Did you know there's something you do every single day that you
could be using as an opportunity to market your business?
What is it?
Sending email. How many email messages do you send in a day?
I recently went back and counted the messages in my Sent folder.
I use several email accounts, but in just one of them I found an
average of 10-12 messages a day. That's 70-84 message per week!
Two Chances for Free Promotion
Did you realize every time you send out an email, you have two
opportunities to market your business?
#1 With Your Email Address
Take a look at the email address you're using for business. Are you
using an email address such as "crazyjane@yahoo.com" or
"fitbodyhunk@hotmail.com"?
Okay, so I'm poking a bit of fun, but you'd be surprised at some
of the email addresses I see. Granted some of them may be
reserved for ezine subscriptions, but I also receive a lot of email
from small business owners with these types of email addresses.
So what's wrong with this?
Well, for one, they are missing out on a free marketing opportunity.
When you use an email address such as debbie@10stepmarketing.com
you have the opportunity to get repeat exposure for your company
name with every email you send out.
You Can Build Your Brand and Business
What, everyone you send email to already knows your business
name? That's okay. It's good reinforcement. And it doesn't cost a
dime, so why not do it? Plus, it presents a much more professional
image. It says you are a real business. Even if you are sending
out your emails while wearing your pajamas in your home office. :-)
Use Your Web Site Domain Email Addresses
Ideally your web site domain should be the same as your business
name. And you web hosting should come with at least a handful of
free email addresses. It's fairly easy to set up, but if you're not sure,
check with your host. Odds are they've addressed it in their FAQs
or online help.
#2 Use An Email Signature
The second way you can market for free is with your email signature.
Even if you don't have a web site, or if your web site address is not
the same or similar to your business name, you can easily take
advantage of this.
Set It Up Once ... Use It Everyday
Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express (and probably other email
software as well) offer a Signature option you can program so every
email you send is signed off with a consistent signature.
Create Your Own Personal Signature
You will want to consider including some of the following information
in your email signature. I wouldn't suggest including all of this
information or your signature will be too long. Pick what's important
to you, and include information that represents how you want people
to contact you.
Your First and Last Name
Your Title (if appropriate)
Your Business Name
Your Tagline
Your Email Address
Your Web Site Address (include the http:// so it becomes a live link)
Your Phone Number
Your Fax Number
Your Snail Mail Address
An Invitation to Subscribe to Your E-newsletter, Ezine or
Receive a Free Report (or any other free information you provide)
Following is an example of the email signature I include on every
email I send out:
Debbie LaChusa
The 10stepmarketing System
“If you can answer 10 questions, you can
successfully market your business!”
619-334-8590 phone
619-334-8591 fax
debbie@10stepmarketing.com
http://www.10stepmarketing.com
Subscribe to the free 10stepmarketing Ezine
to receive weekly marketing how-to articles,
low-cost marketing ideas, tips and advice at
http://www.10stepmarketing.com
It Equals 70-80 Free Promos a Week!
By signing off all your emails with an email signature, you are
constantly promoting your business. Plus your contact information
is right there if someone wants to get in touch with you. They don't
have to take the time to look up your phone number or web site
address.
A good email signature also clearly communicates to people what
your business is all about or what you do.
Who Knows Where Your Email May End Up?
You never know where one of your emails is going to end up. It
may be forwarded to someone who could just become your next
subscriber or client.
Build Web Site Traffic With Special Promos
You can also use your signature to build traffic for your web site
by inviting people to visit your site to get a special report or to
subscribe to your e-newsletter.
You can even use it to announce new products or promotions.
In fact, I just changed mine today to promote my new
Extreme Marketing Makeover program.
Your Email Address Format
Make sure the email address you are using is formatted something
like this: yourname@yourdomain.com
How To Set Up Your Email Signature
If you use Microsoft Outlook, simply go to the Tools option on
your toolbar, click on Options, and then Mail Format. You'll see
Signatures down at the bottom of the window. You can set up
one, or as many as you want. You select the one you want to
use as your default and it will automatically be added to all your email messages.
By doing these two things, you will be building your brand and
your business without spending any extra time or money.
(C) Copyright 2005 Debbie LaChusa
Are You Missing Out on Free & Easy Marketing?
Are You Missing Your Best Quality Improvement Ideas?
November 2005. Winter is just around the corner here in Western Michigan. The leaves are literally raining off the trees. Just this morning at breakfast as I looked into the woods and I could see a steady stream of golden brown, red and yellow leaves heading towards the earth.
Last month I talked about keeping your quality improvement changes in place—using a manual that you develop of SOP’s, standard operating procedures. By the way, if you missed that issue, you can find it on my website, and several earlier ones too.
This month I want to address starting a quality improvement project. That is, how do you decide what project to work on? What issue or process is causing the most waste, is doing the most harm, is most affecting the bottom line? Maybe you are a leader at your site and you have an idea of what is generally causing problems. For instance, you may think that patients with catheters are getting a lot of infections. Perhaps, checking patients in at your site is taking too long and creating a bottleneck. Maybe patients are complaining about having to wait too long at check in at a doctor’s office. It could be that certain departments are running short of supplies too often. There are many other possibilities. The probability is that unless you are directly involved in the contentious process, you probably are not aware of what the exact problems are and are not aware of possible solutions.
This leads us to the conclusion that in order to discover the many problems facing every organization, especially in terms of wasted effort, time and money, there has to be in place a mechanism for the problems to surface to the leaders from the front lines of the organization. There has to be a way for the leaders to hear about the problems from those who are directly involved. For instance, does anyone in your organization know what ideas the cleaning staff has for making the organization better? When I say that there has to be a way for the ideas to surface, I don’t mean that the only ones with a voice should be nursing staff and other professionals. Rather, as in the Baldrige Improvement Plans, the entire staff is involved in quality improvement.
I know of a few hospitals where the leadership—president, CFO, COO, etc.—go out several mornings every week to talk to staff at all levels and patients to see how things could be better and to get some positive feedback about what things are going well. Perhaps at your site you want to start something like this. As time goes by and as suggestions are implemented, staff will feel safer about making suggestions.
Leadership needs to make sure that staff feel safe about making suggestions, no matter what the method of suggesting changes is used. Perhaps you might want to use an anonymous survey for collecting initial suggestions. After some of the suggestions are acted upon, the staff will feel like the leaders really want good ideas and will feel safer making them known. Perhaps you might want to use a consultant in Lean Healthcare (many of these ideas I suggest come directly from Lean Healthcare) to teach the staff the principles and processes of Lean Healthcare and other tools as may seem fit. This approach will help a large organization start making many positive changes quickly, rather than using the idea of slowly spreading the means of change throughout an organization, as some prefer.
Whatever your initial process of getting the ideas percolating up in the organization, after some ideas for quality improvement recommended by the rank and file are successfully implemented and after the improvements and savings are made known in the organization, it is time to create ways to get more ideas. Perhaps you want to have regular meetings with a designated leader and representatives from several staffing areas that will bring up ideas. That means that the rest of the staff must feel comfortable about making suggestions to these team members. If your site has few employees, then perhaps it would be best to have regular staff meetings with all employees where the agenda always includes time for quality improvement ideas and for updates on ongoing projects. Whatever method you decide works best for your site, be sure that an atmosphere safety and security exists for all the staff. This may mean going so far as to guarantee that no staff will lose there position as improvements create more time to get things done.
So, once you have a steady flow of quality improvement ideas being generated by all in the organization, which ones should you act upon? Next month, I’ll address that issue. This issue I decided to concentrate on the Define step of Six Sigma’s DMAIC (define, measure, act, improve, control). Next, I will discuss the measure segment. Sometime in the future I’ll cover team dynamics too.
Have a great Thanksgiving!