Tech Forward:

There are loads of different elements to businesses being successful with e-mail marketing. One of them is list pruning.

One of our clients sent me an e-mail the other day asking if removing nonresponsive people from her e-mail list will give her a more successful list.

Absolutely it will.

Think of it like this . . . when you have a plant with leaves that are half-dead, the plant’s systems have to work that much harder to attempt to send life to leaves and branches that are half-dead.

If you prune that plant and cut the dead leaves, the plant becomes much healthier. It now has free energy to sustain the leaves and branches that really want and need the extra energy, so they can grow.

Same thing with your e-mail list. Let’s face it, there are some people who are tire kickers. These are the people who signup for your lists no matter what you offer and never open the e-mail. They never buy anything. They never call your office for more information. They just sit on your list and suck up energy (all your free information).

So how can you start pruning your list?

1. Start looking at your list’s statistics. Look at the open rates overall and then start looking at the open rates per individual. It might take you some time to do this, but it’s worth it (or have your assistant do this).

2. Then look at your click-through rates (This rate measures how many people click through from your e-zine to your website). Look at the overall number and then look at specifics.

3. You can go all the way up to looking at conversions, but I’ll talk about that later. For right now, start familiarizing yourself with who the openers and the clickers are on your list.

4. Create a separate list for the inactive people on your list–those who don’t open or click. Move them to the separate list and only market to them once in a while.

Make like a healthy plant and devote your marketing energy to the leaves and branches that already show promise of growing.

I’m not sure what’s going on in your company, but we’re growing every day.

When I founded xynoMedia, my intention was to build a completely virtual company with low overhead and enough flexiblity so that our team can enjoy their lives and get work done. I wanted our company to benefit from the input of global citizens, which is why we have teams working all over the world.

We have administrative assistance in Australia, development teams in the States and in South America, and writers in Canada.

If you want to build this kind of an orgnization, you need some sort of secure online collaboration tool. Something like CatalystWeb’s product CatalystOffice.

At the Small Business Technology Summit, I asked Bob Mathew every single hard question I could come up with based on how my team uses our online collaboration tool, and I was mucho impressed (it’s not that easy to impress a New Yorker).

Listen for yourself…

Right now, CatalystWeb only works with Firefox…but, you’re using that as your default browser anyway, right?

Over at Utterz, the topic of conversation is “Service Interruptions: How Long is Too Long?”

It’s a good question.  And it piggybacks (is that a word?) on a topic I wrote about a few days ago: the ins and outs of disaster recovery.

Our company provided direct relief efforts for businesses affected by 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, so I know of what I speak.

Of the cases that were assigned to us, we could only help 20 percent get their business’s technology back on track. That means 80 percent of businesses went under.

And, believe you me, it wasn’t for lack of skill, expertise or effort. We tried. They tried. We all tried. But, ultimately there is not much you can do for a company that:

• Doesn’t have an off-site back-up of its critical files;
• Has a backup device that has never been tested and, when push came to shove, the device malfunctioned or couldn’t restore for some other reason;
• Can’t supply a complete contact list of suppliers, clients and alliances for communication and notification;
• Doesn’t have enough money in the budget to replace destroyed equipment;
• Has not identified an off-site location to set up temporary residence; or
• Does not have access to project files, business planning documents or even legal and financial documentation.

Your clients may very well be raving fans. Your suppliers may routinely go the extra mile for you. Your alliances may deliver value-added service for your clients time and time again.

However, at some point, your clients/alliance partners/suppliers will have to get back to business, with or without your company on board.

Business is not personal; business is business. And your colleagues simply will not wait forever for you to get your act together.

How do we get to proactivity? How do you start making time to do the strategic activities to grow your business?

It’s a little thing called a dedicated business development day. Some people call them focus days. Some people call them work days.

Each Friday, I gather together all my business development activities (brainstorming new white papers/articles, outlining a new program, working on our brand overhaul, telecons with potential clients and strategic alliances, etc.) I prioritize the list and mercilessly slice through it.

It gives me a jazzed feeling during the week knowing that I’ll get to my business development tasks relatively soon and the sense of accomplishment at the end of the week always kick-starts my weekend!

But, here’s where my system differs from most. Rather than letting tasks go undone for months at a time, whatever I don’t get done that still really needs to get done (yes, this happens), I schedule work days with my business friends once or twice THAT month to clear out all those undone tasks. These are usually Saturdays (although I try not to work on weekends sometimes it’s inevitable) and we call each other every hour or two to make sure we’re still on-target. Usually, we only need the first two calls and then we’re off to the races.

Whatever works for you – make like Nike and “Just do it.”