Those of us who rely on creativity in serving our clients must first have the “mental energy” to be creative in thought and action. It’s really no different for you in your business.

The foundation of energy – physical or mental – is rest. Don’t be afraid to take a little extra time off to rest and, even, have a little fun this Thanksgiving. Fill up your tank with renewed energy and you’ll be a better source of what ever it is you are paid to produce.

Almost everyone (93%) campaigns by email these days. This can be very effective inasmuch as frequency in marketing communication is important. But surface direct mail is far from being a sideshow with knowledgeable marketers (69% utilize it). If you automatically use email newsletters because they’re relatively cheap, think again. Two–thirds of marketers still get great results from the envelope. If you’re not, you may be missing a trick.

They work because, to your prospect, it’s apparent that you’ve put in more care and effort to reach them. That extra effort is what gives “traditional” media its added oomph–typically 10–100 times that of a plain–vanilla emailing. If you’ve got a special message to convey, consider getting “beneath the surface” – not away from it.

Our new Refresh! surface–plus–online campaign is a particularly good example of this. Ask me why.

A recent report based on 62,000 email newsletter campaigns indicated the following suggestions for increasing click–thru rates:
Send on Mondays or Tuesdays.
Avoid weekends (though, curiously, Sundays scored the best click–thru percentages).
Send out between 8 a.m. and noon (rates peak–out at 10 a.m., and decline slowly thereafter).
Limit subject line to from 4 to 15 characters (though 16–27 characters didn’t score badly).
My best advice for stimulating opening rates has to do with content. It is: send relevant, helpful messages, as opposed to blatant selling blasts. In other words, send “ham” – not spam!