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loyalty Tagged Articles
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How to Handle the Price Objection
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| I am a firm believer that “Price is only an issue in the absence of value.”
Never drop you price! Anyone who will leave their current supplier for a better price will also leave you for a better price. Create loyalty through value.
If you feel that your prices are too high because you have bought into ‘The sky is falling” mentality of our current economy, then lower your prices across the board but stick to that price once you have presented it to the client.
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Building Trust between Management and Employees
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| Employees are the ones that can in fact have a positive or negative effect not only on your company’s reputation but the success of your company as well. Those managers that are able to maintain and develop trust among their employees are the ones that have longer employee retention. |
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Having Trouble Motivating or Instilling Loyalty in Your People?
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| This article give you 3 specific steps to turn your people into believers. It starts with you and your expectations . . .read on. |
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What You Need To Know Before You Join A Community Problem Solving Effort
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| As a business owner, one way to build community awareness and loyalty to your company is to volunteer on an important community project. Beware. Some of these projects can dissolve into conflict and confusion. Here is what you need to know to make sure that doesn't happen. |
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Passion- The Fire That Illuminates the Path to Success
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| Passion is the icing on the cake that can build and sustain a successful business. Passion is contagious and it breeds attraction and loyalty. Is your business a passive responder or a passionate advocate for your offerings and your customers? |
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Growing Your Small Business
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| Where do you find more customers? How do you compete with bigger businesses?
Answer. Build loyalty and rewards. You may not have the money to spend on
advertising like your competitors do, but you don't need it. What you need is
added exposure, added exposure that costs little or none. One of the best ways
is referrals. Getting referrals from your customers reinforces new customers
that they should choose you because they can trust you and they will be
satisfied.
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Leadership Traits of the USMC
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| James Dicks examines the importance of leadership development in today's business environment. |
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You, Inc. What it Takes to Build a Personal Brand
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| It’s a brand new work-world. And I do mean “brand.” It used to be that only businesses worried about branding. To thrive, they worked diligently to distinguish their company from the competition. This meant carving out a niche based on competitive advantages and specific corporate attributes. In other words, they crafted and maintained a strategic brand – a unique, useful promise to current and prospective customers to gain brand equity and loyalty. This was business, after all. |
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Key Management Insights - Get Your New Hires Fully Engaged
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| You find them; you carefully select them; you sell you and your organization to them. Making that investment count is for nothing when you fall short on the first day... |
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Where Did The Trust Go?
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| Have you lost clients because of bad customer service or because you broke promises to them? Are you trying to reinvent yourself as a business who offers excellence? |
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Share of Mind Leads to Share of Wallet
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| The link between customer loyalty and stock price performance is the ability to create incremental purchase behavior --- how share of mind leads to share of wallet. The more loyal a customer is in any industry, the less likely they are to purchase from a competitive brand. That is why even brands with high engagement scores and loyalty metrics are constantly looking to improve on them. |
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IN THE CONTEXT OF CUSTOMER LOYALTY, NEW NIKE-TIGER WOODS COMMERCIAL IS ON POINT
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| While some may think that the new Nike/Tiger Woods commercial is a bit strange, in the context of customer loyalty, engagement and true “Voice of the Customer” it is actually spot on. |
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Brand loyalty drives higher ROI and stock price
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| Given the direct impact of brand loyalty on ROI and stock price, where does that leave Toyota? |
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Matchmaking 101: Creating Sales Tools That Build Your Brand
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| If you’re like other entrepreneurs, you know a good logo is important to branding your company. You may already have a great logo. Now what? How can you create a variety of marketing materials that build your brand?
In a word: Coordinate. All your materials should tie to one another graphically. They should convey the same look and feel, or image, and evoke a similar emotional response in your customer. When viewed side by side, your stationery, brochures, and other promotional materials should create a cohesive “family.”
Of course, your materials don’t need to “match” each other completely, but some elements should remain consistent from one piece to the next:
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Key Ways to Convey Quality
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| Let’s say that what differentiates your product or service from the competition’s is quality. It may seem like advertising “quality” would be a breeze, right? Unfortunately, it’s not. Customers hear the word “quality” all the time –often from companies selling low-quality products.
In this sense, quality is like trust. If a salesperson resorts to “You can trust me,” it’s often an indicator to beware. Accordingly, if a company is too direct in how it advertises “quality,” customers may ignore the claim or be suspicious of it. So how can you prove that your product or service is the real deal? Following are some often-overlooked ways to convey quality.
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If you don’t take care of your employees… they won’t take care of your customers
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| Delivering the brand from the inside out ---- ensuring that every employee is engaged and motivated to consistently deliver on your brand’s promise ---- is crucial to driving customer loyalty. |
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5 Tips for Writing Quick-Read Copy
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| Click here. Buy now. Free trial offer.
The world of advertising is full of short and snappy copy promising instant gratification. After all, most prospects simply don’t have time to read thoroughly. They skim. They glance. But if you’re betting they’ll wade through long paragraphs of narrative copy, it’s time to adjust your expectations. Your copywriting must be clear, compelling, and to the point.
These days, the best copy is served a-la-carte, allowing readers to sample one message here, taste another message there. Which leads us to the most important rule in writing copy that sells: Make it “digestible.” Rely on headlines, subheads, captions, and bullet points – short snippets of copy with key nuggets of messaging. Long blocks of copy tend to overwhelm readers. They snooze, you lose.
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Success Stories Boost Branding
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| Whether your business is local (like a home remodeler) or global (like an online specialty retailer), you can make a tremendous brand impression by telling stories-real-world stories illustrating how your business has benefited customers. |
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Global Branding Starts Here
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| Telling memorable stories about your customers’ real-world experiences can build your credibility, add moxie to your sales/marketing and luster to your brand. Stories are readily available to any business that has satisfied customers-and that means every viable business on the planet. You can adapt customer stories to a variety of business needs, for instance by tailoring their length and details to fit different venues and audiences. |
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Are You Customer Centric?
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| Research indicates that when polled, 80% of your customers will respond that they are very satisfied with your products/company. Makes you feel great, right? Don’t be fooled by the common misperception that these customers are indeed loyal and plan to repurchase products, or endorse them to their peers & colleagues. The answers to these two questions are the real drivers of customer-centricity & loyalty. |
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What to Do, What to Avoid: DIY Logo Design Checklist What Not to Do When Designing It Yourself
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| Have you ever noticed how many articles there are on creating your own marketing materials? These articles concentrate on things you “should do” – like “know your audience”, and “say it with pictures.” Now, I’m not saying that’s bad. That’s great. But you should also know what NOT to do. That’s what this article is about. Specifically, it’s about what most do-it-yourselfers are TEMPTED to do but shouldn’t.
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Logo Design & Your Favicon: Spotlight Your Brand Online
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| By now, you’re probably familiar with the term “sticky website.” The phrase refers to a site that compels visitors to “stick around.” In order to entice visitors to stick around, however, your site must first project the image that you are a credible (i.e., large) company. If potential customers don’t have this comfort factor, they are likely to bounce before they even see what you offer. There are many aspects to developing a credible, “sticky” website, but one easy and valuable way is to create a “favicon.” |
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The Power of Vision!
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| Vision of what can be creates functional pull against the gravity of lowest common denominator, "just doing my job." This is quantum physics married to newtonian physics. Everyday we don't engage our teams with vision, sense of purpose, tangible using values, we lose opportunity and get pulled back to the common place... read more here in the "power of vision", first published in Food & Drink Magazine, 2009. |
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The Impact of Culture by Choice, Not Chance!
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| You have a business culture. It simply exists. The question is, are you happy with the results your culture's achieving? If the answer's no, you have an opportunity! You can CREATE Culture actively and choicefully. Read more to find out how. This article was first published in 2009 in Food & Drink Magazine. |
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Letters That Dazzle
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| Responding to customer compaints can be an unpleasant and task, BUT done the right way can create raving fans forever... |
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The Recipe for Success: How Puck Struck Gold
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| When Puck was asked what he would most like to be remembered for, he answered, “For passing on my knowledge on to a lot of younger people. I think that that’s really the most important thing at the end of the day.” By the time Puck’s career comes to an end, he will have indeed left a rich legacy of not only gourmet cuisine, but also strong entrepreneurial lessons. He has become one of the most successful immigrants of the 20th century whose restaurants today typically receive over 3,000 reservation requests on a daily basis. What were the factors that led to his astonishing success? |
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Lesson #2: Get Back To Basics
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| “It all comes back to the basics,” said Thomas. “Serve customers the best-tasting food at a good value in a clean, comfortable restaurant, and they'll keep coming back.” |
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Lesson #4: Break Through That Wall
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| “I have had all of the disadvantages required for success,” says Ellison. “There were lots of times, especially in the early days, that were very, very difficult.” From being given up for adoption by his birth mother to losing his adoptive mother to cancer to dropping out of school, Ellison could have been the poster boy for adolescent angst. But, whether it was rebounding in school or bring Oracle back from the brink, Ellison managed to find the determination that he needed to press on. |
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Lesson #2: You’re Only As Good As The People You Hire
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| “None of us is as good as all of us,” Kroc would say. A strong proponent of teamwork, Kroc understood that his growing company could only continue its meteoric rise up if it had the support and the dedication of its workers behind it. In order to ensure staff loyalty and motivate his employees, Kroc did his best to guarantee that they were treated with respect and were able to operate on an equal playing field. |
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Lesson #5: Every Business Needs its Cheering Bull
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| “You'll fail at some things – that’s a learning experience that you need so that you can take that on to the next experience,” says Omidyar. “What you learn from those challenges and those failures are what will get you past the next ones…I was the pretty consistent bull and the cheerleader on eBay actually.” |
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Getting the Picture: How Eastman Turned Kodak into a Star
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| Eastman once said, “What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.” |
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Lesson #5: “It's who you are as an organization that makes everything possible.”
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| If it is who you are as an organization that makes everything possible, then it is who you are as a leader that makes the organization what it is. Wrigley Jr.’s organization was a strong one because he was an even stronger leader. It was several of his key personal characteristics that made the organization reach the heights it did under his leadership. |
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Lesson #3: When we see something that could be done better, we do it
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| “We’re innovative in many small ways,” says Newmark. “When we see something that could be done better, we do it. This is the notion of kaizen, the Japanese practice of continuous business process reengineering.” |
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Business Identity Secrets
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| A few years ago I owned a toy company. At the time, I heard an interesting philosophy on packaging: that you should design your toy’s package so artfully that when children opened it and touched your product, they were just a little disappointed. Maybe this sold more toys in the short run, but I can guarantee it didn’t in the long run. Because when perception trumps reality, your brand is the loser. |
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Niche Branding
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| It is a common misconception that if you’re not casting a wide net with your marketing, you’re leaving money on the table. Actually, the opposite is true. It’s more expensive and usually less profitable to sell a range of products to a wide audience. Furthermore, if your product or service is too similar to a competitor’s, price will always be an issue. When price is your only point of comparison, it’s tough to build a successful brand – especially if you are a small business. Targeting a niche market is a great way to avoid these issues. But how do you find the right niche? |
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Planning
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| If I were to ask the question, Would you like to improve your productivity dramatically without working any longer or any harder? chances are pretty good that you would say, “That would be nice! I’d be more effective and I’d probably get a raise! I might even have more fun in the process.” |
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Inspire loyalty like great sports coaches.
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| Whether you want to recruit and retain dedicated, talented people for your organization or you just want to cultivate great friendships in your personal life, you can't just ask for loyalty from those around you. You have to inspire it within them. |
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Cheaper
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| I just got an angry note from Anna in the Midwest. She read one of my books, got the coupon for unlimited free consulting by email and decided to cash it in. She sent me a note asking me to persuade her bosses that the best way to grow their resort was to lower prices. |
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Teamwork
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| I suspect that all of us in the world of business, athletics, music, etc., recognize the importance of teamwork. Old cliches come to mind, like, "Individuals score points, but teams win games." |
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Simplicity & Dignity
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| A parent or teacher who treats a child with dignity builds the self-esteem of the child and automatically increases the child's performance, which generally improves the child's conduct. |
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Use Math to Create Loyalty
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| This week's tip comes from my friend Chip Conley, author of the new book "Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow" and CEO of Joie de Vivre hotels. Many people have told me and Chip that we were separated at birth in terms of our approach to business and life. |
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Pure Evangelism: How to Get Great Candidates
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| Any article that starts off by advising you to tell potential employees that working at your company is a stepping stone to great jobs in other companies is okay by me. Penelope Trunk does this in "Memo to Human Resources: New Ways to Get Great Candidates." Her recommendations include: |
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5 Tips for E-mailing Busy People
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| Even after outsourcing my e-mail to a virtual assistant, there are still a few messages that come over the transom. |
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The Numbers on Cause Related Marketing
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| Roper Starch Worldwide found that 71% of U.S. consumers feel it should be standard practice and 83% have a more positive image of a company that supports a cause. |
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Two Important Qualities
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| There are a lot of similarities between business and baseball, and in ways they are interchangeable. I played baseball in high school and became captain of the team. I learned a lot about how teams can excel with the right leadership and with regard to the specific talents of each player. It was a great education. |
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A Great Example!
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| Nearly twenty years ago, a young man started working for the Trump Organization as a driver and a security guard. He had a terrific work ethic, natural smarts, wit and an engaging personality that matched his unmistakable Queens accent. His name was Vinny Stellio. |
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When you’re the Top Dog - Three keys to leading like a professional
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| Judging by the way we elect some of our political leaders, you'd think that the three most important qualities for leadership are: popularity, an outgoing personality, and loyalty to your supporters. Coincidentally, these just happen to be three characteristics that are often used to describe the average family dog. Hence, there's much more to effective leadership than what's often perceived on the surface. |
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More Mileage from Branding
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| Let’s say your online business-or your local business with an online presence-has some really strong customer stories. Where can you place these stories on the Internet to enhance your brand, boost credibility and support your sales and marketing? There are numerous online ways to use customer stories. You could try any or all of these: |
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Personal Branding Tips
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| A great deal of time and energy are expended to create memorable brands that add value to company marketing strategies and (in the case of public companies) pique the interest of the investment community. While company brand equity is certainly important, the significance of personal branding should not be overlooked as a key to success. |
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Want Loyal Customers? Make it Easy for Them to Get their Problems Solved
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| While it is often believed that to increase loyalty companies need to WOW customers by exceeding expectations, what customers really want (and rarely get) is just a satisfactory solution to their service issue. |
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Does Brand Imitation Work?
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| To Copy or Not to Copy, This is the Question.vWe all know that it’s tempting to copy the competition. There is safety in conformity – a certain “comfort factor” in being similar. After all, the other company knows what it’s doing, right? Not always.
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What's Your Brand Image ROI?
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| If you’re like millions of other small businesses, creating a professional visual image is key to your success. After all, your image - as seen on your business cards, marketing materials, packaging and website - is the first and sometimes only chance you have to introduce your company to potential customers. If your customers like what they see, you’re one big step closer to getting their business. |
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Why you should stop trying to delight your customers
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| Delighting customers does not build loyalty. Reducing customers’ effort does.
These were the findings from a large customer service survey conducted by the Customer Contact Council (CCC), and featured in the July edition of the Harvard Business Review. The survey’s aim was to get answers to three questions:
1. How important is customer service to loyalty?
2. Which customer service activities increase loyalty, and which don’t?
3. Can companies increase loyalty without raising their customer service operating costs?
After conducting structured interviews with customer service leaders and a study of more than 75,000 customers, the CCC uncovered three findings... |
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Motivational Leadership - Creating Loyalty
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| There are leaders, and then there are those who actually lead. Every executive who supervises others must be prepared to motivate-a skill that really isn't difficult. It requires you to create loyal customers and workers who link themselves to your higher cause. General Motors so successfully motivated people to buy their cars, for example, they sold more than any other automaker in the world for over 77 years. Although they were first in their industry, they did not inspire loyalty. |
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Finding the Right Fit: A Leadership Selection Model for the Redesigned Organization
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| Over the past several years, companies across every industry have sought ways to improve profitability and service while decreasing costs. As labor expenses usually account for the single largest segment of the company's budget, downsizings are one of the first options that senior executives consider when trying to cut costs. By Kenneth R. Cohen, Ph.D. |
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Enhancing Leadership Skills
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| Some people look over the screen at their boss and think there but the grace
go I. After all being the boss, the leader has to be about the easiest job
in the world. What's to do? Sit around ...give orders...check the work...take
the credit for succcesses, blame others for failures.
Problem is it just doesn't work that way and even the best leader needs to brush
up on, improve, hone his/her skills. Here are some ideas and thoughts that may
help you become an even better leader than you already are. |
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Social Media #6 - Friends Help Friends, Keep Friends
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| Part 6 in social media tutorials |
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Giving Thanks to Our Top Performers
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| In honor of Thanksgiving, this edition of Astronology will examine how to identify, and more importantly, to thank top performers within an organization for a job well done. Considering the economic conditions that many of us are experiencing, thankfulness shown through monetary exchanges may not be feasible. No matter your budget, it is critical to acknowledge those who go above and beyond their assigned capacity. Such behavior demonstrates loyalty and dependableness…key assets for any organization! |
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5 Reasons To Not Join Multiple Network Marketing Companies At The Same Time.
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| The temptation to join more than one network marketing company is easy to succumb to. However, you will find it nearly impossible to operate multiple business opportunities simultaneously. Only work one networking business at a time and give it all you have. |
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3 Website Benefits that Improve Client Satisfaction and Retention
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| A website that doesn't make money for your accounting firm is a useless website.
The primary method of generating revenue with your website is by using it as a prospecting tool. It's a great way to bring new clients into the firm but don't become so focused on client acquisition that you allow other opportunities to slip by. You can use your website to improve your client retention as well. Combined with client acquisition, improved client retention can really shore up your firms bottom line. |
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8th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies That Are Key to Building a Sales Culture
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| Key Performance Indicators or KPI's abound for sales. However, most companies choose to pay attention to the wrong ones. They look at lagging indicators like:
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The Power of Welcome Home
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| Eileen McDargh shares the stories that taught her the meaning of "welcome home" and teaches readers how the power of "welcome home" can engage employees and make a difference in the bottom line. |
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Asking for a Raise
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| Asking for a Raise |
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Grieving your mindset during entrepreneurial mindset change?
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| Does your mind need to grieve your previous mindset before being able to be successful in your business? |
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Are you an Effective Team Leader?
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| Understandably, most businesses are focused on nurturing the relationships with their clients, but running a successful business is also dependent on effective management and leadership skills. So, ask yourself, are you an effective team leader? |
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The Gift That Keeps On Giving!
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| What will be your company year end gift? What about teachers gifts? Try the girt that keeps on giving. |
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Why Multiple Streams Of Internet Income Is The Best Way To Go
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| Many of the most successful Internet marketers know the value of developing multiple streams of internet income versus having all their eggs in one basket. |
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The Need for Training
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| The need for professional training is obvious, not just training the new recruits but, more importantly, training the existing trainers and managers in the skills and techniques needed to build an environment in which new recruits can grow and prosper long term. |
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Can Using Twitter Make You More Efficient?
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| Improve efficiency using Twitter? Really? It's all about connections. Read and learn! |
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Lesson #1: “Personal relationships are always the key to good business”
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| “I guess we keep on trying to look after the people that look after us. If we don't look after one another, we can't win. Now, you don't retain customers unless you have a combination of what I call the TIL principle – trust, integrity and loyalty,” says Fox. “I look at a lot of the people I initially employed. And the aspect of loyalty was 100 per cent. Maybe the ability was 90 per cent, but I'd rather have that than a reverse position of it.” |
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All Work And No Play Will Take Our Young Guns Away
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| We all want flexible working arrangements, the five-day work week, sabbaticals and other employee-friendly initiatives. But where does Singapore rank today on work-life balance, especially for the young workforce? |
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Five Steps to Executive Presence
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| There is an art to gaining the corner office, and a large part of it is executive presence.
Executive presence can’t be measured, but it’s often just as important as years of experience, results, knowledge and skill. Here are the five steps you need to know about. |
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Leadership - The Art Of Being one of the 3%
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| As parents, coaches, and business owners, we must develop and posses leadership qualities if we want our children, team members and business to succeed. Whether our desire is to be a leader or not, there are specific skills that must be developed. Leadership styles will differ according to various personalities but main qualities must exist for excellence. Below are six key traits of successful leadership. |
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The importance of understanding your buyer relationships - especially in a tough economy
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| The tough economy is leading to many nasty surprises for sales organisations. In many cases the surprise, or the extent of the surprise, could have been avoided if the sales organisation had better information about the relationship that they have with with their buyers. in this article Keith looks at the different ways of determining the relationship you have with your buyers. |
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Managers - Put That Stick Away!
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| Truly acknowledge how important and valuable your people are to you. Treat them well and they will help you ride out this recession and be ready, with you, when the upturn arrives, as it surely will! |
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Harvesting For the Long Haul | Sales, Service 101
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| In any sphere, as in every business, people make the machines go. We buy, we sell, we make, we serve, we support, and we create. It is in doing all these things that we also provide a basic human need to interact; to know others and to be known. Loyalty, service, value, and earnings are all directly tied to our value upon the human capital, whether serving the company, or a customer of the company. Whatever it is you are selling, understand some basic principles. |
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Being an Effective Salesperson Means That You PREPARE FOR OBJECTIONS
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| It’s not difficult to figure out the top five, most commonly used objections customers will give. Novice salespeople usually hear them in the first weeks on the job. To be successful, particularly in a challenging economy, you have to be able to anticipate resistance and have the tactics in place to overcome it. |
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Win with In-Store Service
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| The "In Store Experience" is well known as a crucial part of a retailer's interaction with his customers, but what can be done to differentiate your store? |
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Good Intentions Are Never Enough
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| In this sobering short Oliver describes the danger of beliving 'Love in your heart' is enough to give your family the best. |
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Business Friendships
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| A Business Friendship is another term I use for a customer. A Business Friendship is no dissimilar to a social or personal friendship, the same rules apply, such as; commonality and camaraderie, adding value, listening and understanding, trust and integrity and let's not forget good old fashioned manners. |
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Basic Branding Techniques For Do It Yourself Online Success
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| Branding is all about how your customers perceive your business. Think of your brand as promise you make to your customers. i.e. Wherever they see your brand they can be assured of both its desirability and reliability. Your goal in developing your brand is to create an emotional spark, a strong connection with your customer that creates a warm and positive feeling resulting in product loyalty. If you are not sure where to begin, or especially if you think you already know everything there is to know about building your brand read on.... |
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Eight Ways to Engage Employees and Power-Up Performance During a Recession
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| Imagine a workplace in which employees feel important and listened to…Now stop imagining it and CREATE it!
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Staying Competitive in Your Organization
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| In today’s economic situation, having and holding your job cannot be assured. We are no longer living in a world where the organization one works for has any guaranteed loyalty to its employees. Here are 6 tips on how to stay competitive within your organization:
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The People Business - Admitting Error is Not A Weakness, It's A Strength
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| Welcome to the people business! It’s a business where the ability to read and interpret mood and behaviour in others is paramount - a business where suddenly the technical knowledge and executions that got you there somehow don’t matter quite so much. People are not going to follow you unless they sense you are real. They’re not going to believe in you unless you earn their trust – and they’re not going to trust you unless you always tell the truth and admit when you’re wrong. To admit a mistake is not a weakness – it’s a strength! |
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Good Employees for your Franchise Company
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| The employees that you hire can, to a large degree, make or break your business. Here are some characteristics to look for when hiring employees. Does the perfect employee exist? Yes, but you have to look for them, and then develop them. |
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Pricing strategies
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| Price is always important, and perhaps even more so during a downturn. How should retailers adjust their pricing to get and keep customers? |
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A franchise business is SMART business
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| This article presents that the best way to go in to a business is through a franchise business. |
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Retail Partnerships
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| Partnering with restaurants and other retailers can be a powerful way of driving traffic and loyalty. |
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No Time To Plan
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| Planning is key to long-term success. Some say there is no time to plan, but I beg to differ. |
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Special Sales
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| Retailers can use special promotional sales to help drive new business, but the key is to do it in a way that is consistent with your branding, and to be sure to turn those new customers into long term customers. |
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How to grow your Ideal Clients by 25% with zero cost of sales
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| We are big fans of “growing loyalty” among Ideal Clients over pretty much any other business building tactic—it’s the lowest cost sales activity you will ever engage in, since you are already doing business with them, you already know what they want and need, and you can easily find out if they are being wooed by someone else. How easy is that? |
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Big Beautiful Bamboo
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| A trip overseas leads to a lesson in marketing that will never be forgotten. However, it doesn't begin where you think it might. Where you ask? A bamboo garden. Bamboo and business may not seem to go hand in hand, but over time you can see their common thread: Growth. |
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ILLUSION AND THE DEATH OF QUALITY
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| Illusion--the belief that things are different than they really are--may be the biggest of all barriers to organizational success, high productivity, and ever-increasing levels of excellence. They may be the most devastating of all organizational enemies, but they seldom get addressed in a meaningful way.
This article discusses how to identify, expose and shred illusions that keep your organization from flourishing. |
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More on Upselling
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| Upselling works, we know that now, but how else can it be used? Besides using it to leverage complementary products, it can also be used to help customers discover new and bargain products that are market relevant. |
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The Power of Gift Cards
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| Gift certificates and gift cards have been a part of the retail landscape for years, but many retailers don't use them to their full potential, including taking advantage of the technological innovations that make them more powerful. |
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Overcoming Your Boardroom Presentation Fears
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| I have gone through a good number of Boardroom presentation with all the funny and awkward incidents that characterise this kind of presentations. I is a stress situation that requires preparation and wit. Here are some tips that may help. |
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How to make your Promotional Products meaningul and unique
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| This article outlines the importance of making your Promotional Products unique and meaningful not by spending a lot of money but by picking a product that represents your company and then incorporating it into your marketing campaign in a creative way. |
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Email Marketing Tips
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| Email is an incredibly cost-effective method for building loyalty and driving transactions, but as with any marketing program, it needs to be tied to specific business objectives. |
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MARKETING ONLINE - GET TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG FOREVER
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| As a business blogger you must be having the desire to have many people like and come more times to your blog. You need to drive and maintain traffic. Traffic drives you. You also need to enjoy high search engine optimization. For you to achieve this, you must make your blog a brand. A brand so strong, that it will stand out against your competitors.
But how do you make your blog a brand?
Many times people use the word brand without actually understanding what a brand mean. The marketers define a brand as:-
• A name or a term
• A sigh, symbol |
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BRANDING YOUR BLOG - THE TEN SUCCESS TIPS
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| As a blogger the need for branding is huge. You cannot achieve the desired marketing growth if your lack proper marketing communication. A blog will do just that, it will communicate and help your online marketing. But how do you brand? The following are ten tips on successful branding of your blog.
1. Segment the market: This way you will be able to identify your primary target and develop benefits that will appeal to them. With a segment for your product or your blog, you will be able to specifically target your offering; you will be having a clear picture of who your intended customers are. |
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TIPS OF WRITING EFFECTIVE MISSION STATEMENT THAT FITS WITH YOUR ENTIRE MARKETING STRATEGY
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| Many times you get into a company and the first thing that greets you is the receptionist and the companies' mission statement. The mission statement is either hanged in a huge board for all to see. It will also be on the top page of the brochure, which will be on top of the table at the waiting room.
To hang a mission statement for all to see is a great thing; however I have been reading many mission statements in my visits in many offices not in one country but in many and one thing come out clearly. |
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Employee retention – Look after your staff, look after your business
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| A business needs to know how to look after its people, and have them committed to their work and highly motivated. Its true strength lies in its people.
This article gives 10 essential keys to keep your team loyal and enthusiastic about their organization. They are important to build team spirit and engender a desire to ‘give of one’s best’ They are all very simple to activate, but, having worked in industry in an advisory capacity for many years, I can tell you that they are essential for any organization that wishes to build productivity, retain staff and ‘stay the distance’.
No business can afford to ignore them. |
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Top 10 PR tips in a crisis
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| When a crisis kicks the last thing you want to worry about is the press but believe me you may need to! Crisis Management PR by definition is costly as 24/7 availability for an expert never comes cheap. There are ways to prepare even if your budget won't stretch to having a PR expert on hand. Think about these top ten rules and it might just buy you the time and perspective you need to have damage limitation. |
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Ride For the Brand
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| I've never seen anyone make it to the top who wasn't completely loyal to the products, services, organization, idea, philosophy or cause she represented. Why would you waste your time and energy on something you don't or can't believe in? |
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How Am I Doing?
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| “How am I doing?” was a question former New York City mayor Ed Koch often asked his constituents. In an effort to make sure he was meeting their needs, he surveyed their opinions constantly. Not a bad idea since it not only gave him valuable feedback to consider but also showed everyone that he was open to getting their honest opinions so he can improve his performance. Do you do this with your customers? Chances are that you don’t, or perhaps you do it in a somewhat ineffective manner. |
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Upselling with Complementary Items
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| Increase "same customer" sales with creative packaging and upselling with complementary items. |
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Can your customers be as loyal as a big brown dog?
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| Because most businesses monitor new sales as the key measurement of healthy, existing customers are often forgotten about until they "shop" again. While focusing on new business is important, so is building a relationship with those you've already sold. So, how does a business foster loyalty with its customers? Take a lesson from from the dogs... |
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Marketers can learn a lot from the Green Bay Packers: America’s Team
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| "America's Team" teaches alot about engaging customers |
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Be Googled Or Die
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| Companies who don't know the importance of SEO and Google will fade off from the scene in no time. |
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Customer Service do you get it
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| Building relationships is the cornerstone of all sales - how do you get started? |
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Generations X & Y: Motivating and Engaging Young Employees
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| Practical tips for understanding and working with Gen X and Y workers. |
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Lesson #1: "Loyalty of your people is a key to most any business success"
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| Cathy has built his reputation not only on the success of his business, but on the unique model with which he chose to expand. Instead of following the usual franchise route, he opted to form joint ventures with individual operators, thus guaranteeing “quality, supervision and the motivation of partnership.” |
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The 7 Most Effective Ways to Recruit, Retain and Motivate Your Youngest Generation
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| How to make your organization more productive |
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You Have To Be Hungry - Part II of III
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| Reaching your goals |
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How to Improve Your Effectiveness as a Manager
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| Quick thoughts on how you can become a more effective manager by simply thinking a little more about your behaviors. |
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Entrepreneurs - Want To Grow Your Company?
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| You’ve got your company set up and the first scramble to get everything working ok and your cash flow positive has paid off. Now you need to grow your company – so how do you do this?
Well there are four activities that will pay dividends in the future.
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Book Review: Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow
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| I read this book a few months after presenting my webinar (Can You Take The Crisis and Turn It Into Gold?) and was struck by how the the same ideas that I applied to marketing to consumers (based on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) is also relevant within a company, for the customer experience, and for business investors. |
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The Bad Customer – How Do You Recognize The Customer Who is Harming Your Business?
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| Why on earth would you want to fire a customer? Well if they cost you more money and effort than the profit you make from them – then it is time for you to remove them from your mailing lists and your marketing activities. Here’s 7 ways to recognize the bad customer. |
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Entrepreneurs - Want To Start A Business With The Best Possible Chance Of Success?
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| You are ready to open your business so how do you make sure that it is successful? There are a few things that you need to make sure you do – here they are. |
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If You Build It, They Will Come: Why REPUTATION Really, Really Matters to Customers—and How to Create a Great One from the Ground Up
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| Tips for creating a reputation that customers will reward with their loyalty. |
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Is Restaurant Marketing Broken?
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| Is restaurant marketing broken? - Yes. What exactly is it that’s broken? |
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Let Me Tell You About A Truly Great Brand
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| This brand is driven by an outstanding team that believes deeply in the brand at all levels of the corporation. |
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5 Thoughts On Guest Loyalty
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| 5 Thoughts On Guest Loyalty |
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How to Make Your Business the Best in the Business
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| Many organisations have got it right - people working together in harmony, passionate, committed, energized, a great culture, strong emotional energies, fantastic popular products. Look at any top orchestra, choir, or rock group. There is much that business managers can learn from them. |
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Building Your Team and Managing It Successfully
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| A well functioning team includes a number of effective people who are concerned about each other and are strongly committed to their assignment. These individuals have the right motivation to work with their collective strength and skill to achieve a given target. Building and managing such a team is a challenge and, ultimately, a pleasure. |
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Sales Training – Top Salespeople Can Learn from Good Soldiers
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| Salespeople can find sales lessons from good soldiers. A most appropriate time to reflect about this is Veterans Day, celebrated in the United States and around the world with different names on November 11th. What can a salesperson learn from top characteristics of good soldiers? |
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Struggling to "Be Here Now"?
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| Many of you know of the book, Be Here Now, the 1971 precursor to Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. From the titles of these books, you get the idea that there is something to be gained from focusing on the present rather than being run by our painful past or anxiously awaiting the unknowable future. Easier said than done, perhaps.
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The Power of Tone Setting
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| When used in the leadership role, simple human interactions can have extraordinary impact and power in managing morale and productivity. Quite simply, leaders with good tone setting skills will achieve much greater results, improve the loyalty of their team members, work through difficulties easier, create an environment with less stress and deliver greater levels of service to their end customers. |
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Toward a better understanding and application of engagement
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| The improved model of the link between staff behaviour and strategy leads to a sharper and different view of engagement based on engagement as visualization. That is people guided to ‘see’ themselves acting out the ideals needed in the role to succeed and achieve the goals and KPIs. This is exactly the same notion as understood and sued in sports. |
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Extraordinary Customer Service: Where Does It Begin?
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| Do you know where extraordinary customer service begins? You may be surprised by the answer. |
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Discover the secrets of what makes people tick
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| Understanding what motivates each person who works for you is the key to their involvement and commitment. Here are some tips on getting the best from the people who work for you. |
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57% of Layoffs Occur in Middle Age
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| Just when you're least able to cope with upsets in your life, when you're reevaluating everything, your career gets upended. It's all part of how the midlife game is played. |
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Loyalty
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| Are you doing what it takes to build loyalty into your life? |
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Emotional Intelligence
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| This article explores the role Emotional Intelligence has in the workplace. Some of the main benefits include:
- The ability to persist and stay motivated in the face of frustration
- The ability to control impulses
- The ability to control emotion
- The ability to empathise with others
Emotions, properly managed, can drive trust loyalty and commitment to create greater productivity gains, innovations and accomplishments within workplaces. Leaders worldwide are discovering, attention to emotions have been shown to save time, expand opportunities, and focus energy for better results. |
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Yes, It Does Involve a "Secret" Victoria…
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| People don't know what you want until you tell them--and asking for what you want results in landing exactly the kind of client you are hoping to reach. |
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Jump Start Your Marketing Brain
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| My engineering mindset always has me ask, “Is this the right solution for this problem?” In marketing most people give something a “good shot” and hope for the best. Doug Hall has done what I’ve been wanting to see for years: he’s done extensive research of what works in marketing, why, and how you can apply it to your business. |
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The Value of Effective Leadership
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| An organization is most effective when leadership provides teaching, mentoring, coaching and motivation to empower every individual to perform most effectively. You can apply the techniques and traits of the Sensei to increase your effectiveness as a leader at work, home and in the community.
The fundamental reason that a Sensei enjoys the loyalty and dedication of his students can be found in the unique relationship of teacher to student. |
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Millennials – Can’t Work With ‘Em…Can’t Work Without ‘Em: So what’s a company to do?
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| Millennials: The youngest members of your workforce, given that moniker becaue they began entering the workforce at the turn of the millennium. As with their older counterparts, they have their own set of stereotypes that come along with them: "Slackers" - "Whiners" - "The 'get a reward for everything' generation." How do companies, and particularly we Boomer bosses, make the most of these young people's capacities while we help them learn how to navigate a work world that will not always be as warm and fuzzy as was mom and the soccer coach? |
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Shared Vision
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| As a small business leader, one of the most important things you can do is develop a mechanism to include all employees in the vision of your organization. Some of the benefits of a shared company vision include... |
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Recognizing Uncertainty
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| Is uncertainly a bad thing? Maybe we just need to view it differently. |
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Red Hot Sales Prospecting - Using Online Strategies
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| For better or for worse we are more and more moving toward becoming a “digital society” and certainly the evidence is that our customers are not only relying on the internet to source information, goods and services, but that the most canny of our competitors are right there, beating us to our prospects and building their total loyalty before they even become aware that it’s time to buy. |
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Your Clients Are Waiting For You!
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| Do fears about marketing get in the way of letting your market know about you and therefore become a barrier to having paying clients? Use these three steps to continually reframe your thinking about marketing over the next 90 days. Your new more powerful mindset will make your marketing more effective and fun! |
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The Need For Every Business To Raise Their Sights Above Only Bottom-Line Thinking
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| Tips on how to raise your sights avove bottom line thinking |
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Own Your Clients' Experiences
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| Creating memorable, client-focused experiences creates loyalty. Hold yourself accountable for this and make this the focus of everyone in your organization. |
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Employees are your life blood. Don’t spring a leak.
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| Maximize employee longevity, productivity and loyalty |
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Advertising & Referrals -The Two Big Punches of Marketing
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| The 5 reasons to advertise and why to use referrals |
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Home Business Opportunities You Can Start Online
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| Are you tired of the drudgery of the typical workday, just like many other people who are searching for their own home business opportunity so that they can finally quit the corporate world and work from home? |
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Who Has Your Intellectual Capital
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| Build Business Value when Preparing for a Business Sale, Merger and Acquisition, (M&A) by Protecting Your Key People |
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When to Fold ‘Em
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| I should get a reaction here; after all I’m the guy who keeps saying “never quit,” right? Let’s not call it quitting then; let’s call it a “tactical re-deployment!” Just to make things a little more complicated, I’ve also traditionally been the guy who says not to listen to the detractors when they’re telling you to lay down. Today I’m going contrarian on that view as well.
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Developing Strong Relationships on the Job
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| Finding the right position is only one piece of the puzzle that leads to job satisfaction. Have you ever heard someone say, "I’d like my work if it weren’t for the people I work with"? One of the greatest challenges in the workplace is getting along with other people. It hardly matters if someone is the best and brightest at what he does if he creates dissension in the office. Regardless of whether we’re hired to lead or be led, it is the ability to establish functional and healthy workplace relationships that can make or break our success and job satisfaction. |
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Turning Stress into Customer Service Success
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| No question about it: You can’t please all the people all the time! And because you’re a professional, it’s understandable that your negative experiences with customers are a source of concern for you. Yet customer stress is a leading cause of employee stress in both sales and service! The question is, what can you do to strengthen and protect yourself from stress while satisfying your challenging customers and winning their loyalty? |
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Steady – One Thing At A Time In Business
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| A lot can happen at the last moment in business. Crises and exigencies can surprise us like digital ambushes from cookies and pop-up screens. It is not that these startling events that tend to throw us off kilter, but rather how we respond to these challenges and distractions |
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How To Make Your Next “All Staff Meetings” Interactive And Engaging
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| For organizations with 200 or more employees, the All Staff Meeting is an opportunity to spark employee engagement and to build team loyalty since the size of your organization can lead to “disconnects” between employees and company leaders, and confusion over company goals. This article explores six tips for making sure your next All Staff Meeting interactive and engaging.
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Tips For Freebie Marketing
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| If utilized intelligently, freebie marketing is a wise and cost effective method for attracting new customers and promoting continued loyalty with established customers. Everywhere you look as a consumer you are bombarded with free offers. Free offers work to build trust and to entice consumers to take a chance on something new.
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Why invest in conventions?
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| Why should you invest your hard earned cash in staff attendance at Conventions? Because it pays amazing dividends |
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Janitorial Power
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| Everyone in your organization should be as powerful as possible. Think about it…When your janitor is powerful, the CEO doesn’t need to mop the floors! |
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Eight Tips in Dealing with Performance Problems
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| Eight bullet-proof tips are provided for dealing with an individuals performance problems. |
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Why Companies Die Young
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| I recently had a disturbing conversation with a close friend who has been employed by a Fortune 500 company for thirty years. Upon asking the question, “How are things at work?” this individual replied, “Not good.” The obvious next question was, “Why?” |
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Do You Pass The Leadership Test?
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| The quality of performance in any organization is a direct reflection of the quality of leadership. The quality of morale, loyalty, retention, relationships, and business performance is directly related to how individual team members respond to the following questions: |
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Recruiting for Dummies
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| When facing the challenge of recruiting personnel, most organizations out there believe that a job posting and some behavioral based interviews will suffice to hire the best candidates—this is true at some point if you are recruiting for some technical jobs such as machine lifter or tractor driver, not that there is anything wrong with these jobs, but the pool of candidates and degree of job functions and expertise will differ if you are hiring a white collar or top executive. |
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Gamification is More Than Just Fun and Games
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| Gaming is all about modifying people’s behavior by tapping into the psychological trigger(s) that prompt us to take action and keep us interested and engaged. |
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Dealing With Conflicts
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| "Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another." Ephesians 4:25 |
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The Atomic Power of Joint Ventures
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| Most entrepreneurs have been taught that you have three options with any prospect. However, in today’s world, we have to think in terms of viral marketing and multiple impacts. This is where Joint Ventures come in as pure gold. |
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SEO Success - Your Call to Action
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| You have managed to optimize your website, the navigation works and the content is relevant. But what are you asking of your viewer? Without a Call to Action, your website is just a nice place to hang around. Think of the purpose of the website and you will realize that unless you convert that traffic to sales, you've missed the point. |
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Ecommerce Web Hosting
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| Nowhere is the increasing popularity of the Internet more evident than when it comes to the rapid growth of ecommerce. Of course, right along with that is the booming ecommerce web hosting industry. More and more, people are becoming comfortable with the idea of buying things along. Especially as rewards and special offers, such as free shipping, become more common, people go online to find what they’re looking for. So why not get in on the action? |
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10 Ways to Build a Referral-Only Business In Less Than Ten Minutes a Day
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| While most businesses are spending enormous amounts in an effort to attract new customers, a select few use a strategy that has virtually eliminated the need for marketing. Building a business on referrals isn’t costly or time-consuming once you know the secret. |
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Email Newsletters That Impress
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| To truly maximize its marketing potential, the e-newsletter content must follow five important rules. |
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Email Marketing Avoid Becoming Spam
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| Email is still the best way to reach a mass audience over the Web. However, email filters are becoming a serious problem for legitimate email marketers because they inadvertently label promotional emails as SPAM. These simple guidelines will help avoid having your emails blocked as unwanted mail.
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