Before I talk about the Approachable Nutrition launch: I thought I would share a series of events leading up to this launch that tell the story of the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing: This summer, I walked into Rockin’ Robins (a fun vintage shop in Niwot, Colorado) and struck up a conversation with the owner, Robin (who is a delightful networker, as well as a retail store owner and a lead singer). Though I was there as a customer, we started talking about marketing (I can’t help it, I am a marketing dork).

A couple of weeks later, Robin introduced me to Dawn of Girls On Top Band, who (upon my recommendation) began using Constant Contact for her band’s email newsletters. When GOT! sent their first email blast, they included a note thanking me for my help. One of the people on their email list was Janeen Goldsmith – a certified Nutritional Therapist. And, in case you didn’t guess it, Janeen called me to ask for help with her marketing efforts.

So, it just goes to show organic word of mouth, like a testimonial from a happy client, is definitely a great marketing tool. As is finding ways that help you stay at the top of your prospects and clients’ minds.

With that in mind, to help Janeen stay top of mind, yesterday we launched her new Approachable Nutrition site and blog, using Constant Contact to send her newly designed newsletter (to match her new site) to her subscriber list. This is what Janeen reported to me within hours of sending out her new email newsletter (and yes, she has given me permission to use it as a testimonial here):

Hi Bethany, Thanks again, it feels great to get this out and it looks awesome! I am getting many positive replies, everyone loves it. Karen who is the marketing director that helps me just loves, loves, loves this. One of my friends who also has her own business and is writing a book wants to know how to do an online newsletter. I will give her your info. I will talk with you soon.
Janeen

Now, let’s do a quick Case Study of this project:

Janeen wanted to change her site, which a friend had built with a template that felt too clinical for Janeen’s approach.

Just to give you an understanding of Janeen’s approach, here is a quick synopsis: Janeen was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2000. She decided to explore nutrition as an alternative or compliment to traditional Western Medical treatments for MS.

Her old site didn’t reflect her vision of wellness. In addition to it being visually inconsistent with her practice, her site required someone else to make even the simplest grammatical changes. She was reliant on her friend’s availability – and though generous with his time, he wasn’t always available when she needed to quickly add or change content.

The Answer: Provide a web tool that would be easy for Janeen to use, with no HTML skills – so she could stay focused on her practice. She wanted to be able to add her newsletter articles to her site, and offer tasty, yet nutritionally viable recipes, as well as charts and tools to help people easily approach nutrition as an option to wellness.

The Process: We set her up with a Wordpress template, which has a built in Content Management System, allowing her to add content using a visual editor (similar to the ease of using a Word document). UniqueThink customized the site to have a color palette and images that better reflected her style. We also created static pages to offer easy navigation to important sections of her site, and we used the blog feature for adding fresh, original content associated with each of her newsletters.

For emailing her entire list (at once), we used Constant Contact to send her newsletter. This is my preferred email campaigner tool for many reasons:

1. Ease of Use: Their features allow Janeen to type content directly into an existing template (which UniqueThink customized to look like her site)

2. Deliverability: Their inbox deliverability is consistently above 97% – meaning they make it into your customers’ inbox, not a bulk mail folder!

3. Tracking: Now Janeen can see how many people opened her email, and how many of them clicked over to her site. This let’s her know which sections of her newsletter are most appealing to her readers, making future newsletters even more targeted

The Results: Well, it has been a little more than 24 Hours, but her testimonial (above) gives you a glance into the success of this campaign. So far, 41.6% of the people who received it have already opened the newlsetter and 41.8% of those have clicked through to her website. Constant Contact states that their average “completed” campaign gets 37% opens and 8.9% click throughs, so in only one day, Janeen is already a head of the game, there, as well.

In this short time, the blog posts have also begun to see results in the search engine and a mention of her post on another health related blog.

And though Janeen’s focus is helping people with MS, her nutritional advice is helpful for all of us. Check out her delicious, nutrition recipes and informative feature articles out on her new blog. And look for a lot more to come in the near future, as we archive all her past newsletters, as well as her new series of Get Healthy newsletters.

P.S. UniqueThink also helped Janeen to find a company name and a website domain name that reflected her style: ApproachableNutrition.com – so, as you contemplate your own company’s direction, consider UniqueThink for a full range of marketing needs. For a sampling of our services, please either explore our website or just give us a call at (720) 771-3271 for Your Complimentary 1-Hour Consultation.

Looking forward to exploring all the possibilities for increasing your company’s awareness online or offline…

Bethany

Over $720 worth of Prizes

Enter by Oct 3rd!!!

The Video Station is celebrating 25 years in Boulder and this indie film rental store is ready for a new logo:

What do you say? Can’t you do better than this? Looking forward to seeing what you can come up with. But remember, you must submit your entry by Oct 3, 2007.

So, go to The Video Station’s site and get the official rules now!

And don’t forget to share this with your friends!

Last night, we attended the Boulder County Business Report’s annual IQ Awards and my client, Lingoport, won in the Software Category.

The IQ awards recognizes the most innovative new products and services coming out of Boulder county, Colorado.

Congratulations to Adam, Nina and the whole team at Lingoport.

Though a Boulder based company, Lingoport provides services and software to help developers take their product into foreign lands.

With the help of Globalyzer, their propriety software, Lingoport “internationalizes” clients’ websites and products to speak like a native in any tongue they are translated into: taking into account culturally appropriate symbols and numerical formats (like dates and currencies).

Basically, before you can translate your software, you have to pull out its guts and sort through millions of lines of code (which Globalyzer does in record time). From there, it doesn’t matter whether the product is translated into Japanese, German or Arabic, it will function appropriately for the end user.

Lingoport was up against some strong competition with Rally Software Development (agile development practices) and bpCentral (a suite of interactive financial tools).

Let’s give a hand to all the 2007 finalists at the IQ Awards. I was impressed to hear about some of the amazing (and innovative) companies right in my own backyard.

Other winners included: Aerogrow, Lijit, Otologics, Intercambio de Comunidades and more…

Even if my client hadn’t won, it would have been a great event. But I have to say, it is more fun to post the win!