If you have a teen at home, I’m sure you have noticed the usage of email accounts is completely different than previous generations.

My daughter the other day had to check her email address because she didn’t remember it. I’ll tell you more, when she’s done watching Netflix movies she puts them back in the envelope and leaves them right there in the living room. Maybe she thinks the Netflix guy comes in our living room once a week to pick up our movies. Maybe she doesn’t know about the Postal office either…

But that is old conversation, right? Here is what I’m interested in today:

1. Email lists are probably the most targeted prospect you will ever get. People give you permission to send them information. I hope you understand that.
2. If these little brats are ignoring my super powerful marketing vehicle, how am I going to connect with them? At some point they will be my prospect, maybe for you they already are.

So Aweber published this cool infographic they designed to communicate the results from a survey they conducted. The survey basically asked teens what their opinions are about Email.

I thought it would be cool to look at it in order to understand what’s up and also to share it with you guys.

First of all, I’m surprised to see a slight majority of them that think email will survive. For the rest of the answers I feel they understand and believe that at some point in their lives, they will use it too. Perhaps email represents a level of commitment they are not willing to take on at this moment.

Can you blame them?

Enjoy the Infographic and it’d be great if you want to share your thoughts about it in the comments.

Data and infographic by AWeber Email Marketing

A couple of weeks ago I received a sales email from somebody I have never met that really made think about how we assume that everybody gets it. Everything changed around us from business models, communications, marketing, the internet, social media and yet, are we sure that all of us are understanding and reinventing ourselves to adapt to these changes?

To be honest I gotta say that my first reaction was “I’m gonna trash you like it’s 1999…”, it pissed me off, but today I rather take it as a lesson to be learned AND shared. I should probably say also that I never claimed to be a writer or an expert at anything… Hell, English is not even my first language!

The email said (in regards to one of my posts):

“Hey: Nice content, but . . . are you interested in having your posts edited so as to sound better written?
Seriously . . . we could do wonders for your “voice”
Good luck . . .”

So here are a few (grammatically incorrect) thoughts:

1. Cold calling died a few years ago… Maybe you didn’t get the memo

How about introducing yourself first? If the person on the other side doesn’t even know who you are, what are your chances? If you are an entrepreneur, you should know that people don’t go knocking on doors anymore. Imagine if this happens in the real world, you’re standing in front of a person for the first time and the first thing that comes out of your mouth is your sales pitch…

People get the impression that you’re kind of desperate to close a sale.

2. You don’t need to be a designer, but hire one

We can’t be good at everything and that’s ok, the key is that we delegate those tasks to the right people, specially if you are an entrepreneur. If accounting is not one of your gifts, would you file your company taxes on your own? Of course not. Design is one of the most important aspects of a business first impression, you can actually kill a perfectly decent product if it looks like crap.

You can’t afford to look bad, it damages your reputation. Using Clipart from Microsoft Word is unacceptable.

3. If you don’t know how to write an email, ask for help

Email was invented a couple of decades ago and it is assumed, just like Word, that everyone knows how to use it. Email is most likely a big part of your daily routine, take the time to make sure you’re doing it right. If you are not sure, google “email etiquette” and invest 10 minutes.

If your intention is to make email part of your marketing or sales strategy you should definitely allocate some time into learning how to do it or you will be burning leads left and right.

4. Fake it ’til you make it

You know what I’m talking about, you can’t pretend to sell houses in Beverly Hills if you’re driving a ’92 Hyunday… I’m not suggesting you buy a Mercedez if you can’t afford it, just make sure you’re not damaging your reputation while chasing business. If you are trying to pitch a service that will improve how I write my posts, it would be better if when I visit your blog there are some people commenting or retweeting your content…

If you look like you need the product more than your prospect, you probably won’t be closing that sale…

5. Can you be any less human?

I am a terrible sales person even tough I’m aware of its importance, I think the only way I get away with it is because I truly try to be as human as possible. Believe or not, if you leave the strategy and the sales technique aside and you focus on putting a smile on your client’s face, that will do.

I won’t make any comments about the “but” and the “seriously” in this particular email because that is just from another planet.

In other words…

If you don’t have the marketing background or the sales techniques, having some heart and a whole lot of Common Sense can take you a long way.

Happy selling!

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For some of us social media is not just a way of keeping in touch with our old classmates, it has become a way of communicating and sharing our life’s work and projects, for some even a vehicle to network with peers and find new prospects but it can sometimes get overwhelming with so much activity we need to keep up with.

I have to admit, I’m one of those guys that loves technology, talking about it, trying every single new gadget or application. A few weeks ago not only I realized that sometimes we end up making our lives more complicated this way but also how annoying it gets with so much activity going on.

Social media can get pretty busy if you don’t control it, so I decided to look for ways of simplifying the spaghetti plate and I made a small list of tricks that we all overlook when using these web services. First I made a commitment and it goes something like this:

If it’s not making your life easier or it’s not providing a real benefit, you should just drop it.

With that in mind, here is my list of things you can do to simplify your social media activity and concentrate in your objectives:

You do NOT need to be on every single social network available

If you think you have a better reach by being everywhere you are wrong, I can assure you that you get most of the action in just a couple of networks and the rest are just a waste of time. If you are tracking your website traffic, go take a good look and decide what networks to drop. It’s different for everybody, if you own a skateshop is probably smart to keep using MySpace…

Control the time you spend

If social media is a way of marketing for you, it’s important to spend some time everyday, make it part of your day and schedule a time to do it. It’s very easy to get distracted by shiny objects when you have Facebook open all day (What was I saying…?).

Stop the email madness

Don’t let social networks control your email inbox, they all want to send you news and emails every time someone in your network does something. Think about this: Why do you need a message in one inbox to let you know that you just got a message on the other inbox? See the picture on the left? That means you not only have 33 messages on Facebook, but you probably also have 33 emails in your inbox…

Did you know that all these websites let you set what kind of communications you want to receive from them? On Facebook you can go to Settings > Notifications and you have a menu to choose from, if you want to get an email every time someones “Pokes” you, then set it up…

Get rid of the Auto-Response junk

Services like Twitter offer the option to setup an Auto-Responder to thank whoever is following you (if you think I’m about to recommend one of those you are wrong…), the problem is that you end up getting all those automated responses saying “I appreciate you following me, I’m looking forward to your Tweets…” in your email. As I said last week in my post “Best How To Use Twitter Resources For The Overwhelmed Beginner“, you should take the time to do it and I’ll take the time to read it… since everybody does it, I turned off my email notifications.

Dump your favorite blogs in a RSS Reader

Instead of keeping all the blogs you love and frequently read on your bookmark toolbar or waste time visiting each one of them to see if they posted a good article, subscribe to all of them through a RSS Reader. I use Google Reader but there are plenty of others. Also to consider, bloggers work very hard and if you follow one, you should consider spreading the love when you like an article.

These days I’m taking it a little further. I moved all my email, calendar and documents to Google Apps, got rid of email signatures, dropped the activity on a few networks, I don’t use a phone except for my iPhone, don’t print and don’t even remember the last time I faxed… I still play with new Apps but I don’t marry them, they need to really kick ass for me to implement them into my life.

So the message is to simplify, don’t get overwhelmed with social media, take the time to set it up so it’s convenient for you. I’ll leave you with a great quote from @shitmydadsays that I think a few of us can take as an example and relax a bit…

Now you can share your thoughts… If you have time.