As Lenin (and several other people) perhaps said, “Quantity has its own quality.” Not precisely applicable but close enough for my purposes with the Sharpie Magnum.
There are times when a king-sized Sharpie just isn’t king-sized enough. Enter the Sharpie Magnum. How much wider is the line of a Sharpie Magnum than a Sharpie King Size? About this much.
Price: $4.49
via: Boing-Boing
(via NYTimes.com) Goldman Sachs is buying Honest Dollar, a digital retirement savings tool aimed at millions of small-business employees who do not have access to traditional employer-sponsored savings plans. The year-old start-up based in Austin, connects employees of small businesses and self-employed workers with individual retirement plans managed by the Vanguard Group for a per-person, per-month fee as low as $8.
Employees answer questions online and get a portfolio recommendation composed of combinations of four Vanguard exchange-traded funds. It is part of a growing group of start-up and traditional asset management companies vying for business in the small plan retirement market, encouraged by a federal government push to make more such plans available.
(Read the story at NYTimes.com: Goldman Sachs to Buy Honest Dollar, a Small Plan Start-Up)
Earlier this week, we shared a ranking of the “open rates” for marketing email by industries, interests and the size of the company sending the email. Open rate is the metric that represents the percentage of recipients who open an email sent as part of a marketing campaign or email distribution. (It ignores the “undeliverable” email.) With this article, we move on to something more challenging: How do you improve your open rates? And how important are open rates? The following is from Rex Hammock, founder and head helper of SmallBusiness.com.
I’m not an email marketer. But I am a marketer who uses email. And like most small business owners, I am a marketer who also does hundreds of other things for which I have no expertise. Fortunately, my trial and error approach has provided me with just enough experience to pass along some non-expert suggestions on improving the open rate of your email marketing campaigns.
Serving customers and creating a business that is viable and meets your goals is the reason you started a business. If you focus first on making your email reflect all the positive things your customers like about you and your company, people will open your email—even if you forget to type in a subject line.
Email doesn’t work if you think of it as promotional fliers you’re sticking under windshield wipers in a giant parking lot. You are sending email to what most internet users consider to be an intimate and treasured spot: their inbox. You must earn your way into an inbox. You must provide consistent service to be invited back. If your email is spammy and all about how great you are, email marketing rejection is going to be very frustrating for you.
Email subject lines are one of the few things where experts seem to agree and follow a similar practice. It can be boiled down to this: “Don’t hide your eyes, plagarize.” I don’t suggest stealing subject lines from others. I suggest “being inspired” by them. Be inspired by the last month of your email inbox and trash folder. Do an inventory of the marketing email you opened, and, likewise, you didn’t. Review the ones you opened and those you trashed. Write subject lines just like the ones you opened.
If improving an open rate is your goal, here’s an easy way to do it. Review the past year of mailings to the same list. Get rid of all the names that never opened your email. Bam! Better open rate. However, you may want to review all the “never open” people on the list for a special email campaign that invites them to rediscover the magic found in your mailings. (Better yet, you should set up an “automated” way to accomplish this, a topic for a future post.) You may discover the problem is related to a filter that is inadvertently sending your emails into spam. If you don’t hear back from the people who aren’t opening your emails, remove them from your list and watch the laws of mathematics make your open rate go up instantly.
Most email marketing platforms include “A/B” testing. If your’s doesn’t, I suggest switching to one that does. It’s a feature that gives you the ability to test two (or more) subject lines with a first wave of mail released. After a set time (I use four hours), the email with the best-performing subject line is the one applied to the remaining list. We typically send 20% as a test and 80% with the winning subject line. In my experience, the test line winner is rarely the one I think is going to be. But then, I never claimed to be an expert.
Coming soon: What is the return on investment of marketing with email?
Photo: Thinkstock
When a child is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, the news can offer greater clarity and resources. For Australian parents Chris and Jessica Offer, their daughter's diagnosis led to another important discovery.
"My husband is a 33-year-old male. He’s also autistic," Jessica wrote on her blog, Girl Tribe, last week. In the post, the mom explains how Chris came to be diagnosed as a parent with autism after learning that they were parents of a child with autism.
"We were together seven years before we realized he had autism," she wrote. "It wasn’t until after my eldest daughter was diagnosed after a few years of back and forth deliberation on my behalf that we finally got her assessed, and diagnosed – and THEN it occurred to us that Cj was too."
The Offers have four daughters, two of whom are autistic. Jessica explained in her blog post that she knew her oldest daughter was not "neurotypical" from about age 4 due to her strict adherence to routines, sensory issues and frequent screaming meltdowns.
When she talked to her husband about these "quirks," however, he said the little girl's behavior seemed normal to him.
"He saw no issue with the way she behaved because he could see why," Jessica wrote. "He could understand her triggers because they triggered him, too. And he had many of the exact same struggles when he was young that she was experiencing now."
After a particularly difficult year, Jessica decided to have a pediatrician assess her oldest daughter's behavior. The diagnosis was clear within an hour: autism.
While the mom felt a sense of "relief and direction" after hearing her daughter's diagnosis, she said her husband was in "shock" and "disbelief." A few days later, Jessica and Chris went through the doctor's diagnostic criteria for autism."And it was here that we discovered that so many of her quirks were the same as his," she wrote.
"Then all the pieces began to fall into place," she continued. "The reasons behind his social overload and only ever wanting to go out one weekend day now both made sense. Along with his exhaustion from talking to people. Even down to the specific way he liked to organize the pantry ... We chuckled over just how many things were there that we had automatically adapted to without even noticing."
A few months later, Chris underwent a formal assessment and was diagnosed with autism at the age of 30. "He greeted it with grief, but also relief," Jessica wrote.
Discussing the effect of this new label, Chris told ABC News, "I'm still doing the same things that I'm always doing but I'm doing them differently with more of a conscious mind. The diagnosis gives you a better toolbox to deal with everyday life."
Jessica told the news network that she has always been attracted to her husband's "quirky" nature and the way it complements her personality. In her viral blog post, she reaffirmed her love and support for Chris.
"Autism didn’t change my husband. He’s never not been autistic, and it’s what makes him who he is," she wrote. "But maybe his earlier formative years would have been a lot less stressful and hard for him had his autism been recognized so he could have gained the appropriate support and learned strategies at a young age; rather than having to cleverly wing it for over 25 years."
The mom added that the couple are now both strong proponents of early diagnosis and intervention when it comes to autism.
"Because when you love someone you love them fully and wholly, and you want to support them to be the best they can be; whoever that is," she concluded. "And you realize that labels don’t define or limit a person’s abilities -- but they can offer a great insight into the individual’s personality, and enable them to be supported to reach their full potential."
H/T Today
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The vast majority of information and resources for starting and operating a business is helpful for any type of potential or existing small business owner, regardless of how we’re different. Yet, as we’re exploring the U.S. resources for various types of small business owners, we are reminded of the ways we need to break down historic barriers and encourage business development where opportunities have not always existed. Recognizing those needs exist, the United States has created a network of resources to address the unique needs, challenges and opportunities of emerging entrepreneurs. These resources seek to “level the playing field” for women business owners, who still face unique obstacles.
As part of our recognition of International Women’s Day, March 8, 2016, we’re sharing this directory of U.S. resources for women business owners.
The mission of the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Women’s Business Ownership is to enable and empower women entrepreneurs through advocacy, outreach, education and support.
On the web: Office of Women’s Business Ownership
Supported by the SBA, Women’s Business Centers (WBCs) represent a national network of more than 100 educational centers throughout the United States and its territories. These centers are designed to assist women in starting and growing small businesses. The SBA’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership (OWBO) oversees the WBC network, which provides women business owners (especially women who are economically or socially disadvantaged) comprehensive training and counseling on a variety of topics in several languages.
Directory of Local Business Centers
The National Women’s Business Council (NWBC) is a federal advisory council created to serve as an independent source of advice and counsel to the President, Congress and the U.S. Small Business Administration on economic issues of importance to women business owners. The council’s mission is to promote bold initiatives, policies and programs designed to support women’s business enterprises at all stages of development in the public and private sector—from start-up to success to significance.
On the web: National Women’s Business Council
These non-government organizations extend the network and resources of the SBA through idea-exchange and the support of volunteers and the private sector.
Association of Women’s Business Centers
Provides women business owners and entrepreneurs with a variety of support and services, including help in securing rounds of venture capital.
National Association of Women Business Owners
Provides information on an association committed to helping women entrepreneurs become effective in economic, social and political spheres of power.
Free and confidential business advice from mentors, both online and in-person.
If you use an email marketing service, after the mailing you probably first check out the “open rate”—the percentage of emails sent that are opened. Seems natural. We all want to know if anyone out there actually read what we sent. Then, we’ll check out the click through rate, an indicator of how compelling the reader finds a specific link provided in the email. But what are “good” rates?
If you ever wonder how your email marketing open rates and clicks stack up against others in your business or topic category, then you are like most small businesses who send out email. Recognizing our competitiveness, the email service MailChimp provides regular benchmark data so we can gloat over (or stew over) our performance. Last week, it updated its statistical overview of data aggregated from millions of marketing emails its users distribute. In Table 1, we’ve used the MailChimp data to rank (best to worst) the open rates of various business categories, most of which have concentrations of small businesses. Table 2 ranks the open rates sent by companies of various sizes, as measured by number of employees.
Coming Tomorrow | How to Improve Your Marketing Email Open Rate
| Sender / Topic Category | Open Rate | Click Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Hobbies | 28.88% | 5.45% |
| Arts and Artists | 27.50% | 2.89% |
| Sports | 26.03% | 3.50% |
| Agriculture and Food Services | 25.22% | 3.23% |
| Architecture and Construction | 25.09% | 2.99% |
| Home and Garden | 24.72% | 3.80% |
| Music and Musicians | 23.00% | 2.93% |
| Manufacturing | 22.88% | 2.53% |
| Legal | 22.74% | 2.98% |
| Medical, Dental, and Healthcare | 22.74% | 2.52% |
| Creative Services/Agency | 22.70% | 2.77% |
| Construction | 22.68% | 1.99% |
| Health and Fitness | 22.55% | 2.84% |
| Media and Publishing | 22.30% | 4.59% |
| Restaurant and Venue | 22.16% | 1.40% |
| Education and Training | 22.01% | 2.78% |
| Restaurant | 21.96% | 1.28% |
| Social Media / Forums | 21.90% | 3.50% |
| Real Estate | 21.65% | 2.01% |
| Entertainment and Events | 21.57% | 2.38% |
| Software and Web App | 21.57% | 2.42% |
| Retail | 21.52% | 2.67% |
| Business and Finance | 21.49% | 2.77% |
| Telecommunications | 21.44% | 2.49% |
| Computers and Electronics | 21.32% | 2.34% |
| Professional Services | 21.00% | 2.68% |
| Travel and Transportation | 20.71% | 2.31% |
| Insurance | 20.47% | 2.14% |
| Recruitment and Staffing | 20.13% | 2.32% |
| Public Relations | 20.04% | 1.68% |
| Consulting | 19.68% | 2.40% |
| Beauty and Personal Care | 19.03% | 2.15% |
| Marketing and Advertising | 18.41% | 2.09% |
| eCommerce | 16.86% | 2.50% |
| Company Size | Open Rate | Click Rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 10 | 21.95% | 2.97% |
| 11 to 25 | 20.99% | 2.58% |
| 26 to 50 | 21.82% | 2.94% |
| 50+ | 23.10% | 2.85% |
Illustration: ThinkStock
This is a new monthly feature on SmallBusiness.com. To help you quickly see where U.S. jobs are growing or contracting, we are providing monthly jobs numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor. To keep it easy and quick to review, we are standardizing the way in which we display this data into a smart-phone friendly format. Each month, we will be focusing on the segments of the economy that have high concentrations of small businesses and are growing or contracting. Note: These are civilian, non-farm jobs and are subject to revision as more data is collected by the Labor Department.
+242,000 | Jobs gained in February
4.9% | Unemployment rate (unchanged from January)
7.8 million | Number of unemployed people (unchanged from January)
-.6% | Unemployment rate compared to previous year
-831,000 | Unemployed persons compared to previous year
+228,000 | Average monthly gain in jobs over past three months
Trend to note: Little or no change from previous month
4.5% | Adult men
4.5% | Adult women
15.6% | Teenagers
4.3% | Whites
8.8% | Blacks
3.8% | Asians
5.4% | Hispanics
+19,000 | Construction: All categories
+40,000 | Food services and drinking places
+24,000 | Healthcare: Ambulatory services
+11,000 | Hospitals: Hospitals
+28,000 | Private educational services
+15,000 | Retail: Food and beverage stores
+13,000 | Retail: General merchandise stores
+19,000 | Social services
Trend to note: In the past 12 month, 171,000 mining jobs have been lost, mainly in support activities.
-16,000 | Mining support activities
-2,000 | Coal mining
34.4 Hours | Average work week: All industries (-.2 hour)
40.8 Hours | Average work week : Manufacturing (no change)
$25.35 | Average hourly earning for all employees (down 3¢ from January)
Deep dive into these reports. Included are monthly numbers by industry and comparisons of average hourly wages by industry.
Photo: Thinkstock
