And we’re back. Here’s Part 2 of the Email List Building Mind Map. In this video I show you the actual steps to creating this process on your site. This is just one way to set up an email capture process, but it’s one we’ve seen perform very well.

The five main pieces are the Landing Page, Confirmation Page, Confirmation Email, Offer Access Page, and the Follow Up Email.

Mind Map download link comes after the jump…

To see this mind map from the beginning check out Email List Building Part 1.

If you want the actual mind map used in the video you can download it and the Content Creation mind map at the link below.

Email List Building, Confirmed Opt-in Mind Map

Let me know if you have any questions.

Shaky cam strikes again! Too much coffee this morning, or not enough? I’m not sure. But I think you can still clearly see how fantastic this handmade furniture is, by Brian Boggs and company. The barstools Brian shows us in this video are exquisite. They are an interesting juxtaposition of hard edged precision geometry and deliberately visible hand work. And freakishly comfortable.

We really enjoyed our time in the shop today and for a furniture nerd like me it’s hard to not start dreaming up things to make after being around all that creativity and craftsmanship, and tools (covet covet).

Visit BrianBoggsChairs.com for more info.

Here we go, finally. Mind maps take time! This is one way, just one way, you can approach building your email list. Maybe there’s a better way for your purposes. Generally speaking, we recommend using “confirmed opt-in” (some call it “double opt-in”) and offering some clear incentive for your readers to get on your email subscriber list.

Mind map download link after the jump…

The process explained in this video and outlined in the mind map assumes that you are creating content, or at least can, that your readers will find valuable. Valuable enough that they don’t mind “paying” with their email addresses, and precious attention. Another approach could be to just give it all away, completely free, no email payment required. If you are continually producing high quality content and giving away great free advice, your readers may well decide to get on your email list just so they don’t miss out.

You can download Email List Building, Confirmed Opt-in Mind Map in this video.

Check back next week for Part 2, or even better, get on our list and we’ll send it to you when we post it.

As a CTO I used to work with liked to say “Comments, questions, flames? Lemme have ‘em.”

(Update: Email List Building Part 2 is now available.)

Yeah, that’s a long headline. But it’s the truth, Ruth. Don’t let the Google Goliath kick sand in your face! Watch the video to hear the whole story. The entire email exchange between Google Adwords staff and me is below.

This is happening to a lot of people. Read Google’s own forums to see how many people are having their pay-per-click Adwords accounts shut down even though they have done nothing wrong. I’m glad they turned this account back on, but I’m disappointed they didn’t address their original, and incorrect, claim that my account was “related to another account, which has repeatedly violated our Landing page policy and site guidelines.”

Instead of admitting that they had made a mistake they said the site had “low landing page score” because it was “down” when they reviewed it. There is no evidence of that. Adwords always indicated a Landing Page Quality Score of 7 or higher.

I waited almost two weeks before asking Google’s customer service to check into it. They replied within a day. Their responsiveness was appreciated, but their response was not. I was going to bold highlights and insert some jokes, but I think I’ll let the emails speak for themselves.

See the entire email thread after the jump.

Jan 9

From: tracysigler@gmail.com
Subject: Ad Approvals and Policies (NewUI)
Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:24:45 +0000

Hello, I’m trying to run two ads for a non-profit. QS is high for everything. I posted them over 10 days ago and they are still “Pending Review.” There are no technical issues. I’ve had an Adwords account for years and have never experienced a delay like this. This is urgent for us because it’s seasonal campaign. Thanks for your help. I appreciate whatever you can do.

Jan 10

Hello Tracy,

Thank you for your email. I understand that you are concerned about your ads being queued for review. I apologize for the delay in response.

It has come to our attention that your Google AdWords account Customer ID XXX-XXX-XXXX is related to another account, which has repeatedly violated our Landing page policy and site guidelines.

You can visit this link for more information
https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164786

As a result, your account has been suspended and your ads will no
 longer run on Google. Additionally, please do not open any new AdWords accounts. If you do, your newly opened accounts will be suspended upon registration, and your account fee will not be refunded.

Our review is extensive, and we take many factors into consideration
 to ensure that we’re reaching an accurate conclusion. As noted in our Terms and Conditions, Google reserves the right to terminate advertisements for any reason.  To view our Terms and
 Conditions, please visit
 https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/tsandcsfinder

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/, where you’ll find answers to many frequently asked questions. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

XXXX X
The Google AdWords Team

Jan 11

Hello XXXX,

This is incorrect. My account has _never_ been “related” to another account and I have not had a problem with repeated policy violations.

Can you please tell me what information you have about this so I can work to clear it up?

Thanks again for your help.

Tracy Sigler

Jan 13

Hello Tracy,

Thank you for your reply. I understand your concern.

Based on your reply, I’ve decided to escalate your issue to our technical
team, which will perform a thorough investigation to determine the cause
of the issue.

These investigations can take some time, but I’ll contact you to let you
know when our specialists have found a resolution.

I sincerely appreciate your patience while we investigate for you. Please
don’t hesitate to reply directly to this email if you have more
information to add.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/, where you’ll find answers to many
frequently asked questions. We look forward to providing you with the most
effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

XXXX X
The Google AdWords Team

Jan 20

Hello Tracy,

Thank you for your continued patience. Your sites have been re enabled
after being reviewed by one of our AdWords Specialists.

I’ve confirmed that your site had a low landing page quality score because
it was down at the time we reviewed it. Because your site is back up, you
should see improvements to your Quality Scores soon, reflected by higher
Quality Score details for your keywords in their Keyword Analysis fields.
Find directions for viewing this field at
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=150568.
You might want to ask your web hosting provider how to prevent future
interruptions to your site’s service.

Keep in mind that we’re constantly improving the way the AdWords system
evaluates landing page quality, and there’s no guarantee that your Quality
Score won’t be affected by a poor landing page quality in the future. To
prevent this from happening, we recommend ensuring that your site complies
with our landing page quality guidelines, found at
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46675.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/, where you’ll find answers to many
frequently asked questions. We look forward to providing you with the most
effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

Niky K
The Google AdWords Team

“I— Am— Sil-ho-uette Man, In-ter-view-ing peo-ple as fast as I can…”

First time I’ve used the Flip camera in the conference room at the new office. Now I know. Don’t sit in front of the windows, too much backlight. I had a great meeting with Eric and Trevor at Lab Escape. They are from a software company, based in Asheville, that makes “heat map” products.

“Lab Escape provides information visualization solutions for businesses seeking to better understand their data. Our products include our Tree Map, which shows trends and highlights anomalies, and our Data Map SDK, which provides support for building your own data maps.”

It’s an interesting business with several big name clients. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say beyond that but when I say big I mean el grande. So if you’re wrestling with great gobs of data, trying to make sense of it all, check out their heat map software.

Heat maps can help you visualize:

“Sales Performance
Risk Management
Market Share Analysis
Asset Management
Market Basket Analysis
Network Monitoring
Investment Performance
Budget Analysis
Portfolio Management
Performance Tracking
Trend Detection
Opportunity Analysis”

That’s all for now.

I have wanted one of these buckles forever. Why? Because it’s funny, that’s why. As if I need a reason to be silly. They only go up to seven letters or I would be tempted to get “AVLMARKETING” in one massive buckle. Maybe “AVLMKTG”? Days of the week? That might be funny. Now I want to get a bunch of them.

Maybe we can talk all our clients into “belt buckle marketing campaigns.” We’ll be on the cutting edge of marketing and pants suspension fusion with this idea!

Thumbs up for BuckleCity.com.

I don’t have a large list of Twitter followers and couldn’t care less. I don’t use social media tools to shout at people. I’m there to share things, mine and others, that I think are interesting, meet interesting people, and stay plugged in to various “communities.” So, I’ve never wasted time following people in the hopes thatthey too are desperate to have a large list of followers and that they will follow me back, or risk getting unfollowed. I also never use anything like auto-following people back or automated direct messages. That’s not real.

All that said, often I have wanted a tool that would let me quickly manage followers in bulk. I don’t have Twitter send notifications to my email when someone follows because I have enough to deal with in my inbox already. And Tweetdeck can tell me I have new followers and whether I’m following them back or not, assuming they’re interesting to me. But Refollow does just one thing, it manages your lists of followers and following-ers (couldn’t resist making up a word) and it does it really well. You can filter and sort by a bunch of dimensions and that really saves time.

Thanks to Scott Stratten at UnMarketing for turning me on to Refollow.

Check out this Twitter tool at Refollow.com

Yesterday I met with Renee Owen, Executive Director at Rainbow Mountain Children’s School. This is a great, small private school in west Asheville. They serve kids from preschool through eighth grade. I have firsthand experience with school because both of my kids have been students there, and it’s been a good experience. The school has developed a fantastic community of students, parents and faculty.

If you’re looking for a private school in Asheville find more about Rainbow at RMCS.org.

The Hoffman brothers, Damien and Derek, remind me of my last real job. I used to work for the media company The Motley Fool (Fool.com) before moving to Asheville. The Fool also covers the stock market and other financial matters, and was founded by brothers Tom and David Gardner.

The Hoffmans are the new, new media guys in this category and I admire their DIY-get-it-done work ethic. You too can grow your site traffic massively in a few short months using their simple approach: work your ass off, create great original content, and develop relationships everywhere you can.

Stay on top of the stock market, trading and investing with WallStCheatSheet.com.

Oh man. It’s hard to keep a straight face when the interviewee is wearing a giant dog head. Say hello to Jack Carrier, founder of DogTagArt.com. I am a huge fan of “crowdsourcing” and that’s exactly the house that Jack’s built. If you’re familiar with Threadless.com, the very popular t-shirt site, then you have an idea what’s going on here. Artists submit designs for custom dog tags that anyone can order. There’s more to it than that so I suggest you check out the site yourself.

One of my favorites says “I love squirrels.”

Visit DogTagArt.com to see tons of custom dog tags.