Creative Commons Licensephoto credit: Alex Leonard

A carefully crafted newsletter strategy will build trust in your customers and prospects and make them want to do business with you.  Here are 9 easy tips and newsletter ideas to make your newsletters more interesting, and easier to assemble and send out.

1. Build Your List – Everybody you meet should be given the option to join your newsletter.  Several of my clients just finished the Austin Home and Garden show.  They took in hundreds of contacts.  I hope they don’t  make the mistake of thinking all these people are ready to be their customer, RIGHT NOW.  But there’s a good chance that many of them are looking for valuable information that will help them make their buying decision when they are ready.  If you do these types of shows, make your first post show contact an invitation to receive your newsletter… with no obligation.  Also send out a Free Case Study featuring a customer testimonial and interview.  They will appreciate the valuable information.

2. Keep On Schedule – Give yourself deadlines and stick to them.  Schedule time to do your research and write your articles.  Develop a reserve of content so that you can easily find womething to include instead of having to constantly write under the pressure of a deadline.

3. Use Digg and Google Reader – These are great services for finding content.  Mark your favorite articles so that you can always come back to them.  You can include links in your articles to those articles or you can use the information to write your own. Here’s a great article: “How To: Use Google Reader Like A Rockstar”

4. Summarize Your Blog Posts- Keep your newsletters short.  Post your long articles, with details, pictures and links on your blog for everybody to see, and summarize those posts in your newsletter.  Use trackable links in your newsletter so that you can see which posts are most popular.

5. Automate – I use Aweber to manage my newsletters because they have automated the entire process and made it a no-brainer for me.  You can choose whatever look and feel you want from their templates.  They create the summary posts from your blog entries, and they provide the subscription forms for you to capture contact information.  Plus they have all the trackable links and reporting that I need to analyze each mailing.  There are many services out there to choose from, but Aweber is a recognized industry leader.  That’s why I have used them for the past 5 years.

6. Write Case Studies about your Customers – Talk about a Win. Win, Win!  Your readers love success stories.  They want to know how others have solved the problems they are facing.  Who better to tell the story than your satisfied customers?  Third party testimonials are very powerful… when they are authentic.  Your readers will love the stories.  Your customers will appreciate the recognition, and you will get the benefit of the great press!

7.  Sell by Teaching – People don’t like to be sold.  But they do like to be educated, and they will buy from the experts they trust.  Make at least 75% of your content informational and educational, and no more than 25% of your content should be “Salesy”.

8.  Include Resourceful Links – People love to find good new resources, articles and videos.  Share your favorite places with you list.  They will appreciate you for it.  By the way, have you bookmarked my $1,000,000 Rolodex”? There’s tons of goodies for you here!

9.  Pay Attention to Your Numbers – You want to keep track of each mailing and track its performance.  Pay attention to how many were sent, how many bounced, how many were opened, which links were clicked, what time of day and what day of week the mailing was sent.  Track different subject lines and content.  You will soon learn what is most effective for your readers.  Once again, Aweber is a great service that makes this easy for you.

Remember, building trust is a function of time, frequency and quality.  Use your newsletter to keep in front of your audience on a consistent basis, and they will turn to you to solve their problems and do business with you.

UPDATE: I’ve had a lot of requests to postpone this webinar until later in the week because of everybody is just getting back from the long weekend.  I’m going to push it back to Friday, but make sure you come because you’re going to love how we show you how to automate that workload!

Mark your calendar for this Friday, December 4 at 11:00AM CST for my Free Webinar -” CRM Software: Your Constant Contact Cash Machine”.

I will have a special guest demonstrating the best use for CRM, also known as contact management software, showing you how to close more sales, and automate your sales and marketing processes.

I’m a huge fan of CRM’s and started using Act! in 1986 on my Mac.  I attribute much of my sales and management success to my mastery of CRM’s (and I’ve used most of them!).  Whether or not you currently use CRM software to stay in constant contact with your customers and prospects, you are not going to want to miss this presentation.

Additional information will be sent only to members of my mailing list, so make sure to give me your contact information below.

Photo: End of Level Boss

Welcome back! I trust everybody had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving with their family.  This is a great time of year for education and training.  Many of us have a little bit more time off of work, and we spend some times sharpening our skills and preparing for the upcoming year.

Here is some important information you need to know about my upcoming  free webinar CRM Software: Your Constant Contact Cash Machine and also about my mastermind groups for blogging, audio/video and CRM.

The CRM webinar will be held this Tuesday, December 1 at 3:00 CST.  Watch your email inbox this Monday for login instructions (if you are not subscribed to this blog, you must register below to get the webinar instructions Monday).  I have a special guest from my favorite CRM company scheduled to meet with us to share with you successful contact management and sales automation techniques.

The mastermind groups are a big hit! I’m getting scores of emails about them, and I’m going through them and trying to respond personally to each one.  I’ve also teamed up with Kathy Goughgenour, President and Founder of LeadBoosterClub.com to help run the Blogging master mind group.  Kathy is an expert trainer and has designed her entire company around helping blogger create content for their websites.  I’m thrilled to have Kathy on board!

Make sure you are subscribed to Social Media Do’s and Don’ts.  If not, fill in the box below to “Follow Me”.  Watch your email inboxes for more important news from me about the free CRM webinar and the mastermind groups.

It’s true, I don’t want you to pay me a dime for my complete Internet Marketing Strategy Guide. I’ll give it all do you… 387 pages PLUS over 4 hours of audio interviews with expert marketers and tons of swipe files.

Why am I doing this?

Because I’m trying to help a family in need this Holiday Season. I’ve already raised over $600 in one day. My goal is to raise over $2000. You help them, and I’ll help you. Here’s how you can get this incredible web marketing content for just a small donation (as little as $10).

Please help me raise money for the family of  Kevin Warmath who passed away earlier this year.  I’m offering my complete Internet Marketing Strategy Guide and donating 100% of all proceeds to the Warmath’s.

Kevin Warmath (3/20/65 – 1/31/09) was a giver. He gave his knowledge, his love, his friendship, his opinion, his best and his heart to everything he did.  It was this same heart that gave him up. A friend of Kevin’s spoke at his memorial service and said that this world wasn’t big enough for Kevin and he
had to move on to bigger places.

Kevin was a tall guy and a bigger man.

Kevin worked as an associate with Maxsell Real Estate and was a member of the Cherokee Association of REALTORS.  When asked to write down all the things he could about himself within one minute, this is what Kevin came up with:

“I am a fiscally conservative, left-brained, green-eyed, slightly
compulsive, mountain biking, computer programming, house selling, tree
planting, chocolate loving, self improving, tireless, sometimes impatient,
Mother Nature hugging, tomato growing, BBQing, western born and bred,
green-thumbed, lifetime student, book loving but slow reading, blogging,
problem solving, frugal, multitasking, cleaver, passionately independent,
straight shooting, NPR Pledging, Car Talk laughing, biscuit baking, orchid
reblooming, civic minded, competitive, discerning, opinionated, thorough,
dedicated, Nikon shooting, photo editing, Titleist driving, thankfully
educated, critically thinking, trustworthy, lacrosse coaching, politically
aware, freedom loving, sailboat desiring, thunderstorm missing, gadget
playing, quarter collecting, Ben & Jerry’s sneaking, efficiency fanatic,
boxing wannabe, child-loving father, husband and real estate consultant for
life.”

Kevin was an innovator in the real estate industry and developed one of the most successful real estate blogs in the country: Alpharetta Real Estate (LiveInAlpharetta.com).

It is certain that Kevin, being part geek and part Realtor, would have absolutely loved and appreciated this event as much as any of us.

Kevin is survived by his wife Sylvie and their three children; Will, Clara, and Sophie.

Earlier this month, VREBC established a fund in his honor, and in an effort to help the Warmath Children’s College Fund.  I have decide to offer my most prized internet marketing content in order to help raise even more money.   I hope you can find it in your hearts to make a small donation, because together we can make a big difference for the Warmath family.

Andrew Carnegie, and many business tycoons of years gone by, understood the exponential power gained by focusing the talents and skills of small teams of people into mastermind groups to excel on a single goal or task:

“It is the fuel that allows common people
to attain uncommon results.”
- Andrew Carnegie

Many of today’s business leaders also credit master mind groups for their success.

Within the next few weeks, I will be organizing a series of mastermind groups, focused on individual topics, for today’s business leaders. The first three topics will be:

1. Blogging: Beginning to advanced; setting up a WordPress blog
2. CRM: Setting up and getting the most out of any CRM system
3. Audio/Video: How to produce great podcasts and videos without spending a lot of time and money

My goal is to make my mastermind groups the single best investiment you have made in your career.  These mastermind groups will be for serious professionals who understand the need for active participation.

By design, I will have to limit the number of people in each group to make sure that each person receives the maximum benefit.  That is why it is important for you to register in the form at right and send me a personal email (steve [at] steverosenbaum[dot]com) telling me which group you would like to participate in.

This week I’ve helped many people from Virtual Real Estate BarCamp (#VREBC) that took advantage of my offer for a free blog critique. I’ve seen some great looking blogs, but many of the people that asked for my help did not have a strong blogging strategy and technique that would help them get good search engine results and strong backlinks.

That’s why I made this video called Blog Posting Secrets.

Watch over my shoulder, as I show you step by step how I wrote today’s blog post “Free Webinar – CRM Software: Your Constant Contact Cash Machine” . (Sorry, I was a little tongue tied today… so I sound a bit funny. But the content of this video more than makes up for it!)

Let’s take this post to the next level… Leave your comments about how you write your blog posts.

Mark your calendar for this Tuesday, December 1 at 3:00 CST for my Free Webinar -” CRM Software: Your Constant Contact Cash Machine”.

I will have a special guest demonstrating the best use for CRM, also known as contact management software, showing you how to close more sales, and automate your sales and marketing processes.

I’m a huge fan of CRM’s and started using Act! in 1986 on my Mac.  I attribute much of my sales and management success to my mastery of CRM’s (and I’ve used most of them!).  Whether or not you currently use CRM software to stay in constant contact with your customers and prospects, you are not going to want to miss this presentation.

Additional information will be sent only to members of my mailing list, so make sure to give me your contact information below.

Photo: End of Level Boss

I had the honor this week of being interviewed by one of my favorite internet marketing experts, Ray Edwards.  Ray made this recording about me called “Regular Guy Makes Good In Internet Marketing” for his audience.

I was quite surprised how deep we got into my personal history.  Ray expertly drew out some very private and personal experiences, and illustrated how they were important to my successful transition from corporate America to starting my own business.

It’s a tough economy out there, and I know a lot of people are facing some very challenging times.  Listen to this interview and hear how I leveraged my experience to quickly gain new business helping other companies.

Thank you, Ray.
Download audio file (RayEdwards_SteveRosenbaum_FINAL.mp3)