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Author: Kylie Fennell

.unique .branded .domain .extensions .excited

Kylie Fennell
Anyone who has started a business in recent and not so recent years has probably been down the frustrating path of first of all, coming up with a unique but relevant brand name, and then second of all, trying to secure a .com or .com.au site of the same name.

 The facts are, if it’s a great brand or business name, someone has probably already thought of it, and bought the domain name before you. To protect your brand you want to buy .com, .com.au and .net if they’re available…but that’s the thing. Everyone is already doing it.

For example, the .com domains are incredibly easy to buy and are often bought by domain hoarders and held for ransom. There is one particular .com that I don’t own that is similar to my main website, but the kind owner (who never wanted it in the first place) keeps offering to sell to me for a lot more than it’s worth.
This scenario often leaves the business owner with the option of having a less desirable domain extension (.never heard of it before) or having to choose a new name altogether.
This is all about to change!
Actually it’s already changing. Last year ICANN, the Internet’s naming authority, approved more than 700 new domain name extensions with up to 1300 becoming available over the next few years.
Now when you go to buy your domain name you may have hundreds of new domain extensions to choose from. So finding an address that fits your business is easier than ever.
Most of the new extensions are industry or location specific with some of the most popular including: .today .center .directory .agency .photos .international .academy .gallery. .sydney .melbourne .technology .properties .rentals .services
It’s not all great news though, here are the pros and cons.
Pros
  • You have more choice and have a better chance of securing your brand name of choice
  • It can help you stand out in the market and be more memorable
  • It can, depending on the extension, reinforce your brand values.
Cons
  • Public awareness of these new domains is still reasonably low
  • Until awareness grows you there may be some confusion in the marketplace, with some customers favouring more well known domain extensions or your competitors’ sites.
  • It is now more difficult to fully protect your company’s online identity and brand, as you would have to purchase almost endless variations of your website domain. You may choose to only purchase key ones. However for the ones you do purchase you can put a redirect on them to your main site.
  • At this point in time a local search in Google will often return local domains, for example searching in Australia you will more likely return an Australian domain name like .com.au or .net.au rather than a non-geographic or international domain extension.
That all being said, the negatives are likely to become less over the next few years as the industry and marketplace get used to the idea.

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Forget Disneyland…I’m going to the library

Kylie Fennell
The Trinity College Library in Ireland (pictured above) is considered the world’s most beautiful.

Disneyland might be the happiest place on Earth – which I tend to think it is (major fan here) – but the most magical place for me must be the library.

I remember clearly being taken to the local library as a child and being mesmerised by the endless shelves, with every single book cover beckoning me and promising new adventures.
I would agonise over my choices and wondered just how many I could take home and get through before my next visit.
The fact that these precious little items were for me to take home and have all to myself, albeit just for a few weeks, was pure magic.
When I was about 11-years-old, I took it upon myself to catalogue every book in our house (there were quite a few books) and log them in a custom-made database that I wrote myself with DOS commands and coding (major nerd alert).
I then issued library cards to my brothers and cousins and forced them to borrow books each week – of course fining them for any late returns.
Okay more than nerdy – a little obsessive – but I couldn’t help it. I loved libraries.
In high school I’d find any excuse to go to the library and run my fingers along the shelves, and I took unfathomable pleasure in mastering the Dewey Decimal system – the old school kind of drawers with little cards in it – not a computer in sight.
As an adult, I don’t get to the library nearly as much as I’d like to, but if I really need to get some work done without the distractions of home, I know my local library is the perfect sanctuary.
While many of my friends and colleagues have moved over to Kindles or Ibooks, I have still resisted on the most part. I buy Ibooks mainly for informational or educational purposes, but if there’s a book I really want to fall in love with, it has to be hard copy. One that I can admire as it sits proudly on my shelf and reminds me how much I enjoyed the adventure of reading it.
For this reason, I hope there will always be a place for the libraries and hard copy books of my childhood.
My dream one day is to have a house big enough that allows for a double story library, with one of those fancy ladders on a runner. So yes nerdy, obsessive, old fashioned – I don’t care because it’s all magical to me.
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Who ya gonna call?

Kylie Fennell

The true test of a business is how they handle themselves when things go wrong.

The best marketing efforts in the world can go come to a big fat zero if a business doesn’t provide great follow-up services.

Simply put, a business needs to let it’s customers know ‘who they can call’ when things go wrong.

These days it seems near impossible, especially with larger organisations, to get a name and a number or an email address for an actual person.

Customers are all directed to a centralised email address or number, and then you are shunted through a series of recorded prompts, dial 2 for X, 3 for Y, 4 for Z, hang-on there isn’t an option for me…what do I do now?

Eventually you may be connected to a person, who answers the phone with, ‘what’s your name, account reference, ID number, date of birth and shoe size’. You then explain your situation in great detail to a person who seems to be reading from a script of pre-prepared Q&As. Nine times out of 10 your query is outside of their expertise or authority, they put you on hold, where you wait for what seems like hours before you’re accidentally cut-off and have to go back to the beginning and start the whole process again.

Let’s look at it from the point of view of the customer:

  • They are “not feeling the love”
  • Their problem remains unsolved
  • They have wasted valuable time
  • They wonder if they made the right decision purchasing your product or service.
Now let’s look at it from the point of view of the person who took your call:
  • They don’t have the authority or expertise to help you
  • They don’t know you or have a relationship with you, so are less likely to be personally invested in solving your problem
  • They probably get abused by customers all day, just as frustrated by the process as much as you are.

Personally I love the idea of having Account Managers or Key Relationship Managers.

Customers love knowing there is someone they can call regardless of their issue. Someone who understands them and their needs, as well as relevant history and is personally invested in you.
Workplaces also benefit from account management models, where individuals are given responsibility or ownership of a function, account or region.
It makes their job more worthwhile and rewarding, clarifies areas of responsibilities, and enables staff to hone their skills and knowledge in a particular area.
The best model includes a back-up account manager, which provides continuity during staff absences, as well as enhances professional development of staff as they familiarise themselves with other areas.
If your customers don’t know ‘who they’re gonna call’ and aren’t feeling the love, you have a potential marketing disaster on your hands.
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Farewell to my first love

Kylie Fennell

A few weeks ago my heart was broken. Not just mine, but countless women around the world, particularly of my vintage, were devastated to learn that Canadian actor Jonathan Crombie had died.

News like this is tragic enough, especially when you consider Crombie was only 48, but what makes the news so significant is that he was my, and many other’s, first love.

For me Crombie was synonymous with one of the much loved characters he played – Gilbert Blythe in the Anne of Green Gables movies of the 80s.

I can’t remember whether I read the books first or saw the movies first, but I was addicted to both as a child and teenager.

Anne of Green Gables was written in 1908 and has stood the test of time. Full of life lessons, everyday adventure, romance, drama and heartbreak, it recounts the adventures of Anne Shirley, an 11-year-old orphan girl.

Anne is mistakenly sent to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, a middle-aged brother and sister who had intended to adopt a boy to help them on their farm in Prince Edward Island. The novel recounts how Anne makes her way with the Cuthberts, in school, and within the town, and the sequels follow her life thereafter.

Anne was intelligent, misunderstood, plucky, fiery, awkward looking, talkative and precocious at times but above all she was imaginative, loyal and passionate. I would have been the same age as Anne when I first read the book and it was as if I had found my own ‘kindred spirit’ in those pages.

To this day I’m obsessed with the idea of “radiantly lovely” cherry trees in full bloom and on my travels I’m always on the lookout for avenues of overhanging apple trees reminiscent of Anne’s “White Way of Delight”.

Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea are one of the few books I have read over and over again. So much so that the 1925 edition I read from as a child is too fragile, from overuse, for the pages to be turned.

Anne is an unmatched literary heroine but she represents only half the appeal of the books.

It’s Gilbert Blythe who really captured our hearts. Gilbert is a handsome classmate who tried to get Anne’s attention on her first day at school by pulling her hair and calling her “Carrots” (unaware of her sensitivity about her red hair). Anne reacted by refusing to have anything to do with him for the next few years. Although Gilbert repeatedly apologised, Anne rebuffed him for years.

However, Gilbert never abandoned his quest for her friendship (and eventually, love). Anne had unknowingly forgiven him when he had saved her from drowning, but had only just let her pride down when he gave up his job as teacher at the Avonlea school for her, to enable her to live at Green Gables with Marilla.

Selfless, smart, handsome, persistent and confident, Gilbert in many ways outshines the likes of Mr Darcy – and that’s saying something.

When Anne refuses his proposal, he replies: “Your friendship can’t satisfy me, Anne. I want your love”.

Gilbert Blythe you were and always will be my first love and thank you Jonathan Crombie for doing justice to L.M. Montgomery’s character.

We could all learn a little from Gilbert – pursue your dreams, persist and never settle for anything less than true love and a life of adventure. Farewell and thank you and here’s my final nod to Crombie’s Gilbert.

Anne Shirley: “I’ve made up my mind to go to my grave unwept, unhonoured and unsung.” 
Gilbert Blythe: “But not unpublished.” Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story (film)

What customers want – no sausages for you

Kylie Fennell 2 comments

It was a simple request. ‘Do you make up family packs of meat?’

The answer from my local butcher was a resounding ‘no’.

I persisted, after all I had been a regular customer for more than four years: ‘I’d be happy to take what ever is on special that week. Secondary cuts of meat, anything really and commit to ongoing purchases’.

‘No. We don’t do family packs. You can just buy whatever is on the shelf.’ (said in a very stern voice)

Taken aback, and feeling a little admonished, I quickly grabbed the first couple of items I could find on the shelf, paid and got out of there, tail between my legs.

From a personal point of view the situation was quite frustrating.

I’m a busy mum and I like to buy my groceries and meat in bulk. I also like to support my local butcher, so asking for a family pack was a no brainer for me. Not so for the butcher.

From a marketing perspective the whole situation was plain complexing. As far as I could see, it was nothing but a lost opportunity for the business.

Of course every business has and should have the right to dictate their products and services, but if you don’t listen to your customers and don’t take a ‘marketing’ approach to your business, you do it at your own peril.

Marketing ideas can come from many places.

Typically you can identify marketing opportunities by conducting market research, monitoring your competitors or reviewing sales figures.

However one of the easiest and most effective methods of identifying marketing ideas and opportunities is to listen to your customers.

What do your customers want?

If you are truly receptive to new marketing opportunities and ideas, your customers will give them to you – and the beauty of it is that if you have your listening ears on, you shouldn’t even have to come out and ask them.

Customers will often tell you what they want without prompting and if you listen carefully, you can create powerful opportunities for your business and ultimately make more sales.

Not every suggestion or a request from a customer is going to be worthwhile considering, but plenty of ideas are.

The key to this is taking a ‘marketing’ approach to your business, rather than a ‘selling’ approach.

What I mean by this is, ‘selling’ involves having an existing product or service and promoting what you already have to obtain sales. A ‘marketing’ approach means to refine or develop new products or services to meet market demands or target new markets – then of course sell them.

Using this approach means you are continually evolving, monitoring your internal and external environment and listening to customers.

Just because I only want to sell ‘X, Y and Z’ products, doesn’t necessarily mean that ‘X, Y and Z’ is what the market wants and will buy. You need to give customers what they want, unless they really aren’t the types of customers you’re looking for.

This brings me back to the butcher example. You may think, maybe the butcher doesn’t want customers like me – local mums buying meat for their families.

This could be the case, but for them they’ve lost an obvious opportunity. The butcher is located directly across the road from a school and I can tell you with all honesty if they had offered me a family pack of meat, I would have gone to school and told every mum I know about it.

Now though, I am looking for an alternative option. The convenience of having a family pack of high quality meat, outweighs for me the convenience of being just around the corner. I will happily travel now to the next suburb or further afield just to get my family pack of meat, which I will then in turn tell everyone about.

So are you giving customers what they want? Or are you giving them what you think they want? Or worse still are you guilty of giving them what you think they should want?

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Let’s get medieval again

Kylie Fennell

It’s coming up to that time of year again in South East Queensland.

Time to go medieval!

If you’re a fan of Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings or any other medieval fantasy you need to make your way to the Abbey Medieval Festival.

This year the Medieval Banquets will be held on 27 June and 4 July with Tournament Days on 11 and 12 July.

The event is hosted in Caboolture, an urban centre on the outskirts of Brisbane, or the Sunshine Coast (depending on where you come from).

The festival goes over a couple of weekends and features everything from jousting, banqueting, and fencing to medieval music, food and dancing.

I can tell you from experience that the Abbey Festival is a delight for the general medieval enthusiast, as well as the hardcore re-enactors who live on-site in tents: dressing, eating and sleeping as if they were in medieval times.

Think Game of Thrones inspired merchandise, delicious mulled wine, archery, jousts and delicious food.

What’s exciting about this year’s line up with the series of suggested itineraries for kids.

The Festival organisers have put together itineraries for: 


They suggest grabbing a spot at the Castle Arena for the Grande Parade, where you will be introduced to each historical reenactment group as they do a tour of the arena in all their splendour.
Then you should plan your day around the Jousts which are held at 10:30am 12:00pm, 1:45pm and 3:15pm. Tickets can be pre-purchased online or bought on the day, but get them early as the jousts are very popular! 

Combat displays are on all day from 11am at The Common (on the way to the Friar’s Folly and Joust Titleyard), with Medieval Life and Dance displays at the Village Green (next to the Stag Inn and markets place).

For the more academic among you, visit the University Pavilion to learn about such things as the making of chain maille, Medieval Surgery and Medicine and Soaps, Scents and Smells in 12th Century England. 

You can find the University Pavilion on the Western side of the field by the High Middle Ages encampments.

There will be Stained Glass Tours throughout the day on Saturday and in the afternoon on Sunday, with lute recitals in the morning at the Abbey Museum. They are free to all visitors of the festival and are held at the Abbey Church, a couple of minutes walk from the main site.

All you need to do now is dust off your suits of armour and count down the days until you can go medieval!

Thing-a-ma-jigs and whats-a-mets – customer and marketing tools you need now

Kylie Fennell

In Marketing like most other professions there are always acronyms, abbreviations and jargon that are commonly used and can leave the marketing novice a little confused.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), CMS (Content Management Systems), COIs (Centre of Influence), Lead Magnets – you get the picture.

In the confusion some of these tools may as well be Thing-a-ma-jigs and Whats-a-mets for all the sense the abbreviations make.

Today I want to talk about a couple of those tools that you could benefit from having right now.

Specifically I want to talk about CRMs and Email Auto Responders.

A CRM is a Customer Relationship Management system.

It is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers.

There are thousands of options out there,  Capsule, Infusionsoft, Insightly just to name a few.

CRMs often involve using technology or software to organise, automate, and synchronise sales, marketing, customer service and communication.

CRMs can also be used to allocate tasks to follow up customers and track them. Additionally they can integrate with book keeping and sales systems.

When you’re first starting out a spreadsheet might be all you need to track customers names, details, sales history, and recent communication – at least initially.

However a good CRM becomes a critical tool as your business grows.

It can be invaluable for managing content, engaging with your customers and creating automated email campaigns. It’s incredibly important for large databases.

CRMs don’t have to be as complex as they sound or expensive. Some are free and many are low cost – thought you should always compare the functionality and features before committing to purchase.

They are often used in conjunction with an Email Auto Responder (such as www.mailchimp.com or www.aweber.com) for bulk and automated emails.
Many CRMs integrate with auto responder programs so the communication history will also be logged in the CRM and a customer’s sales actions may trigger a particular email in the auto responder program.
The goal of an auto responder email series is to convert the recipient to a purchaser or customer.
You will start by collecting an email address, which is added to a list(s) (subscription forms are often included along with unsubscribe features).
It may include an automatic welcome email (with a double opt-in process to confirm the subscription).
The contact will then receive ‘personalised’ emails as part of an automated series or specific campaign you have set up. Often there are ready to go templates you can just fill out for your email campaign.
However you must always follow relevant laws, regulations and terms of use when collecting and using email addresses, particularly ensure you’re across Privacy and Anti Spam legislation.
Once you have a contact in your CRM or auto responder you want to segment them so they can receive communication more specific to them or their actions.
Segmentation can be completed using the following or similar criteria:
  • Add them to specific groups
  • Tag them eg. lead, customer or key influencer
  • Segment them based on whether they have taken a specific action or not during an email series eg. Purchased or Not
  • Actions such as opened, clicked or not opened, has or hasn’t replied
  • Date of when they were added or changes to their profiles
  • Location, language or member rating, even birthdays
  • Purchase activity if integrated with E-commerce platform
  • Performance against visit goals you have set
  • Social data such as age, gender, followers/fans, social networks
  • Number of deliveries, opens, clicks, forwards, most visited locations, subscribers with most opens, locations, sales.
These tools often include great tracking and analytics. A snapshot can be seen above.
So now that I’ve demystified thing-a-ma-jigs and whats-a-mets it’s over to you to go out and get a CRM and Email Auto Responder and take your marketing to the next level.

Creating As Your Purpose

Kylie Fennell
It’s taken nearly 40 years but I’ve finally figured out what I am. 
 
When I say ‘what’ I mean how to define what I do and love. I’m a Creator.
Everything I have done and got so much joy of during my life is about creating. 

Creating words, content, stories, strategies, food, businesses, ideas, events, dinner parties…it’s everything I enjoy and I’m good at. Suddenly my crazy looking life where I jump from creating one thing to the next and back again all in within 5 minutes, makes so much sense to me.
 
Sure it’s another label like being a mum or a business woman or a marketer or even a writer but Creator means so much more to me, especially after reading Seth Godin’s book ‘What to do When it’s Your Turn (and It’s Always Your turn)’.
 
I talked about Seth’s book recently in my business blog and how it inspired me to think of my marketing as creating but to the point here it speaks to my writing.
 
Seth is a marketing genius and inspirational author known for his incredibly popular blog and books such as Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable.
 
In What to do When it’s Your Turn he focuses on the concept of creating new and inspiring ideas. That creators are left with no choice but to put themselves out there in a big way. They need to embrace the fear and exhilaration that success but also possible failure can bring.
 
Creators are driven by the need to create and are utterly miserable when they don’t get to do it.
 
The most pertinent advice he gives is that you may put your blood, sweat and tears into your creation and when you’re finally ready to introduce it to the world you have almost a sense of entitlement that it must be your turn, that your hard work must be rewarded. That you’re owed something. 
 
In fact it’s entirely the opposite. The world owes us Creators nothing.  Forgiving our audience for not feeling grateful and that they owe us gives us the freedom to create for the sake of creating – for us we know no other truth.
 
We owe it to the world to put our creations out there. We’re the Creators and we owe it to the Analysts, the Fixers, the Nurturers, the Thinkers and everyone else, to create for them. It’s our job. It’s who we are. It’s our entire being. 
 
Brutal advice from Seth and scary for a writer who is still slaving away on her first novels, but I can’t help but feel he’s right.
As he says, it is always our turn to put our creations out there. To have bad ideas. To let them marinate to become good ideas. He says that ultimately the person who fails the most will win because the person who gave up at the first hurdle can never win.
The sobering truth is that there are no guarantees but while you’re still creating you are still in the game and you have to be in it to win it.
Care enough to fail. Accept that this might or might not work. And get on with it and create!And thank you Seth for sharing the ugly and beautiful truth of creating.

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How much does it cost?

Kylie Fennell

When it comes to marketing, everyone wants to know, “how much will it cost?”.

But a better question is “how much is a customer worth?”.

Marketing can be notoriously hard to measure in terms of return on investment.

Sometimes it can be difficult to prove a direct link between marketing activities and results.

In a previous post I explained some of the ways you can monitor and evaluate your marketing success. Some of these tips included measuring enquiries, sales, social media engagement, click through rates, customer surveys and media coverage.

Today I want to talk about cost per lead and cost per conversion.

The great thing about the formulas I’m about to explain is that they enable you to allocate a dollar amount to how much it costs to get a new lead and convert a lead.

This also helps you to identify the proportion of leads you’re converting.

Once you know these figures you can easily set yourself a benchmark and then regularly monitor and measure your success against the figures.

Your overall aim is to increase the proportion of leads vs conversions, overall number of conversions and decrease the dollar figure per conversion.

Once you know what dollar figure per customer you’re targeting you can also set yourself more realistic marketing budgets.

Some software programs and analytics programs have built in functionality to measure specific campaigns and their contribution to leads and sales, but this is mainly for online marketing activities and sales.

You can manually calculate how much getting a customer costs when it comes to all of your marketing activities with the following formulas. You will need to choose a time period for calculating the following figures and apply it across all the formulas. You could choose a 12 month period, a month or the period of a specific marketing campaign.

Marketing cost per lead (for X time period) = marketing costs (for X time period) / Number of leads (for X time period).

Marketing cost per conversion or sale (for X time period) = marketing costs (for X time period) / Number of conversions or sales (for X time period). 

You can take this a step further and calculate (from past sales data) the average value of each sale or new customer over the same time period and then calculate return on investment (ROI). If you have a type of business that typically holds onto customers for more than 12 months than calculate the average LIFETIME VALUE of that customer.

Your marketing ROI is the total value of your new customers or new sales over the time period or lifetime value of your customers minus the marketing costs OR

Marketing ROI = Sales revenue – Marketing costs (for X time period).

Of course the above formula only considers revenue so it doesn’t take into account other overheads that will affect overall profits but it does indicate the relationship between your marketing spend and sales. This is then another measure or benchmark you can use for future marketing campaigns and activities.

Finally you can calculate the Marketing ROI of each new customer by using the following formula:

Marketing ROI of each new customer = (Sales revenue – Marketing costs)/Number of new customers 

Finally you can also express Marketing ROI as a percentage with the following calculation:
Marketing ROI % = ((Sales revenue – Marketing costs)/Marketing costs) x 100

The percentage figures can seem a little on the high side but they once again will show the correlation between marketing spend and sales.

Below you can find a sample of these calculations for a fictional business over a 12 month period.

ANNUAL MARKETING COSTS $10,000.00

NUMBER OF (TARGET) LEADS IN YEAR		 1000

NUMBER OF (TARGET) CONVERSIONS IN YEAR		 300

MARKETING COST PER LEAD		 $10.00

MARKETING COST PER CONVERSION (CUSTOMER)		 $33.33

AVERAGE VALUE OF EACH NEW CUSTOMER OVER 12 MONTHS (SALES REVENUE)		 $500.00

TOTAL VALUE OF NEW CUSTOMERS OVER 12 MONTHS (SALES REVENUE)		 $150,000.00

OVERALL MARKETING ROI AFTER 12 MONTHS		 $140,000.00

ROI OF EACH NEW CUSTOMER AFTER MARKETING COSTS OVER 12 MONTHS		 $466.67
MARKETING ROI% 1400.00%

TIP: The above formulas are great for measuring marketing activities and their success but in business you also need to take into account your overall profit margins, so you may wish to ALSO deduct other overheads (NOT just marketing costs) when calculating ROI figures. This will enable you to make sure your marketing activities are well within budget.

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I like to read, I do, I do…what about you?

Kylie Fennell

“The more that you read, the more things you will know.  The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” Dr. Seuss

If you have read my last couple of blogs you would know that my son started school this year and has started his reading journey.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re reading a catalogue, a newspaper or a first reader,  he takes the greatest pleasure in spotting the words he is starting to learn.

“Mummy, there’s a ‘the’, there’s ‘and’, it’s ‘look’.”

Reading is a lifelong adventure and I’m enjoying revisiting the magical journey from the very beginning.

My son’s teacher said that we needed to move onto rhyming, so my next challenge was to find books that featured rhyme words.

It was a simple choice. We happen to have a very healthy collection of Dr. Seuss – we started with Cat in a Hat of course.

Dr. Seuss is the perfect starting ground for any young reader. I read a great CNN article about how Dr. Seuss is the ultimate model for innovation.

He authored more than 40 books but he is celebrated more for creating a fun and creative way of learning how to read but he also delivered important life lessons. “Green Eggs and Ham” uses just 50 words and delivers the message that just don’t know for sure about something until you actually try it.

“‘The Sneetches’ touches on discrimination. ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas!’ is a reminder for many about the true meaning of the holiday; and ‘Oh, The Places You’ll Go!’ teaches us that life is a balancing act so be prepared for the tough parts and appreciate and take advantage of the great parts.”

I particularly enjoy ‘The Lorax’, which teaches us the importance of caring for our environment.

Dr. Seuss was ahead of his time but more than 60 years after first publishing Cat in Hat his work is still highly entertaining and relevant.

This blogpost from teacher Christa Brown explains why children should be exposed to Dr. Seuss Books.

Her top reasons include the importance of rhythm, counting and alphabet skills. She also explains the importance of rhyme.

“Reading a text with rhyme builds a foundation for reading success.  There is evidence that children who recognise rhymes, also recognise the spelling sequence of word families such as ‘at’.  When this happens children can quickly read words of the same word family. Children become familiar with the rhymes and can recite them. Dr. Seuss books are some of the best early readers, the help form a foundation of confidence in reading.”

The moral lessons are also an incredible bonus, providing new insights and important life concepts for young minds.

And finally the illustrations and silliness make the stories so much FUN, and that’s exactly what reading should be.

Dr. Seuss is perfect for children but also big kids and readers of all ages.

If I could write half as good as Dr. Seuss, I would be a happy girl, because I like to read and I like to write, I do, I do…what about you?

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