When those contacts just disappear...

...from your Outlook or Outlook Express contact list, what does that mean?Before you start screaming at the PC and threatening it with a sledgehammer (a favourite trick of mine), here's a tip I found out the hard way when I suddenly lost visibility of all my contacts when trying to send an email a few years ago.

Your contact list will become invisible in Email mode if you have 1000 contacts or more. Most of us don't have that many on our contact list (although the Forum did!), and perhaps Microsoft has fixed it with the latest version. I use a Mac these days so can't comment accurately on that.

So what you have to do is delete some of your contacts, and once you're down to 999 or below they will all magically reappear. There are probably a heap of old contact emails you still have which no longer work, so why not do a regular purge of your email contacts and remove the ones which are outdated?

Doing business the old fashioned way - face to face

As you're all aware (I hope!!) by now, we're holding the Ryde Business & Sustainability Expo next Wednesday, 5 August. Several of our members are exhibitors. Over the two years we've held the Expo so far, our exhibitors have reported good leads and have turned some of those leads into customers and clients. At the very least, they have expanded their marketing database by 350+ leads each year.

I LOVE electronic marketing. I'm the email queen. But meeting new potential RBF members face to face is important - we can gain mutual trust by chatting and observing each other. From last year's Expo we gained a number of new members and they have all renewed their membership this year.

The Expo is a powerful tool. If you're an exhibitor, you MUST make the most of the opportunity by encouraging your existing clients to come along. They could meet other contacts there who will fulfil some of their business' other needs - and will have you to thank for the introduction. The Expo isn't a case of "if we build it, people will come". It relies on exhibitors being marketing managers for the Expo as part of their own business' marketing strategy.

RBF markets the expo to around 500 contacts plus newspaper advertising, Expo Edge to several thousand. Marketing the Expo can be as simple as including a banner in your email signature. So, if you're an exhibitor, have you marketed your presence there?