• I love Wikipedia, but I know it’s not 100% reliable and sometimes you need more than one resource. Beyond Wikipedia: 20 References You Can’t Do Without points to other resources.

• I started reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but wasn’t impressed. 10 Overrated Business Books (and What to Read Instead) also thinks 7 Habits is overrated.

• In addition to 10 Tips For Marketing Your Book Online, check out Plug Your Book.

• 5 Tips to TRULY becoming your OWN BOSS

• Proofreading Test and Tips — I prescribe to the “put it away for a day” proofing method.

• Contests (writing) and Agencies to Avoid [Thanks, Sage]

• Marketing Lessons from Apple

• “You Ain’t All That!” — A Marketing Copy Autopsy

• Games for the Brain

Pareto’s principle states that 80 percent of a company’s business comes from 20 percent of its customers. Therefore, businesses invest time and money into building and maintaining customer loyalty. Loyalty Myths says that organizations focused on traditional loyalty programs won’t succeed and explains why the 53 customer loyalty beliefs are myths.

Businesses that work to keep “loyal” customers may be actually losing money from such customers. Furthermore, traditional marketing emphasizes retaining customers instead of seeking new customers, a belief that could wipe out some businesses or prevent them from reaching their highest potential.

Few argue against the premise that today’s environment in which lets customers be choosier and indifferent when it comes to products and brands. Consider the fact that having the most loyal customers doesn’t guarantee a company the highest market share.

Do you believe that customers over the age of 50 stay true blue to products and brands? The authors have successfully proved otherwise. Think about the different loyalty programs to which you belong. Several airlines have loyalty programs in place, but do you cash in? Do the programs influence your decision on which airline to take?

The book contains a great example from The First National Bank of Chicago, a bank that needed to find ways to overcome the low equity that affected many banks in the ‘90. The bank took an unpopular approach in charging $3 when customers went inside the bank for transactions instead of relying on the ATM or doing it over the phone. Sound disastrous, but it paid off.

Unsurprisingly, the media posted negative stories about the bank’s method, and competitors jumped in by paying customers to use the teller and other incentives. The result? The bank’s profits went up by 28 percent with over 80 percent of the transactions done electronically.

The book doesn’t stop at loyalty programs we encounter in our daily lives. It also looks at loyalty myths associated with company goals, management practices, market share and profitability, and employees. In addition to breaking the myths, the authors also provide a chapter on how to do loyalty the right way.

The authors do a nice job providing the rationale for every myth backing it up with data and case studies. The only annoyance with the book is the cartoons that appear throughout the book. They’re corny and ugly. Adding cartoons into a business book is fine, just not these.

This type of book can be dry and academic, but not this one. Loyalty Myths is an engaging and valuable read for anyone who wants to get positive results from customer loyalty programs or turn around their broken loyalty programs.

Title: Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business and Proven Tactics That Really Work
Author: Timothy L. Keiningham, Terry G. Vavra, Lerzan Aksoy, Henri Wallard
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0471743151
Date: September 2005
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Cover Price: USD: $24.95 Amazon: $17.22

Businesses especially small businesses expect employees to do more than their main job and this often includes sales and marketing. Book Yourself Solid contains activities that business people most likely already know. However, Michael Port brings these activities together and organizes them using lists and questions to help the reader find the answers.

The author writes that he gathered the ideas from multiple resources to build his Book Yourself Solid system. Port shares first-rate advice like dropping clients that sap your energy leaving you with more stress than enthusiasm. Let go of clients? How can you afford that? Think of how much work you’d finish if you enjoy working with every client. Maybe you’d be able to add a few more by letting go of deadweight clients.

The book provides guidance to find your target audience. Anyone who has read books and researched the target market thing may be skeptical about discovering new information in this book. Port breaks down the process of selecting your target market into doable steps, something few resources do.

At times, the book starts reading like those “hyped up” sales materials you see online or in infomercials. In spite of this and a bit of off the mark advice, the book is a worthy and useful read. If you check out Port’s web site, you’ll encounter this hype. Don’t let the web site influence your decision to read this book. The book and web site have little in common.

Small business owners and employees will find the book’s ideas simple to understand and easy to put into action. In fact, they’re most likely doing some of the activities, but the author takes the activities a step further with the goal of booking more clients.

The book benefits business people who want to make marketing and sales an everyday part of their job for a couple of hours a week. Some especially new businesses and service-based businesses will value the book as it saves time that’s involved with trying to determine how to do marketing and sales.

Title: Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling
Author: Michael Port
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0471783935
Date: April 2006
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 258
Cover Price: USD: $24.95 Amazon: $16.47

One of the more enjoyable ways to market is by holding contests. They’re fun, they encourage folks to spread the word, and they make a few people happy. Imagine my surprise when I saw a package from DeveloperOne on my doorstep yesterday. I didn’t remember ordering anything. I opened it and found a lovely and professional holiday card with the note, “Meryl, congrats on your prize!”

It clicked that I had entered the Developer One Holiday Traditions Giveaway! The company asked for stories of favorite traditions. My prize? Wisconsin’s famous product: Cheese. I received cheese in the shape of beer mug and a package of beer bread mix. The mobile software company is located in Milwaukee.

The best contests are the ones that fun for everyone. I had fun trying to think of a simple tradition while I assume DeveloperOne enjoyed reading the stories. Some contests are a burden requiring more work or giving away more information than needed. A few provide extra credit if you forward the contest information to a friend. The company gets more names while the contestant gets more entries.

I’ve been playing 1FunThing, but it took too much time. The questions are challenging and I spent more time that I should have in seeking the answers. I’m stuck on #32 and need four more to complete the tour, but #32 killed me. It was fun, frustrating, and takes too long.

This Is Broken looks at KFC’s ad for its “NEW! KFC famous bowls.” The submitter correctly points out that you can’t be “new” and “famous” at the same time. One reader says games can become famous before they ever hit the market. True. Look at Nintendo’s Brain Age and Big Brain Academy. My mom was clamoring for the Nintendo DS and the two games just because she read about them months before their release.

Sorry, KFC, bowls don’t get that kind of advance press to earn “famous” in their names.

Get ready for serious laughing (oxymoron, I know). Vote for Signspotting’s Sign of the Year. My favorites are the McDonald’s and George Bush signs. I voted for the McDonald’s sign because the George Bush is mainly an American (Democratic) joke while McDonald’s is international. As I understand it, the word in the sign means the same thing in many places.

Why can’t I ever find signs like these?

Jakob Nielsen’s latest Alertbox discusses newsletter usability and the competition for user attention. Nilesen reports that the original findings remain true today: “email newsletters are the best way to maintain customer relationships on the Internet.”

I love newsletters as a marketing tool. Done right, you provide valuable information to readers without annoying them with sales-speak. I try to focus on building relationships and let the chips fall.

One problem with some newsletters is the difficulty in unsubscribing to the newsletter. Keeping readers who don’t want your newsletter is not worth it. It’s a waste of money to email readers who want nothing to do with the newsletter. If they’re gonna delete it, then make it quick and painless to get off your list.
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When I find my way to a Web site, I may have gotten there through a search engine or through a link from a colleague or Web site. After I’ve scanned the content and fiddled around in the pages, the site may impress me if the information proves valuable.

What do I do then? The possibilities: Bookmark it, Furl it, subscribe to the feed or subscribe to the email newsletter. The action I take depends on how much I need the information and what options the site offers by way of feeds, newsletters and what-have-you.

Let’s say I found the email newsletter link or subscription box. Would I subscribe? It depends on what’s available on the site surrounding the newsletter. I won’t subscribe if respecting my privacy isn’t mentioned. I also won’t subscribe without finding archives to review. The third reason I won’t subscribe is if the site asks for too much information. [ Read more in the May issue of eNJ ]

Here’s a mixed bag entry as these aren’t long enough to warrant their own entries. Marko Mihelcic has a growing list of interviews and asked me to join the list. Thanks, Marko. It’s an honor to be among a pool of talented folks. Maybe he needed a black sheep.

When I read a great article that makes me think of a friend or colleague, I share it. Alas, I can’t share them all as some require free registration. I think the burden of registration outweighs the the opportunity to read the article. That’s the rant in the latest eNewsletter Journal. Also, there’s a new issue of meryl’s notes newsletter.

I’ve been meaning to post this list of book resources for weeks. Finally got off my duff and fixed it up. I would’ve liked to expand the summary, but then I’d never get it posted and these sites deserve visitors.

Someone asked about how to format the newsletter — how much content to put in the newsletter itself, whether it should be a link, some content or all of the content. As you know, in Lockergnome you get the title and a summary. It allows you to quickly decide whether or not you want to read the rest of the article.

Every format has its fans and enemies. I share my take on this topic and leave it to you to decide what works best for you.

A reader asked about increasing survey responses. It’s a challenge. We try to provide you with questions that interest you and keep the survey short and sweet with a prize drawing as an enticement. I wish I could offer every one of you prizes for completing the survey … you know how it goes. [ Read the August issue of eNewsletter Journal ]