for an evening of pre-storm pj’s and a movie. Cozy. Warm. Home. Instead, I said “Yes!” and off I headed into a night of fun and adventure. Normally, receiving some gifted tickets to something wouldn’t warrant a blog entry, but there’s more fun to share.  On the way to the show, I got a follow-up email that there was a second ticket available. This led to me scrambling to find someone to go with.

I turned to my Constant Contact mobile app (I was on the bus into town at this point) and sent a note to my “Tag along at the last minute” list – to see if anyone wanted to join me. That only turned up a friend from Seattle saying hi. But the fact that I could do this felt very fun and sometimes it works like a charm.

I got into the Crystal Ballroom and there were vendors and seating and fewer people than I’d ever shared that room and dance floor with. It was super sweet and people were in a great mood. The music was lovely, too. I got to hobnob with some Portland music legends – Worth, and Louie Longmier – both folks I’d been wanting to meet over the years. The artists also seemed really pleased to be playing for this festival. The Festival raises money for homeless projects around Portland.

Music Portland was there and I got to speak with one of their board members, Rose Gerber, who shared what the organization needs volunteer-wise. I may plug in and help.  Also, $ raised by the event is going to All Good Northwest.

I ended up talking to the folks at Shady Pines Radio and they invited one of their staff to take the extra ticket and she showed up with a big smile on her face!

At the end of the night, the person who had gifted me the ticket introduced herself and we shared a Lyft home.  What a fine way to spend the evening than home alone! And a Folk Festival – in Winter! I hope they do a Summer one – I’ll help and volunteer!!!

They’ve canceled tonight (Saturday’s show), but intend to pull it all together for Sunday. I’ll likely go! Join me!

It all started because someone I don’t know but who is on my email list (who receives my newsletters) reached out to me. Albert smiling.

PS – I did some live streaming (not fantastic quality, but hey) on my Facebook account here.

PPS – Here’s a Spotify playlist of the many groups that play this festival!

Plushrooms! the vendors were great!

Here’s a write-up of part two which was smooshed into one day a few weeks later. It was a great day and I took some pics and videos located here.

song a day

you can give Song a Day a try. A new song every day for 232 days.

 

 

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Email Marketing Service Providers

February 8, 2018 by Leave a Comment

Email Marketing Service Providers – 2023

Here is information about various Email Marketing Service providers. Most of these have many of the same features – and some are easier to use than others. Once you’ve picked one and want to get started, check out my many articles on how to build your list and training videos, too.

Constant Contact – These folks are excellent. Possibly the most expensive in this category, but you also get a lot for what you pay for. Great support. If you want to work together, it’s likely we’ll be using Constant Contact 🙂

Constant Contact logo

Robly – A less expensive alternative to Constant Contact with some interesting features I haven’t seen anywhere – NextGen – which allows a user to re-send a newsletter to those who haven’t opened it yet. Robly AI – which tracks when recipients have received an email in the past and then sends it again at that time is also pretty cool.  These alone make this service worth a look.

Robly

Aweber – I’ve used Aweber in the past. I have a number of clients who’ve switched to it in the past. I think mostly because of the action-based triggers it offers. My experience is that it is not nearly as user-friendly for beginner users – I’d love to hear about your experience if you use Aweber.aweber

Getresponse – This is one you hear about a lot – I’ll write here more as I learn more about this solution

Getresponse

Mailchimp – You get what you don’t pay for. I’ve written an article about why I think it does not make sense to use Mailchimp. That said – it’s way better than using nothing – and I hope you have success if you go this route.

Active Campaign

Vertical Response

 

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Build Your List

July 2, 2017 by 2 Comments

Create A Great Email List

Would you like to do a better job of marketing your business/cause/non-profit/self/project? – Great! Here are some first steps to get started! This can be hard for some people – but it’s worthwhile to go through this process.

    1. Gather your email addresses into a spreadsheet – Feel free to download this example in Excel.  If you are already using an Email Service Provider such as Constant Contact you may already have this step covered. If not, you’ll want to download your email contacts from wherever they live. Some typical places might be Outlook (Constant Contact has an app that allows you to sync your Outlook contacts!); Gmail; LinkedIn; Hotmail; MSN; Yahoo or your Mac’s address book if you’re using MacMail. Do a little sleuthing and you’ll find instructions on how to download from any of these platforms into a spreadsheet that you can work with.
    2. Segment Your Lists. Once you have your emails in a spreadsheet you’ll want to create some columns to segment (categorize) your list.  The more columns, the better. Typical things people often segment people by zip code; relationship (friend, family, business associate, customer); age; or birthday; anything that makes a contact different from another one is a reason to create a column. Once you have your columns set up – run through your list and put an “X” in every box that makes sense – ie, a person can be part of more than one list – you may want to reach out to someone for multiple reasons.

      Why to segment your lists - working together

      Why segment your lists – Thanks, Sumo!

    3. Learn Best Practices. At this point, if you want to get an idea of my thinking have a look at one or more of my training videos.
    4. Join My List. If you’re not already receiving my business newsletter – sign up. This will help you see the process I use in my business and it’s something similar to what I’ll advise you to create if you don’t already have something like this setup.

    5. Extra credit – if you don’t already have a Constant Contact account – let me know and I will sign you up for a trial. I’d be happy to do this and you can learn the program and start using it in minutes.
    6. Buffer.com has a great article on how to build your list via your website, here.

If you’ve made it to this point, it’s time to get in touch and we can get started.  Thanks for reading this.  I’m always open to feedback – so feel free to let me know if this has been helpful or not. I look forward to working together.

 

Albert Kaufman
February 25, 2023

Updated on 6.13.24

Albert Kaufman December 2016 Working Together

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Marketing Plans

August 3, 2016 by Leave a Comment

What Working Together Can Look Like

If you’ve thought about starting with email marketing or updating your current effots, I’m here to help. If you’d like an idea of what working with me will cost, have a look at my recently created Email Marketing Plans by Albert Kaufman. Within you’ll see a variety of packages and get an idea of how we can organize your approach together.  It’s taken me a long time to come up with a plan and I’d love your feedback.  Feel free to reach out to me to discuss your business and your needs and we can fashion an effort that works for you.

Email marketing has been shown to return on average $44.25 per dollar spent on marketing.  That’s the highest level out there – more than Facebook and Twitter combined.  It’s how small businesses and non-profits effectively reach out.

Currently, I mainly work with Constant Contact as an email service provider for clients. If you choose to go that route, you can start with a 2-month trial account that can show you all the bells and whistles.  Constant Contact is the industry leader for on-line marketing for small businesses and it’s what I prefer to use also because I know it the best. I also offer many classes and webinars (mostly free) for your further education in this exciting area.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Albert Kaufman
Portland, Oregon
https://albertideation.com

The Bagdad Theater, Portland, Oregon

The Bagdad Theater, Portland, Oregon

 

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The Power of Your Many Inboxes

February 6, 2016 by 1 Comment

one in a million inboxesInboxes

Since the start of 2016 I’ve taught a class called The Power of the Inbox as part of Constant Contact’s celebration of having trained over 1 million people since they opened their doors. These classes focus on the value of email marketing and how to do it right. Some of the main points are getting a great subject line going; using mobile-friendly templates; sending from a recognizable email address – and so much more. To see a video of the class as a webinar, click here. Something interesting occurred to me as I’ve been teaching this class – the rise of the importance of your other inboxes! Email remains the key way to reach customers, clients, friends and family, and it turns out, you can’t neglect the communications coming via your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter messaging systems (to name just 3).

A client, Gregg Harris (of Rooseveltpdx – a fantastic terrarium store on 44th and Hawthorne in Portland, Oregon, which made my top 11 list for 2015) said to me the other day “Albert, people are expecting me to respond to their communications on Facebook“. I am so fully busy in the on-line world that I’ve just taken it for granted that messages that come in via various platforms are “like” email, and so should be treated as such.  But, like Gregg, I tend to let many of those messages languish for days – especially messages from Twitter and LinkedIn.  I’m on Facebook so much that I tend to use their messenger at about the same rate of response as email, but Gregg’s woken me up to how I should be treating all on-line communications. And there’s a simple solution – notifications.

Within each social network is a way to be notified (via email, of course) when a message has come into your account. My recommendation would be to turn on any direct messages you get via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and see if any business or important information is coming your way.  I’ll do the same and I’ll keep you posted what I learn. Timing is often important in this instant gratification world. If a request for your services comes in through a channel you’re not monitoring, you may miss something important.  Let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks for reading. Albert

Can you spot the fish?

Can you spot the fish?

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Constant Contact Tutorial

November 9, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Constant Contact Tutorial

I’ve been teaching people how to use Constant Contact and email marketing for years. If you’d like to get started – sign up for a free trial account and then follow this step by step tutorial.  At the end of the tutorial I also give a few cool tips on how to use Facebook and LinkedIn that you may never have heard before.  If you have any questions, please get in touch – I’m here to help!

If you already use Constant Contact, please join my Managed Care Program. Every Constant Contact user gets a Solution Provider to work with and I’d love to be yours.  This tutorial will probably teach you something you don’t know yet, too – so check it out and let me know what you think!

Take care and happy email marketing!

Yours, Albert Kaufman

Time to go!

I visited the Red Rock Resort in October 2015 to learn the latest from Constant Contact!

 

 

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