Information Overload

Posted on March 26, 2009 by admin

Seth Godin points to a mindmap for Internet marketing. It relates to what I wrote earlier on this blog about distracting your audience. When presented with too much information, the electrical circuits of our brains shut down in a defensive reaction. We can only process so much information at one time. Seth suggests bullets of seven three points. I couldn’t agree more. As a matter of fact, I make every attempt to chop it down to one. One product. One point. One call-to-action.

“…Take an experiment reported in Nature last year (1996) by neuroscientists John Maunsell, at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and Stefan Treue of the University of T|bingen in Germany. They studied those neurons about halfway up the visual hierarchy that deal with motion, in monkeys trained to watch moving dots on a screen. When the monkeys did not have to follow any dot in particular, the motion cells simply burst into life each time they spotted a dot heading in their preferred direction. But as soon as the monkeys were asked to concentrate on a single dot, they had been trained to do this without moving their heads or their eyes, the cells became picky. When the target dot came into view, the cells went wild, doubling their firing rate, while the response from the same neurons to non-target dots moving in the correct direction became weaker….” continue reading

So why do I have so many links in this post? Well, they all relate to the same one topic – information overload. Are you causing the brains of your audience to go wild by giving them too much to process at one time?

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How Expectations Influence Recipient Attitudes and Behaviors

Posted on March 24, 2009 by admin

Email campaigns tend to have a distinctive pattern over time. Patterns can be good, because they help to build brand recognition and trust over time. But certain message patterns can also dilute the value of your brand. For whatever reason, I don’t trust those stores that seem to have a perpetual “Clearance” sign in the window. If you always offer a ‘clearance’ price, doesn’t that clearance price become regular price?

picture-3.pngWhen the pattern of your email campaign is about perpetual promotions – 10 percent off this, 20 percent off that – recipients might become desensitized to your special offers. They might say, “20% Off is so routine, wake me when you have a 75% Off Sale”. It might also make recipients think of your brand as “The one who always has a sale” rather than “The one that has really cool features, great customer service and excellent quality.”

Stephanie Miller tables this issue in her post High Margin Email: Getting Past the Discount Habit.

“…It’s a common trap that retailers and many other email marketers find themselves in – slaves to the discount. Once we start to regularly offer discounts or free shipping in email messages, subscribers become hooked, and they torture us by not responding as well to other types of messages…”

In the same way that websites shouldn’t be a brochure for your company, email shouldn’t be a billboard for sales. Email is a conversation platform. A bridge between you and your customers. If you’re like me, you tend to avoid the guy who is always trying to sell you stuff cheap. I’d rather have a conversation with someone about shared experiences, values, benefits and new ideas.

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Message in a Bottle

Posted on March 23, 2009 by admin

messageinabottle1.jpgWHEN I WAS YOUNGER, I worked as a mail carrier for the US Postal Service in Ossining, New York, home to Sing Sing prison and other not so infamous and more beautiful spots. It was an enviable job on a sunny, spring day – another story entirely in the midst of a blustery winter storm. One of my favorite aspects of delivering the mail was handing personal packages into surprised and enthusiastic hands. Eyes widened at the sight of a well wrapped parcel, usually unexpected by the recipient. What could it be? Who is it from? Being part of that transfer of thought and time from sender to receiver was so enjoyable, and more often than not it was met with wide eyed, enthusiastic response from the recipient. Once, I had the pleasure of delivering a message in a bottle. It was a letter like any other letter, but scrolled tightly inside of a clean, green glass bottle with a cork in the opening to seal it shut. The young woman who received it was overjoyed by the gesture.

Over the years, the amount of personal letters and packages that we receive in the post has declined. More and more people are using email and SMS text messaging to send personal greetings to friends and family. Holiday cheer is sent electronically now to a growing number of people who were once on our traditional card mailing list. Some think that the use of email or other modern platforms makes communication cold and impersonal. Others appreciate the speed and efficiency that new technology provides. Unfortunately, many of us are inclined to write more mechanically, almost in a shorthand style when sending email. Perhaps it is because we think that the content should be as efficient as the channel used to send it. It certainly doesn’t have to be.

It seems that with all of the new technology around us these days, we easily lose sight of the most important part of modern communication – the message itself. The fact is, the quality of our message should not be affected by the channel that we use to send it. By spending the same time composing a letter sent by email as you would have when writing it on fine paper with a felt tip pen, the recipient will be equally enthused by the warmth of your words and the sincerity of your thoughts. Like a message in a bottle, electronic post can be embellished with personal photos, colorful images, templates or decorative borders. But it certainly doesn’t have to be cold. It doesn’t have to be mechanical. As a matter of fact, it shouldn’t be.

Perhaps you will think on this when you sit down next time to write your friend or family member an email. And perhaps they, like the woman who received the message in a bottle, will be overjoyed by your gesture – by your words – by your message.

Posted in communication, Customer service, design, email, email marketing, emarketing, Insights, Marketing, newsletters | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Limits and Consequences

Posted on March 19, 2009 by admin

Limits exist in most natural and artificial processes. We can only stay awake so long before our biological system shuts down. When sleep deprived our mental alertness, physical ability and even immune system suffers. When we drive too fast, we can get a speeding ticket, damage our engine or even hurt or kill ourselves or others. Even our emotions have limits. We can run out of patience, fall out of love and only laugh so much before milk comes out of our nose.

Email marketers face limits every day. You can only send so many messages to someone before they become fatigued (or annoyed.) Your mail server can only process so many emails each minute or hour or day. If you try to go beyond these limits, there will be consequences too. Your recipients will eventually unsubscribe or report your messages as spam. Your mail server will suspend your access for a period of time and your reputation as a sender will suffer, affecting your long term goals.

Fortunately, there are mechanisms in place that make it easy to stay within natural and artificial limits. Our bodies naturally adapt to our need for rest and gas pedals, brakes and cruise control help us to regulate our speed on the road.

Likewise, email marketing software allows you to stagger delivery of your campaigns in line with your mail server capacity and automatically process unsubscribe requests and bounces before your sender reputation suffers.

Limits are in place for a reason. Being as effective as possible within those limits is the key to long term success.

Posted in email, email marketing, emarketing, GroupMail, Infacta, Insights, Marketing, newsletters, spam | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment