My favorite charity in the whole world is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It was Danny Thomas’ dream that no child should die in the dawn of life and that no child should be denied coverage because of an inability to pay. One visit to St. Jude will tell you that Danny’s dream is alive and thriving.

And St. Jude has great corporate partners like Target, Chili’s, Kay Jewelers, Domino’s and many others. Those many corporate partners are proud of their affiliation with St. Jude and celebrate it in their stores and especially during the holiday season, when the “Thanks and Giving” campaign kicks in full gear. Marketing your company along with the charity that you associate with is called “cause marketing,” and believe me it works.

The reason it works is because as consumers, we want to know that we are doing business with the right people. After all, it reflects on us and our values. And in this new economy, we depend on those good corporate citizens to pick up the slack as we have to stretch our dollars. With social networking and instant information, we also are spreading the word faster about good works and good causes.

Here are some additional research numbers about the power of cause marketing (from Cone Corporate Citizenship survey).

• 89% of Americans believe corporations and nonprofits should work together to raise money and awareness for causes
• 76% of Americans believe partnerships result in a more positive image for the nonprofit
• 79% of Americans are more likely to buy a product that supports the nonprofit
• 76% are more likely to tell a friend about the nonprofit
• 70% are more likely to donate money to the nonprofit when corporate and nonprofit interests are working as one
• 75% of Americans feel nonprofits would benefit from having employees of the partner company volunteer for the nonprofit
• 66% would welcome information about a cause or charity on the company’s product or packaging

If your company quietly supports charities and non-profits, but doesn’t educate the consumer, then you are doing everyone, including your brand, a disservice. Americans want to know what you stand for and who you support. Look at that last stat – Americans WELCOME information on the product or packaging. Its your responsibility as a brand to get the word out.

Raising money is great. Raising awareness is better. Doing both means that you have serviced the cause and the public, while differentiating yourself from others in your industry.

So what matters to you?

Blair Ingle

“Innovative leader; man of action, influence and service everyday.”

You can read more at his website BlairIngle.com

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Who doesn’t love candy as a gift? Wouldn’t your employees love candy wrapped in a bag for the holidays?

Personalized candy with your company logo, slogan, or both make for great gifts to potential customers, current customers, or your employees for special events or the holidays.

There are a number of companies that you can get your logo and slogan imprinted on promotional items for marketing your company, but there are only a few that that offer personalized business candy or personalized chocolate for special events.

If you’re looking for a new way to promote and market your business, look at getting personalized candy as a sweet choice!

Yola.com is a company that provides easy, simple, small business website solutions.

If you’re small business is looking for a sharp redesign to the current website, check out Yola.com.

What are email analytics? This is the data you receive for your email or newsletter marketing. Analytics answer certain questions like how many people received your email? How many people opened up your newsletter? How many people clicked on your offer and purchased your product or service you were promoting in your newsletter?

This data can become very valuable because it will allow you to analyze the data you’ve collected and change your headline or promotions in future email newsletters to convert more people into customers.

For example, a best practice that email marketers will use is A/B testing the email subject to see which one will be opened by more people. The content of the two emails are identical except the headline of the email which the end user will see when it’s in their inbox. Which headline will more people open “Buy today at a reduced price” or “Save more money today only”.

I have my guess which one people will open more, but when you conduct an A/B test, you use data to make future business decisions for you.

When deciding which email newsletter provider you choose from business such as aWeber, Constant Contact, or VerticalResponse you’ll want to see what type of analytics they provide and which data points will be most important to your business.

This ends our week in exploring email newsletter marketing for small and medium businesses. If you have any future questions, please leave comments below. Otherwise, here’s to your successful email newsletter marketing in the future.

Use analytics to monitor your email newsletters for success

If you are going to use email marketing as a method to market to customers and prospects, you’ll have to have a strategy to collect email addresses from your site visitors or acquire those addresses from other methods.

Collecting email addresses from your site visitors is one of the most qualified email address you can acquire and it is also one of the most valuable. Whoever gives you their email address is telling you “Yes, please market your products and services to me” so they are already somewhat interested in what you have to offer and just need some more persuasion to purchase.

One method of collecting email addresses on your website is through a sign up form. This form can be as simple as just an email address or it can be more thorough and ask for more information such as name, telephone number, address, interests, or other qualifications that you want to know about your visitors.

You have to remember that the more simple the sign up form is, the more submissions you will receive. If you want to know more about your website visitor, you will receive fewer email addresses, but they will be more qualified. So you have to figure out a balance on how many email addresses you want compared to how much information you can collect.

You can use an email sign up form from vendors such as aWeber, Constant Contact, or VerticalResponse. They each have slightly different offers and you’ll want to see which one best fits your businesses needs.

Smashing Magazine has a great article about where to place your sign up form on your website so you’ll receive the optimal number of email addresses.

Have an email sign up form on your website to collect emails for email marketing

An email autoresponder is an automatic method of contacting someone who has just set you an email or signed up for your newsletter on your website and is a great email marketing tool.

Why use an email autoresponder?

Why would you even want to use an email autoresponder? Well, if you want to give someone that just emailed you or signed up for your newsletter with some immediate information, you’ll want to use an autoresponder from a service like aWeber.

For example, once someone has inputted their email address and told you they want to start to receiving your monthly or weekly email, you’ll want to send them a thank you message and let them know when they will start to receive their newsletter.

Or another example is your customer service email address. If someone emails your customer service with a question, concern, or complaint you will want to have an email autoresponder send a message back to them that someone is handling the message, the time expected to respond to them, your company’s telephone number, and the hours of operation in case they want to call instead.

Email autoresponders are great for connecting directly with your customer or prospect immediately after they’ve contacted you. Setting up autoresponders are quick and easy and can be a valuable tool in building relationships with your customers.

Email autoresponders are an effective marketing tool

This week we are looking at email marketing tools for small and medium businesses. To begin with, we have to understand what email newsletter marketing is and how it’s incorporated into your marketing plan.

What is email newsletter marketing?

Email newsletter marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to reach prospects and convert more sales for your products and services. Email newsletter marketing is the process of sending out a formatted email to your contact list using a service from company’s such as aWeber, Constant Contact, or VerticalResponse.

Why choose email newsletter marketing?

Here are some stats from the EmailStatsCenter.com:

62% of marketing executives surveyed say that email newsletters are tactics that are a part of their 2009 marketing strategy. - Datran Media “3rd Annual Marketing & Media Survey Results” (2008)

24%% of marketers rated Sending one newsletter to customers and another to prospects tests “very effective”. - MarketingSherpa “2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide” (Oct 2008)

49% of email marketers said their newsletter routinely justified themselves. - MarketingSherpa “Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008″ (2008)

How do you acquire email address for your newsletter marketing?

Typically, you will acquire email addresses for your newsletter marketing from your website. You want to collect these email addresses from people that are already interested in your business, your products, or your services. Online consumers specifically like newsletters that have discounts or special deals in them.

Once you choose your email marketing partner, you will be able to start collecting emails on your website and connecting with those potential customers or current customers to increase your sales.

Email Newsletter Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to reach customers and convert more sales for your products and services.

Many companies don’t know how to effectively market to their email list. This is why there are many email marketing tools that you can use to make the job easier and more effective.

Over the next week we’re going to look at the different email marketing tools that you can use to increase your success in email marketing:

Using Newsletters as a Email Marketing Tools

What’s a newsletter? How do you get informative newsletters out to your customers and potential customers that they’ll want to read and share with their friends? What is email newsletter marketing?

Autoresponders as a Email Marketing Tools

What’s an email autoresponder? How do you set up an autoresponder so when someone signs up to be on your mailing list they receive an immediate email from you? Can you offer free ebooks or other information with an autoresponder?

Website Sign Up Forms as a Email Marketing Tools

What do your sign up forms look like? Are there methods to increasing your signups with different types of web forms? Where on your website do you put your sign up form to collect email addresses?

Web Analytics as an Email Marketing Tools

How many people receive your newsletter? How many of them open up the newsletter once it’s in their inbox? What links ae they clicking on within your newsletter? You can find this out with email web analytics for your newsletter marketing.

These are all the different types of email marketing tools and email marketing solutions that you can use to turn your email marketing into a success. We will go over these tools this week so you can start to collect more email addresses and sending out valuable information to your list so you can sell more of your products and services.

Tools Needed for Successful Email Marketing Programs