We may laugh at stories like this one posted on Clients from Hell, but ultimately, we are the ones they should laugh at if this is what the client actually believes. We have not done our jobs communicating clearly.

 If we don't educate our clients with the terminology we use while working on their projects, or learn to reword it in terms they are familiar with, we have no one to blame but ourselves when there is this hurricane of a degree of a misunderstanding. AND, on the other hand, if you are the client and something doesn't make sense, someone is geekspeaking at you, hailing acronyms on you that you're unsure of their meaning - ASK! We think you know some of this stuff, or assume you do because you smile and nod your head as if you understand,  or don't ask any questions.

I've been on both sides of this scenario. 

When I was in Jr. High ('78-'80), I was always a student council member, or a representative for

Sylvia Montgomery, Partner at Hinge Marketing tackles a tough question in this SLMA Radio replay about the efficiency of email marketing to generate leads. Email response rates continue to plunge, but many companies cling to it because of cost. Certainly garbage in and poor response out isn’t unusual.   Is it the database?  The Subject line?  The offer?  Sylvia digs deep and gives us some surprising and  interesting answers. 

About Sylvia Montgomery, CPSM SENIOR PARTNER-Hinge Marketing

A Senior Partner and the head of Hinge’s A/E/C practice. When she’s not traveling around the country for speaking engagements or client meetings, you will find Sylvia creating marketing and branding strategies for clients, supervising her A/E/C team, developing new business, or working on her personal brand. With a 20-year career spanning visual communications, strategy, and marketing, and over a decade working in the A/E/C sector, Sylvia brings a creative, business-focused approach to her client engagements. She specializes in agile marketing for professional services firms, creating actionable, research-driven strategies tailored to helping businesses grow. A Starbucks aficionado, Sylvia credits her success to a top-secret formula involving caffeine and yoga. Sylvia came to Hinge from Bowman Consulting, one of the fastest-growing engineering firms in the Mid-Atlantic, where she was Director of Marketing. 

About Hinge Marketing

When it comes to choosing a marketing or branding firm, we don't envy you. There are more options out there than flies in a cow pasture. But if you want a firm that’s at home in your field and is familiar with the challenges you face, Hinge has a lot to offer that you simply won't find elsewhere in a single package: Professional Services Expertise As professional services specialists, we focus on just five market segments: Architecture / Engineering / Construction Accounting & Finance Consulting Government Contracting Technology.

http://www.hingemarketing.com/

This post may be "101" for many of you who have full marketing departments, large automated systems that process subscribers, send out auto-responders, and automatically create newsletters from your hashtagged posts on social media. This is for the rest of you. There are so many types of email marketing systems. Some are so complex and auto-piloted you barely know what is being sent out or who is engaging until you read the monthly reports. This is a very hands-off approach. Although it is helpful for tracking and saving time, you can lose touch with those who are actually

Have you ventured into Google+ yet or are you saying, "ONE more Social Media venue? Are you kidding me?" It gets better - with Google+ swallowing up YouTube and GoogleHangouts you can hit them from all angles with very little effort.

If you use YouTube, YouTube is redoing it's layout for channels. Our pretty backgrounds with our branding will no longer work. We all have to come up with new banner graphics. Good news is, you can most likely use the same graphic on Google+, too.

Here's an example of a freshened up YouTube Channel >

Here's an example of the layout of the new graphics for all formats: online, television, mobile devices >

Now, here's the thing to give a try: GoogleHangouts. It's a way to BROADCAST LIVE your video conference and automatically upload to your freshened up YouTube channel.

Here are some easy to follow articles to give you ideas and talk about the benefits of Google Hangouts:

• 5 Creative Ways Businesses Are Using Google+ Hangouts
• Six Google Hangout Examples to Learn From
• Crash Course in Google Hangouts

You and your company need to stay up on these venues and trends. Google Hangouts is under utilizied at this point, but is pretty nifty, especially when you promote your conference using "Hype My Hangout."

Think about it - tech talk, product release Q&A. Many of you already do webinars, but this is a way to control the panel and then have the recording to use later, already publicized in all social media venues.

Good news! The direct marketing precepts we learned, practiced, and have made good money at over the years not only endure, they are proving their worth once again, despite the tough economy. Examples:

“Inbound marketing” = direct response marketing. Approach the right audience with the right message, make a good offer, issue a definitive call to action, provoke the prospect’s response … Houston, we have a lead!