Chad Blodgett

I’ve heard a lot about this book from friends that I do business with. They rave about it. Many of the people I associate with own their own businesses (like myself) and so they have said, “read this book, and free yourself up.”

I am excited. I have read the authors blog, and I have read the cover “escape 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich.” What is the new rich? From what little I have read, it is those that value freedom and mobility over having things (material things).

This should be good….here we go, Chapter 1.

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ABC channel 4 news did a follow up on our Holiday Challenge. I, like an idiot, had the trophy in between my face and the camera! Oh well, I’ll get it right one of these days.

You can follow this link for the article and then click on the “Watch Video” link.

http://www.abc4.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=7c55fcba-2f69-4247-a033-2b983420704c

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WOW! I haven’t posted forever!  That will change as of today… I will be more loyal to my one reader (my wife) and the occational stumbler.

My lack of posting has been partly because I launched another business.  I have always been intrigued by lead aggregator business models, similar to LowerMyBills.com.  Recently I was discuss some marketing and business problems with chocolate fountain owners and decided to throw up a chocolate fountain lead aggregator.

We did a little research to discover how many searches are performed on various chocolate fountain keywords, and decided that we ought to try it out.  After the first 7 days we received over 16,000 impressions and about 800 clicks!  Pretty good for 7 days. 

We are working out the kinks, but seem to have found a promissing niche.

If you have tips or advice or references, etc on Lead Aggregators as business models please let me know.

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What a great idea! My wife has been scowering (sp?) the internet to try and find nice trails and campgrounds within our state. She has had some success, but not nearly the help that we would like.

We are not from the state that we currently live in and so we are not familiar with the outdoor recreation that is available. We have a good friend who seems to know EVERY trail up EVERY canyon and so we have used his recommendations and had some great times. He has since moved away from us and our contact has gone down.

iHikes.com has taken the knowledge of the back country to people like my wife and I. You can download video’s of trails, national parks, etc. to help you discover the places in Americathat you want to see. These videos include narrative on the trail and can be viewed from your handheld device, including the iPod. Brilliant!

I only wish there were more trials covered by their service. I wonder what they would pay me to hike around our state and video the trails?

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What is the value of an email address? What you pay to have one email address from someone in your target market?

The fact is businesses pay for email lists each day and most of the lists just aren’t that valuable. To really maximize your email campaigns follow these few steps from Paul Chaney.

1. Make the integrity of your list your number one goal: Double opt-in techniques will help make your list more valuable to you.
2. The Subject Line is Key: Spam and overcrowded inboxes are the problem. You have about two seconds to appeal to your audience. Check your subject line through a spam checking service like Spam Assassin (spamassiassin.apache.org) before you send. MarketingSherpa reported on a study that reveals that the boring subject lines with your company name in the subject have a much higher open rate.
3. Provide a Call to Action: Ask them to do something, and make it easy for them to do it.
4. Don’t Over Mail your List: There is no concrete answer to how often you should send email. Monitor your conversion data and open rates – if they drop off you might consider mailing less frequent (or more frequent).
5. HTML vs. TEXT ONLY: This used to be an issue, but today nearly every email client can receive HTML. One thing to note, however, is not to include all of your text within an image. Make sure there is plenty of text to offset the “text only” default view of most email programs.

Lastly, how well are you doing with your email campaigns? Do you have a list of subscribers that are valuable to you? Do you have any good tips, suggestions, or lessons learned that you would like to share?

If so, please share. Click the comment button below.

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I listened to a great pod-cast by DuctTapeMarketing about a month ago and have been planning on blogging about it ever since. It was an interview with Jill Giffen, the author of “15 ways to improve customer loyalty.”

My customers on WeightLossWars.com (which is a business that does weight loss competitions and weight loss programs to help with weight loss motivation - if you couldn’t tell these are some of our keywords) are very loyal users, however, I have been thinking of new ways to provide value to them - and therefore increase their loyalty to WeightLossWars. We are in the process of developing new features and tools to help our customers. You can check out the development site here.

Anyway, this pod-cast was very helpful and I have decided that the best way for me to learn the principles of the pod-cast is to implement them with my customers and then teach (blog) about them here. So, that is the plan - and I hope that I will come away with some insights on customer loyalty.

For a teaser…here are Jill Giffen’s 15 ways to improve customer loyalty.

1. Remind your customers how YOU add value

2. Get Congruent

3. Know your customers definition of value

4. Watch for signs of an unhappy customer

5. Beware of “No Loyalty” Customers

6. Beware of the “Thrill of the Chase”

7. Get advocates selling for you

8. Serve first, sell second

9. Practice the 80/20 rule

10. Learn how to comfort an angry customer

11. Learn from lost customers

12. Make it easy for customers to complain

13. Head off negative word-of-mouth

14. Say Thank you

15. Rev up your loyalty engine

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Very interesting article in Practical eCommerce of how a coupon cutting idea has turned into a business with 100,000 members, 26 employees, franchises in 49 states, and $6 million in annual sales.

Teri Gault (Founded TheGroceryGame.com) decided to take her coupon skills to the internet to help with her family income. She has developed a system based on cyclical categorical sales trends so she can match those local sales with manufacture coupons – resulting in some very cheap groceries at your local supermarket.

Her list will tell you what to buy, and how much – based on when it will go on sale again.

I thought her story was inspiring and thought you would enjoy reading the article as well.

The best part of the story is this…she did it. She didn’t talk about it… she didn’t dream about it…she didn’t talk herself out of it…she acted on it. She rolled her quarters together for a business license and web-site and then rolled up her sleeves and created some value for others.

Why wait? Do it now.

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I blogged previously about our move to add greater educational content to our services at eHealthCompete.  With the addition of HealthCast we will revolutionize the way employers deliver behavior change programs to their employees.  We are in the final stages of post production on the first HealthCast Series and have chosen the following logo to represent our video education…

I am very curious to hear what you think of the logo?  I will blog later about why we chose this version from others, but in the mean time, let me know what your first impressions are, what you like/dislike about it.

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Puttin you on the Map!

I am now a VIP Blogger! I have a little square toward the top of the home page and have received some nice traffic since loading it up two days ago.

I am excited to see VIP grow. We hear so much discussion on the power of networks and word of mouth marketing - and I think VIP Bloggers will be a great case study on how businesses and ideas can grow. Justin Bergener will be in “The Tipping Point” sequel (if there ever could be one) .

So - what are you waiting for? Get your square on VIPBloggers and spread the word!

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So, I’m sitting in my LoveSac, watching the BYU VS. UTAH game and reading blogs from about a dozen different entrepreneurs that I respect. My wife is at the kitchen table listening to the sound track from Walk the Line and helping me edit some of the scripts for the HealthCast vidcasts that we are doing with my corporate wellness company eHealthCompete. Our 2 boys are sound asleep.

Life is good.

eHealthCompete will be launching the HealthCast Video Productions through a partnership with Steve Aldana and my Junto Partner, Joe Grover, and his Production Company Digital Mind Studios. HealthCast will be the first corporate wellness company to deliver educational video content over the internet.

My goal is to educate employees in an entertaining way so they will be better able to make good health and lifestyle choices. Choices that will improve the quality of life that people live.

I’ll post a link to the first video once we have it completed.

The more you know, the safer your arteries!

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