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What Guerrillas Know About Email by Jay Conrad Levinson |
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| Guerrillas are well aware that free marketing exists in its most free state as email, |
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| which is far more than merely letters with free postage. |
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| Mark Twain said he never let his schooling interfere with his education. Regardless of |
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| your schooling, there’s little chance it covered what technology makes possible |
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| today. If you took a course in how computers can aid your marketing, the first insight |
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| SPECIAL FEATURES |
you would have gained would be into the profitability for you if you become savvy |
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about email. |
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| - Entrepreneurial Thinking |
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| When you think of email, don’t compare it with snail mail because it’s considerably . |
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| - The Process of Marketing |
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| different. In fact, it is such an improvement on old-fashioned mail delivery that the U.S |
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| - What Guerrillas Know |
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| Postal service now uses it, and today there is a lot more email being sent daily than |
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About Email |
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snail mail. Soon, half of all bills and payments will be sent electronically. Two-thirds of |
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| - Where And When To |
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| Social Security checks, tax refunds and other federal payments sent in l999 went |
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Begin Marketing |
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electronically. |
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| In fact, the U.S. Postal Service is now in serious trouble because of the vast amount |
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| of information transmitted via the Internet. For much of this, guerrillas owe a tip of |
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| their propeller beanie to Ray Tomlinson who invented email in l971. |
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| You can use email in your marketing in ways that will make your customers delighted |
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| to be doing business with you. Guerrillas love email but hate junk email, known as |
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| spamming. Their affinity to email is because they can deliver their messages instantly |
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| and to anywhere in the world if the recipients are online, as more and more of them |
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| are with each word I type. That means email saves you time in communicating and |
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| money that you used to spend on postage. It can also help save trees on the planet |
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| because it is so delightfully paperless. |
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Each recipient can read your email on screen or print and save it just as with a
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| standard letter, which does use paper. But you don’t have to print and save your |
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| email, saving you the cost of paper and the convenience of space. Save it in your |
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| computer. Make copies as you need them. All your files and memos can be kept in |
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| one convenient location. Each one is dated and timed. Many experts feel that for all |
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| the great things about being online, email is the most valuable of all computer |
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| applications. |
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Email also helps you save on the cost of courier service and faxing. You can use it to
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| send brief messages or long documents, to send black and white communications or |
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| colorful, beautifully-designed materials. It’s easy for you and easy for the person who |
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| receives your email. |
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| Who should that be? People who want to receive it, that’s who. Find their names on |
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your customer list, in the newsgroups to which you belong, in chatrooms where
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| they’re talking about your industry, possibly even your company. Although email isn’t |
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| free, because you need a computer and internet connection, it’s far less expensive |
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| than telephoning, mailing or faxing. When using it, keep your message as brief as |
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| possible because people read computer screens differently than letters. They know |
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| being online saves time, so they don’t want to waste time reading long things. As |
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| Thomas Jefferson said, "Never use two words when one word will do." |
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You’re aware, as all guerrillas are, of how technology such as email can strengthen
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| your marketing. You’ve also got to be aware of its limitations and of the new |
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| advancements that are taking place at breakneck speed. Don’t let those |
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| advancements overwhelm you. Very little becomes obsolete, but nearly everything |
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| becomes improved. |
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| Technology, for all the wondrous things about it, can also be a major distraction and a |
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| drain on your time if you focus on the technology itself rather than on the benefits it |
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| can bring to your business. |
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| As "Net Benefits" author Kim Elton reminds us, "Business is life and life is messy. Like |
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| a kitchen sink full of dirty dishes, you know that when you’ve finally cleaned them up, |
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| someone will burn a tuna casserole and you’ll be back in sudsy water up to your |
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| elbows with a Brillo pad in no time. But if the kids are growing up healthy and strong |
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| -- and helping out with the dishes now and then -- it’s all worth the effort. Soon you’ll |
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| get a dishwasher and you can shift the mess from the sink to the dishwasher. The |
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| dishes still have to be cleaned. The technology eases the labor and takes away some |
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| of the pain, but it doesn’t relieve the duty." |
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That’s the insight that I want you to take from this column. Technology helps with the
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| job but doesn’t do the job. That’s your task. In order for you to understand how |
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| technology can help you, it’s not necessary for you to learn the technical jargon, the |
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| nerdy part of technology. But you must comprehend the impact of technology and the |
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| ways it can transform a squirt gun into a cannon. |
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| To cash in on the transformation, you must be in close touch with your needs. |
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| Technology will help you meet them. You must know how best to utilize the |
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| technology in which you’ve invested to get the maximum benefit for the money you’ve |
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| put forth. You’ve got to recognize hype for just what it is and solid science for just |
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| what it is. |
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You wouldn’t dream of running a business without using a telephone. The computer
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| will be just as endemic as phones. Using technology will be as easy as making a |
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| phone call. It’s already well in its way. Investment research company Robertson |
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| Stephens stated it this way: |
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| "Communicating is becoming the primary role of computers after four decades of |
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number crunching. We stand at a technology crossroads and are witnessing a |
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| technological metamorphosis....In our opinion, computers, originally designed for |
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| number crunching and applied to computing tasks for nearly 50 years, will be used in |
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| the future primarily for communicating." The future is now the present. |
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| top^^ |
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| Copyright 2007 / THE NOTICEBOARD COMPANY Limited / Published by Dilton Consulting |
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| Powered by Kad Technologies, providing solutions to maximize efficiency. |
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| All Rights Reserved |
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