Of course, it’s a good idea to have an open channel of communication with your clients, because it keeps them from forgetting about you. A professional newsletter can also increase recipients’ perception that you are familiar and established, and so makes it easier for them to buy from you. But in the end, like everything else in business, it comes down to the payoff. What is the final objective of your e-mail campaign? Better yet, what is the objective of the very next e-mail you’re going to send out?

If the objective is to win a sale, then you’ll already be very clear on this. But often, maintaining a mailing list involves sending out a number of messages with less decisive agendas. You can improve your e-mail marketing campaigns immensely by doing three simple things:

1. Set a goal for every message you send out.

What would you like for this particular newsletter to accomplish for your business? Do you want to inspire your recipients to click through to your web site? Are you hoping to get them to forward your newsletter to their friends so you can grow your membership? Do you want them to fill out a survey? Do you simply want them to trust you more?

2. Think of a couple of different ways you might accomplish this.

If you’re trying to get your message recipients to trust you, then your job is very easy. All you have to do is give them information that is both authoritative and immediately useful to them, and ask for nothing in return. Of course, you’ll have to have this type of information first, so this type of goal is excellent if you are an authority on the topping of your newsletter.

If you’re aiming to induce a specific action, your strategy will be similarly rational: in most cases, you’ll just ask them to do what you want them to do. That isn’t really as simple as it seems, of course. Is it better to ask at the beginning of a message or at the end? In the middle? Should you give them a whole paragraph to pitch the action or just set it aside in a colored box apart from your content? These variables will be different for every newsletter based on the preferences of your demographic and the nature of the information you’re sending out. How do you determine which is best for your purposes?

3. Test them against each other.

Just set up your A/B Split test in 1-2-All and send out your mailing. Then pay attention to the results and note them for future mailings. See how easy that was? Now you know something about your client base that you never knew before–you’ve learned a little something about how to induce them to perform a specific action. In your next newsletters, you can keep right on putting that technique to work, or (and here’s the real secret) keep testing. Do a split test every single time you send out a message. It’s just a little more work, and the results can scale exponentially. Use the insights of all of your previous tests to design each of your next tests, so that your knowledge of your customers snowballs into… dare I say… absolute power. Or, at the very least, you can get more people to forward your messages to their friends

Don’t think small with these insights either. Everything you learn about getting someone to click through to your site is also an insight that can potentially be used to win a sale. Knowledge is money.

Other minor changes in 4.80 include bug fixes, updates to the subscription forms, and updates to sending filters.

Multiple SMTP Screenshots:

• Top 10 Entry/Exit graphs now have improved algorithms.
• The search engine report no longer reports blank search engines.
• Custom fields in TrioLive are now managed by our modern custom field system used in 1-2-All, SupportTrio, VisualEdit and SwiftTraction.
• Chat usernames are now cached in a visitor’s traffic session, which should defeat the problem where what’s reported on the traffic list as a visitor’s last-used chat name is inaccurate.
• Update geolocation data
• We now cache the referrer in the traffic session table.
• Removed an option to define HIDDEN custom field as required
• Now passing more variables to Forgot Password emails

Here are some screenshots of the new version:

Most people who don’t produce or use a lot of web-based software have never heard of either of these products and get a little flustered when confronted with the question of which they should download. If you’re using a shared web hosting account or have an in-house server admin running your web server, then you have a simple one-step solution: pick up the phone, call the admin, and ask which one you can use

If you’re running your own server, it’s still very simple. The first thing to do is to find out if your server can already run Ioncube scripts, since if it can there are no additional steps for you. The way to find this out is to:

• download our test script
• unzip and upload it to your web directory
• and then open it up in a web browser

You’ll see something like this:

As you can see, my own local test server is not able to run Ioncube-encoded scripts without additional setup, because I’m using the latest version of PHP, which has broken dynamic loading. That’s no big deal, because I went ahead and installed the free Zend Optimizer with just a couple of clicks, and now I’ll show you how to do the same.

Download Zend Optimizer

If you find this part challenging, you probably shouldn’t be trying to run your own web server! 

What you need to do is to download the Zend Optimizer package onto your web server. You can get it from http://www.zend.com/en/products/guard/downloads, where you’ll need to select the appropriate package for your server. So first select the radio button labeled “Zend Optimizer” (not the one labeled “Zend Guard,”) and then you’ll find that the dropdown box becomes populated with a list of server types that Zend Optimizer is available for. The chances are very good that the type of server you are using is supported by Zend Optimizer. Remember, folks, you’re installing this on your web server, not on your own local computer (unless your web site is served from your local machine), so you want to be doing all this from the server, and to select the option that corresponds to the operating system running on the web server.

Before you are allowed to download, you’ll have to register for an account on zend.com on the next page. Once you’ve downloaded the software, all that is left is to install it on the server. The instructions for doing this will vary depending on the type of server that you use. If it is a Windows IIS server, just double-click on the installer .exe file and follow the instructions that appear on the screen. On any other type of system, including Mac OS X and any Linux or Unix variant, you’ll find that the installation package is compressed, so you first need to extract it.

On Linux or Unix servers

• Open up a terminal window or get yourself out to the command line. You can decompress the package by entering the following at the command line prompt:
  • gunzip -c <package name> | tar xf -
• Then, from inside the installer package directory that is created when the package is unzipped, type:
  • ./install.
• Now you’ll see a nice pretty graphical installation wizard that will walk you through setting up Zend Optimizer on your server.

On servers running Mac OS X

Installation on a server running OS X is a little more complicated that you might like it to be, but is still very doable. The most complicated part is basically just that you have to use the command line, which many OS X users are not very familiar with. However, you can find a very good tutorial for going through this process here.

Now put it to good use!

Once you’ve got Zend Optimizer installed on your server, you should be able to run Zend-encoded PHP scripts right away. So now just grab a copy of the Zend version of whichever ActiveCampaign software product you’ve purchased, and follow the installation instructions in the docs/install.txt file (you can also find the instructions in our knowledge base.)

If you run into any problems with the Zend Optimizer installation or if you get an error message saying that Zend Optimizer is not installed on your server, check the Zend website for troubleshooting tips.

Click here to view the templates and order!

This new version has a number of bug fixes and a new deign.  It should now be easier to track time and view reports.  For a full list of changes click here.

It had been a very long time since I had done this job with only one monitor, and it was fairly amazing how difficult it was to go back to it. As you can see in my screenshot below, there are quite a few things I need to have at close reach while I’m working, and there’s no way to deal with them all on a single monitor without constantly switching between windows to see what’s going on.

Which got me thinking: you guys aren’t doing all your work on just a single monitor, are you? The difference in productivity between a single and dual-monitor setup is definitely significant for anyone who is consistently working with a number of different tools. But I think there’s also a health issue here: I felt much more stressed out working that way. I felt cramped up and twitchy. By the time I left, I was a little burned out. And it was much tougher for me to unwind than is usual, even after a long day.

Working with computers all day can be much more stressful than a lot of folks would imagine. And it’s usually not an all-out assault of stress that you could point to as something that was definitely doing you harm. Rather, it’s a slow and steady trickle of stress that comes from paying attention to lots of little things for prolonged periods of time. Most of us are already only too aware that chronic stress can ruin your health, so you should take every possible precaution to ensure that your workday is as relaxed and pleasant as possible.

One of the very simplest things you can do to reduce your stress level is to reduce visual clutter. Allow yourself a little room to move around in, and you’ll find you feel less… imposed upon. This most definitely applies to what you see on your screen(s). I usually even go so far as to keep all of my windows just a little smaller than they could be so that I can see the space behind and between then more clearly. This establishes a sense of depth and expansiveness on your desktop, which not only gives you the visual impression of having more space for yourself, it also makes it easier to feel like each piece of work is a solid and graspable object, not a vast expanse of overwhelming workload.

So if you’re not already using at least two monitors, and organizing your workspace in such a way as to create a sense of natural simplicity and calm, then why not take a break from whatever you’re doing and get it set up right now? Not only will the increase in productivity easily earn back whatever time and money you spent on the setup, you’ll probably also notice an increased sense of well-being and improved overall health.

On Friday the Tribune carried a story about the sculpture, which is called the “Communication X9″ by an Israeli artist named Yaacov Agam. Yaacov is hopping mad.

It seems the sculpture was originally placed in another part of the downtown area, in an outdoor park that also features massive sculptures by Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall. Chicago loves a great big sculpture, what else can I tell you? Unfortunately, after a couple decades the paint on Agam’s sculpture started fading and peeling, so the city took it down for restoration.

This is where the trouble begins. The firm hired to perform the restoration–for $300,000!–was supposed to consult with Agam throughout the process in order to make sure that the restoration was true to his original work. The firm says they did, the artist says they didn’t. And now Agam is calling the restored sculpture “an unauthorized copy” of his original work and is suing everybody.

The idea behind the piece is that the subtle changes in color would create the perception of motion for onlookers. I never saw the original, so I can’t say how well it worked, but I don’t think I’ve noticed any perception of motion while gazing at the new and improved model.

Everything you need to navigate the support center is all on the left sidebar. Manage Your Products, for example, is where you can go to view all of your serial numbers, to upgrade your licenses, to renew your upgrade/support contract or to add phone support. You can also purchase any add-ons that are available for your product right there under Manage Your Products.

A couple of really useful new features can be found under Download Your Products. Aside for the nifty new tabbed interface (pictured above) that lets you easily sort through the different types of licenses you own, take a look at the top right corner of that image. You’ll see a link for an RSS feed that you can subscribe to to be notified of updates to the products that you own.

You’ll find another great time-saver here when you’re ready to upgrade to the latest version. Between the links for full product downloads and the links to download your add-ons, you’ll find Upgrade Patches. Our system will ask you which version you’re currently using and automatically generate a simple patch that you can upgrade with. The upgrade process is then as simple as uploading the patch files right over top of your existing install and running the updater.php script from your browser. Delicious!

There are couple new things to see and explore in your support center account, which of course we believe are self-explanatory (since we made them.) But we’ll be rolling out additional touch-ups over the next few weeks, so post here if there is anything about the new support center interface that you don’t understand or would like to see work differently.

But this idea makes customers nervous. What if they buy the product only to find out that they can’t make it work for them the way they had hoped? What if they misunderstood the promotional literature and come to find that a critical feature is missing? What if they just plain change their mind? We’ve all experienced these worries when making a purchase, and your customers are no different. Your job is to put their minds at ease. Because nervous people don’t buy. They put it on hold and then forget to get back to it. It happens. You can probably think of plenty of times when you did this yourself.

Enter the money back guarantee. If you know you can get your money back, you worry less. You feel less pressured. You have some breathing room. So you go for it. As a business owner, you’ve told your customer that you are willing to shoulder the burden of their potential buyer’s remorse.

This is actually a win-win situation, because if you know that you’ve represented your product accurately, and that it is of a high quality, you can already predict that the vast majority of people who buy from you will not ask for their money back. You have the advantage in the situation: you already know that your customer needs what you are offering. As long as you are actually delivering what you promise, the only people who will ever take you up on the offer are the ones who simply misunderstood. And, frankly, you want them to return the product to you for a refund. Otherwise you’ll have a dissatisfied customer out their talking about all the things your product can’t do. This build up a perceived deficit in what may otherwise be a great product. The moral of the story is that you only ever want happy customers who will tell people nice things about you.

Offering a money back guarantee not only alleviates your customer’s anxiety about purchasing, it also conveys confidence. If you’re willing to give them 30 or even 60 days to make up their minds about whether the product is worth it, they know you mean business. If you’re selling crap, this strategy is not going to work for you. But when you’ve worked hard to produce a product that meets your clients’ needs, the sales you will gain by using this strategy will vastly outweigh the refunds you end up paying out.