Cory Miller | Adventures in Entrepreneurship » Marketing

The Enduring Value of a Good Email List

Cory Miller — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:34:47 +0000

Internet marketers preach the importance of having a list. I do too.

An email list of targeted people in your niche is invaluable to building a sustainable business online. Trust me on this: The bigger and better the list, the more success you’ll enjoy.

We launched iThemes with an email list of about 200-300 people. That initial list and the email launched propelled us to our next product launch and gave us the momentum to grow and grow. Our list has grown over time, but each and every time we send out an email … we have a great sales day. In fact, I can easily trace the days we send emails out with our sales reports.

New emails about products = new sales

In fact, our email list is likely our most valuable non-human asset in our business.

Customers won’t just come to you. They forget. They move on. Thus, you need to invite them to come back and buy by offering them value in your product or service. And email is still one of the best ways of doing that.

Yes, Twitter, Facebook and blog feeds are good tools for relationship building (we use them) … but NOT NEARLY as effective as a really good, targeted email list.

Here are some thoughts about cultivating good email lists ….

MUST be permission-based … don’t spam. The good email solutions like Aweber (I use this) and MailChimp require it.
With every new brand or large project I start an email list for it … this helps with segmentation and marketing to the right people.
Cultivate prospective customers interested in your topic (who most likely need your niche product) into a good solid, well-maintained email list.
For initial launch, grow a big enough list to make an initial ripple and get people buying and talking about it.
To sustain and expand your business, you need a growing group of people to market your work to as you release new products and features – new product releases via email equal new sales nearly every single time.
Free content (i.e. blogs, webinars, ebooks, etc) are great opportunities to build and cultivate a great list. <===This is how you build a target list!
Do surveys with it. Ask them what they want and what problems they have. This is vital for building great products that they will actually buy. When someone signs up for our email newsletter, we ask them to fill out a survey. Now I have over two years of customer data to mine when thinking about new products or features to create. That’s gold.
Give incentives to sign up. I use free reports, downloads and special discounts to continually build our email lists for our brands.
I still use text only emails … with links to bigger posts and more polished sales pages. Give people a fast and easy way to just click through if they are interested.
I guard our email lists. I use it for our products only. I try very hard not to flood and abuse the people who have trusted us with their email address.

Businesses: Be Content Producers

Cory Miller — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:54:01 +0000

This post has been brewing for a while, I’ve been trying to let it crystalize some more, and even now I’m not sure it’s polished, but after reading so many good books and posts recently (I’ll list as many as I can remember at the end of this post) on the subject of “content marketing,” I’m going to take my first stab at it.

From this website that I started publishing my old newspaper columns in 1999, to the professional blog I started almost 4 years ago, and the fact that every venture or website we start comes with a blog attached as a central marketing strategy (see iThemes and WebDesign.com), I’ve long realized the value in delivering good, quality, practical, helpful content.

Maybe it’s because I was a newspaper journalist in my previous career, but I love good content and use it prolifically in my marketing strategies. And I believe, as so many others have said, businesses now need to become content creators themselves and stop outsourcing it to external media outlets in the form of advertising.

Here’s some thoughts on how and why businesses need to go this route:

Content is an AWESOME marketing channel and strategy. Duh, Captain Obvious! But seriously, you can attract prospective customers through it, build your brand and establish thought leadership and expertise …. oh, and you can also make sales through it and because of it. More on that later.
The media empires are collapsing around us. And there is a void being left in their ashes. Their readers still want quality content.
Develop your own readership and audience. There is no need for a middleman to communicate with your prospective audiences. By creating your own media, you can develop direct relationships with your audience. You’re not leasing another’s readership, you’re developing your own.
As I’ve blogged about before: Content is priceless. I’ll always invest in good “evergreen” or “pillar” content.
Educational marketing IS creating valuable, practical content you’re prospects aka audience need or are interested in. There are topics and tips and tutorials that your customer is looking for … in your niche, you should be THE expert on it.
Content is about being helpful. I keep using the words “valuable” and “practical” when I describe content here because ultimately if you help someone – through social media or the content on your blog – it endears that person to you. If you’re just a blaring marketing speaker, it’s not going to help your customer. But if you’re help through your content, they will associate good feelings with your brand and products that are tools in solving their problems.
Content can also be about storytelling for your brand. It’s one of the reasons I bought a Tom Bihn laptop bag (I unboxed it here). They tell a great story. So in the words of Chris Brogan, “Hire journalists. They are great storytellers.” We’re trying to tell our own story through our live show at iThemes each week, through videos, through in person workshops … and by the way, this ‘About Us’ video from Digital Tutors is brand storytelling at its finest! David Meerman Scott calls this “brand journalism,” and has some good advice for journalists.
Build community with content. One of the things we’re trying to do at iThemes is build community by embracing our customers and their unique needs. And that means not only providing products or tools to empower them to do it, but content that teaches and shows them how. We want to be their hub for building beautiful and effective websites with WordPress. American Express might be one of the best doing this with OPEN Forum, recruiting some of the biggest and best names for their free content offering. Stellar content that’s made me think better of American Express.

Content like this has been around for a long, long time. It’s nothing new.

Ebooks, white papers, blogs, videos, audio/podcasts, workshops, roadshows, webinars/teleseminars, speaking engagements, books, etc, etc …. are all pretty good examples of content creation and marketing.

I think businesses should use a combination of them … MORE, or heck, actually do some of this, starting with a blog.

How does all this relate to the bottomline? Or maybe, the question really is: how does content make sales?

Here’s what I’ve seen content do for my business …

Builds your brand – the brand exposure content brings is amazing. One of our highest linked to and visited pages on our site is our free WordPress tutorials page.
Establishes you as the expert - I love how often people cite Gary V as THEIR wine guru … and, by the way, he happens to sell wine. If I was going to buy wine (which I know nothing about), I’d go to Gary for advice … then I’d probably buy from him. Think about it: When someone helps you out in a niche, who are you most likely to buy from?
Presents your products and tools as possible solutions – It’s about exposure but not the obnoxious kind. Gary and others who do content marketing well don’t bash you over the head with marketing their goods. (In fact, I’ve seen him say he’s not that worried about it – it’s more about community.) But good content marketing exposes your products and services as possible solutions. This is the VERY tricky part about content marketing. The one we’re still refining and I hope to share more as we learn effective ways to balance content and community with paying the bills!

Here are some more reference resources about content marketing …

Book: Get Content, Get Customers: The excerpt is foundational, the rest of the book is mostly case studies but a good read
Book: Inbound Marketing: By the marketing specialists at HubSpot … they are shining examples of content/educational marketing
Post: Content strategy is the next big thing
Post: Why Brand Are Becoming Media: I’m looking forward to getting his book Engage!
Probably a ton more I missed or forgot ….

On Unique Experiences

Cory Miller — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:31:46 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about unique experiences lately. As a consumer, I love and crave unique experiences.

Whenever I think about unique experiences, I’m usually drawn to restaurants.

Not the chain kind but the hole-in-the-wall, greasy spoon restuarants.

My thought is that anybody can find and go to a chain restaurant like Olive Garden or Abuelo’s or [insert any name brand national restaurant] … the food is extremely consistent and usually really good. The service is generally above average as most of these restaurants are well-oiled machines (or at least appear so).

But my wife and I love to find the little, cool, one-of-a-kind places with good food and even better atmosphere tucked in an old location or off the path.

We want a dining experience we can’t get everywhere. And when we have family or friends visiting we like to take them to these little joints.

In fact, whenever I travel to a new city, I always hit up Urbanspoon for the cool, unique restaurants or cafes to go to.

Here are a couple we love and frequent regularly …

Here’s a couple of thoughts about why we like those places:

Atmosphere is almost everything — We love unique decor and distinct feel. Irma’s has one of the most awesome nightime ‘feels.’ The wall pictures, the low ceilings, the paint and trim, it all ties together at Irma’s.
We want a good story – Not all of them have a good story, but the best ones have a unique background or flair; the first time we went to Flip’s, the waitress gave us the most amazing story about how they prepare their food
We love good food — Let’s face it, the atmosphere and service could suck, but if the food is amazing, it trumps all else. (This is about the product experience which affects all.)

Lessons for my business and yours…

With these thoughts on unique dining experiences, let’s talk about some other unique experiences with products, like Tom Bihn’s laptop bags.

(This Mashable article introduced me to Tom Bihn, a Seattle-based maker of some super-cool, hand-made laptop bags, hit it home for me and motivated me to finally write this post. Check out Tom Bihn’s laptop bags here and look for me to show you mine as I have to have one now!)

More and more as a consumer, I’m wanting unique experiences with products too.

For certain consumer products, I don’t want something that’s poorly made, cheap and of which I can find in any store.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a Mac fan boy. I love the unique feel and experience I get from using Apple products. (And so do millions of others.)

Although Apples are mass produced and there’s rarely an event I’ve been to when Mac laptops and iPhones didn’t dominate the audience, they have preserved the specialness we want in products.

I feel the unique experience when I started reading and listening to the videos on the Tom Bihn site.

Here’s why I’m almost dead set on making my next laptop bag a Tom Bihn one:

The demo videos – that dude, evidentally a friend and not even a company employee, walks you through all the pockets and features of the laptop bags in a unique way where I HAVE to have one … this guy loves the bags!
The bags are one-of-a-kind – I learned that Tom Bihn himself designs every one of them … and he designs them for himself. I can’t go in Wal-Mart, like I have with my past 3 lousy laptop bags, and get one. I have to special order these. And they are hand-made with love in Seattle.
Customer forum community – their forums are really active with awesome photos of people using their Tom Bihn bags. I want to belong to that community. It’s something we want to recreate with our brands, including iThemes.

So I’ve been thinking a lot recently for how we create unique experiences around our business and products … how we filter these values through everything we do …

As more and more companies streamline the manufacturing process, more and more consumer will crave unique experiences and products — something they can’t get just anywhere else.

What about you? What about your business? What ways are you creating one-of-a-kind experiences with your community?

Why Google Should Matter To Your Small Business

Cory Miller — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:15:28 +0000

We’ll be elaborating on these things once we launch WebDesign.com, but in the meantime, here are my rough draft thoughts on why Google should matter to your small business — even if you’re a one-man/woman shop!

People are looking for the products and services you offer … online! Are you being found?

Watch the video here

How to Start Your Own WordPress Web Development Business Today

Cory Miller — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:13:01 +0000

I remember the first weeks and months of trying to break into the web design field …

It was hard. It was drastically different from my print design background (my first career was as a newspaper journalist). There were so many things to learn.

After I learned some basic CSS skills, like what to look for and how to edit it, (here’s my tutorial resource for web design) and saw the awesome potential for using WordPress as a CMS, my primary was having a base theme toolkit so I can customize them for my clients.

I didn’t want to and frankly, I couldn’t have, started from scratch. (Nearly three years later, I know of only a couple of people now who do or can!)

But the best and easiest for me (and my clients) was finding some foundational themes that I could take and tweak to my liking.

So at iThemes, we took this thought … and have unveiled our All Access WordPress Theme Pass.

If you buy it today, you get access to over 30 themes at your disposal for WordPress projects — our entire theme vault!

It’s more than a theme club – it’s an opportunity to build a freelance web design business with WordPress. We’ve even included special unbranded WordPress screencast tutorials that you can upload to your site so you don’t have to reteach your clients the basics of WP.

James, our “creative architect” who ran a successful design business prior to coming to iThemes, posted a great article listing some ways you can start your web design business.

Our passion is helping aspiring web developers … and all our packages are geared toward them (the multi-use licenses allow you to use our themes on multiple client and personal sites and as such are a true bargain!). If you do the math, you’re getting these themes – with multi-use licenses – for under $20 a theme.

Check out the All Access Theme Pass today and get started!

5 Ways I Find Value in Twitter for My Business

Cory Miller — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:36:11 +0000

When I created my Twitter account over a year ago, I really didn’t understand it. To me, it seemed like another time-suck Web 2.0 creation.

Then one day, someone on our team told me that I had over 900 followers on Twitter. I was shocked. So I scrambled to see what Twittermania was about.

And THAT day … I instantly saw the ROI …

The reason? Any time a bunch of people care to listen to what you say, no matter what the format or platform, as a businessperson, you have been offered a great opportunity to begin the conversation with them!

I mean, a central marketing strategy to everything I do with our business is to build an audience with our customers and prospects. I do that mainly through email newsletters (yes, they still work) and of course blog feeds.

And independent of the platform, if someone wants a conversation with me (in a way that would benefit our business), I try my best to give them that.

So after about 6 months of using Twitter, here’s how I’ve seen it most useful in our business …

1. Building community around products and brands

Twitter is our new email newsletter in a way. Each time we roll out a new venture, like Happy Joe (follow @happyjoedesign), we’ve created a Twitter account for that.

(Yes, I’d pay for a corporate account at Twitter!)

We display Twitter icons on our sites so our site guests who know what Twitter is can follow us on there.

At iThemes (follow @ithemes), we use this as another way (permissions-based, I would add) of announcing new products, features, tutorials and more.

2. Responding to customers

I have searches for all our brands and names. This way I can respond to prospects, even if they don’t follow @ithemes or me. A number of times I’ve sent messages to those seeking advice about which WordPress theme to buy offering my help or assistance.

I can also put out fires of those who are unhappy or who feel neglected. So it works both ways.

3. Following conversations in our niche

I follow most of the WordPress theme builders, and a number of people influential to WordPress (the software our themes are built for) and their conversations too. It’s great to see what others are doing in the field, stay on top of trends, tips, whatever … and to build relationships with those too.

One time another WordPress theme designer helped me with a problem I was having, and hopefully I can return the favor soon.

4. Creating super-fans

A time or two, I’ve seen people ask for help on Twitter about issues I can actually assist with … so I’ve offered my time and in a couple of instances, taken relationships I’ve developed on Twitter to another level.

Think about it … when you help someone solve a nagging problem … for free … don’t you think they’ll do retweets or #followfridays of you and your stuff?!

5. Provide value

I do this through links to useful posts, quotes on books I’m reading, and other nuggets of gold that the bulk of people following me might find useful and practical for their lives and businesses. Some may call it educational marketing.

In this way, Twitter IS like a micro-blog. I feel a responsibility to provide value to those who may be using text messages to follow my tweets, just like I do with email newsletters, this blog, and other mediums.

I’m the editor of that … and although I’m still refining it, I’m realizing the great value it serves me, and our business.

Tweet on!

Why Online Advertising Is Better Than Traditional Advertising

Cory Miller — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:53:31 +0000

I’m talking specifically about print (newspapers, magazines) and broadcast (TV, radio). But I’m excluding direct mail advertising.

Here’s why online ads beat traditional advertising: It’s measuarable!

For the past several decades advertising representatives have done a great job selling the “value” of advertising as we know it today. They’ve invested a lot into their sales pitch and honed it in an excellent manner.

But the thing they’ve lacked is real metrics — statistics — to show their customers the return on investment.

Now … my hope is that all those ad reps with such excellent sales pitches about value and ROI come running to online advertising and showcase the power of online advertising’s strengths: it’s growing (rapidly) and you can actually see results!

One of the main reasons I hope this happens is so that all the great blogs out there can actually make a decent income (side or full-time) on their hard work … to be valued as much as their print counterparts. (Of course, if the value warrants it.)

Three Ways to Describe Social Media and Web Publishing

Cory Miller — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 02:56:48 +0000

It’s interesting how there truly is nothing new under the sun. Over and over, I continue to see old products and services take on new skin …

Here’s some thoughts …

“Twitter is like Facebook Status” – by my buddy Brad Ulrich, on describing Twitter to other college students
“Facebook Walls are like the old website guestbooks” – by me, after I saw the WP-Wall plugin for WordPress
Blogs are simply easy ways to publish personal websites - me again, on thinking how this domain and website got started in 1999 (doing it “by hand” with ClarisHomePage)

4 Reasons Darren Sproles Should Get a Blog (And Other Athletes)

Cory Miller — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:27:09 +0000

I just read this ESPN article about NFL running back Darren Sproles … he’s getting ready to become a free agent and this part of the article stood out to me:

Sproles, who has stuttered since childhood, knows his profile is growing, and a marketing team is working with him to get him acclimated to high-intensity media situations.

The first thing I thought was … he needs a blog.

Sure, he should get help with dealing with the media to increase his market value, but a blog would help his fans and the media get to know him easier.

They’d have an online fact sheet to draw insights from for their news reports. They’d have direct copy-and-paste quotes on issues. It’s a win-win for a guy like Sproles who needs to polish off his speaking skills in front of all those cameras.

Of course, in the conversation of athletes and blogging … I thought instantly of NFL tight end Chris Cooley’s blog … he blogs like crazy and it’s an extension of his life.

Blogs have some great benefits for athletes:

Blogs are great marketing tools. They are cheap, effective, and easy marketing engines that a player can take with them no matter what team they are on.
Blogs are 24/7 marketing agents for the media. They have an easy way to find fast facts, quotes, photos, and more about the players they are covering.
Blog have a snowball effect on marketing. If athletes do it right they should build an email newsletter list, where they can send updates to their fans. Blogs are sticky. A player has a big game and fans go back. They move with the player from team to team, city to city, game to game.
Blogs make players more personable and ‘touchable’ for their fans. Imagine little kids following their favorite players from city to city, game to game, with insights on how they workout, their hobbies, etc. Player’s blogs should have photos from their athletes so fans can set them as their desktop pictures.

Think about it ….

Exposure increases.

Then jersey sales increase.

Endorsement opportunities increase.

Teams would love them for the built-in, off-the-field marketing value a player could bring.

Talk about extra power in free agent negotiations!

P.S. – I watched Darren Sproles play in the Big 12 Championship game several years ago against OU. We met some of his family. I’m a fan!

Social Media Tip: Sign Up Early

Cory Miller — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:48:21 +0000

In the last couple of months, I’ve been using Twitter more and more for business and relationship building.

It took me a while to see some tangible benefits to using Twitter, especially, but I finally came around when Nathan told me I had a bunch of people following me on the service (because I got linked on different posts).

Each day I see a little increase in people following … but it occurred to me that it’s key to adopt the hot web 2.0 technologies early. (As of this writing, I have 1,414 following me on Twitter … and that account set dormant for months before I actually used it.)

So each new business venture we do includes starting a Twitter account for each (as we typically do standard by starting blogs and email newsletters for them) … here’s our iThemes one and now our Happy Joe one.

I tend to look at Twitter for our ventures like I do our an email newsletters … keeping customers and prospects up to speed on what we’re doing, new products, etc.

So here’s the tip … get an account, display the profile address prominently (on your blog and I also put it in my email signature) … and start building momentum early!