Newsletters Made For You- Exceptional Living

Don’t worry… berserk violence isn’t required.

People today are mailing less.  A lot less.

As Americans turn from paper to electronic communications, the amount of mail handled by the Post Office continues to drop.

From 213 billion pieces in 2006 to 177 billion last year.

BTW:  Those numbers are staggering. Now you know why our mail occasionally takes a ‘left turn’ on us. Overall, the U. S. Postal Service is incredibly reliable.

Anyway, this means that your marketing will stand out even more in your prospects and clients mail boxes.

And it will get even better. Volume is expected to drop to 150 billion by 2020.

This is good news, indeed.

Now is the time to step up your print marketing. While everyone is falling back to email-only marketing, your mail will definitely get noticed.

This is why newsletter marketing is so hot. No one is doing them… including your competitors.

Some biz owners think they’re hopelessly old school. Others may have tried client newsletters and failed (they’re harder than they look).

Most entrepreneurs think of printed newsletters as quaint old things, like handwritten letters or electric typewriters. So while marketing certainly isn’t exempt from fads, client newsletters are absolutely evergreen.

And if you do it right, your customers will actually look forward to getting their client newsletter each month.

Exceptional Living is now only $1.49 each – printed, personalized, addressed and mailed first class.

Activate your free account and jump in. You can play with the cool editing features, upload images to your account, etc.

You don’t pay a dime until you decide that you want to place an order. In the meantime kick the tires on our free newsletter templates.

If you do choose to order, for less than 18 bucks a year per client, you can keep in touch every month and build your customer relationships.

I’m hard at work on April’s issue of Exceptional Living. It should be ready for viewing in the next few days.

I’ll keep you ‘posted (pun intended).

Taking action just feel right.

-  David Gruttadaurio
“The Print Newsletter Expert”

PS: Save $77! I’ll waive your first month’s subscription of Exceptional Living print newsletter!

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Copyright 2010

This post is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any portion of this email is strictly prohibited without the express written consent of David Gruttadaurio

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Do you have a commodity-oriented biz?

Or…

Think you can’t sell a premium version of your product or service?

Then consider this:

High end toilet paper… well, you know what I mean… luxury tush tissue.

BTW: This info courtesy of DK’s ‘Marketing To The Affluent Letter’.

Andrex is THE toilet paper brand in the U.K. with sales of $550 million annually.  Last year they came out with a luxury brand, enriched with Shea Butter (Google it).

This is the product description (you really must read this):

“Offering a multi-sensory experience, this luxurious new toilet tissue has some new and exclusive features that will make you feel truly fabulous… the pack is a deep, rich luxurious brown color, matching any contemporary bathroom design.  It feels soft, smells divine and looks gorgeous which will make you feel really fabulous! ”

Yep. This is same stuff we all wipe our butts with.

Now go back and read the descriptives that I italicized.  This copy has absolutely NOTHING to do with toilet paper. It’s all about a luxurious [fabulous] experience… while in the loo!

Marketing lesson:  No one can ever say they can’t create a premium upsell or product/service option.

If there was ever a commodity product, this is it. And yet, somebody is romancing it, elevating its social standing and selling an upscale version of it.

Surely you can dream up a way to do this in your business.

If you have – or plan to – let me know. I’d love to hear about it.

Taking action just feel right.

-  David Gruttadaurio
“The Print Newsletter Expert”

PS: There’s still time to get your March newsletter order in – now just $1.49 each – printed, mailed first class in 6 page, edge-to-edge, full color.

Copyright 2010

This post is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any portion of this email is strictly prohibited without the express written consent of David Gruttadaurio

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I had an ‘aha’ moment.  Boy, if Oprah finds out…

Here’s the skinny: Several month ago, Ms. Multibillionaire sued Mutual of Omaha.  The insurance company started a marketing campaign called “the official sponsor of the aha moment.” They also trademarked the phrase.

Oprah was miffed.  Winfrey thinks she owns the phrase – apparently she says it a lot – although she’s never tried to trademark it.

Anyway, they settled out of court. No one really knows how it ended.

So… I guess I’ll just have to take my chances.

This is how my ‘aha moment’ happened.

One of my clients called to thank me for sending her the ‘magazine’ this month.

Magazine???  My mind was racing… did I send someone my Sports Illustrated by mistake?  No, no, no… she  sounded HAPPY to get it.

Then it hit me. She was talking about Exceptional Living customer newsletter – but she called it a magazine!

Huh… I never thought of it as a magazine before.  But I can see why she would think that.

After all, it’s printed in full, edge-to-edge-color; and it does have six pages. Perhaps ‘newsmagazine’ could work, too… hmmm.

My ‘aha moment’ was sealed.

Want to know when YOUR ‘aha moment’ will be?

The day your customers start calling YOU about the great ‘magazine’ you  sent them. Then you’ll finally believe:

-  Exceptional Living is really easy to create -  97% of the work is done for you with our newsletter template that’s made for you.

-  Exceptional Living really does bring in more sales from existing clients.

-  Exceptional Living really gets passed around and generates more referrals for your company.

Create your own ‘aha moment’.  Get started here.

And don’t worry about Oprah; I won’t tell her.

Taking action just feel right.

-  David Gruttadaurio
“The Print Newsletter Expert”

PS: You have plenty of time to get your March newsletter in your customer’s mailboxes. Our turnaround time is awesome!

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Do you think history repeats itself?

Roy H. Williams (The Monday Morning Memo guy) commented today on a book called ‘Generations’.

The authors went back over 400 years and identified four 20 year cycles mankind seems to revert to, over and over again. Each cycle appears like clockwork. Right now, we are seven years into the current cycle.

To prove his point, Roy then looked at the life of Moses as an example.  Bible buffs will find this incredibly fascinating.

While we cannot predict the future, we can predict the trends that drive us towards certain mindsets. These mindsets govern many aspects of our lives… including how we spend our money.

Marketing lesson: We need to be agile and fast-moving with our marketing message. Constant client contact enables you to adapt to the moods that drive your sales.

And there is no better way to maintain a relationship with your clients then with a monthly customer newsletter.

And I have one waiting for you.

The March issue of Exceptional Living is locked and loaded here.

Activate your free account if you haven’t done so yet.

Taking action just feels right.

-David Gruttadaurio
“The Print Newsletter Expert”

PS: You can read Roy’s Memo here.

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Bill Glazer was the first to tell me that most ads are boring.

Then I started paying attention to what I was seeing in the mail box and in magazines and newspapers.

Huh. They were pretty damn boring.

In fact, they were nearly invisible… I just didn’t pay attention to them because they ALL LOOKED ALIKE.

This is what I discovered:

People are bored by advertising for the same reason they’re bored by anything else…

A total lack of relevance.

But when ads are relevant, customers respond.

Are your ads relevant, or are they answering a question that no one is asking?

Good ads work no matter how they’re delivered. It doesn’t matter if they are direct mail letters or fax machine blasts; on the radio or TV. With some small variations, they all perform equally well.

The secret is crafting a message that would be relevant to the public.

Great ads work because they deliver a message guaranteed to move the needle on the “It Matters Meter.”

Ads FAIL when they don’t matter… ’cause no one cares.

Newsletter marketing works the same way.

- They can’t be boring.
- They must be relevant to your customer.
- The “It Matters Meter” must move way over into the red when they open it up.

If your client newsletter doesn’t do this, it will share the same fate as a bad ad.

It gets ignored, unnoticed and NEVER acted upon.

You can learn a lot about marketing from Exceptional Living customer newsletter.

Click here to have me mail you three free sample hard copies.

Taking action just feel right.

- David Gruttadaurio
“The Print Newsletter Expert”

PS: My partner Brett said I’m supposed to keep this quiet… but I have BIG announcement coming on Monday. I’m so excited…

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I just spent two very full days (9 a.m. to 9 p.m.) with 15 extremely sharp and savvy entrepreneurs in Andrew Lock’s Magical Mastermind group.

As promised, this is 1 of 5 marketing strategies you can use in your own business.

Most businesses consider customer service to be a necessary evil. Who wants to hear people gripe about their stuff, right?

I’ve talked about Zappos before. Check out this blog post to get caught up. They excel at customer service… it’s legendary… it’s the gold standard.

Zappos considers customer service THE most important thing they do.

One of the guys in our group runs a multimillion dollar online nutritional supplement company.

So he’s telling a story about a REALLY unhappy customer. She was furious with the company. And she posted all of this fury on their Facebook page!

Here’s what they do when they have a real thorny problem:  They ask, “What would Zappos do?”

This is the kind of company Zappos is:

The nutritional supplement company actually called Zappos customer service. They wanted to know how Zappos would handle this customer.

Guess what?

Zappos’ customer service rep spent 30 minutes helping them work out a solution for their problem customer.

And then she cheerfully tells them, “Call us any time!”

BIG TAKE AWAY: Customer service is an attitude. And to be honest, I have a hard time with it in my service businesses.

But when I hear TRUE stories like this about Zappos, it always makes me rethink my customer service mentality. It makes me want to aspire to the Zappos standard.

What do you think about this?

How do YOU handle difficult customer services issues?

Leave a comment – I’d love to hear your thoughts about customer service.

-David Gruttadaurio
“The Print Newsletter Expert”

PS: If you haven’t requested your three free samples of Exceptional Living, click here now.

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Used to be, back in the day – your father’s day – customer loyalty was pretty much a given.

For example, if you were an ‘Oldsmobile’ man, you bought Oldsmobile vehicles until the day you died.

Brand loyalty ran deep.  It was taught to children; and then passed on to the grandchildren.

When I was a kid, we used to go to the same neighborhood restaurant every Sunday like clockwork. If we missed a week, the owner would call to make sure we were ok.

He did it because he was really concerned about us, not because he didn’t get our money that week.

But that was then… and this is now.

Consumers today will desert you at the drop of a hat.

These new rules cut across entire industries and into the big cities and small towns.

A marketing plan from 1980 just doesn’t work anymore.

This is what has NOT changed:

75% of all buying decisions are STILL based on relationships.

Today we just have to work much harder now to earn (and keep) the loyalty of our clients.

Communication is the starting point of all relationships.  A client newsletter is the most powerful way to communicate to your customers.

Here’s why customer newsletters work:

Every time your client gets your newsletter, it’s another chance to get to know you better. And the better they know you, the more they will like you.

Consumers will buy over and over from people they like. Don’t you?  It’s becomes an enjoyable, pleasant and likable experience. It makes you feel good about your buying decision.

A customer newsletter sent regularly (key word) and that is interesting (another key word) has the marketing magic to accomplish this. If done properly, it can create relationships that last a lifetime.

If you haven’t looked at Exceptional Living lately, perhaps it’s time to add it to your marketing arsenal.

It’s how you can dominate your market.

- David Gruttadaurio
“The Print Newsletter Expert”

PS:  Click here to have me send you three free samples of Exceptional Living today.

Newsletter, client newsletter, customer newsletter, marketing, marketing newsletter, newsletter marketing, newsletters, print newsletter, relationship marketing client, Clients for Life, customer, David Gruttadaurio, exceptional living, Newsletter, newsletters, print newsletter, relationship

Used to be, back in the day – your father’s day – customer loyalty was pretty much a given.

If you were an ‘Oldsmobile’ man, you bought Oldsmobiles until the day you died.

Brand loyalty ran deep and was taught to children – even down to grandchildren.

When I was a kid we used to go to the same restaurant every week in our neighborhood. Like clockwork. If we missed a week, the owner called to make sure we were ok.

He did it because he was really concerned about us, not because he didn’t get our money that week.

But that was then – and this is now…

Consumers today desert you at the drop of a hat.

These new rules cut across entire industries and into big cities and small towns.

A marketing plan from 1970 just doesn’t work anymore.

What HAS NOT changed is that 75% of all buying decisions are STILL based on relationships.

**We just have to work harder to earn (and keep) the loyalty of our clients.

Communication is the key to any relationship.  A client newsletter is the most powerful way to communicate to your customers.

Here’s why it works:

Every time your client gets your newsletter, it’s another chance to get to know you a little better.

Consumers will buy over and over from people they like. Don’t you?  It’s enjoyable buying from someone pleasant and likable.

It makes you feel good about your buying decision.

If you haven’t looked at Exceptional Living, maybe it’s time to check it out.

It’s a marketing tool for modern times.

-David Gruttadaurio
“The Print Newsletter Expert”

PS: Click here to get three multi-industry issues sent to you.

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As entrepreneurs, our job is really pretty simple: We try to get people to do what we want.

Some guys make this look easy.

Everyone knows at least one person who can persuade anyone on just about anything.

You know what I mean… he’s guy (or gal) who can “sell iceboxes to Eskimos.”

Would having this ability would be good for your business?

Well, here’s the big secret…

“Enter the conversation already taking place in your customer’s mind.”

In other words: The easiest way to persuade someone is with whatever is ALREADY influencing them.

If you get in synch with them… they WILL listen to what you have to say.

Take the economy as an example. Here’s what a survey recently revealed about the American people:

– 87% are worried about the future of the country.

– 61% feel that they “did everything right and still lost”.

– And 65% “can’t believe this happened to us today in America.”

So, what’s the conversation going on in most people’s heads?

Disbelief, Fear and Anger

So begin collecting the words, phrases and ideas your market uses. Speak back to them with their own words.

Pay attention to what’s being discussed in the newspapers, on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Think about how you can solve their problems…quickly… easily… and simply.

When your marketing strikes this kind of chord with your clients, they will be nodding their heads, slapping the table top, and saying, “Yes! That’s exactly how I feel!”

And when that happens, they will do anything you ask.

Because whatever you ask is going to be exactly aligned with what they already want.

Then, use your new-found magical persuasive power in ALL of your marketing… postcards, letters and of course, your monthly client newsletter.

But only use your powers for good… like increasing profits and winning clients for life.

Let’s get to work,

-David Gruttadaurio
“The Print Newsletter Expert”

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One of my businesses is a service company.

I got a call last Friday from one of my clients. Her name is Betty.

She called to answer the trivia question in the December newsletter.

Customers will usually leave their answers in voicemail or email to me. I recognized her name on Caller ID, so I picked up.

After Betty gave me the correct answer, we talked for a few minutes. It was nice chatting with her… I enjoy my customers a lot.

Then she literally shocked me speechless.

Betty was telling me how much she loved reading Exceptional Living (that wasn’t the shock).

Then…

She referred to a little story I told in the monthly “My Corner’ column. It was about texting and how a clerk was texting the entire time we were checking out at the register.

Anyway, while we talked, Betty related this story back to me like she had just read it…

… but I wrote it FOUR MONTHS ago. It was in the August newsletter.

Either she still remembered the story or she had saved the newsletter and read it again recently.

I think it was the former. Betty simply remembered my story from way back in August.

BIG marketing lesson:  Include stories in your marketing ’cause stories get remembered and make you memorable.

Why is that? Psychologists tell us stories form the basis of how we think, organize, and remember information.

Telling a compelling story is an art. But don’t worry about being an expert. I’m not. I discovered telling ANY story is better than no story at all.

Give it try in your marketing – be a story teller – become memorable.

BTW: I almost forgot. Betty got her December Exceptional Living 2 ½ weeks ago… and saved it. Kinda interesting, huh? Do your customers save YOUR stuff?

Taking action just feels right,

- David Gruttadaurio
“The Print Newsletter Expert”

PS: Click here to tell me where to send your 3 sample issues of Exceptional Living… if you’re one of the few that haven’t requested them.

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