Fast forward several years later, she now works with major brands such as AOL®, AARP™, the Wall Street Journal®, NASCAR® and Condé Nast Publications.

Here’s how she did it.

Brooks was tasked with designing advertising creatives for AOL back in 2003, where she delivered better results than other agencies. Soon word spread within AOL, and more and more marketing teams at AOL used her services.

Getting referrals was how Brooks grew her business in the first 2 years, by “making clients totally ecstatic with results and providing outstanding customer service. We have no formal sales force and no marketing. That works because of the business that we’re in. In large companies, it’s about who you know and how they talk about you.”

She still gets word-of-mouth referrals, but she also goes to conferences to meet new clients and build relationships with industry professionals. She speaks at marketing events to establish herself as a thought leader. One of her recent speaking engagements was at MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2009, where she showcased lessons learned from an AARP e-newsletter program.

As many large companies cut travel budgets recently, she can no longer depend on going to conferences to grow her client base. So she changed her strategy. Instead of focusing on going to conferences, she now focuses on partnering with other agencies.

With more clients to cater to, Brooks grew her company to 18 people. She recently organized everyone into teams, where each team is assigned goals that are aligned to the revenue. To keep her employees motivated, she introduced a bonus structure that’s aligned with metrics. With this new strategy, she has seen some friendly competition and more leadership to achieve the company goals.

So how can you apply Brooks’ experience to your own business?  Know who your customers are, make them your biggest fans by delivering results and excellent customer service and know how their system works. More importantly, be flexible — don’t be afraid to change how you grow and manage your business. That’s certainly how Brooks and her team have doubled their revenue goal so far this year.

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Image Source: AARP Web Site

I recently sat in a presentation by Brooks Bell, President of Brooks Bell Interactive, on lessons learned from AARP e-newsletter program. She originally presented this case study at MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2009, and then did an encore presentation in a webinar format.

Brooks Bell Interactive was tasked with reinventing the AARP e-newsletter, called AARP Webletter. The goals of the Webletter are to drive traffic to AARP website, increase engagement with current members, convert non-members to members and drive advertising revenue. Here are some takeaways from her presentation.

Segment Your E-newsletter List
Brooks Bell Interactive segmented the AARP Webletter subscribers by activities within the last four Webletters: active users clicked on the Webletter at least once; passive users opened the Webletter, but did not click; and inactive users did not open the Webletter.

With this segmentation strategy, they were able to customize the Webletter subject line and content. For example, inactive users received a Webletter with the subject line of “[Name], We Miss You! Have You Seen the Latest from AARP?”

Constantly Test Your E-newsletter
If you’re new to testing, here’s a quick basic: testing is when you change one element of your e-newsletter to see if that single change improves your e-newsletter performance. Measuring performance may include how many times subscribers open your e-newsletter, how many times subscribers click on your e-newsletter, or how many sales you get from that e-newsletter. How often you test will depend on your resources and how many e-newsletter subscribers you have. Brooks stressed during the presentation that you can’t expect an overnight success with testing, so you need to test constantly.

For AARP, Brooks Bell Interactive implemented 10 tests per week. With 40 million members, AARP most likely has a huge subscriber base for their Webletter. So testing that frequently makes sense. If you have hundreds or thousands of subscribers, you may only need to test monthly.

An example of a test element is the subject line, so you can see which e-newsletter is opened more. These four types of subject lines worked well for the AARP Webletter:
1. Personalized, such as using the subscriber’s name in the subject line
2. Question format, such as “More Stimulus Payments on the Way?”
3. Boring, such as “AARP Web Letter” — this creates a more official tone to subscribers
4. Slightly alarming, such as “Don’t Let Your Doctor Make a Mistake!”

Content is Still King
Another test element is content. More subscribers clicked on the AARP Webletter when the following types of content were used:
1. “Best” lists, such as AARP’s 50 Healthiest Places to Live
2. Timely content, such as gas price and stimulus package
3. Content with a broad appeal, such as diets and saving money
4. Write in a personal way, specifically using “you”
5. No negative, depressing and scary topics

After almost a year of testing, Brooks Bell Interactive successfully reinvented the AARP Webletter. Not only does the Webletter become the second highest source of traffic to AARP website, but it also serves as the least expensive marketing program for AARP.

If you have any questions about your e-newsletter program, please leave your comment below! You can also check out Constant Contact® to start an e-mail marketing program for your business.

Steve: Let’s start out with the basic concept of productivity. Do you think technology has helped us or just increased our ability to handle more?
Jared: When I started SET (software efficiency training) Consulting in 2002 it was with the hope of getting people more productive with technology, so they could better enjoy their work and leave their offices a little earlier. But most people are as concerned with how much they work as they are with the results. That is, they feel the need to work at least eight hours, regardless.
So, technology does help us to accomplish more, and certainly offers conveniences. But, in and of itself, I don’t think it’s led us to work less or be any happier.

Steve: How long have you been working in the technology space? What motivated you to start SET Consulting?
Jared: I’ve been in technology since my first HTML support job at a startup in ’95. I worked in web or Windows development at four other startups, half of which are still in existence, and I spent three years in development with the Federal Trade Commission.

While working at the FTC I realized that even the most technical users weren’t particularly adept with the seemingly basic Microsoft products like Word, Excel, and Outlook. I saw this both walking-through the office, and in some training sessions I held. After some more investigation, I considered that there was a market in helping people who used these tools 6+ hours per day. I had always been the kid who shared the little “computer tricks” with friends; it turned out that law firms, government agencies, and small businesses needed those tricks even more.

Steve: What is your philosophy on using technology to become more productive?
Jared: Productivity should never be an end in itself. If you focus just on how long things take, then you can become a cog in a machine. But if you can better apply your time to skip past the minutiae, then you can be more creative and add greater value to everything you touch—in other words, a little thought about productivity can help people to use technology as a vehicle rather than an obstacle to getting stuff done.

Steve: You are definitely someone who has been inspired by productivity thought leaders. Who do you find are most effective and why?
Jared: I’ve learned and been inspired by people like Tim Ferriss and Marc Orchant. Tim has really helped people to see their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s completely differently: as the time we should really be enjoying ourselves. Marc Orchant was a personal role model who exemplified just how much the tools can accomplish, and where to draw the line between tools and education. So many others have offered their ideas and inspiration, and I was an early adopter of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, as you might guess.

He taught me that whatever we do for personal organization, we need to rely on a system and get stuff out of our head, or we’ll never be able to focus and things will always slip through the cracks.

Steve: Switching gears a bit, I would like to talk about your exciting new project, AwayFind. This summer you launched it in a small beta and have grown it since then. What is the basic principle of AwayFind?
Jared: The principle that underlies AwayFind is that one needs to check their email less often if they want to focus on the task at hand, or escape from their work. AwayFind makes this possible by giving people the confidence that they can be reached with time-sensitive messages when they’re not checking their email.

Steve: How was it motivated by the “4-Hour Work Week”?
Jared: Tim stressed the value of an auto-responder to assist in people’s email workflow. I really liked the idea, but didn’t want people to have to call me when they needed me sooner. So I decided to create a similar solution with AwayFind—rather than providing my phone number, I placed a web link in my auto responder that could SMS me or delegate the problem when something urgent arose.

Steve: What are some lessons good or bad you have learned from a software product like this?
Jared: The slogan for SET Consulting used to be, “Technology does not create productive people. We do” – it stressed that how people use technology drives their productivity, not the software itself. Similarly, AwayFind on its own won’t make people more productive—they still have to check their email less often. In building AwayFind I’ve learned how to draw the line between what technology can accomplish and what I have to offer or teach people in order to change their behavior. I’m still learning.

Steve: How much does it cost and how does one signup for the beta?
Jared: AwayFind is “Freemium”—most features are totally free, but some additional branding, security, and routing features will be purchasable for a few dollars per month (still working out the exact price, but it’ll be in the $5-10/range and offer 30-day trials.)

The first 25 who click over to www.awayfind.com from this page will get an invitation code within an hour.

Steve: As we close the interview I would like to leave our mostly overworked small business owners who are our loyal readers a bit of productivity advice. What are the top 5 things a small business owner can do to get more productive?
Jared:
Gosh, that’s a tough question. Most of it comes down to guarding your time and minimizing interruptions:
1. Turn off all email notifications: on your smartphone, in your email program, etc.
2. Don’t multitask: do one thing and do it well.
3. Learn lots of keyboard shortcuts instead of just mouse-clicking things. It’ll take a few weeks to master them, but 2 seconds saved 1,000 times per day will add up
4. If there’s something you really want to accomplish but continue to have trouble with, tie an external commitment to it—for instance, tell your friends you’re doing it, set a deadline that costs money that relies upon it, make a plan with a co-worker/spouse/friend to work on it one day/weekend, etc
5. Sign up for www.awayfind.com and stop checking your email 100 times per day!