Optimistic

Daughter moving to Seattle, spreading her wings. Anyone know any architecture or urban planning jobs out there?

Many irons in the fire for a busy August/September. Waiting...

4 speaking engagements booked for September alone.

Fall coming, change in weather, change in perspective.

Optimistic that new developments bring new experiences.

Twitter for Business 101

The whole world seems a-flutter about Twitter and I have been a bit of a sitter on the sidelines, at least until now. I have been tweeting for a few months but am always looking for new ways Twitter can help my business.

Mashable ran a piece called Twitter 101 which is a great guide to ideas on how Twitter can benefit your business. Here it is in hopes it helps you somehow.

Let’s follow each other: I am @marchalpert

Optimists meet! Hope abounds!

Can you imagine such a newspaper headline?
Or a talking head on TV saying "Optimists meet! Hope abounds! News at 11."

Well, it indeed happened last night, at a social event held by the Optimists' Tribe, in which a diverse group put names to faces and verbal promises of deeds to accomplish in 2009 that will make world just a little better place.

Sixteen quality people met, each with a view of the present and the future as bright and hopeful, in the spirit of social cause networking.

Join us on the website. It's free, or if you care to make a contribution that's cool too.

Optimism and how to get more of it!

It's easy to be cynical or even downright pessimistic if you read the news: religious leader and mayors arrested for corruption, etc. etc.

I am not advocating suspending your newspapers subscriptions.

But I am suggesting finding optimistic open-minded people to mingle with and enjoy their energy. I am lucky I get to do this a lot.

Today I joined a new green business group sponsored by the local award-winning SCORE chapter. There were so many intelligent and sustainable business ideas in one room!

On Monday I am attending a social gathering of the Optimists' Tribe, a newly formed group that revels in an optimistic view of the present and the future. I am looking forward to an infectious evening of new contacts and positive friends.

I will report back soon.
Optimistically,
Marc

Would you like to save $4000 a year?

It pains me to meet a nonprofit to find out that their credit card rates and other online donor services are so out of the market that they could realize savings of $4000 a year, that's a 50% savings! It happened again last week in Stamford.

Not that they are foolish or asleep at the wheel; on the contrary. It's just that my trained and objective eye can find new ways to give them the same functionality (actually better!) for less.

Once a controller came up to me after a presentation meeting at which I won their business and said, "You don't realize what you've just done-you saved us enough money to take one of our staffers and make her a full time employee."

Now that's good for the employee and for the organization. And it makes me feel good too, that I am able to help out in a new way.

What can we do for you?

Guest Blogger Lesley Mattos Tells Us How NOT To Be Treated as a Client

From her blog Adesso Albums entitled,

"Authorize.NOT"

Friday, July 3, 2009 by Lesley Mattos

About 11:00 p.m. Pacific last night, there was a fire in the data center in Seattle, Washington where the credit card processing company for our e-commerce site is located. It was almost 12 hours before Authorize.NOT, as I like to refer to them now, resolved the issue but it took them 9 of those hours before they reached out to their customer base through Twitter.

The scary thing about this is that the Companys back up servers were impacted by the fire as well. Now I'm a very (VERY) small business compared to Authorize.net and even I know that redundancy means more than one copy of your important data and more than one place for it to reside. For God sake, they're the #1 credit card processing company in the world, you'd think they'd know that too!

Whoever is tweeting for them is now singing the praises of their response to the situation. The "tweet" - "Been on conf. call with the team for hours now. Impressed with how calm & meticulous they have been thru this entire event." Great. Next time try communicating that you've got it all under control the instant the issue arises so your customers aren't pulling up a blank website or calling a number that says the company is closed for the holiday weekend. Communicate with YOUR customers so that they can be proactive with theirs. It's not rocket science, it's just good customer relations.

Absent any information, here's what we did for our customers who were unable to complete purchases of our unique instant photo guest books to use for their wedding guest book, baby keepsake album, birthday or wedding shower guest book:

* We checked to see who had abandoned their shopping cart since the outage

* We sent an email to each of them, informing them about the outage and letting them know that we'd contact them again when the situation was resolved

* We offered them a 10% discount on their order when they did come back


The good news (and there always is some) is that I'd bet that someone has lit a firecracker under the "calm and meticulous" Authorize.NOT team are thinking long and hard over this holiday weekend about redundancy and beefing up their crisis communication plan. Let's hope so!

Guest Blogger Howard Levy with some great tips on direct mail fundraising

I get to know some dynamic people who show great expertise in their fields. One of them is Howard Levy, who hails from Orange, CT but is providing sharp branding services for nonprofit out of Red Rooster Group, his marketing design firm in NYC. Howard is sharing a posting as my guest blogger today and I think it contains great tips that make paper mail solicitations much more effective:

"I just received a direct mail piece from Audubon that I think is effective (of course I don’t know what actual results were). Here are the elements and graphic techniques that I think make this piece appealing:

1. An enticing outer envelope. First, the package gets your attention. No mailing can be successful unless the recipient is compelled to envelope. This outer envelope is printed in full color with a lush image of an egret (which appeals to their members) and has a seal enclosure that looks like a label which gives it a special caché that elevates it above other fundraising appeals (the envelope flap is actually die cut). Also, notice that the offer to “Double your impact” is on the envelope.
2. An appealing offer. Due to a Challenge Grant by a large donor (made to several organizations), all donations made will be matched. Double your donation is a very compelling offer, especially in this recession.
3. Graphic demonstration of the offer. Not only does it tell that it will double your money, it actually shows you what those amounts are to make the offer more tangible. The piece is designed as perforated vouchers with the amounts pre-printed, no doubt based on the recipients’ previous giving levels to motivate donors to give a levels that are comfortable for them.
4. Repetition of the message. The Challenge Fund is presented in an elegant seal-like crest that makes the package feel special, with the words “Match My Gift” prominent on every voucher.
5. Effective design. Overall, the piece conveys an upscale look that reinforces the positive impression that Audubon is a professionally-run organization that will put the money to good use. Instead of many different fonts, lots of indents indents and use of yellow highlighting typical of fundraising letters, in this package the typefaces are kept to a minimum and the colors are restrained to Audubon’s signature green and an accent yellow to create an upscale, consistent look.
6. Comfort for the donor. Notice the Better Business Bureau logo on each form to provide an endorsement for the charity. Every bit of credibility helps when you are competing for funds."

Thanks, Howard!