By no means do we encourage people to drink and drive, but we DO encourage them to visit the new MOBILE website for the 29th Annual Wine & Roses Charity Wine Tasting! From the comfort of your couch (or the passenger’s seat in your car) grab your phone and go to www.wineandroses.net or scan the QR code below…

Visitors can:

• Purchase tickets
• Navigate to the event
• See the full list of restaurants & wineries
• See photos from previous events
• and more!

One of our clients is a political candidate running for the United States House of Representatives, and she has just won a write-in campaign, leading her to an official election!

To help her secure her candidacy, Twin Bees designed business-card sized information cards. We printed 30,000 cards and shipped them to the east coast. Campaign volunteers covered the surrounding counties and passed them out to voters!

Write-in campaigns are incredibly difficult to win, as each voter must make an extra effort to follow correct write-in procedures… otherwise his or her vote is not counted.

The cards produced for the campaign gave clear directions to voters. And now we know, that’s the ticket to win!

In other words, the agent receives all of the benefits of having his very own, personalized magazine… yet it does not cost him anything! Agent wins. Readers win. Partners win.

While this magazine deals with local real estate and its partner services, please note that we can create a custom magazine for ANY business or industry.

SIZES

• Pocket 5.5 Tall x 4.25 Wide
• Booklet 8.5 Tall x 5.5 Wide
• Full 11 Tall x 8.5 Wide
• Custom ? Tall x ? Wide

Call (858) 877-3733 and let’s discuss YOUR new magazine!

We are excited to launch the new website for Wine & Roses, a charity event now in its 29th year in San Diego.

The new site is a dramatic refresh of the site we designed for the organization last decade. The new look and feel are on top of a completely new foundation that includes the latest web technology for performance, speed and SEO.

The home page is complete and we will be adding supporting images to the sub-pages over the coming days. Current site features include:

• Social Functionality
• Live Facebook Feed
• In-Site Ticket Purchasing
• Blogging / Articles
• Instant SEO
• Media Gallery
• Secure Client Log-In with Easy Edit

PLEASE CALL US ABOUT YOUR NEXT WEBSITE / DESIGN / PRINTING / VIDEO project. We will provide you with incredible quality, value, and 5-star service.

Readers can easily share the interactive magazine through social media with just one-click. See the magazine HERE or click the magazine above for the digital edition. If you have a print magazine, newsletter, or document that you’d like to have as an interactive piece online, we’d like to work with you.

This week we also heard from Jack in Pennsylvania whose political action team ordered 30,000 promotional cards. He wrote on our Testimonials Page:

“Twin Bees provided personal attention right from the beginning. Given a model message from which to prepare a one sided [promotional] card, they quickly produced an artistic rendition that was far superior to the crude artwork we supplied… and they did it within hours. The product was shipped quickly and exceeded our expectations. It was an excellent value and got us ready to move on with our project without further concern over the design & production, which gave us a big boost over our competition.”

Thanks for the feedback, Jack! We’re not going to hide it… Our clients simply love our quality, availability and personal service. And we love our clients, too. Maybe this is why nearly every project we receive is a referral. Hmmm… sort of like a bee going from flower to flower!

BREAKING NEWS: We designed, printed and shipped hundreds of gorgeous navy blue T-shirts for one of our clients in the midwest… Word just came in that management gave them to employees in exchange for any competitor-branded T-shirt. That’s a fantastic idea to build morale, erode competition, and energize corporate branding.

I’ll never forget what happened one day when a client (let’s call her Sally) sent an e-mail to one of my co-workers, Bill.

“Hey Bill, do you think I could get a couple of tickets to the Jimmy Buffet concert in April?”

(Now, you have to understand that if you were a reasonably big client, and you bought a lot of advertising, it would be an easy wish to grant.)

So Bill began to forward the message to his manager for permission. He wrote, “What do you think?” and expected a reply like, “Sure, no problem. Tell Sally I said HI.”

A few days went by with no reply from the manager. Worse yet, Sally and Bill had not talked in as much time. Then it got bad. On Friday afternoon a fax came in for Bill, with a letter demanding the cancellation of an upcoming large ad campaign… signed Sally.

Bill could not believe it. “How can this be?” he asked me, “One day she’s happy and wants to go see Jimmy Buffet. The next thing you know she’s canceling her campaign!”

So Bill and the manager investigated, and found the problem: When Bill wrote “What do you think?” in an email, he accidentally hit REPLY (instead of FORWARD) and sent the message back to Sally.  It was clear that Sally must have mistaken the “What do you think?” comment as a sassy, almost smart-aleck comment.

Fortunately, the relationship eventually got repaired, but not before Sally had already committed her campaign dollars to a competing radio station.

Fast forward to 2012… Have things changed or gotten worse? Mobile phone carriers report that today people use mobile data FAR more than they make phone calls. At home, people are shutting off their landlines and throwing phones into e-waste.

Face it: Our long and meaningful conversations have become short and snappy tweets and facebook updates, all too often clicked in a rush at the stoplight. Never has it been more important to choose the rights words, deliver them to the correct person / audience, and carry the appropriate tone.

Please share your thoughts and comments below.

by Thom Hiatt

So there you are, sitting in your recliner, watching the news, and you hear it… The rapping at the door… “Knock knock knock…”

You open the door and find a cute, sweet, smiling little girl. Let’s call her “Ms. Cutie Pie.” Her uniform is pressed, her golden locks are brushed, and her script is polished. And here it comes…

“Would you like to buy some Girl Scout Cookies?”

“Ugh,” I silently gasp as the joyous musical tune of the beautiful moment comes to a scratching halt in my mind. “Cutie Pie asked a YES / NO question,” I say only to myself, “When are they ever going to learn?”

Everything was perfect until that moment — until she gave me a 50% chance to turn down her sale. (Cutie Pie also never bothered to tell me the benefits of buying her cookies.)

In business, or better yet in sales, a ‘yes / no question’ gives the buyer a 50% chance to say yes, and worse, a 50% chance to immediately say NO. Right out of the gate, our customer at the door is asked to make a final decision, one way or the other, and there-in lies the problem.

We suggest a more tactical approach that, in our very-un-scientific-but-based-on-opinion-and-experience research, we believe would increase the national level of annual Girl Scout Cookie sales by 200-500%.

In the “Cookie Sale of my Dreams,” Cutie Pie walks up to the front door with an accomplice… NOT HER MOTHER, but rather another scout, perhaps a Brownie. Cutie Pie is dressed as usual, and her accomplice is holding a large, but manageable color poster board showcasing delicious photos of the five most popular cookie flavors. It’s not complex and it’s not overwhelming. It’s just 5 professionally-shot photos of yummy cookies arranged on classy plates next to sweating glasses of refreshing milk. On the corner of each pic is the respective “logo” of that cookie, i.e. Thin Mints, or Tagalongs. At the bottom of the board it reads, “Your support improves our future!” or something else cute and motivational.

The accomplice simply acts like an easel, standing tall, and holding the poster board for our customers to see clearly, especially for our sight- and hearing-challenged customers.

Cutie Pie rings the doorbell and the customer opens the door. Cutie Pie says in a non-script-sounding tone, “Good afternoon, Sir. My name is Cutie Pie, and this is my friend Easel. We are members of Girl Scout Chapter 3421 right here in Springfield. Each year our cookie sales help us go to camp, do crafts, and learn to be better citizens. Which one of our delicious cookies is your very favorite?” (A CHOICE question, rather than a WAY OUT.)

Customer is drooling over the photos, “I like the Thin Mints.”

“Oh, great choice, sir! Our Thin Mints are the most popular,” Cutie Pie says to reinforce his decision and make him feel good about himself and his choice, “You are very generous. Would you like 2 boxes, or would you rather have 3…?” (Again, a CHOICE, rather than a WAY OUT.)

“I’ll take two boxes,” he says.

“Fantastic. We will bring them to you in a week or so. Lots of people are also ordering a couple of boxes of our brand new Savannah Smiles. They are lemon cookies with delicious powdered sugar gently sprinkled all around. I can bring two boxes to go along with your Thin Mints. You can give them as gifts or keep them for yourself… If I were you, I would keep them for myself. They are delicious. Would you prefer to pay with a check, or with your credit card so you can rack of the miles and start earning your next free vacation?”

“I’ll use my credit card…”

And that’s it. Sales are doubled or tripled.

For the cute little Brownie Scouts who cannot remember the entire sales process, we recommend. “Hello, Ma’am. My mom said I can’t eat all of the cookies. So I need you to buy a few boxes. Which cookie is your favorite?”

Think about you and your business. Are you asking YES / NO questions that give your customers a way out?

P.S. It’s our understanding that the annual cookie sales are a fund-raiser, but more importantly an opportunity for girls to build confidence and learn transactional / business skills on their own.

Share your thoughts below, or write to info@mytwinbees.com

by Thom Hiatt

If you’re already an e-news master, then skip this article and get back to work. Otherwise, let’s keep rolling…

More often than not, small and medium-sized business have very good intentions for sending out regular newsletters, whether on email or in print. But intentions don’t always become reality.

Often, a business owner or manager will send out their first newsletter on the 1st of the month. She notes her calendar for the following month, plans to send the next issue, and then sets it all aside. The good worker that she is, she actually sends out the 2nd newsletter the following month. And maybe a 3rd.

Then usually around newsletter #4, somehow magically the newsletter manager is too busy to send it out. It doesn’t get done on time. She thinks, “Well, I had a big project to finish instead, and that’s good. I will just send the newsletter out a couple of weeks late.”

A couple of weeks later she thinks, “You know, it would look funny if I send it out two weeks late. I will just wait until the first of the month.”

It’s the first of the month and she’s busy again. It doesn’t go out. She thinks, “Maybe we should send a QUARTERLY newsletter instead….”

And so it goes. We see it all the time.

YOUR NEWSLETTER IS VALUABLE!

1. If you are sending quality, valuable content to your customers and prospects, then they actually appreciate your newsletter, they enjoy it, and they may even look forward to it! If you’re not sending it out, you are depriving them of that happiness.
2. Each time you send your newsletter, you are working to stay top-of-mind with your clients. When they see something from you (and even if they don’t open it up) they remember you, they think of you, and they know that you are alive and kicking.
3. Your newsletters (especially electronic newsletters) can provide valuable data and feedback that will help to improve your business.

WHAT GETS IN THE WAY?

One of the biggest “hassles” clients share with us about “making the newsletter” is coming up with the content. People have told us that they sit down for hours upon hours, laboring over topics, slaving away at the keyboard, writing drafts, editing copy, looking for images, and so on. Not only is this completely unnecessary, but it’s what becomes the biggest reason people put it off and eventually stop sending their newsletter.

SPREAD IT OUT

To get rid of the content hurdle, break it up into smaller chunks. Rather than trying to create your giant newsletter all at once, create it over time… over the course of the month.

Each week (or more often if you like) sit down at your computer and write a blog article for your website. Write about a great customer experience. Or a problem you solved. Or maybe write about the secret benefits of using your product. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just do it. Get it done. And fix the little problems later.

After four weeks you’ve got four articles, and VOILA… there’s the content for your monthly newsletter.

CREAM OF THE CROP

If you’ve had the luxury of writing two blog entries or articles per week, you can do something really cool. Look at your website’s visitor analysis. See which articles have been most popular just from regular traffic. Grab the four big ones and VOILA… there’s your newsletter content.

SIDE NOTE: Just imagine, after one year, you’ve got anywhere from 50 to 100 new articles in your website! That’s TONS of food for Google to chew on. And that brings more visitors to your site who have searched for topics you’ve written about!

COPY AND PASTE

Now that you have your four articles from the month, simply copy and paste them into your printed newsletter. Or if you are sending e-news, copy and paste the headlines and the first two sentences of each article… followed by “read more.”

SUPER SAUCE WORKS ON HAMBURGERS, TOO
One of the best Happy Helper testimonials we’ve ever received arrived in December 2011 from Janet K. in Little Rock, Arkansas. Janet explained that her favorite ice cream topping works great on hamburgers, too! Gosh, hamburgers, of all things! We were intrigued… read more…

By using only the headline and first few sentences, we can:

1. Keep the email newsletter brief. Nobody wants to open a message and see an encyclopedia staring them in the face. Nothing gets your email deleted faster.
2. Track what’s interesting. Using the right services, you’ll be able to see how many of your readers were interested in the Super Sauce article enough to click “read more.”
3. Create new lists. Now that you know who is interested in Secret Sauce, you can create a list of just those people, and later on market the new and improved Secret Sauce to that target group.

by Thom Hiatt