Sent Out Email Announcement for Hostwell Web Hosting
On Wednesday afternoon I finished my email announcement, imported my selected group of individuals into Mail Chimp, prayed, and clicked “send.”
Of course, it was a bit more difficult than that… I spent about 5 hours writing, re-writing, and sending a few tests to myself before my wife looked over the copy. She always has great suggestions because she is not savvy in the same areas I am. She asks questions that help me realize I need to re-write a few things. Here is how the final version read:
Howdy Chris,
Call me crazy, but I’d like to think you should get more from your website hosting company. So much so, I started a web hosting company to fix a problem many small businesses experience.
Most small business websites do not get updated frequently. Because of this, these websites do not:
- Get many visitors.
- Get many leads.
- Rank well in Google or other search engines.
If you experience any of these, you may be left feeling like your website is not an effective marketing tool.
Hostwell can solve this problem.
When you become a Hostwell customer, your normal web hosting needs will be met. In addition, I’ll update your website content for free. Specifically, I will:
- Update 2 pages of content on your site per month – free.
- Add 1 new page to your site per month – free.
>> View all of Hostwell’s benefits [link]
How does updating my site solve this problem?
Adding new content increases your website’s ability to rank better in the search engines. With better search engine rankings, you’ll receive more visitors and more leads.
Is Hostwell right for me?
Hostwell is right for you if you are a small business that:
- Does not or cannot update your site frequently.
- Does not update because of cost.
- Wants your website to become a better marketing tool.
*Type in “newsletter” into the secret code field when signing up and you can send out an email newsletter to 100 of your customers each month for free.What is included with my Hostwell hosting plan?
- Unlimited support (phone and email)
- Branded email accounts (e.g. bob@hostwell.cc)
- Email setup (I will walk you through your email setup or set it up for you – in Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.)
- 99.9% uptime (your website will be up for your visitors)
- Unlimited Storage
- Unlimited Bandwidth
Host Better – Improve Your Website – Get Started Now! [link]
Host your website at Hostwell for:
$360 per year ($120 savings)
or
$40 per month
After clicking the send button and re-reading it, I noticed one sentence I would have changed. I said:
Call me crazy, but I’d like to think you should get more from your website hosting company.
I was a bit presumptious…what I should have said is:
Call me crazy, but I’d like to think small businesses should get more from their website hosting company.
I guess I took Brian’s first advice too seriously and used “you” too much in the opening statement.
Results
The results weren’t what I was really hoping for, but I did get a few people interested, which is great! One of my recipients, Jim Grammer, even Tweeted about Hostwell and said:
Bob Potter’s new Web hosting service for small business makes *total* sense. Is your Web site stagnant? http://hostwell.cc/story.php
To be honest with you, that is exactly the kind of response I am hoping to invoke with Hostwell.
on Aug 28 in General Updates tagged email marketing, General Updates, results, writing by Bob PotterTime Invested – August
Getting Hostwell off the ground has been a much bigger task than I had anticipated. So far I’ve spent about 33+ hours on it. Here is a break down by task:
- Design – 1.4 hours
- Website Development – 11.6 hours (includes both site and blog setup/coding)
- Writing Content – 14.3 hours (writing, editing, having my wife edit, etc.)
- Hosting – .6 hours (setting up hosting account, email, etc.)
- Email Newsletter Announcement – 5 hours
- Social Media – .5 hours
Why did I spend so much time on my newsletter?
While I enjoy writing, I do struggle with it at times. I start writing something only to erase it, then start with something else. I’ll finish it, read through it and decide it doesn’t send the message I want to get across. So I start over. Then I have my wife edit it and offer suggestions. After a few test sends and with an increased heart rate I push the “Send” button as it goes out to my contacts…hoping for the best.
Room for Improvement
There are a number of things I can improve upon:
- I write my website content in Coda so that I can see it on the website. Being visual, it really helps me develop the copy (at least I think it does). As you can imagine, writing it in Coda and constantly going to my FTP client to refresh and upload the file adds lots of time. It’s a bad habit and one I really need to correct. My goal is to write the content in something like Evernote and then add it to the site once it has been fully edited. I imagine I’d spend 20% less going this route.
- When I started designing this site I had a few ideas. Most of which came from Jason’s mockup of Basecamp, Freshbooks, Mail Chimp, 37 Signals, and a few other websites. Why did I “borrow” from these fine websites? Because I look up to them and because I borrowed Seth Godin’s philosophy that there is no reason to try and come up with something entirely new – he basically says, “don’t start from scratch.” If I had started from scratch, I would have spent far more hours designing something and it wouldn’t have added any value.
- I didn’t do much “marketing” before hand. I’m more of “gotta have all my ducks in a row” kinda guy. Plus I’m better off focusing on one task than figuring out how to generate some interest and do it effectively. Throughout this process I wished I had a partner to help with things like this.
