The Campaign Manager has been available for about two weeks and has been very well received by the LongJump user community. With the holiday season around the corner, it may be a great time to use your 250 free campaign emails to send your customers your well wishes for a prosperous new year — or just close out the year with a bang.

Here are some pointers for first-time email marketers:

• Don’t just use emails to sell - People get tons of emails everyday, so the best message may not be a call to buy. Instead, consider focusing on how people can learn new approaches to reach their goals from your point of view. Content is king.
• Don’t go crazy with HTML or graphics - A few tasteful graphics can help your message, but too many can be a hindrance or worse, look like an ad. Make sure your emails are friendly to even those without web-based email readers.
• Personalize your message - LongJump lets you mail merge data directly into your email templates so you can provide a consistent, personal message to your contacts. You can add fields into your templates using the Template wizard or within your text.
• Give them more info - Some LongJump users are avoiding email attachments, which can be bulky and hard to manage, by sending documents using the Documents folder. By making a file “Publicly Available,” they are embedding a web link into their email that lets people download the file directly. They can also track if the customer clicked on the link.
• Follow-up on clicks - Because LongJump lets you automatically assign a callback task to a member of your team whenever your email campaigns are click or opened, you can create a one-to-one experience and close the loop. Have your team open with “I saw that you had downloaded our flyer and wanted to know if you had any additional questions.”

Getting Started with the Campaign Manager
If you are new to the Campaign Manger, click here to install it.

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, roughly 50% of small businesses fail within the first five years. The causes vary from poor planning and resource management, cost and fund raising, to sales and marketing development. According to the SBA “Good organization of financial, inventory, schedules, and production ­can help you avoid many pitfalls.” and we feel that some of the applications that come as part of the LongJump platform help address these problems.

We would like to find out from our users, as well as visitors, the types of problems their businesses are facing, and how business applications can help solve those problems. In the past, we have had live coaching clinics to help customers understand how LongJump can help their businesses grow, and we’ll keep you posted on future clinics. In the mean time,  simply leave us a comment - we would love to hear from you.