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Should You Send Save the Date Cards?

With the number of other things to consider before your wedding day – from engagement parties to bridal showers – save the date cards might be the last thing on your mind. You might not have even heard of them, or perhaps you have, but are not sure if they are worth doing. This article explores what they are and the pros and cons of using them.

What are save the date cards?

These are invitations which are sent out to your guests to let them know that they have been invited to your wedding, as well as providing information about the date, time and location. They are normally sent 2-3 months after a couple’s engagement and may feature a relatively new engagement photo. They aim to increase the number of guests that can attend your wedding by giving them plenty of notice as to the date of the event.

The benefits

They give people plenty of notice

We live in a busy era where calendars are chock-a-block with meetings and parties. A save the date card is good in that it lets people know that you’re having a wedding as well as the date and location. This means they are given plenty of time to book any travel or hotels required and don’t double up on another event.

They let people know if they’ve been invited

You can’t assume people will know they’re invited to your wedding just because they’re related to you or are close to you. They may be left guessing, but a save the date card lets them know that they’re definitely on the list. The invitation may also tell them if they can bring a plus one along, which gives them time to prepare.

They increase the number of guests that attend

Giving people plenty of notice in advance ensures that they can mark off your date on their calendar as occupied. If you don’t send them a save the date, they could accept an invitation to another event or plan an overseas trip in the meantime, meaning that they might not be able to attend your wedding.

The drawbacks

While these invitations may be greatly appreciated by your guests and also help you to know how many people to expect, there are some downsides to them.

You’re forced to know your wedding details early

After getting engaged, you’ve got to decide upon wedding details such as location, date and time pretty early on. These are things that are difficult to change once you’ve sent our your save the date cards. If you’re on the fence about your venue and date, you might want to skip them and just send out a regular wedding invitation later on instead.

You have to decide on your guest list ASAP

Once you’ve invited someone, it’s pretty tough to un-invite them. This is one of the downsides of sending out these invitations. You’ll have to decide who you want to come to your wedding up to a year in advance, and things can change in a year. Once someone has received the invite, they could be set on coming regardless.

They add an extra cost to your likely already expensive wedding

Producing and posting the save the date cards adds another expense to your budget. Things such as design, printing and postage all cost money. The number of invitations you send, as well as how high-quality they are, can also increase the cost.

Conclusion

The pros and cons of sending save the date cards are something you will have to weigh up for yourself.

Pick and Pack Services Taking The Flat Out Of Your Flat Pack

You buy a coffee table, a bookshelf or maybe you purchased a cupboard. You get your purchase home or have it delivered, excited by your new purchase only to find out you have three to four flat pack boxes to now try to put together. We have all felt this sting. When I think flat pack the first place I think is IKEA but in fact, most furniture comes in flat packs these days. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could have a professional company do all of the hard work for you?

Nobody likes having to spend hours putting together a brand new piece of furniture that you just spent hours picking out. Pick and pack services are here to reduce the frustration and will come to your home or office and put together your flat pack saving you a lot of hassle.

The instructions that come with your flat pack can send the most intelligent person into hair-ripping frustration. Although they look quite simple, the instructions can be very difficult to decipher. The experts at the pick and pack service have many years of experience reading and understanding these puzzles known as instructions and can easily put your furniture together for you.

Quite often all we have on hand are screwdrivers. The instructions tell you to use a Phillips head screwdriver and a hammer and that is all. 30 screws later your hands are shaking, they are aching and blisters begin to show and your shelf is wobbling because you can’t seem to get the screws in tight enough. Some of the nails that you hammered in have become bent and you had to toss them away leaving you short. By using a pick and pack service you can sit back and relax knowing they have all the tools (hand-held tools and battery powered) and also spare nails and screws, to complete the job correctly ending with you having sturdy furniture.

Many couples have ended up in screaming matches because of the stress and frustration of putting together a flat pack. Damage to walls may be done when something falls, and fingers can be squashed or cut. Sometimes your item just simply does not fit into the space you originally planned for it to go. All of these headaches can be erased with using a pick and pack service. They will measure the space you want it to be placed and give you the option of where you want it to be put instead if it doesn’t fit. Any damage to paintwork or door frames, etc, will be fixed leaving you with a stress-free day.

A pick and pack service will offer fast and professional help. With a reliable and trustworthy handyman, you can put your mind at ease when you let them into your home. You can rest assure that nothing in your home will be touched unless it is directly involved in putting together your item or putting it into its place, i.e moving other furniture to make it fit.

When attempting to put together your new shelf there is the chance of screws going in wrong causing big holes, or you bend something the wrong way and it snaps. Another benefit of using a reputable company is that if by chance part of your flat pack is damaged, you will have your item replaced. Pick and pack service companies are insured to cover any damages. You will have brand new furniture by the time they leave your property.

So if you have made a purchase and it just happens to need putting together from a flat pack with those horrible instructions, consider hiring a professional pick and pack service. You can sit back and relax knowing the hard work is all being completely taken care of.

Causes for your digital marketing campaign to fail

When you are starting or continuing a digital marketing campaign you probably have already done extensive research into what helps make a campaign succeed. However a lot of people tend to not look into the measures that can cause its down fall.

The causes of failure are just as if not more important as the factors that can make it succeed. If you are using a Melbourne SEO agency or a different kind of third party to run your campaign they should already know the causes for failure but knowing yourself can also help you set up the campaign for success.

Below are some of the causes that you need to be aware of that could lead to the failure of your digital marketing campaign.

Website optimisation

A very easy way to cause the failure of your digital marketing campaign before it even properly starts is having a poorly optimised website. The main goal of all SEO and PPC campaigns is to direct people searching on the internet to your website. If your website is poorly optimised and just simply doesn’t flow or engage your visitor base there is no point in wasting money investing in redirection methods.

Before you start with any good digital marketing agency they will always analyse your website before starting any SEO or PPC strategies because as previously mentioned it is like directing cars to a dead end. A good website will engage visitors and get them more interested in your website with the underlying goal of them becoming a client the priority.

Poor website optimisation can account for high bounce rates, low average session times and a low amount of leads with visitors still coming in.

Black hat SEO efforts

In the SEO world there are two different streams of approaching SEO known as white hat and black hat strategies. White hat can be deemed as the ethical and appropriate methods that you should be taking to increase your Google ranking. This includes optimising your website with relevant and engaging content, link building and building a reliable review platform. White hat SEO methods is what all digital marketing agencies should be using as black hat methods can have negative outcomes.

Black hat SEO methods are what Google deems as unethical ways to artificially boost your Google ranking. Google frowns upon any website that uses these tactics and can lead to them having their listing on Google removed completely which can tank your online presence completely. Black hat SEO methods include link spam, invisible text and webpages on your website.

The budget

Naturally with all investments, the more you can put into something the larger return you will get. Digital marketing is no different and a reasonable budget needs to be determined for you to achieve your goals. SEO budgets are mostly poured into the improvement of your website while PPC is to allow you to capture certain search terms and have more of them.

Depending on what your goals are, you need to assess what these services cost and then adjust if they don’t meet with what you have in mind. For example website redesign is not a cheap service can cost several thousands of dollars which for many people and small business owners is not feasible.

How to Get Rid of Bad Debt

Getting rid of bad debt, or more prominently, writing it off is often required by businesses who have customers that can’t pay their bills. Having customers owe money to your business, can be potentially extremely harmful to your business and might force you to have it written off entirely.

Bad debt thus generally refers to a situation where an individual has bought products, or rendered services, from a company, on credit, but isn’t able to pay it back, according to the instalments that are set up by the company.

Bad debt is an awful thing for a business, especially one starting out, to have. That is because bad debt cannot be collected, making it next to impossible to generate it out of a pocket other than your own.

How to Deal with Bad Debt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GanCy3hv1mI

Although it is difficult to solve the problem at hand, when it comes to bad debt, there are a few ways one can solve it.

Businesses can incur bad debt by offering loans to their clients and vendors, take out a business loan to pay it back without hurting their company, as well as by reducing credit sales to customers, to help the problem from increasing with more customers.

By reducing a business’ credit, for instance, businesses have a far better change managing their customers and the credit they can afford than they would if they only allowed them continuously increased credit.

How a Business Can Write Off Bad Debt

Regarding financial accounting, bad debt, if not paid by customers, becomes an expense for businesses, which when it comes to accounting, can be very time-consuming and turn out to be quite expensive.

When it comes to accrual accounting in business, payments get marked as receivable accounts and are receivable as money owed to the business.

If this money isn’t paid, according to its scheduled instalments, or after that after negotiating payment terms with the customer, it becomes a bad debt that needs to be written off. It means the business’ accounting books need to be readjusted, to be able to represent the actual amounts of the business credit accounts.

Since writing off bad debt includes removing it altogether, it will affect your business balance sheet. It can either be written off with an allowance method, or direct write-off method.

Writing off Bad Debt

Allowance Method

This method allows you not to predict the payment that is receivable for credit sales, which is that owed by all your customers. It results in debiting all bad debts, expenses, as well as credit allowance, for accounts you’re uncertain of. In the case of bad debt, you’ll be able to credit your receivable accounts, as well as your debit allowance for those accounts.

Direct Write-Off Method

This method is most commonly used to write off bad debt and takes place after receivable accounts get recorded, which must be credited as receivable accounts, where bad debt expenses must be debited, to be able to write it off completely

How Technology is Changing the Face of Ecommerce

E-commerce has been an innovative marketing platform that’s been around for a while, but why is technology only having a major effect on it now?

Well, that’s because shopping in a store, or online in a manner that is either not well thought out, or difficult, is something entirely of the past.

E-commerce is a platform for making sales at both a small or large scale, that allows customers to buy items online, help customers to keep track of their purchases, as well as when they’ll receive it.

It also allows for a lot more support from the brand, or company, you’re buying from, which is something that wasn’t exactly possible in the past. In fact, shopping online a decade ago was a lot more complicated than people think. What’s more is, it was very safe either.

E-commerce Stores for the Online World

Online users use to be quite wary about buying items online, especially if those items would have to be shipped abroad, with the hope that it wouldn’t get lost, and, arrive according to schedule in one piece.

Technology has thus had a major effect on the industry of e-commerce and how retailers converse and sell to their customers.

This shift in technology has allowed for business-to-consumer transactions, fresh opportunities, as well as access to the tools that will enable consumers to look at prices, compare products or services, as well as locate stores more effectively and even make use of discounts.

Due to the effectiveness of online e-commerce stores, anyone, from anywhere in the world, can now purchase any brand’s products and have it shipped to there doorstep with a few clicks of a button. It has also allowed retailers to make greater sales, create a more reliable platform for dealing with customers, as well as promote stronger B2C relationships, which finally, helps brands grow faster.

Technology has thus revolutionised the way businesses connect with their consumers and have amplified the process of making a sale.

E-commerce for Retailers

If you’re a retailer, enjoying the wonderful perks of having an e-commerce store online, you’re on your way to growing your business and reaching a global network of consumers, which wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

Thanks, internet.

Dozens of features and application software has also allowed for marketing to be made more accessible, allowing for products to be more accessible than ever before.

A marketing technique, such as social media marketing, which is generally connected to your e-commerce store, can allow for a global platform of online users, looking to purchase products from your store.

E-commerce, along with the enhancements of technology, has allowed for a lot of success in businesses globally. Most brands owe their success to the incredibly well-paired e-commerce, digital marketing platforms, and of course, the internet.

The 5 Different Types of Health

Change takes place consistently, making wellbeing an active process. We all have suffered illness or had times of good health. Most people had times of serious illness. Lifestyle changes can alter our levels of fitness. What does it mean to be fit? Physical health is essential, but so is mental health as well.

There are different areas where we need to be healthy and in good physical condition. These areas include Physical health, Mental health, Emotional health, Spiritual health and Social health.

Physical Health

Physical Health involves lifestyle improvements that will cause fewer diseases and illness. Fitness includes heart and lung abilities and the capability of your body to breathe oxygen. The oxygen is then delivered to the cells in your body to improve circulation by releasing energy so that physical activities can take place.

Physical health also includes the capability of your muscular endurance, strength and the generating of power to improve posture in our bodies. Our muscles and joints consist of the range of movements that we can perform.

Mental Health

Mental Health is the potential to grow in knowledge and learning how to grow intelligently. We determine good mental health by factors such as circumstances and structures in our lives like parenting, schooling and the relationships that form during our lives.

Emotional Health

Emotional health is a term that refers to the capacity to control our emotions, learning to express them freely and effectively.

Spiritual Health

Spiritual health states the type of faith we have. Is our faith focused on belief systems or in some unifying force?

Social Health

Social health indicates our ability to sustain relationships, including our participation in events and the people in our environment.

We need to take responsibility for our wellness and development. Every person on earth desires a good quality of life with personal growth. We can all improve our health to live long lives. Taking care to eat nutritious foods, doing regular physical exercises, learning to cope with stress and maintain good relationships will only improve our wellbeing. We should work towards being well in soul, spirit and body. If any imbalance occurs, we will be unfit. We must take care of ourselves. There are fitness professionals to assist in motivating us to improve our overall level of health continually. Guidance and support are available. We need to drive ourselves to become more physically active and encourage one another daily to have a proper diet.

There are fun activities that families can get involved in to benefit their overall health. One would be to do bike riding or rollerblading. Playing on the beach will reduce stress and help you lose weight at the same time. Physical activity makes you live longer and improves overall fitness. Your health and the proper shape of your family is too important to ignore.