If there is an easy way and a hard way to do something, I always
pick the latter. If it can be done fast or slow, I end up with slow.
And if a path is tricky and fraught with traps, I land in every
one.
I
make mistakes -- lots of them, but I take pride in the fact that
I never make the same one twice. In fact, the next time around,
I usually know exactly how to accomplish the task quickly, neatly
-- and to near-perfection. To me, "trial and error" isn't
just a learning concept -- it's a way of life. Recognizing
this quirk of my personality has served me well in the course of
launching my online business. I've made some truly bone-headed errors...
but each one taught me valuable lessons. Here are some of them: #1
Forgive Me Father, For I Have Spammed When
I first began planning my online business, I had a narrow understanding
of what was permissible in email marketing. I knew enough not to
send bulk email to addresses purchased from a questionable source.
However, (and I am somewhat ashamed to admit this) I did attempt
to solicit sales to individual strangers via email -- which is spam. Luckily,
my clumsy sales letters were very polite, so while this tactic wasn't
successful (spam never is), I didn't receive any angry responses,
either. Basically, I was ignored... which is how I treat most of
the spam that now clutters my InBox daily (poetic justice, I'm afraid). I
LEARNED MY LESSON: While the definition of spam is somewhat
in the eye of the beholder, there seems to be some consensus that
it is *any* unsolicited email to someone with whom you have no existing
prior business relationship. I
now work on building relationships and trust before I send a sales
message -- and often receive inquiries from others *asking* to advertise
on my website. (Now, if I could just learn how to write better sales
letters!)
#2:
The Importance of Being Private I
committed more email gaffes in subsequent weeks. There was the time
I tried to send the same message to five subscribers at once without
masking their addresses. Now,
when I was working in the corporate world, I needed to communicate
regularly to a group of 1,500 individuals. I learned then to mask
their email addresses so the recipients would not have to scroll
through all those names before they got to the message. But
with a list of just five people, I didn't think twice about putting
their names in the To: field, as I do when emailing my friends and
family.
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Donna Schwartz Mills is the Editor/Webmaster of the
ParentPreneur Club <http://www.parentpreneurclub.com>,
"where those who are doing the most important job of all
hang their hats." She can be reached at
mailto:donna@parentpreneurclub.com. |
