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E-Newsletters: Hit ‘em where they are

Patrick Ledwell — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:55:21 +0000

Looking for a smart start to your new year? On January 12, I’ll be holding a new morning-long session on “How to Create an E-Newsletter,” in partnership with ProfitLearn PEI and the Queen Street Commons. You can register for the session on-line at the Queen Street Commons site.

Early baseball legend Willie Keeler had this advice for aspiring baseball hitters: “Keep your eye clear, and hit ‘em where they ain’t.” If you replace “where they ain’t” with “where they are,” it’s good advice for on-line communication. You need to have clear-eyed content, and to hit it where they are, on a daily basis.

E-Newsletters are still one of the most effective ways of pulling together your on-line message in one place, for an interested audience. The main reason? Because e-mail is where people are.

Many small businesses and groups have been placing most of their on-line focus on social media. There’s a lot of interesting new ways to connect with Facebook and Twitter, for sure. But when you’re developing an on-line strategy, and looking at social media and more time-tested media like e-newletters, it’s not an either-or proposition.

E-Newsletters find people when they start their day– in their e-mail inbox. A subscriber may only look at your content for 30 seconds, but that time window gives you a chance to relate what’s new and interesting in your world. It might be a Facebook campaign, a new blog post, or an on-line promotion. The e-newsletter provides you a way to integrate all these links in one place, and put them right where they can be noticed.

It’s an ideal way to reward loyal members of the audience with special information, or unique promotions. I have clients that use e-newsletters to circulate high quality pictures and postcards, and others that use special e-newsletter promotion codes to give discounts to subscribers.

Current e-newsletter systems, like MailChimp or ConstantContact, also provide you with smart information about how many people are opening your news, and what content they’re interacting with. Using these analytics, you can decide how to best spend your on-line time, and to learn what content people find engaging.

These systems give you easy-to-use tools to keep on track, making sure that you only send information to recipients who want to get it, and that your content is the kind that’s always worth a click.

In the January 12 E-Newsletter session, I’m looking forward to sharing success stories and good practices. It will be a hands-on session, meant to give you the tools to start your own e-newsletter or to spur some new activity with your existing e-newsletter. Hope to see you there.

Setting Up an e-Commerce Web Site for Small, Home-Based Retail Businesses

Patrick Ledwell — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:31:31 +0000

Here are the resources for a new hour-long learning session that I’m leading at the Queen Street Commons, this Wednesday Oct. 19, at 12:00 noon.

The session is called “Setting Up an e-Commerce Web Site for Small, Home-Based Retail Businesses.” If you’ve never had the chance to try e-Commerce for your business, the set-up time and fees of a full e-Commerce site can be … well … intimidating.

Web-based payment tools like PayPal have made small business over the internet more manageable and easy-to-implement. This session focuses on how you can set up and use PayPal to do small-scale sales directly from most existing websites, with a manageable amount of time, effort, and hassle.

In this one-hour session, we travel from PayPal set-up to putting items up for sale. Check out the PDF of the session.

PEI Beer Festival

Patrick Ledwell — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:08:10 +0000

Everybody loves beer. Right?

People in Prince Edward Island appreciate a fine brew, and the province boasts a couple of micro-breweries and a legion of beer fanciers. So it was a natural next step in summer 2011, when Campbell Webster Entertainment announced that they would be launching the first annual PEI Beer Festival.

The idea behind the festival? To allow PEI beer lovers to experience the best regional, national, and international varieties, from major breweries abroad and micro-breweries, right here.

PEI Beer Festival website

The main challenge? The PEI Beer Festival had a narrow time window to roll out their 2011 marketing.

After getting all the approvals they needed, the Festival needed the site to be up-and-running in a week. The site also had to be very easy to update, so that the organizers could add new details about exhibitors and varieties of beer, as confirmations came in.

The site also needed an on-line ticketing solution, and to keep the ticket surcharges low.

We created a custom designed WordPress-based site, which adapted to fit new details about the Festival, as they arrived.

We designed a look-and-feel to match the Festival logo, and a single main page that brought together all the key details about the Festival’s time, location, and tickets. The pages are directly editable by the client, and we also incorporated a blog to highlight interesting news stories, like the local supplier who debuted a new craft beer at the Festival. Site visitors were able to recommend pages to their friends on Facebook and Twitter, which doubled site traffic.

We also integrated PayPal ticketing on the site, and it was a low-cost solution which resulted in increased pre-event ticket sales.

WordPress design
Blogging
Content management
PayPal integration

PEI Writers’ Guild

Patrick Ledwell — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:00:28 +0000

The Prince Edward Island Writers’ Guild (PEIWG) is an organization dedicated to supporting writers of all kinds, from poets to non-fiction writers to screenwriters. The Writers’ Guild supports young writers by organizing the Island Literary Awards each year, creates mentorship programs for emerging writers, and develops workshops across different writing genres.

In 2011, the PEI Writers’ Guild needed a new website, which could stay up-to-date with the many activities of the organization.

PEI Writers’ Guild website

In fall 2011, the PEI Writers’ Guild took on the organization of the Pen & Inkling Festival, a week-long event celebrating writing in Prince Edward Island. It was a big event, for a small organization.

The Writers’ Guild needed a website that could get the word out about Pen & Inkling events. The co-ordinator wanted a quick way to add details on her own, and to do press releases running up to the Festival dates.

The Writers’ Guild also wanted to build its membership, through this high-activity, high-profile time. A combination of paper-based forms and incomplete spreadsheets had created a situation where there was no fully up-to-date membership list. As a membership funded organization, it was very important that there be an easy-to-use membership form, and membership information, on the website.

We created a new WordPress-based site, to fan out details about the Pen & Inkling Festival and generate more awareness about the PEI Writers Guild.

The site pulled together all the Pen & Inkling event details, scheduling, and biographies of all presenters. The user-friendly content system allowed the event co-ordinator to update the details, as they got confirmed or when the information arrived.

Event tools and news releases featured social networking buttons, so supporters could pass along the word on Facebook or Twitter, with a single click.

Using free Google Docs, we built a new on-line membership form for the PEI Writers Guild. When a new member fills out this on-line form, the Guild gets an e-mail notification, and all the information goes into a shared Excel-compatible spreadsheet. No more conflicts between multiple versions of the spreadsheet!

WordPress design
Blogging
Content management
Google Docs integration

Training and Facilitation

Patrick Ledwell — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:57:01 +0000

Training and Facilitation serves organizations and communities who want to engage people in meaningful dialogue and learning, and make the most of their resources.

Training and Facilitation website

Comfort Zone

Patrick Ledwell — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:45:31 +0000

Comfort Zone is an all natural brand of mosquito area repellent. Unlike personal repellents, Comfort Zone is applied to or around an outdoor area (on grass, trees, patios, etc) to provide an invisible barrier that will leave you free to enjoy outdoor activity free of pesky mosquitoes.

Comfort Zone website

Target Tours

Patrick Ledwell — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:41:45 +0000

Target Tours is an Island company that specializes in arranging escorted coach vacations that appeal to a broad range of age demographics and interests (i.e., an Amish Country Farm tour, a Theatre in New York City tour, a NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 tour).

Target Tours website

Owen Connolly Estate Bursary

Patrick Ledwell — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:17:50 +0000

The Owen Connolly Estate is a trust which grants bursaries to post-secondary students in Prince Edward Island. The funds for the bursary are from the estate of Owen Connolly, a 19th century Prince Edward Island businessman, who rose to success after immigrating from Ireland.

The aims of the new website are to provide more history on the legacy of Owen Connolly, and to help applicants understand the terms of the bursary. Rather than mailing out packages, after candidates express interest, the bursary applications and details are provided easily and immediately on-line.

This change will save the board considerable time and effort, throughout the application process.

Owen Connolly Estate Bursary website

Campbell Webster Foundation

Patrick Ledwell — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:15:37 +0000

The Campbell Webster Foundation makes grants annually to registered Canadian charities, in support of social justice and economic equity projects in Latin America and Atlantic Canada.

The goal of the website design was to broaden awareness about the Foundation’s work and grants, and also to facilitate the application process. The site helps to outline the mandate and criteria for the Foundation’s grants, and makes the application available digitally by Adobe PDF.

Campbell Webster Foundation website

Anne and Gilbert

Patrick Ledwell — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 05:37:59 +0000

Since its launch in 2005, “Anne and Gilbert” has become one of the most successful and critically acclaimed new musicals in recent Canadian history. The show has been called “such a hit” by Newsweek and “A winner” by the Toronto Star.

Sustain Creative helped the producers of “Anne and Gilbert” create a site that would share new developments for the musical, and promote each year’s productions. The site is media-rich: with YouTube videos, digital photos, and fully-playable versions of the cast recording.

Anne and Gilbert website