I’m telling you the story of what happened to me. I was in the middle of starting up a new business while playing Startupologist here at StartupNation. And my hard drive had crashed, according to the Dell Customer Service rep. A DISASTER!!! ALL MY STUFF, GONE!!!

The Cinderalla aspect of this story, though, is that just a month earlier, a business associate at a collaborating company for my startup suggested that I get an automatic back-up service. Actually, he didn’t suggest, he demanded, saying something like, “If I’m going to be dependent on you, I’ve got to be confident that you won’t have a catastrophe and lose all this data we’re sharing. You’ve got to have an automatic back-up for your data.” He mentioned a couple of options he’d used for automatic backup of your computer. I chose one not knowing the difference - Carbonite, which is always working in the background, syncing your files with a remote storage area at Carbonite.

And thank goodness for his sage advice. Within a few days of my hard drive crash, I had received a new hard drive from Dell, I logged in to Carbonite, I selected “Sync,” and after Gigabytes of downloading, Bingo! I was back in action, not a single thing missing, everything organized just like before.

So I connected with Carbonite to ask them to make a special offer to fellow entrepreneurs at StartupNation who MUST NOT suffer a loss of their priceless data. Our businesses are just too small to endure that kind of blow.

Glad to share that Carbonite has stepped up and offered a special two-months free on an annual subsciption costing around $59. They also offer their standard “Try It Free” trial without a credit card required. Here’s Carbonite’s special offer for StartupNation folks.

My data was priceless, literally. At around $5/month ($59 annualized), it was a no-brainer for me when I was first advised to download it, and now I’m giving you strong encouragement to develop your own hands-off, automatic back-up solution.

Yes, Carbonite is an automatic backup service we have a special offer on, but choose any such service and get your data backed up automatically without having to think about it. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did. In business, the key is taking only risks you HAVE to take. Your data no longer has to fall into the “risk” category.

Here’s the special offer at Carbonite

1.  The essence of an API is that it makes it easy for two types of programs to talk to each other.

2.  So when you are selecting an email marketing vendor or an accounting vendor, you want to ask them if they have an API.

3.  Next, you should consider if there are already integrations in place.  If there are, then you don’t even need an API.  For example, if your email provider is already integrated with Salesforce.com, a popular CRM application, then you know the two applications can talk to each other automatically without you having to hire a coder to make them talk to each other.

4.  Now, if any application does not have an API, then consider that it will be significantly harder to get it to talk to other applications.  Just keep that in mind then you are in decision-making mode.

As examples, many vendors have free APIs already available to anyone.  For example, Twitter and Facebook have a variety of APIs that allow you to push your content directly to the social media platforms or let your users log in to your website directly with their Facebook or Twitter information.  Many of your key solutions also integrate with your website.  For example, your email marketing platform will communicate with your website and automatically update your mailing list when new users register.  This automated approach saves you time and eliminates error.

Overall, APIs simplify your business processes by making your solutions work together seamlessly.  They are easy to integrate so all you need to do is take advantage of their benefits!

HubSpot strives to have every major marketing feature that small and medium-sized businesses need - Search Engine Optimization (SEO); lead generation, nurturing and tracking; blogging and social media management; and email marketing. Additionally, it has the analytics and reports to help companies figure out what’s working and what’s not.

Thousands of companies can’t be wrong. In fact, our user base confirms that HubSpot hits the mark. Not only does HubSpot do a good job of SEO for search engines, but it delves deeper to grade keywords on social media sites and press releases. HubSpot also provides comprehensive lead tracking and nurturing tools and incorporates timed emails to prospective leads to increase the chances of conversion.

This solution is geared to the SMB in two ways. First of all, although the price may seem high (from $250 to $1500 per month, depending on quantity of users and campaigns), it’s much cheaper than buying tools separately or hiring a consultant. All the tools come integrated - a huge added bonus. HubSpot’s value-add is really in the additional help (okay, sometimes hand-holding) that smaller companies sometimes need, especially when getting started. It ranges from the very simple (online training or webinars, for example) to the more complex (group training classes, 1:1 coaching, customized marketing plans).

HubSpot isn’t the only game in town - far from it. It’s got several worthy competitors that are well worth checking out. But so far, HubSpot is winning the game, one customer at a time.

1. You want a system from a trusted company with many satisfied users. Salesforce has the largest market share of users in the CRM space.  There are many satisfied customers and a wealth of user forums for your reference. Salesforce is a trusted company with many satisfied clients.

2.  You want a reliable, hosted CRM solution. You may be realizing that its time to move to the Web. Salesforce is a hosted solution and with it come all of the benefits of utilizing a system in the cloud.  You won’t have to worry about hardware or hardware upgrades, data backup and releasing new software versions to your company.  All you need to access your Salesforce system is Internet access. It is also accessible through mobile apps.

3. You expect your CRM solution to expand and grow over time. With Salesforce you can start out small and even customize the solution for your company early on and then have it grow over time by moving to a more advanced edition (there are 5 Editions).

4. You want the flexibility of wide and varied customizations. Salesforce has multiple custom modules to choose from depending on your business needs. The number of customizations and custom functionality grows daily, and you are sure to find the customizations out there without having to write the code yourself.

5. You want access to consultants to aid you in your implementation. There are many independent Salesforce consultants out there ready to help with analyzing your needs and determining your solution. In addition, they will consult on customization tasks and implementing your solution. These consultants can also aid you in growing your system over time.

If most, or all of these statements ring true for you, consider yourself clued in that you should investigate Salesforce for your CRM needs.  And if these statements are way beyond your needs, then check out many of the simpler, cheaper solutions out here: http://www.comparz.com/reviews/crm.

So what is social CRM?  It’s a platform that enables a company to manage all of its interactions through all forms of digital media in one place.  With Facebook and Twitter becoming an important part of any company’s marketing strategy, it is crucial to have a Social CRM tool to manage these activities.

With Constant Contact, instead of having two separate platforms, one for social and one for email marketing, you will soon have a product that integrates both - making your life easier.  The company plans to release a new social media marketing offering early next year that will help you “create and launch integrated social campaigns” and help you monitor campaigns across multiple channels.  But you don’t have to wait until next year to take advantage of some of these functions - Constant Contact’s current email platform already provides some social media tracking such as clicks, email opens and social media interactions.

As the prevalence of social media continues to grow, it is important that you are able to support, monitor and communicate with your customers via all digital touch points.  Constant Contact will soon make it even easier for you to do so!

Great! Now, what do you do?

A.     Sit back and watch who signs up.

B.     Communicate with your new registrants right away.

C.    Send valuable information to your list on a regular basis.

If you answered B and C… Ding, Ding Ding! You are right!

Newsletter Set Up is Just the Beginning.

The whole reason you have an online newsletter registration
is so that you can collect the contact information for potential
customers.

Once you get their names and e-mails, the real work begins…

• Send a thank you.

Immediately after people register for your newsletter, send them
a personalized, e-mail thank-you note. It should include a welcome
message, all the benefits they will be receiving and any kind of
free e-report, survey, white paper, etc. that you agreed to send
them if they registered.

• Schedule e-mail auto-responders.

What are they?

Well, after you send out your initial thank-you
and welcome e-mail, you need to communicate with your
list on a regular basis.

With e-mail auto-responders, you send e-mails to your
audience to remind them about your business. And these 5-10
e-mails are scheduled for automatic delivery over a matter of weeks.

However, you want to ensure these e-mail messages are personal
and provide value to the readers.

Perhaps, you can share a story about something that happened
to you recently, provide a business tip or talk about a current,
news story?

At the end of your e-mail, you remind your list about
a particular product or service that you are selling.

This way, you communicate with your list in a way that provides value,
reminds them you are around and allows them to get to know you
over time.

It is a fantastic way to build long-term, customer relationships.

• Are you blogging and using social media?

In addition to sending out the e-mail auto-responders mentioned above,
you also want to let your list know when you have a new blog entry,
article, sale, etc. And this is just a simple process of scheduling an
e-mail to go out whenever you have a new entry.

For these services, check out:

http://aweber.com/?324776
www.constantcontact.com
www.icontact.com
www.myemma.com
www.verticalresponse.com

This way, you can easily stay in touch with your list on a regular
basis and keep your products and services top-of-mind while
providing value.

• Monitor e-mail auto-responder results.

Once your newsletter-registration and e-mail auto-responder
process is in place, be sure to monitor it regularly.

By checking your e-mail service, you can see how many people
opened your e-mail, the most popular content and clicks,
the best subject lines and send times, undeliverables, spam notices,
and more.

This is valuable information you can use to get the best results
for your e-mail efforts. Plus, you can use this data to discover key
trends with your list members, conduct follow-up, stop issues before
they become big problems, and create new content to meet their
specific needs.

Take Advantage of This Process.

Having a newsletter registration allows you to create and
grow your own list of customers. But this is just the beginning.

Once you offer your newsletter, it’s important to provide
personalized information  to your list on a regular basis via
an e-mail auto-responder series.

Now, you may think that your customers will turn away if you
send them too many e-mails. And sure, you will get some
unsubscribes. But you do not want these “uninterested” people
on your list anyway.

Just be sure to send valuable information your customers can
use. And note that there is an art to the content and timing of these
e-mails… so I strongly advise that you hire an experienced, SEO
copywriter to help you write and send them.

But it’s well worth the time, cost and effort. With good, e-mail
auto-responders, your list will actually look forward to
receiving  your e-mails.

And this means you can build valuable,
long-term customer relationships that will catapult your business
above the competition and dramatically increase sales.

Do you need assistance setting up your newsletter process and
e-mail auto-responder series? Please write to me here or at
www.rembrandtwrites.com. Your site traffic will increase!

It is because of all of these reasons that document management software was created in the first place. Of course, just knowing that the software exists does not help you to understand which one is the best for your growing company. There are a few different brands out there all telling you that they will meet all of your document management needs. If you are willing to invest just a little bit of time on research, it is possible to find the exact software that you have been looking for and you can get on with your life.

Look into Efficiency
One of the main reasons why you are likely investing your time and money into document software is because you are looking to save some time out of your day. The only way you will be able to accomplish this is if the software you install has the ability to provide a good workflow. Workflow is the ability to find and access information in a streamlined manner. It includes going through the security phases in order to gain access to the documents as well as the procedures for finding the document.

Look into Hosting
The right software will allow you to host your information where you want it to be hosted. You will be able to choose between hosting the information locally on your own system, in a managed system or on your system but allowing access from anywhere. Many prefer to allow another company to host the information for them because of the added layers of security. Others believe that allowing anyone else to have possession of secured documents is a security risk. If you do decide to host your documents, it is highly important that you encrypt your files properly.

Look into Ease of Use
The software will not be very efficient if you cannot figure out how to use it. Test out the software yourself by uploading a few documents to it. If you have any employees, ask them to test out the software. If you do not have an employee, ask your spouse or a friend to test it out. If someone else finds it easy to use without any instructions, you may want to choose the software. It is important that you are not tempted to install the cheapest one no matter how low your budget is. Lower grade software can be riddled with problems or it simply will not meet your needs. Tally your list of demands first and choose based on price last.

Addoway: An online marketplace for fashion, collectibles and more that integrates with Facebook’s social graph to recommend merchants your friends have bought from, know personally or have identified as having great deals they want to share with their friends. Addoway rewards shoppers for sharing deals they like on social networks with a virtual currency called “Addo Bucks” that shoppers can cash in for discounts on Addoway purchases, free gift cards from popular retailers like Starbucks and Best Buy or access to limited-entry giveaways of popular products like an Apple iPad or Nintendo Wii. Addoway offers a free online storefront for merchants with easy importing and inventory management that syncs with eBay and its recommendation engine and social sharing platform provides merchants with an easy way to spread their products virally.

BigCommerce: Robust online selling solution that provides merchants with a handful of tools, including drag and drop design, simple distribution to eBay and shopping comparison sites, automated email marketing and mobile commerce features. On the social side, BigCommerce provides subscribers with a way to distribute their inventory into a shop on their Facebook fan page. When shoppers visit the fan page and click an item they like, they are redirected to the merchant’s BigCommerce store off Facebook to complete the purchase.

Payvment: Shopping cart solution tailored to selling on Facebook. Payvment’s system allows merchants to set up a free online shop on Facebook. Payvment’s Facebook stores are searchable, allowing shoppers to search all Payvment stores from within one seller’s fan page at once. Unlike a lot of other Facebook store applications, Payvment allows shoppers to purchase right on Facebook without having to redirect to a third-party website to checkout. Payvment uses PayPal to process payments.

Sellit: An embeddable “mini-shop” that can be distributed across the web and on social networks. Sellit’s social turns stores from online marketplaces into a pretty cool flash mini-shop with a sample of that store’s best products. The mini-shop can be displayed directly on blogs, social networks and more. Sellit offers “Ad Paks” that enable merchants to have their mini-shop distributed to thousands of locations on the web as an advertisement for the store. Sellit has established partnerships with some of the most popular online marketplaces like Etsy and Cafepress.

Wildfire: Promotion builder for social networks. For quite a while Wildfire has been providing small and large businesses with promotional tools for social networks, and recently launched a self-service platform to enable merchants to run their own “Group Buying” promotions from within their Facebook pages. The deals work similar to Groupon. Merchants can set up a special promotion (i.e. $20 for $40 worth of merchandise from their store) and then require that a certain number of people buy the deal in order for everyone to get it (which encourages buyers to share the deal with their friends). Wildfire charges a fee per campaign and per day that it is run.

Have comments on one of these tools or any others? Tell us in the comments below.

(Disclosure: I am a partner and advisor to Addoway)

About the Author: Corey Kossack is a Managing Partner at Game Change Ventures, focusing on partnering and consulting with startups in the areas of social media, consumer Internet and e-commerce. Corey is also an Operating Partner at Game Change Ventures’ first Internet startup, Addoway, a social marketplace that helps you buy and sell with your friends and the people they know. Formerly Corey was one of the world’s largest retailers on eBay, built a $1M company from scratch at age 23, has led multiple startups and received numerous awards for his entrepreneurial achievements.

Tell us about your business.

The internet happened to be a perfect medium for the promotional products industry due to the vast amount of product and supplier choices, fast turnaround times required, low competition, and customer need for lower pricing and streamlined processes. So I, and two other, very good software developers, set out to revolutionize promotional products on the Web by creating an organic, robust Web application that is seamlessly integrated with our website, our ordering system, billing system, and CRM system, all in one.

It’s a place where marketing professionals, small businesses, universities, government and the like can go online at any time of the day, any day of the week and research/purchase quality promotional items to promote their business/message and do it for less money and effort.

Now that we have an award-winning, world class Website, a happy and knowledgeable staff, things are going better than ever. Sales are reaching record growth numbers year over year, and we’re in the process of moving to a new location to accommodate for the near 100% increase in employees.

What was the biggest challenge in starting your business and how did you overcome it?

Getting 15000 + products on the site maintained and ready for purchase. There are many options available to consider when purchasing promotional items, and online, it can be a very challenging task when there are so many items and suppliers to choose from. There are materials, colors, imprint areas, decoration methods, shipping methods, rush production options, images, etc.

How do you display these options to the user so that the information is clear and concise? How do you calculate and present back accurate pricing instantly based on user input? With so many products, how do you categorize them so that a user can narrow their choices? How do you then encourage the user to take the steps required to convert them into paying customers? When pricing changes, how do you update all of the products before they are out of date again?

These are just a few of the challenges we face and continue to optimize. The key is to do more planning and testing than implementation. It should be an organic and ever evolving process. If you dive in and start trying to display every product available with every option available, that’s all you will accomplish and when you’re done, you’ll have to do it all over again.

What marketing and promotional tactics did you use to grow your business and why?

We have tried everything from affiliate and referral programs, to direct mail, catalogs, email blasts, and online Pay Per Click advertising. We used these mediums at first because we were really just following the lead of most others in the industry.

We thought, “If these guys are doing it, then it must work.” Well, we were wrong. We learned that just because successful companies are doing something, it doesn’t mean they are doing it correctly or optimally and if they are, it still may not be the right thing for our company.

We learned that print marketing and Pay Per Click advertising are incredibly expensive and not great converters. We then changed our strategy to focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). That was one of the best decisions we ever made. If done correctly, this avenue yields high volumes of qualified buyers at a very low cost.

What marketing and promotional tactics worked best, and why do you think that is?

The core of our business comes from high levels of search engine visibility via Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). There’s just no better medium for the amount of lead volume for the low amount of costs. The unique visitors (not the meaningless “hits” metric) to our website via search engines are over 100,000 per month and costs us next to nothing.  Where else can you get that much exposure for so little money?

If you had to start over again, is there anything you would do differently and why or why not?

Make sure every partner, vendor, and the like are not only part of the potential success, but that they are also held accountable for the potential failure. And make sure it’s in writing. Even though InkHead has enjoyed a great amount of success, we would be a great deal further along had we dotted a few “I’s” and crossed a few “T’s” when forming relationships.

What advice do you have for new entrepreneurs pursuing their business dreams?

Increase your chances of success by learning to fail.

Don’t get too busy making plans for all your future success, yet plan for failure, always in writing, and when it goes wrong you’ll have a chance to try it again.

Speed Kills.

If you’re going to do something, get it done immediately. Perfect plans never get executed, so start things a step at a time and build as you go, but do it now. If you don’t, someone else will.

Embrace the Web.

Humility Required.

Relationships are essential when starting and maintaining a new business. No vendor, customer, partner or employee enjoys building relationships with business owners who are arrogant, unethical, or too prideful to accept responsibility for mistakes. So, you must leave pride at home and learn to gracefully take your blows. Resolve issues quickly by being straightforward but respectful.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

There is no greater value to a business owner than being seen and heard as a recognized brand. Promotions and relationships are proven to be the most effective way to do this. That is what InkHead’s business model is all about. That is what we do for our customers, employees, vendors, and ourselves.

Thanks for your great insights and tips Chris! We wish you all the best and continued success!

How about you? Do you need help with your SEO copywriting and marketing strategies to boost sales, awareness and credibility? Please write to me here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

Tell us about InfoDome and why you created it.

InfoDome is a simple and powerful online database that makes it easy to collect, manage, analyze, and share your data across remote users.

Spreadsheet users and database authors can import their data, visually design forms and relational reports with drag-and-drop ease, share these selectively, or embed them in a website with a few clicks, and drill into data for business intelligence.

We created it to let people with a wide range of skills benefit from having an online database to better manage their information, especially with remote users, as so many small businesses are using virtual offices and remote employees or contractors.

Do you think InfoDome will change the way people use technology like your brother changed things with Apple?

Yes, InfoDome will be used by people with database experience, and by a lot more people who haven’t been able to use one because databases have traditionally been too hard to use and share.

Desktop software databases are too difficult for mere mortals to author, and you need lots of IT support to share the data. Managing data in spreadsheets is hard because users can mistakenly override data they shouldn’t even have access to, and it’s tedious to manually report on the data.

We have customers using InfoDome as a small business database for tracking leads, inventory, tasks, students – in ways that are custom to their needs. InfoDome makes it easy to provide each person a focused form to manage their data, and reports that provide business insight.

How are you promoting InfoDome?

We promote InfoDome via events like DEMO Spring 2010, search engine marketing and public relations.

What marketing and promotional techniques have worked best and why?

We’ve had best results from search engines, because we have a solution to a problem people are directly searching for.

What kind of marketing techniques do you plan to use in the future to grow the company?

We plan to evaluate affiliate marketing and inside sales.

What piece of advice do you have for new business owners?

Make sure your team is motivated by the work they do rather than external rewards. If people love their work and the product they’re working on, it’s so much easier.

Also, there are so many ways to manage your business using a cloud application. Check out online solutions before you commit to an installed software package.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Your website is really great resource for entrepreneurs and small business owners!

Thanks for the compliment and the great insights Mark. We wish you all the best!

How about you? Do you need help with your marketing strategies to boost sales, awareness and credibility? Please write to me here or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.