MessagingTimes

Marketing from the Top of the Empire State Building

Posted on September 29, 2009 by admin

I received an email this morning from a man who was wondering if GroupMail would help him to contact his list of one million emails. It was sent from a Yahoo address. I told him “yes it can but no you shouldn’t.”

If you have a small business and want to get the word out about your product or service, don’t shout it from the top of the Empire State Building. Take the elevator down to the ground floor and talk to people about it. Start some conversations. Attend some conferences. Create a presence and give people the opportunity to request more information. Work to be an invited guest and not the wedding crasher.

I remember a guy from college who would always stand on a chair at parties and make these huge, attention-seeking announcements. Everyone heard him, but nobody liked him. Don’t be the loudmouth who talks the loudest but says the least.

You will create more buzz about your products and services if you engage a smaller crowd, respond to their needs and surpass their expectations.

That’s not to say that you should never rent an email list. To rent a reputable email list of 1 million addresses would cost $170,000 dollars (based on average B2C email list rental rates of $170/thousand). The man who contacted me probably spent about one hundred dollars. Of course, his list will be full of invalid addresses and potentially have some spamtrap email addresses on it as well.

You can also use effective strategies to grow your own email list over time.

“…In-house email lists regularly outperform 3rd party rental lists simply because those people who subscribe directly on your website know what they are signing up for and are requesting to hear from you first-hand. When renting an email list, you are assuming that the people on that list are interested in what you have to say and sell. And you know what assuming does…” read 5 Tips to Increase Email Subscription Rates

Just don’t expect the old batch and blast email method to be effective as a long term strategy to build your business and promote your brand. It’s like shouting from the top of the Empire State Building.

Posted in communication, email, email marketing, emarketing, GroupMail, Insights, Marketing, newsletters | Tagged b2c email list rental rates, batch and blast, email strategy, email subscription tips | 2 Comments

Is Your Email Social?

Posted on September 28, 2009 by admin

Email can be used effectively to bridge your customers, prospects and anyone else on your email list to the more regular conversations that you are having on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. So why aren’t more email marketers building this bridge?

A recent study by Email Data Source and Goodmail Systems found that just over half of email marketers who engage in social networking are including a link to their Twitter and Facebook profiles in email campaigns. Perhaps even more surprising, less than 30 percent of marketers provide a link to their social networking channels on their websites.

“…Online retailers that [did] link to their social media pages in e-mail campaigns were somewhat more likely to also promote them on their Website. Still, the majority of the Internet Retailer top 100 sites (63%) did not link to a social media presence..” read more

Bridging email recipients and website visitors to the more regular conversations that you are having on Twitter and Facebook will certainly increase the number of people who are following you on those social networking platforms. So why aren’t people leveraging email and websites to invite people to join their ongoing conversations?

One guess is that there aren’t any conversations going on. I imagine that many companies with Twitter and Facebook accounts have them because they think they should. They are not actively participating in industry conversations or providing immediate streams of support for their products or services on Twitter or Facebook.

Just having a Facebook or Twitter profile isn’t enough. You have to invite people to join your conversations and be available to participate in them yourself. If you have an email list that you communicate with every month, that’s a good place to start.

You should also add links to your Twitter and Facebook profiles in your signatures that appear in your email, blog comments, forum posts and anywhere else where you digital signature is used.

Have you built strong bridges between email, Twitter, Facebook, your blog and your website? If not, why not?

Posted in communication, design, email, email marketing, emarketing, Insights, Marketing, newsletters | Tagged effective social networking, facebook in email, linking to your Facebook profile, linking to your Twitter profile, social email, twitter in email | 2 Comments

Weekend Email Campaigns

Posted on September 25, 2009 by admin

I check my work email regularly every day, including weekends. Most people do. So what about sending your B2C and B2B email campaigns out on weekends?

On weekends, corporate mail servers aren’t as busy. More importantly, weekend inboxes aren’t as cluttered with the weekday workload which often causes your message to lose visibility and sometimes fall victim to the quick-delete management method that many recipients use to whittle their inbox down to a manageable size each day.

The fact is, many people check their personal email at work and their work email at home. The electronic line blurs between work and home today.

“…The average email user in New York checks personal email 4 times per day. Meanwhile, they also check work email over 3 times in a given weekend…” read more stats for New York and other cities

Mobile devices are making it even easier for people to keep up with work and personal email over the weekend.

“…64% of key decision makers are viewing your carefully crafted email on their BlackBerrys and other mobile devices, according to new MarketingSherpa data…” continue reading

So why not take advantage of the reduced mail server volume and the increased inbox visibility that weekends provide? It’s not like you have to go into work to run your campaign. Just schedule the send for Saturday morning and let your recipients digest your message in the comfort of their bathrobe with a cup of coffee in their hand.

Recent studies show that Saturday and Sunday garner the best open and click-through rates. So, there’s even some evidence to back up the theory I’m positing here.

It’s certainly worth testing.

Have a good weekend!

Posted in communication, email, email marketing, emarketing, Insights, Marketing | Tagged sending email campaigns on weekends, weekend email, weekend email campaigns, work and personal email | 5 Comments

Why People Report Your Message As Spam

Posted on September 23, 2009 by admin

While there really were no earth shattering revelations in the 2007 Email Sender and Provider Coalition (ESPC) study of email recipient behavior; it did provide some research data to support what many of us in the industry have been saying for years. The study investigated the views about spam, unsubscribe features and anti-spam technologies of more than 2000 US email recipients.

The study found that 80 percent of respondents delete or report messages as spam without opening the actual message. Seventy three percent base this decision on the “From” field and 69 percent take action because of subject line content.

Ninety percent of those surveyed indicated that they would appreciate having an unsubscribe button and 80 percent also want access to a report fraud button. In addition, more than half of respondents (53 percent) would be more likely to open and read an e-mail with a certification symbol.

The report made me think about the potential value of including an unsubscribe “button” in email. Most email marketers include an opt-out link in their email messages. Or they should! Normally, this link is found buried somewhere at the bottom of an email after a long sting of text. But what about making it even easier for our recipients to unsubscribe by crafting that unsubscribe link in the form of a clear, easy to see button? Anyone who read Seth Godin’s The Big Red Fez understands the positive impact that a red button can have on website landing pages.

What about using a big red button (or medium size for that matter) for our unsubscribe links? More and more, email marketers are understanding that keeping recipients on an email list when they really don’t want to be there isn’t a good strategy. It’s like inviting people who don’t like you to your party. The most effective email lists are comprised of willing, interested and engaged recipients. Email marketers would benefit from making the unsubscribe process easy for those who don’t want to attend the party in the first place. Not only would it help to build a more effective list, but it would build trust and confidence in their brand and differentiate them from pushy emailers who do not value permission-based marketing.

The study also reiterates the importance of the From and Subject fields. “80 percent of respondents delete or report messages as spam without opening the actual message.” These figures remind us to focus on these fields when designing our email campaigns. Too often, micro-content such as these fields is overlooked by email copywriters.

Articles relevant to this post:

Optimizing the “From” Field for your Email Campaigns

The “Subject” of Email

Processing Email Subscriptions (practically speaking)

Posted in email, email marketing, emarketing, GroupMail, Infacta, Marketing, newsletters, spam | Tagged email subscription management, email subscription strategy, opt-out management, report as spam button, unsubscribe links, unsubscribe practices | 5 Comments

Email: A Window of Opportunity

Posted on September 21, 2009 by admin

I received an email today that required too much effort on my part in several ways. This is not an isolated incident. The truth is that many, if not most email marketing messages that arrive to my inbox require me to take unnecessary steps to access the content.

First, I had to enable images to see what the message had to say:

Next, I had to scroll down to see the content below the branding (this was true when I was viewing the message full screen also – which requires a double click to open the message – something I try to avoid).

Email is a powerful and effective communication platform, but many marketers make us work unnecessarily hard to see their message. Why not consider using a simpler HTML format that circumvents image suppression and communicates your key points immediately in the preview pane of your recipients inbox? As an example, I took the content from this same AdAge message and re-formatted it using simple HTML. The example below lacks any design elements (color, borders, font formatting, etc.) because it is intended to illustrate effective copy placement more than design.

Whichever link your recipient clicks should take them to a page that contains the relevant content and links to the other content related to your campaign. As such, email acts as a bridge to your website. Once a recipient lands on your website, they should be able to easily access other content that you included in your message. Rather than trying to fit your website into your email message, consider email as a bridge to your website.

There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes, it can be effective to include a full article in a message. This is most effectively done with shorter articles. Even with full-article email, it is still important to take the preview pane into consideration – ensuring that the lead paragraph is visible to your recipients without scrolling or clicking.

Think of the email preview pane as the window to your campaign. What do your recipients see when they look in that window? Would you cover your retail shop window with curtains? Would you make your potential customers climb a ladder to see what you have inside?

Think about it.