WorkingPoint is pleased to announce our exciting partnership with VerticalResponse, Inc., one of the largest, fastest growing and trusted email marketing providers around. VerticalResponse is used by thousands of small businesses and freelancers to create self-service email marketing, online surveys and direct mail campaigns.

VerticalResponse’s email marketing feature provides robust email creation tools, including over 500 email templates and multiple email creation workflows, and exceptional email delivery by using the most advanced methods in the industry to authenticate your email and ensure consistently high delivery rates. After your campaign has been sent, use VerticalResponse to track the results of your email marketing campaigns in real-time with easy-to-view graphs and charts that give you a snapshot view or dive deep into the data to analyze your opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes, compare campaign performance and more.

Get Free Email Credits
As a WorkingPoint subscriber, you will receive free email credits when you sign up for a VerticalResponse account and take advantage of VerticalResponse’s powerful on-demand e-mail marketing, online survey, and direct mail solutions. The number of free email credits vary depending on your account plan:

• Basic Account Plan Subscribers Receive 200 Free Email Credits
• Paid Account Plan Subscribers Receive 500 Free Email Credits

To redeem your credits, simply log in to your account and look for the Free Email Credits widget on your Home Page Dashboard.

Read a recent review VerticalResponse CEO, Janine Popick gave us.

WorkingPoint makes it easy to create professional invoices fast and manage your accounts receivable. Our new video series takes you step-by-step through creating a new invoice, using the Invoices List, receiving payments, and converting quotes into invoices.

The first video is our series shows you how easy it is to create an invoice. Check it out!

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to Susan Leak of Renegade’s Relics an online, vinyl LP music dealer based in Northern Alabama:

My name is Susan Leak and I am known online as “Renagade” . I have been an online dealer of music for several years, believing in offering the best quaility vinyl I can find at the best price.

Music is Susan’s passion, actually it’s her life. She finds the best quality LPs available, cleans them, listens to them all the way through and grades them for sound quality. When you buy an LP from Susan you are assured of the quality. She also offers music in other forms via CDs, tapes etc. and if you are local a DJ service. In her spare time she writes for the local paper!

Don’t have a profile for your small business? Learn more or Sign up for an account and create your small business profile today!

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to Dan Tolman of Yankee New England Real Estate, based in Winchester Center, CT:

Yankee New England Real Estate is a full service real estate brokerage specializing in the listing and selling of fine country homes throughout the 26 towns of Litchfield County. Dan is the 2008 recipient of the CT Association of Realtors Good Neighbor Award for his many charitable works.

Don’t have a profile? Learn more or Sign up for an account and create your profile today!

Is it a time consuming hassle to find a customer’s sales history? Not if you have WorkingPoint. With WorkingPoint, you’re always just a couple of clicks away from everything you need to know about your customers.

1. Go to your Contacts List
2. Click on a Customer

• Here WorkingPoint keeps a complete sales history, including the status of all invoices and quotes. You can also see the total sales for this customer to date by looking at their Lifetime Sales figure.
• Plus you can easily email your customer a copy of their sales history and even create new invoices and quotes with the click of a button.

The more time you spend with WorkingPoint, the more ways you’ll find that it can help your business.
For more information on working with customers, click here.

As a small business owner, you are always looking for ways to reach out to your customers & contacts – keeping your name out there is important to building your brand recognition. Our newest Company Profile enhancement helps you get the word out to your contacts that you have a new online listing for your business so they can stay connected with your business.

With WorkingPoint, getting the word out couldn’t be easier. During your initial profile set-up – or anytime after – you can quickly send your contacts a message letting them know where to view your WorkingPoint Profile.

Simply select the contacts you want to notify and craft your message. We’ve already filled in the subject for you but you can change it if you want to. And you can add a personal message to your profile link to say – well anything you want to! When your message is ready, click Send Message. That’s it!

Your WorkingPoint Profile is an easy to manage online listing for your company and spreading the word just got easier.

Don’t have a WorkingPoint Profile? Learn more about the benefits of setting up a free WorkingPoint profile.

In writing about Key Success Factors (KSFs) as a tool for managing a small business, I recently suggested that you create a “bite-sized” business plan. The process is simple; just take twenty minutes and one piece of paper. Jot down:

1. Your top three goals for the next 30 days.
2. What activities are required to achieve those goals?
3. What measurement(s) will chart your progress?

Once you have these fundamentals identified and written down, ask yourself this question: “If I do these activities properly and hit these goals, how much profit will I make?”

If you’re like the owners of most small business, you won’t know the answer! Why? Because most plans don’t include a line item for profit! It’s true; look at the “bite-sized” plan you’ve written. You almost certainly have a top line, or a revenue number. You’re bound to have something written down for targeting your expenses. Did you subtract the expense from the income and commit to a profit target?

• If you did, congratulations, you’re in the small minority.
• If you didn’t, then don’t fret – instead ask the question, “What’s the right amount of profit?”

Don’t fall into the trap of simply accepting the difference between the income and expense projections. Instead, establish a specific amount of profit you want to achieve. By targeting profit as a line item, you’ve taken a big step towards turning it into a reality.

Janine Popick, CEO of Vertical Response says WorkingPoint is great for free invoicing, double entry bookkeeping and working with Vertical Response to help you manage your small business:

What I like about WorkingPoint is that it’s free forever for one user. Free=affordable 🙂 It even includes the kitchen sink: online invoicing, bookkeeping, contact management, inventory tracking, expense tracking, financial reports, and much more. What’s more is that you don’t need to be a bookkeeper to get up and running.And it’s great for any small business whether you’re a freelancer, consultant, retailer, service provider or distributor, their flexible system will work for you.

You’ll be hearing more about WorkingPoint and Vertical Response working together for your business. VerticalResponse gives your business full online, direct marketing and campaign management. There is no better way to manage your online marketing than with VerticalResponse. And like WorkingPoint it’s easy to use, inexpensive and gives you instant feedback about your business.

Stay up-to-the-minute with what is happening at WorkingPoint by adding the WorkingPoint Tweet Feed widget to your WorkingPoint dashboard.

Learn how to customize your dashboard here.

Don’t have a WorkingPoint account? Click here and zoom in on the image to view some of the widgets that will help you manage your business when using WorkingPoint.

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to
Steve Kaschimer of Dash Technical Solutions, based in Clinton Township, MI:

Dash Technical Solutions works with small to medium sized businesses located in and around Macomb County, Michigan. They help businesses solve their technology needs (and pains) in the most appropriate way possible meaning that they won’t sell you anything you don’t need or want.

If you have a Community Profile and would like to be featured our blog, email us.
Don’t have a profile? Learn more or Sign up for an account and create your profile today!