It was long overdue, but we worked nights and weekends and finally updated the look-and-feel of our company’s Web site. Special thanks to Stephanie for helping me with the design work and making this project a success. Steph’s doing some competitive research while I’m gone and we’ll start the Search Engine Optimization as soon as I get back from PubCon next week.
At the end of 1999 I thought I had the perfect business concept that would land me millions in VC money and finally allow me to enjoy the rich-and-famous lifestyle I so justly deserved. I even wrote a business plan! Well, the bubble burst, and the great idea wasn’t so great..and so here I am, still working for “the man”. I thought I’d publish the golf business plan just for historical fun…I mean, billions of dollars were flushed in early 2000 on crappier ideas than this one, right? Man, those were the days…all you needed was a business plan and a .com at the end of your name to strike it rich. I just missed it!
So the question to my readers is…what should I do with this domain name? Any ideas?
Visit www.GolfingGopher.com
I trusted you with my real name, my real home address, and my real email address. In exchange, you promised me informative and relevant topic-specific information. Unfortunately, the quality of your newsletter is just about on par with the 50 other spam messages that litter my inbox every week. As a matter of fact, your e-newsletters are WORSE than those other useless messages because I actually paid attention to them for a few minutes. But no more…you’ve stolen enough of my time. I am unsubscribing (and, BTW, I am going to talk shit about your company to anyone who asks).
Free e-Newsletter Tips: Keep them short, keep them simple, make sure that they are useful, and keep self-promoting hype to a minimum. e.g. I don’t care who got promoted to VP of Sales last month. I don’t care that you just landed another relatively insignificant account. I don’t care that you just signed up your 1000th customer (only 1000? In a marketplace of millions?). I don’t care that you’re speaking at a conference on the other side of the globe. And I don’t appreciate you “re-capping” all of the other articles I’ve already read from my more authoritative newsletters.
You promised me value. Give it to me. Or I quit.
I get ten industry-related newsletters a day. Please make yours count. I don’t even need an entire article for cryin’ out loud! (Just a little something that points me in the right direction and gets me thinking.) I’m not asking much from you…only what you promised me when I signed up in the first place.
Please don’t waste my time, please don’t bore me, and please don’t insult my intelligence. Monthly newsletters are a great way of building your business and keeping your brand top-of-mind, I get that. But if your subscribers feel that your newsletter is nothing more than opt-in spam, you are doing your company more harm than good.