The New Book Review

This blog, #TheNewBookReview, is "new" because it eschews #bookbigotry. It lets readers, reviewers, authors, and publishers expand the exposure of their favorite reviews, FREE. Info for submissions is in the "Send Me Your Fav Book Review" circle icon in the right column below. Find resources to help your career using the mini search engine below. #TheNewBookReview is a multi-award-winning blog including a MastersInEnglish.org recommendation.

Friday, September 12, 2008

The Lowdown on E-mail Marketing and How You've Been Lead Astray

Email Marketing for Complex Sales Cycles
Subtitle: Proven Ways to Produce a Continuous Flow of Prospects and Profits with
Effective, Spam-Free Email Systems
By Winton Churchill
Foreword by Ron Richards, President, ResultsLab
Morgan - James, 2008
ISBN 9781600374210
Nonfiction/Business
Author's Site: www.churchillmethod.com/
Contact Reviewer: HoJoNews@aol.com



Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, award-winning author of three books of fiction and poetry and The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success

Remember when we were advised, "Don't believe everything you read?" That's probably even more true in the Internet age than it was back in the days when I first heard it. That's one of the reasons I was glad to see the release of Email Marketing for Complex Sales Cycles by Winton Churchill.

See, I've always been vaguely aware that people get unnecessarily up in arms about SPAM. I see them let others censor the material they get delivered in their e-mail boxes all in the interest of kill, kill, killing the Dearly Beloved messages. I've seen them give up an old e-mail address to curtail the flow of SPAM, even though they are also giving up all kinds of networking contacts when they do so. I've seen them rant and rave about SPAM that was really only a query from someone who had found them doing a search on Google. I mean, that's why we have websites, so people can find us.

So when a real expert like Churchill tells it like it is, well . . . that is a wonderful, affirming experience for me. Churchill is a master marketer who has been quoted in the likes of The Wall Street Journal and Inc. Magazine. He also happens to know a good deal about e-marketing and he shares what he knows in this helpful marketing book.

Email Marketing is written primarily for big business people with large marketing budgets and big staffs. I would like to have seen Churchill specifically address how little guys might put his method to use on a smaller scale and a lot more frugally. But then I am the author behind the HowToDoItFrugally series of book for writers. With an emphasis on the word frugal.

That doesn't mean this author's methods can't be adapted to small business people, right down to small publishers—even individual authors. I found that many of his theories fit very well into the basics of great PR (things like building relationships rather than use the big four-letter word SELL). And that many of them can be adapted to less ambitious online processes like forging trust and making great contact lists.

It is also comforting to know that in my own marketing I have already been practicing much of what he preaches but on a much, much smaller scale. He almost has me convinced to take a jump into something bigger. But if I don't, I can use some of his techniques to hone the processes I'm already using.

Technorati Tags:
, , , , , , , ,




-------------
Carolyn Howard-Johnson is an instructor for UCLA Extension's Writers’ Program. She is the author of two award-winning books, This Is the Place and Harkening. Her how-to book for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't, is the winner of USA Book News' Best Professional Book and the Irwin Award. The second in the HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers, The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success, is also a USA Book News award winner and a Reader Views Literary award winner. She won the 2008 New Generation Award for Marketing. Learn more at www.HowToDoItFrugally.com.

4 comments:

Nikki Leigh said...

Hi Carolyn

Thank you for hosting Winton on the first day of his virtual blog tour. He has a lot of great information to share and you mentioned some of those things :) Many types of people and businesses that want to sell products and services can benefit from the information. We look forward to sharing these details with people :)

Nikki Leigh

Rolv E. Heggenhougen said...

eMail marketing is VERY effective yet it is always mass emails and often come from “do-not-reply” addresses. These emails also arrive with a red x where there are pictures and then the recipient must right-click to download – this is where over 50% are lost as people hit the delete button.
Seems like WrapMail is the only company that seamlessly focuses on the REGULAR external emails we all send every day:
You have a website.
You send emails.
WrapMail, without installing anything on any desktop or cell phone facilitates:
Every email becomes a showpiece for the organization.
Every employee becomes a marketer.
No other marketing or advertising medium is as targeted as an email between people that know each other (as opposed to mass emails). These emails are always read and typically kept.
WrapMail turns your everyday email into a branding and research tool (yes, the system reports who is clicking on what and when) for your business at a cost of $5 per user per month. That includes the WrapMaker™ where clients make their own wraps.
And……..WrapMail’s show up WITHOUT the red x and message to download images!

Anonymous said...

I've yet to tackle email marketing, simply because I don't know where to start. Thanks for recommending this book, now I have a good idea of where to start and how to go about it. I'll pick it up and read it this week.

Anonymous said...

Hi Carolyn,

Thanks for your kind words!

Yes, you have hit on one of the things I've discovered since the book came out...lots of small business owners find the book applies to their sales cycle as well.

More and more smaller businesses find they have to form a relationship with their prospects before they buy.

Thanks,

Winton Churchill
http://www.churchillmethod.com/