StartupNation Blogs

With hundreds of millions of registered users across the world, social networking web sites are among the most popular places to communicate and trade information. There are numerous reasons why people use these sites: to find colleagues, friends or classmates, read breaking news, or make new business connections. As social media continues to evolve, [...]

In the past few years, we have seen a dramatic shift in the way we talk about our environment. From heated debates in Congress about amending our energy policies, to the fervor generated by Al Gore’s award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, to millions of businesses changing their company cultures, “greening” has entered into the discourse [...]

I’ve spoken in the past about the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and how it affects email marketers. Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) to establish guidelines for those businesses that send out commercial emails, and to cut down the on volume of spam through the U.S. As ethical [...]

Email marketing services like iContact have a powerful method of improving the open and response rates for your email newsletters: message personalization. People generally respond more favorably to marketing when you make them feel unique. On the other hand, they tend to respond differently to things when they perceive themselves as part of a larger [...]

Earlier in the week, I began a discussion about what you should not do with your email newsletters. In his article, “The Eight Deadly Sins of Email Marketing,” Ron Evans talks about the worst things you can do with your email marketing campaigns. Here are the final four “deadly sins:”

Don’t [...]

I’ve spoken at length about what to say in your email messages to make your company more attractive to your potential customers. I have also discussed ways to improve the look and feel of your messages to give them a more professional appearance. These best practices will help you maximize your email marketing campaigns, raise [...]

After a nearly two-decade hiatus, Indiana Jones is back in a new adventure that is ripping through box offices across the world. Ever since Raiders of the Lost Ark captured the world’s imagination in 1981, philosophers, professors and college students alike have tried to decipher Indy’s iconic image. They say, “Look, we know this is [...]

There are a few main methods of scaling your business, including: investing more in online or offline advertising, franchising your company, opening up offices in other cities and countries, expanding your business into the international market.
With the advent of the Internet and email marketing, the markets of the world have become more accessible to [...]

In his book, Succeed and Grow Rich through Persuasion, Napoleon Hill listed eleven traits that the successful salesperson must possess. I have adapted these and created my own Nine Traits a Successful Salesperson Must Have:

Knowledge of merchandise
Belief in the merchandise or service
Knowledge [...]

The skill of sales is one of the most-prized attributes that an aspiring entrepreneur can have. The ability to lay out the reason why someone should buy from you and not your competitor, in a customer-centered fashion – and then go for the sale at the exact right moment, is more difficult than one would [...]