May 2, 2008

Happy Birthday Spam, Now Die

Really it is 30 years today that the first documented spam email was sent. And look where we are today, still fighting the battle that Gary Thuerk started. Interesting history on Wikipedia, but would be even more interesting if we could mark this the year that we killed it off.

Mashable has a good article around it as well.

What can we do this year as email marketers to make it die a painful death?

1. Stop sending to people that don't want your email. Sure they opted in in 2002, but they have not read it for the past 3 years and you keep them on your active email list. Time to purge them. They are of no value to you and you are of no value to them no matter what you think.

2. Start segmenting your lists and send relevant campaigns based on their profile, what they tell you, and past behaviors.

3. ESPs need to be more vigilante on the lists that their clients load into their systems. Although sometimes tricky when you are bringing a client onto your email platform that you have no history with, you need to set some guidelines, educate them, and keep your eyes on the feedback loops and bounce reports from an account by account level.

Help us all help each other. No one no matter who they are want spam emails. Really.

Comments (1) | Posted by dylan at 4:00 AM | Permalink

April 17, 2008

Lessons to Learn for One to One

Let's set this one up as "What not to do in email marketing".

So not sure if this was done in a find/replace method or driven from a CRM.

Lesson One: Use the right company name in your email. We are eROI not Exact Target. Those are those guys in Indy. We are the sexy ones in Portland, Oregon (HOLLA).

Two: Proof it for any typos or grammar.

Three: Cold Calling sucks, make me learn about your event and the value prop instead of making me HEAR about your event from you. You move straight into the you need to buy pitch and I still don't know what the event is.

Don't want to stir any Cold Call Cowboy karma, but if you don't plan your email outreach, even on a one to one level, you might as well not email.

Sorry Marc-----

------------------
From: M Rosenfeld
Date: April 14, 2008 2:32:24 PM PDT
To: Dylan Boyd
Subject: Request for call re Online Market World

Hi Dylan,

I left you a message this afternoon about to see if you had some time over the next few days to discuss the opportunities for Exact Target at Online Market World, October 1-3 in San Francisco. I know you're busy, so rather than trying to catch you on the fly, I was hoping to carve out a few minutes to take you through the details of the event, and to see if this is a good fit for you.

A limited number of speaking opportunities and high-profile sponsorships are still available, as well as prime exhibit space on the show floor. We've also added a new Community section to our website (Click here for our latest newsletter, which links to it) and can offer you a number of exposure options (podcasts, webcasts, etc.) on the site, to help you start promoting your company before the event in Oct.

Please let me know what day/times work best for you to chat. Thanks in advance for your time.

Regards,

M Rosenfeld
Sales & Business Development Mgr.
Online Market World
www.onlinemarketworld.com

Online Market World 08: October 1-3, '08 San Francisco

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:20 AM | Permalink

April 16, 2008

Email Landing Page Let Downs

The timing was right, the offer was strong, the creative compelling, the message was clear... so what happened? This is the part of the email marketing issue that drives me nuts. I call it the loss leader email. If you have ever seen that car ads in the paper or on TV that say we have X car starting at X price, hurry in. Well an email campaign like this leaves me with some email remorse.

View image

Let's set this up more.

I was looking at booking a hotel room this AM for next week in NYC. This email popped into my inbox. Timing... perfect. The offer was good so I immediately clicked through. I got to the landing page, saw 3 possible locations, clicked through to book, and guess what... no more rooms for that offer were available. So I went to the next location, same thing. Then the next location, same thing. I spent 20 seconds thinking maybe I could just spend a little more (now picture the sales manager walking onto the floor of the auto dealer ready to make you a "special offer"). No dice. I was a bit let down and even felt mislead by the offer.

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And then, 8 hours later, I got the email again. It was the same creative used in the first on top, but it had an extended area showing me what was available. Nothing that met what I needed, but interesting that they did the one-two combo in the same day. Was this behaviorally triggered based on my last search? I had to look. And once again no dice.

View image

BUT what they did to was call out what my past searches were on the left hand side. Liked that touch.

So guess I will have to look somewhere else, even if it was just a little more it still left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

What I did love about this was the landing page had a countdown timer running on the right side letting me know when this offer was up. In the context of this post, it killed me, but from a campaign immediacy idea it was a stand out driver. I wish that this countdown timer was in the email as well.

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Unfortunately it is hard sometimes to control what is going to be left when someone clicks from your email and drives to the site. Whether it is in stock or available sometimes is out of your control if it is popular and a good email campaign. So what can you do? Can you honor the price? Make a deal on another room or product? How can you keep the offer compelling when the offer is gone? Things to think about when you are driving to limited offer.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:01 AM | Permalink

April 8, 2008

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together

So I want to start by saying that I love video and I love email. What I don't love is when you combine them and it not only does not work, but it looks like the below image (fished out of my Junk folder)

Let's start at the top at the jump >>

1. Headers : If you can't test you can't tell if it will get there let alone get to the inbox.
Example headers:
Received: from unknown (HELO avimail-sender2) (67.51.210.148) by mailscan0.--------s.com with SMTP; 3 Apr 2008 18:20:03 -0000
X-Spam-Flag: YES
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.2 (2007-07-23) on mailscan0.0--------.com
X-Spam-Level: ***********
X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=11.0 required=5.0 tests=DOS_OE_TO_MX, FORGED_OUTLOOK_HTML,FORGED_OUTLOOK_TAGS,HTML_EMBEDS,HTML_IMAGE_RATIO_02, HTML_MESSAGE,MIME_HTML_ONLY,WHOIS_PRIVPROT,XMAILER_MIMEOLE_OL_1ECD5 autolearn=no version=3.2.2
X-Spam-Report: * 0.6 HTML_IMAGE_RATIO_02 BODY: HTML has a low ratio of text to image area * 0.4 HTML_EMBEDS BODY: HTML with embedded plugin object * 0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message * 1.7 MIME_HTML_ONLY BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts * 2.8 WHOIS_PRIVPROT URL registered to WHOIS Privacy Protection * [URIs: avimailer1.com] * 2.8 XMAILER_MIMEOLE_OL_1ECD5 XMAILER_MIMEOLE_OL_1ECD5 * 0.0 FORGED_OUTLOOK_TAGS Outlook can't send HTML in this format * 0.0 FORGED_OUTLOOK_HTML Outlook can't send HTML message only * 2.8 DOS_OE_TO_MX Delivered direct to MX with OE headers
Message-Id:
Organization: AVI Communications
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-Msmail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1081
X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1081
X-Spam-Prev-Subject: Heidi Foglesong Talks Video Email

2. Rendering: If you don't test if it will render don't send it. I mean not only video BUT this entire email is images. Really images? Come on man you are targeting ESPs, email marketers, and brand marketers. We all know best practices so if you are going to sell to us... follow them.

View image

3. Who the hell is Heidi Foglesong? And why should I care in email?
Really do you know who she is? Unless you live in AZ and watch the local news you have no clue.
I had to google her to even get an idea of why I should care, Ask yourself if your target audience would go to this length. Time's Up... Answer is NOPE.

So I turned on the images to see, but would others even take this step? Please code your emails in HTML and not ALL images and ALT tag your images.

View image

So I will go on record that I do not HATE video in email (but I do like the team at AVI) and everyone is all over it lately in all the email marketing industry articles, BUT I have yet to see a campaign that worked 100% everywhere and one that has compelled me to buy. I know others will argue this, so bring it on. Show me the data, the creative, and the results.

Sell me.

Comments (0) | Posted by dylan at 4:03 AM | Permalink