Seattle’s Best Coffee – ATL Airport Delay… Funny Kind Of…

My wife and I are on our way to Daytona Beach for a Vacation with our family (they are already there). We were planning on getting to the Airport in Florida @ about 12:30 am (like Midnight:Thirty) and then driving from Orlando to Daytona Beach (about 1:00 am to 2:00 am in the middle of the night)  in our rental car, which is the first car I will have ever rented, (I just turned 25 in March, and I have traveled around the country in the last 3 years and have never been able to rent a car…). Well sure enough there was a huge storm we had to go around (extra 150 miles) and also didn’t leave until an hour late. Then when we arrived in ATL for our connection, we found out everything was completely mixed up with all the flights and nothing was showing on there fancy LCD’s screens with the times and the info. It turns out the system this Airline uses was running Windows Vista and had a “Fatal Error”. Not really, I am just a huge Apple fan and don’t really care for Windows anymore. Anyway, I decided since I was going to be driving (my very first) rental car half the night, we should probably get some coffees – Iced Coffees that is(Not Frapuchinos or whatever…) I ordered two large Iced Coffees from Seattle’s best Coffee (I’ve never drank it before, and I’ve only heard of this once when I was in Reno going to Lake Tahoe back in December…) Long story short, it costed $9.56 for two Iced Coffees, isn’t that crazy? I am extremely tight with my money and hate spending money on things that don’t give me a good return on investment, or any return for that matter. But the good thing is, I can write a blog article about it while I sit in the airport (right now) and kill some time. I hope this story was not a waste of your time, its supposed to be funny, but I have a feeling, its not that funny, and I am just getting a little loopy since I have been awake for so long.I think these things that happen in life are sort of funny and we need to alway realize, it could be so much worse. It could also be some much better, but thats not being positive thats being sort of negative. Granite, I am sitting in this airport for an extra 2 or 3 hours and I will not go to bed until 5 am most likely, but just think, I am going to wake up in DAYTONA BEACH Florida… I could be waking up tomorrow morning and going to my old job @ Chase Bank (remember I’m a Recovering Banker…) Thats all for now, please post comments questions and concerns below. Thanks for reading.

Email Marketing Tip – Use Holidays to Your Advantage

Use the Holidays to your advantage and have some creativity.
With Holidays such as Valentine’s Day, tailor your message around themes such as love, candy, flowers, or Cupid.  You could use Thanksgiving, send a message of thanks to your subscribers.  Your subscribers will appreciate the fun, festive vibe of your emails. Remember in today’s economy and business world, we need to create value for people not bother them with sales pitches all the time. Using these holidays as another way to stay in front of our customers and potential customers.

Bit.ly My New Favorite Free Tool.

If you use internet marketing such as Twitter, Facebook Etc. tracking where your clicks are coming from is crucial, and shortening the length of the url is important too, escpicially on Twitter. Well, I found this cool tool call Bit.ly. thats bit.ly and its really great. What it does is creates a new URL for you that is smaller than the one you have and also makes it so you can track your clicks. Click Here: http://bit.ly/mfcn1 to set up your free account.

EMail Marketing Tip: Use HTML and Brand It

Send HTML Emails

Use HTML emails to boost your branding (Make sure its branded with your company colors and logo, if you don’t have one then get one done right away, this is crucial) and enhance the visual experience for the recipients.  Text emails are forgettable (and boring) but HTML emails can be designed to be memorable and effective. Also, HTML emails are easier to read and more enjoyable. If you don’t have an email marketing program, I suggest you use one such as iContact, they are by far one of the best and easiest to use, CLICK HERE

FREE 15 day trial. Plans start at less than $10 a month.

Mint.com Free Personal Budgeting System…

I just found out about this neat little tool called Mint.com and what it does is keep track of your spending and targets bank fees and where your spending your money. I really like how its is interactive with my bank accounts and actually is updated automatically with my bank directly and lets me know where I am spending my money and if I have any bank fees etc. Check it out: www.Mint.com