Project Timeline with Lessons Learned and Resources - Steve0110110/tldrsales GitHub Wiki

tldrSales.com Project Timeline

  • 2/28/18 06:48 AM - Created and published blank terms of service and privacy policy pages. Used helpful tool at http://www.formswift.com to autogenerate legal terms of service document.

  • 2/28/18 10:43 AM - Created and published privacy policy. Used helpful too at https://www.freeprivacypolicy.com/ to auto-generate the required verbiage.

  • 2/28/2018 2:53 PM - Have been taken down a rabbit hole on getting a SSL certificate. Part of the questionnaire at the privacy policy generator above asked about whether or not I would be gathering personal information (yes, emails - hopefully). Led me to buying a Comodo SSL certificate from http://www.ssls.com ($3.83) and spending the next couple of hours working to get it issued and then upload the certificate, .ca bundle, and RSA key uploaded via my cPanel. Reached out to hosting provider to install the certificate for a 1 time fee ($10). Inadvertently requested the certificate be uploaded to the incorrect domain so had to correct for another ($10). Lesson learned. Waiting to see next step from hosting provider in the process.

  • 2/28/2018 3:29 PM - Working to verify domain with Amazon SES as a step to get out of the sandbox. Used cPanel Advanced Zone Editor tool to create .txt domain name verification record and DKIM CNAME record sets. Used TTL = 3600.

  • 2/28/2018 4:20 PM - Submitted request to SES to move from sandbox to production environment. Needed to review process for handling bounce/complaint process and found documentation in SendyPro describing the process.

  • 2/29/2018 5:30 AM - 3:10 PM - Generated three new documents in the "new newsletter subscription subscriber" flow. The first was the initial webpage redirect message that follows immediately after the prospect enters their email to the subscription file which directs them to check their email spam/promotions folder for the confirmation.

The second is the actual optin confirmation email that is sent to the user's email address that was entered into the subscription form. This email initially was sent directly to the Gmail SPAM folder and displayed a "suspicious link" warning message. After the revision it still goes to the SPAM folder but does not display the warning message any longer. Need to add a to-do on the project board on additional steps I can take to get the email into the "primary" folder on the first go.

The third document was the actual confirmation/onboarding email that is sent to the new subscriber after they have clicked on the email and confirmed that it is correct. I am not completely satisfied with either of these communications, but they are better than the default messages. Need to add a to-do of creating the social media pages for both facebook and instagram, as well as a "archive" for the user to explore as a "next step."

I included the source code for the second and third messages to the repository for future use.

Resources I used for research on how to accomplish these tasks are as follows:

  1. Mr. Digital on YouTube to see how to use MailChimp template creator: https://www.youtube.com/user/MrDigitalAu
  2. SendyPro blog with info for further study on authenticating emails and getting out of the SPAM folder: https://easysendy.com/blog/investigate-email-campaign-spam/
  3. Used social media icon pictures from this site: https://www.mail-signatures.com/articles/add-social-media-button-email-signature/
  4. Information about specific SPF records and DKIM domain key records procedures from the following: https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/everything-email/spam-prevention-techniques/spf-records-domain-keys-combating-spam
  5. Customer forms modification page with descriptions of each template here: https://easysendy.com/docs/how-to-create-email-list-form-pages/

  • 3/2/2018 - Created social media pages at facebook.com/tldrsales and instagram.com/tldrsales and created campaign for each to promote my email newsletter. Additionally integrated the Google Analytics and Facebook pixel into code for use in targeting audience down the line with paid advertising campaigns (potentially).

  • 3/3/2018 4:00 AM - Sent out first email to subscriber list of 8. 6 personal email accounts to test various actions and confirm everything is working correctly, and 2 buddies that have startups and whose feedback I have asked for.

Additionally I published a "Tip of the Week" archive page and posted the article about sales and marketing "Pareto Power Tasks" at http://tldrsales.com/paretopowertasks/

Found a useful tool to use before sending future emails at https://readable.io/text/ It's a good tool because it gives the readability index score of the email and serves as a simple editor by identifying passive voice, wordy sentences, and too-long words.

Additional tool I intend to use for creating visual media is https://create.piktochart.com/ Ability to create presentations, infographics, etc for use of the site or in social media.

  • 3/3/2018 - Achievement unlocked! First email campaign sent! Designed a basic website from scratch, configured email sending service, integrated an email sign up form onto site, formatted on-boarding emails correctly, created valuable content to share, incorporated action steps into email and had corresponding pages set up and linked, and sent the email to list of subscribers at a pre-determined time where it was successfully received by the intended recipients.

  • 3/10/2018: 5:00 AM - Updated the tip of the week archive with the second newsletter about how sales is a process of disqualifying your potential customers. http://tldrsales.com/salesdisqualification/

  • 3/10/2018: 6:40 AM - Updated .htaccess file to set up 301 server redirect from old unsecure site to new and improved SSL https site. helpful resource to make the redirect was here Also, a useful resource on the whole conversion to https starting with getting a certificate is here

  • 3/10/2018: 8:30 AM - Used a find and replace plugin to search wordpress to replace http://tldrsales.com with https://tldrsales.com here

  • 3/10/2018: 8:45 AM - Used redirect mapper tool to determine if the 301 redirect is working. here