They sent an email out to their loyal readers announcing the roll out of a new suite of tools that will make interacting with Boston.com content and community easier and more rewarding. you had us at easy!

Boston.com Gets a Positive Web Marketing Role Model A-ok!

Boston.com gets a Web Marketing Therapy positive role model for their understanding that web marketing work is never done and for their comittment to making their website a webSOLUTION.  They also win web marketing therapy kudos for being proactive communicators.  They sent an email out to readers to give them advance notice since some of the upgrades may affect Boston.com user experience.  The email was brilliant – short, sweet and bulleted (remember, web surfres SCAN they don’t read, bullets rock!) and in the email, they highlighted their new site site features…features powered with personalization!! (a total web marketing best practice!)

Here’s the skinny on the new Boston.com:

1. Personal profile pages with web experience, all users want to see is “what’s in it for me?”
They automatically create a personal profile page for everyone who posts to a forum or comments on an article.  If you have posted to a forum in the past, you also get a profile page.

Other features include:

* A personal avatar making experience more personal and fun
* The ability to add links to friends making the site sticky and an interactive rolodex…smart!
* Controls that let you choose what appears on your profile empowering, good for control freaks

2. Improved comments on articles like:

* The ability to recommend comments with one click easy = happy readers
* Sorting tools that allow you to determine the order in which the comments appear geeky cool
* Clickable screen names

3. Improved, faster forums there is a need for speed! with features like:

* Ignore this user, which removes from view the comments of posters who annoy you
* Unread comments. You’ll see a gold star next to any discussion that has new comments since the last time you visited. Clicking the star will bring you to the point in the discussion where you left
* Much better search they probably got comments and feedback asking for this!  way to deliver!
* Clickable screen names, which link to profile pages

The email gave tips on when features would be hitting to respect and communicate with their readers and they also openly invited email recipients to visit the FAQ page or offer to answer questions on feedback@boston.com.

Thank you Boston.com for caring about your web readers and for employing empowering web marketing best practices.  Your comittment to healthy web marketing makes you a wealthy organization in our book!

P.S.  Thank you to Eldon Edwards for sending us GREAT emails with killer examples!  Next time I see you, I am giving you a WMT “Thinking Cap” as a token of my appreciation

MAFG even recycles their holiday e-cards, how green is that!?

Their 2008 card memorable and meaningful, AND has been a true committment year after year.  They even recycle their e-cards to be uber eco-friendly! 

“A firm tradition since 2002, the maffgl virtual holiday e-card is part of our firm’s mission to minimize our environmental impact on the earth and express our appreciation for our clients and friends.  Please enjoy this gallery of our previous e-cards.
As you can see, we are even committed to conserving capital letters.”

Nice way to connect with clients, leave a nice year end imprint (and own their values!) and announce a new site launch!

When people KNOW, LIKE and TRUST you, they also want to evangelize you!  Misty created a “help me help you” web marketing tool to help her web alliances (she has a cult following) plug her.

Check out the brilliant word-of-mouse marketing buttons.  Her site rocks, her marketing savvy rocks, she rocks!

Can you explain the power of what you do?

I help people in business make lasting impressions, so they attract more clients.

When I teach web marketing classes, I bust out all my therapy-isms and one of the “isms” that I always spew to students relates to Jamie’s positive role model behavior:

If you don’t toot your own horn, nobody else will

I purposely put that line in green because if you can learn how to effectively explain who you are, what you do and the VALUE of what you do, then that is money honey!

Communication is key in marketing, if you can’t explain what you do (and do well!) succinctly and powerfully, then you have a problem!

So tip of the day – toot your own horn!

The real meaning of marketing is maximizing awareness & exchanges to equal $ale$. We are in business to sell something – sales is not just for “salespeople” it’s everybody’s job and is part of everything you do!

And now to toot the WMT horn (I have to practice what I preach, right?) :

Web marketing therapy helps professionals invest in healthy, meaningful marketing to make their organizations wealthy!

Please respond to this post if you have a good horn to toot! I want to hear it!!!!

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