To build your business you need to be in control of your online presence which means have your own website and building your own e-mail list. I talked about building your email list in episodes 5 to 8 of this season.

Your website is your online presence, It allows your business to be available anytime and from anywhere in the world. Eventually you want your website to be a tool to increase your revenue; but caution is needed people are not stupid and if they detect a sales pitch before you have built their trust they will quickly move on. Build your community with valuable content before attempting a sales pitch.

Let’s start planning your website.

If you are transitioning from a corporate career to being a solo consultant, coach or content provider a major challenge you will face is that you will need to learn skills that in the past you relied on others in your organization to provide. Yes you could pay folks to do this work for you but our objective is to build your business at the lowest cost possible. And at the outset it is unlikely that you will be so busy that you do not have the time to do this yourself. So let’s not spend those dwindling retirement savings on others, our objective is to increase your savings or at least not deplete them. Over the next few weeks I will share with you the how to ideas I have found searching the internet on various topics – this week its email marketing. Over the following week I follow the advice I have shared with you and report what has worked and not worked for me. Plus how hard it has been to implement the ideas. You can also follow my progress or lack of it on my companion website – The Geriatric Entrepreneur. So let’s get started. you understand the importance of email marketing, perhaps you already have a mailing list but no one is signing up. You feel like the exhibitor at a major trade show who has no visitors to their booth. Do not despair, maybe we can fix the problem with the ideas I will share in the next two episodes.

From Amazon Prime to Panera Bread’s Unlimited Sip Club, loyalty programs have become commonplace in a wide variety of industries. However, despite their popularity, it’s not always clear whether these programs are actually profitable. The authors analyzed data from 24,000 customers at a large Asian retailer to explore the various factors that can drive a program’s profitability, and identified three takeaways to help managers ensure their subscription programs are a net positive: In February 2020, Panera Bread announced the Unlimited Sip Club and rocked the coffee world. For just $8.99 a month, members could get unlimited refills of their favorite coffee or hot tea at any Panera location. With the average American consumer spending more than $2,000 a year on coffee, this sounded like an incredible deal for coffee drinkers — begging the question, how could Panera possibly justify such generosity? Loyalty programs like this are common in industries as wide-ranging as retail, food and beverages, health and wellness, and more. Proponents argue that increases in sales justify the costs — for example, while Panera may lose money on its drinks, if loyalty members buy a croissant every time they get a coffee, the program could still be quite profitable for the company — but these effects can be hard to quantify. For example, the average Amazon Prime member spends more than twice as much as the average non-member. This may seem to imply that the program is responsible for a substantial increase in revenues, but the difference in spending could also be driven by self-selection (that is, customers who already intend to spend more may be more likely to choose to become members). The costs to the company of providing membership benefits can also be substantial, whether that’s a free cup of coffee, exclusive product offers, free shipping, or other perks. In light of this complexity, how can managers ensure their loyalty programs are truly profitable? To explore this question, they conducted a large-scale study in partnership with a major Asian retailer that was launching a new, paid loyalty program in 2015. We analyzed 15 months of transaction data for more than 24,000 customers, about half of whom had joined the program, and identified three key takeaways for managers: Go beyond averages and analyze trends on an individual level.

On average, we found that customers spent more than twice as much per month after subscribing to the retailer’s loyalty program. However, this increase was not evenly spread out across all the members in the sample: Some customers contributed substantially to the increase in revenues, while others did not. This illustrates how a better understanding of whose spending is likely to increase the most after joining a loyalty program can help marketers better target prospects going forward.

McKinsey & Company. John Straw, a senior advisor to McKinsey based in London, a serial entrepreneur and technology expert. In this McKinsey article John Straw is focused on larger corporations but there is much in what he says that is applicable to entrepreneurs and not only in the retail sector. Mr. Straw recounts a story when he was talking with a Silicon Valley investor who said “You know what I’d really like from one of my startups? I’d like a dollar in revenue with a hundred users engaging a thousand times a day with a product, rather than a thousand dollars in revenue with a few hundred users engaging once, because that is where I am going to place my bets – that level of engagement. The point this investor was making is that a high level of engagement shows you have got the product right. Where people come only once it is the marketing you have got right. And marketing does not scale but products can.

Continuing with the theme of getting the product right Mr. Straw mentions the value of prototyping. In this case this does not mean a prototype that does not see the light of day beyond a design studio. These are prototypes that you get into the hands of consumers early in the development stage and judge the level of the consumers engagement. Use feedback to improve the product. Producing some prototypes need not be prohibitively expensive there are many design and build companies that can help. Do not try to get the prototype perfect, get a functioning version and get it into consumer’s hands. You may want to consider setting a self-imposed deadline for the launch date. There is nothing like a deadline for focusing the mind. Backward planning will help in this regard. I talked about backward planning in Show 4 Season 4 as part of the series on strategic planning. In summary you identify when you want to launch your prototype and all that needs to be done to get there. You then work backwards to today and build what is effectively your to do list with milestones. If you are disciplined this will keep you on track and enable you to celebrate as milestones are reached. Based on his experience John Straw says the first lesson he would draw is to be sure that in the early days you have something tangible to show. Show and tell is very important if you want to gain financial traction. Show, tell, engage. Augmented Reality AR and Extended Reality XR are creating opportunities for retailers. John Straw recounts how IKEA quickly took advantage of the AR feature on iPhones to create an App that enabled customers to see how a piece of furniture would look in their own rooms. IKEA went further by finding company whose technology could measure a room and allow the consumer to see how a complete range of furniture would look. The big news is that Apple is rumored to going to launch a range of XR glasses. Based on Apple’s track record these glasses will be a significant advance on anything that has gone before. If you sell high priced items it is time to start thinking of what AR/XR can do for you. You can be sure there are developers working on Apps for Apple products already. If you could work alongside a developer as a beta test site, you could be the coolest retailer in your town. The progress in virtual assistants and chatbots will provide opportunities for retailers to allow customers to interact with virtual assistants with no limits on their knowledge and experience. Chatbot technology is not where it needs to be today. I am sure you have had frustrating conversations with chatbots. Where you ask a question, get an unsatisfactory answer, so you try to ask the