Email Marketing Service Providers

February 8, 2018 by albertkaufman 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 🙂

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.

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.

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

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

Filed Under: email marketing Tagged With: active campaign, aweber, constant contact, email marketing, getresponse, mailchimp, robly, vertical response

Frequently Asked Questions

January 29, 2018 by albertkaufman Leave a Comment

Frequently Asked Questions

Here is my FAQ as of 8.21.18 – if you have a question, please contact me. Thank you!

Q: Can you help me market my business on Facebook?
A: That is not my focus these days. Here’s why. If you’d like to market more effectively, try email marketing. That I can help you with.

Q: Will you post my event on your timeline? Will you like my business/fan page? Will you contribute to my fundraiser or help spread the word about it?
A: At this time I get asked this one many times a day and I can’t do it all, sorry. That said – if I am attending your event I’ll likely be happy to spread the word about it and invite friends. If I like your project/fundraiser, I’ll probably donate at least $11 to it.

Q: How about Instagram?
A: Even more problematic. That said, my next door neighbor has built a great following using Instagram – anything is possible! The main thing seems to be jumping in and staying active with it. If you have the time and energy – go for it!

Q: Where can I go for SEO help?
A: I advise people to teach themselves some via Google. Then, if you want to hire an expert – my colleague, Don Richardson is a good person to speak with. Tell him I sent you!

Q: How about WordPress/SquareSpace/Weebly – what do you recommend?
A: Personally, I’ve chosen WordPress. In terms of learning that or how to use other tools, there are a ton of online tutorials. I would start there if you’re thinking about doing things yourself. So much of the technology is plug & play these days. But if you want a hand in this area – ask me @ albert@albertideation.com and I’ll refer you to someone.

Q: Twitter?
A: I forward things to Twitter – but really don’t look at it too much. I think it’s a great way to find out the pulse about a particular topic – but not key to marketing for small businesses. One caveat from my brother Dan: food trucks and food businesses in general thrive with Twitter.

Q: LinkedIn?
A: The main value I see in LinkedIn is the ability to export all of your contacts and see what people do and their contact information. This is available in Facebook, too. But it’s much easier to export via LinkedIn. I don’t recommend people spend a lot of time trying to marketing their businesses via LinkedIn.

Carlton Ward and Albert Kaufman - Beloved 2017

Carlton Ward and Albert Kaufman – Beloved Festival 2017

Filed Under: FAQ Tagged With: albertideation, email marketing, FAQ, frequently asked questions

How We Can Work Together

January 29, 2018 by albertkaufman Leave a Comment

If you need a hand – Here’s how I roll

Hi there. Below is an outline of my recent work history and how I like to work with people/organizations in 2019. Here’s how I roll.

I started this phase of my online marketing guru work life in 2008 by teaching people how to use Facebook in small classes in my living room. That led to teaching email marketing using Constant Contact for the past 11 years. I’ve been holding regular classes and webinars during this time – many are available as training videos here.

I have been keeping up with social media trends, but really my main focus now is getting people’s email lists and email marketing set up and running. There are many ways to market online, but the simplest and most effective form I’ve found (and one where you are the owner of your data) is building an email list and sending out regular news to those interested in what you have to say or sell.

If that sounds useful, take a look at my page called Working Together. There you’ll find a short process where you can get things started. If you need a hand with that process or the steps afterwards, please get in touch via my contact form and we can take it from there. If you want to ask me questions about social media, WordPress, SEO, or the plethora of other ways to market oneself, see my Frequently Asked Questions page.

If you’re interested in an Albert Does it for Me/Us solution, also reach out via my Contact form and give me an idea of your project, scope, and budget. Thanks!

As always, I’m open to feedback about this post or anything else on this site. Feel free to leave me a comment below!

Here’s to your business and life success!

—Albert Kaufman, Albertideation, Portland, Oregon

Filed Under: Roll Tagged With: contact me, email, email marketing, how I roll, social media, working together

3 Great Reasons to have a Personal Newsletter for Friends and Family

November 9, 2017 by albertkaufman Leave a Comment

Starting a Friends and Family Newsletter

I’ve been using email to send out a newsletter to my friends and family for the past 16 years. The response has been fantastic and it’s made me a believer in taking the time to send word to your personal network on a regular basis. Here are my three top reasons why I think this makes sense.

1. You have a personal life and telling people that care about you what is going on for you leads to their having a greater understanding of your life, hopes, and dreams. Once friends and family know more about what you’re up to – they can get behind any effort you’re making. For instance, I had an idea a couple of years ago called Farm My Yard. It’s an effort to match up homeowners and urban farmers who live nearby. I’ve been mentioning this idea and dreaming it into existence for the past couple of years, and now that it’s starting to take off the people I’ve told are some of the effort’s greatest boosters. And, of course, Farm My Yard has a newsletter sign-up form on the website 🙂

2. The feedback. We all want to know how we’re doing. When I send my newsletter out, I always ask for feedback. Over the years it feels like people take turns writing back with their thoughts, suggestions, and mentions of how they might be facing the same challenges and their solutions for making their way through. Sometimes it’s just an “atta boy”, but some friends have deepened our relationship by sharing their thinking and real offers of help.

3. Referrals. By telling my friends and family what I’m up to in my business life, they then know something about how I make a living – teaching email marketing, and social media, and helping small businesses boost their marketing efforts. I have become known in my personal world as THE guy who does that. This has led to friends referring their friends who need business support. I generally don’t ask my friends and family directly for support, but their knowledge of my business helps me in various ways. For instance, when we come together for various gatherings, the conversations often start at a greater depth because they’ve been following my life and are somewhat caught up with my progress. Instead of “what’s new“, the conversations more often start with “Hey, I remember you mentioning that you lead street tree planting efforts” – any idea of how we can get that going in my neck of the woods?”

As with any email newsletter, you want to follow the basic rules of thumb – keeping the newsletter brief; having a great subject line; putting the call to action towards the top, and using graphics and links sparingly. If you invite your friends and family to write back about what has moved them about what you’ve written, they often will – and, I promise, this feedback will be interesting and possibly useful.

If you ever need encouragement on trying this out, feel free to get in touch. If you’d like to receive my friends & family monthly email (The Eleven), you can sign up for it here.

You can do this, and I truly believe it will lead to great things!

The Eleven Archives

Thanks to Yehudah for this article from May 2024 on Kinkeeping!

And a cool TikTok on the subject.

Filed Under: Newsletter Tagged With: constant contact, email marketing, family, friends, Friends of Trees, keeping in touch, newsletter, sharing the news, support, support network, survey, survey tool

Social Media is Many Things to Many People

August 16, 2017 by albertkaufman Leave a Comment

The many faces of social media

The more I use social media over the years the more convinced I am that it is very hard to say exactly what it is. There are various platforms and these are often hard to explain simply. I’ve been training people on how to use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others for about 11 years (in 2019).

I first started out by teaching classes in my living room – mainly – how does one use Facebook – personal pages vs. business pages + netiquette – how to be in those places and look like you have a cleu. As the various platforms have expanded their feature sets and made things a bit more difficult for businesses to reach their fans how people use them has changed. Here are some of the new uses that I am experiencing and seeing in the field.

1. Some people are just using the systems as a messaging system – an example would be FB messenger. I note that I am having more and more personal “email-like” interactions via FB messenger than in the past. FB messenger seems to be replacing email in terms of personal connections/conversations in my world.

2. People pick their platforms and stick with them. I know a number of people who are mainly on one platform and that’s it. My next-door neighbor runs an Instagram page for his crystal business. He’s up to 142K followers. I encouraged him to get going with email marketing – and he has, but really, he’s having so much success and fun with Instagram.. that he’s pretty happy with that one platform. Personally, I don’t recommend having all your eggs in one basket (ie, make sure to be list-building – that’s yours…) – but I see this across the board. People who are mainly on Twitter or FB – find a home and stay there.

3. Then, there’s how one spends their time on FB. I used to spend much more time on the newsfeed – and I’m sure many still do. But ever since I discovered Friends’ Lists and how to segment my friends + see all the posts of those who I most want to follow/learn from.. that has changed my FB experience dramatically. I also am using FB much more to network with others and connect around business topics in relevant groups. Active business or interest groups have changed my thinking about how a small, dedicated group of people can come together for a common purpose and really elevate everyone’s experience.

I’ve been looking for more insight into where people delve into how these prominent tools/platforms are being used – in non-obvious ways, but have not really found what I’m looking for. So, I’ll try putting out my own thinking on the topic and see how that goes.

Do you use social media in a way that you think was not intended by the creators? Please share below!

Have a great Summer – Albert Kaufman, Albertideation, Portland, Oregon, The United States

PS – Please join my email list. I have a few different projects I’m working on and I’d love you along for the ride!

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: business pages, constant contact, email marketing, facebook, facebook fan pages, facebook lists, instagram, linkedin, social change, social media, social networking

Build Your List

July 2, 2017 by albertkaufman 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 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.
  
  Sign Up Here
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

Filed Under: email marketing Tagged With: constant contact, email lists, email marketing, working together