Home Office Design Tips — From a Financial Advisor?

In my occasional series of crappy newsletters, here’s another, sent by a financial planner.

The only professional I want to get office design tips from is an interior designer or furniture vendor.

With financial reform and the worldwide economic meltdown on most everyone’s mind, sending a newsletter with fluff like this makes me question whether this advisor is in the loop or out to lunch. C’mon, talk to me about something you’re a credentialed expert in!

Oh, the money saving tips? Crap I could get from Reader’s Digest like take your lunch to work instead of eating out and get DVDs free at the public library instead of renting them. You must be kidding.

This is another fine example of sending something for the sake of sending something. This advisor needs an editorial calendar. Big Time.

Oh, and the last straw? She actually PAID a vendor to give her a proverbial communications black eye.

If your boilerplate requires you to disclaim giving financial advice, at least print some material that verges on the topic!

Sheesh.

Devising your Editorial Calendar

Exhortations to “publish, publish, publish” forget the most important advice: publish something worthwhile. To communicate in a meaningful way build an editorial calendar and stock your content pantry.

Building blocks for an editorial calendar

Seasonality. The US tax season drives business to accountants, but also  drives a spike in calls to financial advisors and some attorneys. Surely there is seasonality in your business, too. What seasonal issues do your clients face? Can you come up with one for each month of the year?

Key Messages. One of my clients is a JD-CPA who specializes in estate and succession planning. His newsletter’s target audience are accountants and financial planners. He writes about triggering events in their clients’ lives that might cause them to consult with an estate planning professional, making liberal use of case studies. What are the top ten things your clients need to know? What are the top five mistakes your clients made before working with you? What are the three most expensive errors your clients make when trying to go it alone?

Political calendar. Here in the States, 2010 is an election year, so candidates will be talking about change. Seize the momentum and prepare a series of articles or posts on topics likely to get news coverage. If you play your cards right (or hire a public relations pro) you might have the good fortune of being quoted by mainstream media.

The 24×7 news cycle. You can’t plan ahead for all breaking news, but you can capitalize on it. Once you know your key messages you’ll be surprised how often something in the news prompts you for a blog post or newsletter article.

Build a content pantry of key messages

Back in ye olde days (before 1980 or so!) people stocked “staples” in their kitchens/pantries including flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, herbs, spices…you get the idea. This made it easy to whip up a myriad of dishes with the addition of items that can’t sit on the shelf as long.

Think of your key messages as a “content pantry.” One of my clients, a mortgage planner, has this in his content pantry:

• A written mortgage planning philosophy
• Case studies of how people in various phases of life can apply his philosophy
• A recommended process for people to find and finance the right house
• Case studies of refinancing strategies gone well and gone badly
• Some mortgage planning tools like a Household Blended Debt Rate calculator
• A list of mistakes people often make when house/mortgage shopping

Add a seasonal calendar

The mortgage planner’s calendar includes:

• First Quarter:
  • Good financial/budgeting hygiene
  • Planning ahead to making deposits on colleges (refi may be in order)
  • Tax season
• Second Quarter:
  • People start thinking about selling their home
  • Get a mortgage plan before falling in love with a house
  • Local stats on home values, appreciation,  school boundary changes & other things of interest to shoppers
• Third Quarter:
  • Basic financial advice (evergreen topics)
  • Reminders to come in for an annual mortgage review
  • Looking ahead at funding college
• Fourth Quarter:
  • September is Life Insurance Awareness month; he talks about the role of insurance in an overall mortgage strategy
  • Year-end/first-of-year planning topics (might include refi)

Ready to publish

This client is basically ready to go. When something hits the news, he already has key messages from which to base commentary. How’d he get to this point? I helped.

You can do this, too. What are you waiting for?

The Company you Keep

Mom’s advice still holds: you’re known by the company you keep. Since 15% of all reported spam  last month was finance-oriented, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are scrubbing emails with references or offers related to money, the stock market or other financial “opportunities” including investments, credit reports, real estate and loans.

What’s this mean for legitimate financial services emailers? You’ve got to fight harder to keep your own reputation intact. The good folks at Listrak give great advice including pruning your subscriber list and asking subscribers to re-opt-in from time to time.

Here’s the exciting news for legitimate emailers:  ISPs have added a new metric to the reputation measurement – level of subscriber interaction and engagement. ISPs can tell who opens and clicks on a message and who ignores or deletes it. More importantly, they monitor how many subscribers click “this is not spam” if the message is delivered to the junk mail folder instead of the inbox. Monitoring subscriber engagement lets the ISP know which senders are delivering relevant content that subscribers want and which ones, like spammers, are continuing to blast out message after message even if no previous action has been taken (emphasis added).

Takeaways:

• Keep email content brief. Link elsewhere for the full story
• Engage subscribers with surveys, downloads and linked graphics
• All email templates have a built-in forward feature, but it can only help to suggest specific possible recipients, for example:
  • A coworker whose spouse was recently laid off
  • A neighbor whose house has been languishing on the market
  • A relative whose adult children have moved back in

If your content isn’t engaging, it’s more likely to be trapped in a spam filter. Call me to develop a content strategy that keeps receivers engaged and sending you referrals.

Low-Jargon Financial Blogs & Newsletters

I write blogs and newsletters for attorneys, advisors and accountants. These professionals often need to provide complex information without making their clients’ eyes glaze over.

Professionals  with compliance/malpractice concerns  too often navigate the middle of the road where nothing meaningful is communicated. Some admit they hope readers will pick up the phone and call for clarification “on the clock.” Bad strategy.

Everyone faces this challenge of writing thorough-yet-understandable communications  from time to time. Here are writing tips for newsletter or blog writers who aspire to communicate without using jargon on one hand, or dumbing down the message on the other.

It’s a conversation, not a treatise

• Provide links to jargon, technical definitions and 50-cent SAT words like “treatise.” This way, everyone can get as much info as they need on their own and your writing doesn’t bog down
• Don’t mistake your articles for term papers!
  • Use headers, bolds and links to enable (gasp) skimming
  • Avoid passive voice; use active voice
  • Write to the appropriate reading level of your audience
    • Run your copy through a fog index calculator (tells the number of years of education needed to understand what you’ve written)
    • If you use Google Docs, click Tools>Word Count and find the analysis at the bottom
• You’re not a professor
  • Don’t try to tell everything you know about the subject. Pare it down to the essentials
  • For weighty topics, write a series of short articles
  • Provide an intro to the topic in your newsletter and link to your blog/elsewhere for details. If you can find a video (or make one yourself) your audience will be grateful. Here’s how one of my clients does it
  • Leverage industry videos and handouts (be sure to comply with licensing and copyrights)

Engage readers

• Invite them to leave comments and comment on those of others
• Offer a free worksheet to help them apply the information to their lives — invite them to review the information with you off the clock, if appropriate
• Ask readers to weigh in on a topic by linking to a survey that gives them the option to see how their answers compare to those of other respondents
• Poll readers for future articles on similar/related subjects

Brains need variety

• 

  This infographic is from a parody site

  Use stories – our brains are wired for stories -and people “find” themselves in them.

• Use case studies for the same reasons

• Link to a narrated presentation deck or video to stimulate the story-receptive part of readers’ brains. One of my clients does this very well

• Use  infographics or produce your own charts and tables. FlowingData is a great resource to learn about them and you might find one to use there

What techniques have you or others used to make complex information digestible? What have you seen out there that turns you off? 

Working with a Ghostwriter

Used to be the word “ghostwriter” conjured images of a wily hack with a battered Olivetti sitting at a Hollywood swimming pool coaxing confidences from a star.

Lately the word has gotten traction in the music world (evidently lots of rappers use them). Politicians have always used ghosts — a recent Christian Science Monitor story estimated 90% of politicians’ books are “heavily ghostwritten.”

Now businesspeople are convinced they need to be content producers to drive search engine results and keep their names top of mind with customers. This makes my job as a business ghostwriter easier to explain, but there are lots of misconceptions out there about what we do, how we work, and how we’re paid. In case you’re thinking about hiring a ghostwriter, this might help you think things through.

Q:  What kind of work can you give to a ghostwriter?

A: There is no professional organization that certifies ghostwriters. Generally speaking we can write anything on your behalf. The devil lies in the details of how well a ghostwriter works with you, whether they know your field well enough to hit the ground running, and whether you can agree on a fee structure.

As a financial ghostwriter I craft presentations and management letters. I write blog posts, newsletters, white papers, articles and (soon) books. Each writer will produce each type of publication with differing levels of proficiency.

Do you want to rough out a topic then turn it over to a ghostwriter? Or does the sight of a blank page drain your mind completely? Working with a ghostwriter is a partnership, so begin your quest by identifying your needs, working preferences and limitations. These will determine the offsetting strengths to look for in your writing partner.

Q: What do I look for in a business ghostwriter?

A: You need to find someone who knows enough about your field that they can focus on production. You might also need to find a writer experienced with Chicago Manual of Style, MLA, etc. That said,  if you find a great writer they can learn the styles. A good ghost won’t upcharge you for coming up the learning curve, provided there’s sufficient upside for the writer.

You might also need help devising an editorial calendar or other marketing/public relations capabilities, so be sure to ask your writer if they can provide that expertise. In today’s social media environment a ghostwriter should have a working understanding of how search engine optimization works, but beware the writer who tries to convince you that writing in a stilted style to feed the search bots will serve you well with human readers.

Q: Where do I look for a qualified ghostwriter?

A: Tap your professional circles first. With so many corporate communications departments being downsized, domain experts who write well are a LinkedIn search away. Whether they can effectively ghost for you is another matter. My advice is to start with domain experts and then refine the search by chemistry, mutually-acceptable work styles, pricing, etc.

Q: How much will a ghostwriter charge?

A: Your business ghostwriter will charge in the range of a self-employed accountant in private practice.  Specialists in other subject areas will differ, but this will give you an idea of how to budget.

Start by asking yourself the qualifications someone would need to write intelligently about your field. (For example, could a nurse write about biotech?)  Put a number on what that person would make working for an employer full time. That’s just a start. You can’t just divide that by 2080 annual working hours; you must add something for administration and overhead costs, and allow that of a 40 hour week, about 25 is actually billable (the other fifteen are spent in client acquisition, proposals, professional development and administrivia). The accountant study shows similar productivity.

Let’s crunch numbers. Say you want an MBA Who Writes Like An English Major with a background in finance. Let’s assume that person would earn $100k in their field. OK, add the employer-paid taxes, employer-subsidized health insurance and two weeks of vacation and the result is about a 20% bump over base salary. We’re at $120k. Divide that by 2080 “standard” work hours a year and you get $58/hour. For reasons explained above, the $58 would translate to more like $94/hour when they actually get on the clock.

Q: Will ghostwriters work at a fixed rate?

A: When you hire a writer with domain expertise, they’ll likely bid your project on a flat fee or bid a price per (accepted) page. This will take some pre-work on your part defining the scope of the project and giving the writer sufficient source material to get to work.

Q: How will a ghostwriter price my project?

A: The more organized and efficient you are, the less you’ll pay the writer. If you have all your research compiled and outline your expectations up front (number of pages/slides/word count) the writer can adequately estimate their work effort.

Your personal organization and efficiency plays a big role in keeping the project on budget, too. An experienced writer will devise a project timeline with deadlines and expectations for YOU.  You’ll have to uphold your end to keep the contracted price and schedule. If the contract says you get one editorial pass and one line edit pass, you’ve got to make best use of each. If you get to the line edit round and start moving big chunks around or inserting more copy, chances are your writer will need to charge you for that editorial re-work. A line edit consists of tweaking for clarity and correctness, not re-drafting. I find that clients often want to make changes after copy they’ve approved has been handed over to the graphic designer/desktop publisher; such re-work is not in scope.

There are some professional pay guidelines out there for different types of writing/editing on a project and page basis.

Q: Do I have to work with a ghostwriter face-to-face?

A: Each project drives the tactical means for getting it done. If I’m writing a white paper, the client provides me with the source material, we discuss relative weighting of the topics and the general outline and I take it from there, circling back for commentary, elucidation, additional source material, etc. Many of my blog and newsletter clients will forward news updates from their professional organizations for me to base a commentary upon. While I’m pretty flexible, I can’t speak for other writers.

I have to learn the client’s “voice” to emulate it. A client should never sound like a stranger in real life to someone who’s been reading their work. I prefer that my clients use digital recorder as much as possible; the digital file is easily attached to email.  Not only do I learn how they speak, I also glean from their inflection what matters to them most and any key words or phrases that they favor.

Most people say more when speaking than when writing.  Clients may think they have two articles for their newsletter but they start talking, I might “hear” three articles for the current edition and another for a blog post or future newsletter.  Occasionally a client will be in the middle of answering a question when something pops up that we can use later.

Q: How to proceed?

A: I suggest you audition one or two potential writing partners. Already writing a newsletter? Give the writer an earlier version and ask what they’d do differently. Never written one before? Give the writer three news topics and see what they want from you before they begin writing and how they would propose to learn your voice. I will sometimes offer to do an audition piece without charge and then if the client hires me I’ll bill them for the work.

More questions? Give me a call and we’ll discuss your particular project: 704-907-2811

Why Outsource Newsletters & Email Campaigns?

After June’s speaking engagement, members of Charlotte Professional Saleswomen and Entrepreneurs (CPSE) have been in touch with questions about email and newsletter marketing.  Since we ran out of time in person, this post is fourth in the series of online follow-ups.

Question: Why not just send my newsletter from my own email account?

Answer: There’s a lot more to email marketing than selecting recipients from your address book and hitting the “send” button.

I’m proud of the email/newsletter service I offer and in answering this question I’ll identify when I’m pushing my own service so you can skip the parts labeled in blue if you want to be like Joe Friday and get “Just the Facts, ma’am.”

Administrivia

• Subscribe and unsubscribe requests — every time you send a campaign, some people are likely to want to get off the list. It may only take you a minute or two to deal with, but if you need to stop what you are doing and switch tasks, it adds up quickly. And what happens if you miss one and send to that person again? Federal CAN-
  SPAM violations can run to $11,000.

  Commercial: My service lets people unsubscribe instantly from any email they receive, and your list is updated automatically — just what CAN-SPAM envisioned.
  

• Dealing with bounced emails — For any given campaign, you might expect up to 10% of the emails to be bounced back to you. That could be hundreds or thousands of emails you need to handle somehow.

  Are they permanent bounces? Then should you remove them from your list? Or do you need to resend the email to them?

  Commercial: My service instantly removes hard bounces, and re-sends your campaigns automatically to addresses which soft bounce.

• Dealing with spam complaints — Sometimes people forget that they signed up for your emails, and hit the spam button. No one wants to defend themselves against the feds in a CAN-SPAM matter.

Commercial: My system instantly removes people from your list as soon as they make a spam complaint, ensuring they do not receive any more email.

Improve your deliverability

Your email campaign can only succeed if your recipients are actually able to read it. When you subscribe to my service to send your campaigns you’ve entrusted a powerful ally.

• Commercial: Whitelisting and feedback loops — My service has relationships with major Internet Service Providerss like AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo! and many more.  This means our mail servers are recognized as legitimate senders of bulk email, so your campaigns have a much greater chance of being delivered.

• Commercial: Monitoring of blacklists — We continually check blacklisting services to make sure our servers are not being listed, something which is time consuming and complex to do for your own servers.

• Commercial: Specialized network of mail servers — our mail servers optimize email delivery for particular recipient mail systems, throttling the speed of delivery to match acceptable levels for each system.

You’d be hard pressed to do these with regular email:

• Personalization — Use custom fields to adapt your emails for individual subscribers
• Segmentation — Send focused emails to subsets of your full lists
• Powerful import and export — Easily get your subscriber lists into and out of the system at any time
• Archive your campaigns — Easily display your previous campaigns on your website

Focus on your customers, not on your technology

Sure, you can use your own email client and deal with unsubscribe requests and bounces from bad emails all day. But wouldn’t you rather use an email service provider that lets you avoid the mundane administrative work and concentrate on serving your customers better?

Question: What’s this service got to do with you as a ghostwriter?

That depends on you.  If you want to use my service and write your own content, go for it. At least you’ll get the advantages discussed above (and a great custom template).

If you want my help, it can range from editing your work to developing an editorial calendar, integrating newsletters and email campaigns with your blog and marketing strategies.  Or, I can simply write your content from source material you provide.

Let’s talk about your skills and needs.  You want to be free to focus on the aspects of your business that can’t or shouldn’t be outsourced.  If you’re not a Business Person who writes like an English Major, you can hire someone who is.

e-Newsletters: Track Them, You Must

The first week of the month is popular for publishing newsletters.  I publish the first week.  So with the June flurry largely passed, here’s food for thought before firing off your July edition.

In a study reported on MediaPost on email marketing (which isn’t exactly newsletter campaigns, but sufficiently related), roughly 18% of marketers admitted they were NOT tracking campaign performance.  Stunning.

Marketers that do not track normal site conversions

• Don’t know how      42.86%
• Don’t have budget     4.76
• Don’t have time        14.29
• Other                           38.08

Newsletter metrics

Of course I wish you were using my service, since it provides exquisitely detailed reporting, but no matter.  If you’re using an off-the-shelf provider, start with what you can track and pay attention.

How’s your open rate over time?  What about subscriber base?

Do specific topics generate a higher click-through rate?  A higher unsubscribe or forward rate?

Clients ask, I answer

Yesterday a client called for my input.  She wants to move her ad-sponsored printed newsletter clients over to an ad-sponsored blog and wanted to check her logic with me.  She asked why I bother to publish both a blog and a newsletter.

Answer: I want to make it easy for clients and prospects to hear from me.  My audience ranges from the tech-savvy  to the tech-impaired,  so whether they stream my blog to a reader or hit a blog post I’ve tweeted or look at the monthly newsletter in their inbox (and click through to the blog, or not) I’m doing the hard work so that they can skim what they need and move on with their lives.

This works for me because I’m *good enough* with technology, I have a sales and marketing background, and I love writing, a lucky combination.  Few people, including my client, have the same mix of strengths and preferences, so my advice to her and anyone else is to go with your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

This might mean hiring a ghostwriter, but should never mean publishing an off-the-shelf newsletter.  Realtors can get away with recycled articles like carpet cleaning tips and how to stage a house for showings, but I can’t think of a profession besides theirs that should even consider it.

Goal-driven newsletters

From time to time I have tactical goals, like drumming up attendance for a speaking engagement, but my overall publishing goal (blog and newsletter) is client acquisition and retention.  I want to keep my services and expertise top of mind.  Someday, someone will remember I’m a Business Person who writes like an English Major and engage me.

Staying top of mind is also why I publish free blog/newsletter topics for clients and prospects in the industries I know best: financial services, consulting, services and environmental.  I exercise the “give to get” philosophy that feeding professionals ideas for their publishing endeavors will someday yield a harvest for me.

Whether your goal is converting readers to a seminar series or a sit-down session, you need to start with that goal,  figure out how to make it happen, and how to track what’s happening along the way.  With rare exception you’ll need to make corrections to your current path that will bring you to your goal.  But if you don’t know you’re off course, you can’t get back on track.

Unless you’re a statistician, analysis isn’t the sexiest thing you’ll do with your day.  But to quote Yoda, “Do it, you must.”  Feel free to reach out if you want my feedback.

Your Reputation as a Spammer

You think you’ve properly built a subscriber list of folks who OPTED IN to receive your e-newsletter.  Turns out, that’s not good enough.  Your email might still wind up in the SPAM file.

Lyris, Inc.’s 2008 analysis showed one out of every four permission-based email messages sent to U.S.-based Internet Service Providers (ISPs) lands in the junk mail folder.

What’s up?  While results vary by the filter policy of each ISP (such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AIM, etc), the report says it’s the sender’s reputation driving 25% of messages to the SPAM folder.

How do you earn the right reputation?

• Craft a compelling message.
• Don’t bombard your list — send no more often than your recipients bargained for.
• Make it easy for people to find the “Unsubscribe” button.  If it’s easier to hit “SPAM” than “Unsubscribe” you’ll get a reputation as a spammer on ISPs’ scorecards.

Stefan Pollard, Lyris email marketing expert, points out that “The definition of spam has moved beyond the legal requirements of the CAN-SPAM Act to include any message that is unrecognized, unexpected or unwanted... This puts the onus on senders to make their messages recognized, expected and wanted.  Until they do, invited email will continue to be delivered to the bulk folder.”

Spam filter trigger words:

Act Now!                     Free!                               50% off!         While Supplies last

Click Here                  Call now!                       Earn $             Why pay more?

Discount!                   You’re a Winner!        Credit               Serious Cash

Weight                        Opportunity                 Compare         Double Your Income

Removes                   Collect                           Amazing           Work from Home

Offer                           As Seen On…                Click Here         “Stop” or “Stops”

Buy Direct                Loans                            Buy Direct         Satisfaction Guaranteed

Subscribe               All Natural                    Winner                Avoid Bankruptcy

Promise You         Cash                                Easy Terms       Special Promotion

Get Paid                 Great offer                     One time             Guarantee, Guaranteed

Join millions       No cost, No fees          Order Now         Online Marketing

Please Read        Don’t Delete                   Save up to          Time Limited

Problems with promotional email

In a study by Merkle, “View from the Inbox,” 2009, the main reasons subscribers choose to opt out of email programs, are perceived irrelevance (75%) and sending too frequently (73%).

Promotional emails were deemed the most  intrusive. Solution?  Make your newsletter informative, not promotional.

Merkle reported that 20% of those receiving e-newsletters thought they were worthy of reading, and received, on average,about eight newsletters each month.  That’s a heap of competition for YOUR customers’ attention.

Your reputation intact

If you can’t do the job in house, pay a good ghostwriter/copywriter.  You’ll offset by the fees with savings to your reputation with customers and ISPs.

When you decide to outsource, be sure you hire someone who not only can cut a phrase and punctuate, but also who knows your firm/industry.  That is, unless you really want to bring a writer up the learning curve(!)

Pardon my plug to consider my turnkey newsletter service. When you go to the trouble of communicating with customers, track results so you know what’s working and what’s not.  My service includes custom templates with analytics that can tell you details like who opened what link in what browser.

Speaking engagement

At the kind invitation of the Carolinas Professinal Saleswomen and Entrepreneurs, I’ll be speaking on CAN-SPAM and e-newsletters June 18.  Hope to see you there.

Branding and Emotions

As reviewed online by Ivan Misner,”…when you know how to use design as a complete strategy, starting with the ideal

customer experience and then building an internal supply chain to deliver in a way that exceeds expectations, you’ll create products, services and experiences that truly matter to your customers’ lives–and your business will thrive.  However, the reality is that few companies know how to create great design, and even fewer know how to implement a design strategy that will secure enduring success.”

Prompts

• Help your clients explore how their product, service or brand forges an emotional connection with their customers.
• Give a case study of a client that executed a brand turnaround strategy with your help.
• Propose to cover topics from this book in your next client check-in.

Employee Free Choice Act: Pro & Con

In a report released by the Economic Policy Institute the much debated Employee Free Choice Act, which adversaries say will kill jobs by forcing more employers out of business, found neither historical data or existing credible research, to back the claim.

In Still Open for Business, John DiNardo compares data on business failures among unionized and similar nonunion firms and concludes that unionized businesses are no more likely than nonunion ones to fail.

Writing Prompts

• After reading the report, you might share the findings with your employees in a newsletter.
• Has your firm’s trade association taken a stand on the Employee Free Choice Act?  Explain your stand and how it differs or agrees with this report or the trade association.
• If passed, how will this legislation affect the way you do business?  Will it change pricing or terms?  Employee benefits?  Recruiting and retention efforts?
  

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