Content Marketing Today

2 Irish Lasses + a Personal Touch + Strong Content = 1 Great eNewsletter

Receiving an eNewsletter that takes a personal approach is the perfect touch from Simple Solutions Concierge.

The eNewsletter and the company behind it is the creation of self-described ‘Irish lasses’, Kelly O’Brien-Pastore & Lynne McCarty-Pietrzyk. This business tag team provides a much needed service for Southwest Floridians with much too much to do.

Their business revolves around easing the burdens of overburdened businesspeople to whom time has become the most precious commodity of all. They understand that their target clients may have plenty of money but not nearly enough personal and professional time.

Their eNewsletter does a great job of delivering engaging content that connects with their target audience–and which humanizes Kelly and Lynne.

As they describe it:

We help you by taking the everyday tasks that rob you of your time, by simply handing over your “To Do List” to our concierge specialists.  We are dedicated to doing your tasks on our time, a Simple Solution to an easier life.

The eNewsletter and their new website represent their commitment to a content marketing strategy.  Because most of their services are provided locally, they have found networking to be extremely effective as a marketing tactic.  Conversely, they have tested other traditional marketing approaches and found them wanting.

They launched the eNewsletter at the end of 2007 and have added the website in the first quarter of 2008.  What makes the eNewsletter both charming and effective is that it takes a very personal and authentic approach to communicating with their current and future customers.

Unlike the terrible guerrilla marketing eNewsletter which we have recently trashed(Click here to see how Jay Levinson went completely off the content marketing reservation), the Simple Solutions Concierge is all about the customer. 

Lynne and Kelly do begin with a personal note about themselves but it represents a sincere attempt to open up to their readers and to express thankfulness for their good fortune–or as they put it the ‘luck of the Irish.’

90% of the content is customer centric. The first feature tells a personal, life lesson story about prioritizing what’s really important rather than getting bogged down in minutia.  They followed this with an article that offers practical tips about getting organized written by a contributor to whom they offer a link.

Their eNewsletter violates some common wisdom–rather than having a lot of very brief items, it includes two rather long features. But I think this strategy works for them because the features are well written and engaging.  They get to tell the complete story without forcing their readers to take further action.  Perhaps the nice upward growth of their eNewsletter readership proves the effectiveness of their feature article approach.

An interesting component of their business strategy is to develop a network of related services whose quality and service standards are just as high as their own.  This enables members of the network to grow more easily by sharing an expanded high quality prospect base.

The eNewsletter also includes some calls to action both for their own service and for a company that is part of their new network.  But these commercial messages are not intrusive and do not interrupt the flow of their feature content.

Since I have met both Lynne and Kelly, I can testify that they are just as smart, focused, and charming as their eNewsletter. That is to say that their content marketing approach accurately reflects the kind of people they are and the kind of business that they run.

Of course, the fact that they totally embrace the importance of content marketing makes them even smarter in my eyes.  Once again, their well executed eNewsletter, which uses Constant Contact software, proves that it’s all about the mindset, not the money.