You put together an email that talks about your widget. You may even show a photo of your widget, and send it out to your clients. And you send your email out to your entire list.

How direct are you with your overall selling process?

I’m a member of Barnes & Noble. We shop there a lot, and of course I’m a member.

So once a week I get emailed info on their current weeks sales, and an occasional coupon to help motivate me to visit online or come in and buy.

Because I’m a member, they have everything on file for past purchases. So my emails aren’t just talking about current releases, they focus the email specifically to me.

So this week, my email started out “New From an Author You Know” and went on to say that since I’ve purchased a book from this author, I may be interested in the newest release.

Great marketing!

The book is for my daughter, and yes, we’re heading over after school to buy it.

Consider these two questions:

1. How many customers do you have that regularly buy from you?

2. Do you know what they buy and what they would be interested in buying from you in the future?

In both cases, you can probably divide your list into categories, and send out emails that pertain exclusively to that list.

Maybe a portion of the people purchase holiday cards from you every year. You can send out an email saying you know they’ve purchased holiday cards from you in the past, and if they purchase 100 cards between now and October 15th, you’ll throw in an additional 25 at no cost.

How’s that for motivating your clients to purchasing more.

It’s all about knowing who your clients are, and giving them what you know they want. Motivate them. They already love what you have, why make the buying process difficult?

Well if you’re Google, you announce it in a way sure to please every online person around. Through a comic book of course.

This past weekend, Google announced it will be releasing Chrome, it’s browser that will directly compete with Microsoft Explorer. Want to see the comic book - I found a complete copy here.

Google has always taken complex items and made it super easy to use. They don’t clutter up their main idea with a bunch of  links to other places. You can go to Google and get exactly what you’re looking for. That said, I wonder what Chrome will be like?

I guess we’ll find out sometime in the next few days. You should be able to go to Chrome when they release it. 

The class is titled, How To Use Social Networking To Boost Your Business. If you’re in the Denver area, I’d love to have you in class.

We’ll be talking about a variety of different ways to use the new social media to build up connections for your business, where to look for social sites, and how much time it really takes to stay active online.

Hope to see you there.

The old Brooklyn’s restaurant that sat on the grounds of the Pepsi Center has been completely redone as the CNN Grill.On CNN’s website today   I found the time lapse video of putting the entire place together - pretty amazing what they’ll do when they move in for a week.

While things like the DNC can literally change the structure of a business, it can have huge impact on even the smallest of business owners. Why not sell a few shirts, or create your own bumper stickers? You can find it all.

We spent a long time going over our goals for this fall, and talking about ways to bring in different types of clients. While we were talking about lead generation, we suddenly got onto the topic of lifetime value of customers.

We’ve been Qdoba regulars since they first came to town - at least six years ago. Qdoba has a frequent customer card that allows you to get one meal free when you purchase 10 meals. Because we usually go together - 2 meals at once - we usually can fill the card in five visits.

Each meal is about $6, which means they give you $6 when you spend $60. We also made the assumption we filled one card every two months (it is our favorite place after all). Which means we spend about $360 a year, and they give us $36 of free food each year.

Because we’ve been going there for around six years now, we’ve spent about $2160 - if you assume everything I mentioned above is constant. [Wow, this is actually a great lesson for me - I can't believe how much we've spent going out to lunch once every week or two.]

And because it’s one of our favorite lunch spots, we’ll be going there well into the future. Which means our lifetime value will end up being several thousand dollars. What’s an occasional free meal to someone who is going to bring several thousand dollars into your business?

You can see how quickly even $6 adds up. What about big ticket items? Maybe you have a $1000 monthly program, or several different products worth several hundred dollars a piece. How many times do your clients buy from you? What’s your overall lifetime customer value?

Once you find out how valuable a client is to you, you can begin to see how much you can spend to get a client through your doors. If your average client is worth $5000, maybe mailing $100 worth of marketing materials to gain that client isn’t very much after all.

As I’m planning two new promotions for the fall, I’ll be spending some of my time calculating the lifetime value of my clients. Even with quick calculations, I know my numbers are high. I’ll definitely be using this to come up with my promotions.

No matter if you’re Democrat or Republican [or somewhere in between] it’s an exciting time to be in Denver. Denver’s last Democratic Convention was held 100 years ago in 1908 - which makes this a historic moment, one that I’m thoroughly enjoying.

The preparations are amazing.

Already the protestors and propaganda are evident all around downtown.

Outside every restaurant on the Pepsi Center grounds has been taken over by the media.

When you walk into the Pepsi Center, it seems to be transformed into a whole new venue. Everything sports related has been converted to DNC.

And the stage area is amazing. The lights flash; the stars roll by, the words pop out.

Want to see more? Visit my Flickr to see the rest of my DNC 2008 images.

I’m going to be adding a few more posts here in the next couple of days, just to share with you some of the excitement. This whole event is taking over Denver, and since I’m a Denver native, I’m enjoying the entire process. No matter what your beliefs, or what your political preference, it’s fun to be involved in something so big and really life changing. Even three days before the official start, there’s already a ton of protestors and propaganda on display.  

I captured a wide variety of images - stay tuned, I’ll be posting both here and to my Flickr account as soon as I return to my computer.

But any time you have a problem, you have unhappiness. Something in your life isn’t right, or isn’t the best it could be, so you’re out searching for a way to make it better.

The more products and services available, the more unhappiness there must be, right?

As I was blogging today, I came across a great post by Seth Godin on happiness. He stated something that got me thinking.

“What you have doesn’t make you unhappy. What you want does.

And want is created by us, the marketers.”

One of the reasons I quit watching the news is because of all the negativity. I can get the news I need on world events through various sites online - why should I sit through a half hour of negativity?

So maybe the same holds true with marketing. What if we could change it around and sell not from the “want” but from the “growth” factor? Instead of selling to you because something’s missing in your life, what if something could help you grow?

hmmmm…

After a year and a half together, it’s amazing how much we’ve all grown. We’ve seen many changes in our business, some successes and some failures. But the great thing is every three weeks we can share our ideas, ask for opinions, and get honest feedback from people that share a common interest.

I started thinking about why being a part of a mastermind is so important. Obviously there are a ton of reasons. But the one that kept coming to my mind was having a group that in no way is impacted financially by what you do, yet know you well enough to see exactly what you should be doing, and has no reservations on telling you exactly what you should be doing.

Let me give you an example. One of the members has an incredible niche, and has made her full time income from her website for many years now. She’s been adding a few products and changing some of her ideas over the past year and a half. But a few months ago, as she started developing a coaching program, the rest of the mastermind group told her she needed a membership site. It was a perfect fit for what she was doing.

She was skeptical at first, but kept pursuing it. She’s been working on building it during 2008, and last night she reported she’s almost got it all together. Way to go!

It’s so amazing watching things come together for the people around you. And what’s more amazing is that while you are watching their progress, it usually comes together for you too.

We’re not meant to do things by ourselves. Instead we’re meant to build things together. If you’re a solopreneur, get in a mastermind. They are highly worth it - I can’t rant enough about the benefits of a mastermind. You don’t have to meet in person; some very good ones have formed through phone calls.

The important thing is to find people that have something in common, and work to help build the knowledge base of all the members. 

Thousands of blogging sites will take place in this unique online event. On October 15th, every blogger registered for the cause will make a blog post about poverty. To be truly unique, the blog post should be targeted towards your audience of readers. So of course I’ll be reflecting on the importance of financing an entrepreneurs dream of making a better life.

I’ll also be supporting Kiva that day - an amazing organization in which you can help entrepreneurs in developing countries with a micro loan.

Do you have a blog? Do you want to join this amazing cause yourself? Come join in the fun, and see how blogging can take you to new heights.