I came across this blog that takes the names of the spam and brings them to life, then kills them off. It is a great idea and fun if you find that you are the one person in this industry that has an hour or so to kill each day writing this.
Most of this is common sense, but it is always nice to see it in a chart, and hear others “definitions” of points w/in a campaign.
From a vidcast on http://www.dutchcowboys.nl/
Content: something that people want to spend time with, and share with others (video game, education, story, etc)
Seeding Angle/ Viral Hook- The teaser to encourage someone to dive into the message
The Seeder: Spreads the marketing material to the desired connection points
Connection point: Areas of distribution to your target market
Initial Spread: To encourage sufficient spread, you have to start “in the middle of the viral pyramid” with as many people as you can. The number of connection points influences this
Viral Levels: Finally the viral aspect has enough umph to do its job.
Really Seldom Syndication
RSS has marketers’ attention. Most US employees do not know what it is.
By James Belcher - Senior Analyst - eMarketer
When eMarketer last looked at Really Simple Syndication (RSS) in March, the little-used technology had caught the interest of marketers eager to use it as an end run around spam filters.
Since then, more data have been released suggesting that RSS is…a little-used technology with which marketers hope to make an end run around spam filters. Research by Media Buyer Planner and Workplace Print Media shows that merely 2% of US employees subscribe to RSS feeds, and only 9% know what such feeds are.
I have come to think that Alaska Airlines has a key logger on my computer as they always seem to send relevant emails and offers. Well once again I was ready to buy. But when I clicked through to the page to book some travel, for the first time they let me down. There were not any deals available, as they stated due to the time of the year.
So why give me the carrot I want to eat if the fridge is empty? Just a case in point, if you are going to send relevant emails, make sure that the landing page is active with content. IF there is a chance that you might sell out of an item, make a note in the email like “limited inventory available”.
This is an interesting report. I have had the holidays already on my mind as I am sure many of you have as well. What are your plans? Are they locked down? Will you use email RIGHT this year?
E-mail marketing and search engine marketing will be the focus of many Internet and multichannel retailers’ marketing campaigns as they approach the holiday season, according to a new study released by WebTrends.
Forty one percent of the 300 retailers surveyed in the 2006 Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report, said that the holiday season accounts for over 20 percent of their annual revenue. According to Forrester Research, the industry has already experienced an incredible 33 percent compound annual growth rate, and by their predictions is expected to increase by yet another 20 percent, totaling over $200 billion by the end of 2006.
demand generation activity for this holiday season, followed by search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Overall, the biggest increases in spending according to the report will be in email marketing (52 percent), search engine marketing (46 percent) and search engine optimization (38 percent). The biggest decreases in activity spending however will be in online banner ads (17 percent), print advertising (16 percent) and broadcast advertising (14 percent).
Not that this is any stop the press kind of news, but as a reader for many years I was interested as to why Macromedia changed the email newsletter layout. I would assume that change happened due to the new ownership, but none the less, I like it. I would be interested to learn what impact this changes to an image newsletter format had on the click through rate. I would naturally assume that the click through rate was higher, simply due to the fact that readers wanted to learn more.
I think that keeping it simple sometimes has merit. And in this case where they sell tools to develop image driven content (think flash) this is the right way. I will keep my eyes on the next one to see what changes occur in the next vesion.
I had this great question come in last week that I wanted to share as it is very relevant.
I was just wondering, what are your thoughts on whether or not to opt-in a user who has verbally subscribed to an email communication stream? My personal concern with regard to this possible scenario is that the user may forget that they subscribed to the communication and we wouldn’t have indisputable evidence that they had. I’d definitely appreciate your two cents on this matter.
After some thought, we surmized that using a double opt in form, you can enter that person’s email address and then trigger the confirmation/opt in email to hit them back to confirm. Using this strategy you can get the IP, Date, Time and Double Opt in stamp to give you that record.
I would also suggest letting this person know to expect an email from your company and tell them how to act on it and opt in.
I found this latest eMarketer graph to hold some interesting data on where marketers are dipping thier toes into the water. I know that all of these methods are great when used right and in combination with email triggers and drip campaigns with viral send to friend built into the sites.
We have sites that we have design or worked on like:
deathJr
MusicInEveryDirection
SilentHillifier
Create Your Case
Barber Brigade
Send A High Five
and more that use these types of new media that we have launched.
Chad White over at RetailEmail.BlogSpot.com put together a phenomenal study on the top 101 retail emailers and the entire process of subscribing to their email communications. This is worth a read for sure. Not only is this study great, but he also comments on the campaigns that come in daily and weekly from these subscriptions.
He also wraps up a his daily posts with the Subsjectivity Scanner. Which hightlight the subject lines daily.
Here is an example:
SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER:
Staples, 8/22, 4 pm — Staples Easy Mobile Tech is here to help with a $10 coupon!
Polo, 8/22, 5 pm — Introducing New Multicolor Big Pony Styles
Saks Fifth Avenue, 8/22, 1 pm — Just in: SAKS.COM FALL CATALOG + New Fashion Incubator
Bass Pro Shops, 8/22, 3 pm — RedHead Sale and Sweepstakes at Bass Pro!
Harry & David, 8/22, 4 pm — Going fast: The world’s biggest, sweetest Peaches - order now!
L.L. Bean, 8/22, 4 pm — Fall Favorites under $30 + Lower Prices on Polos
Office Depot, 8/22, 12 pm — Toshiba Week Savings
A quick take away, they can place a financial value on all other types of spam, but not email spam. I was hungry to see what the value of this would be.
By Ben Macklin - Senior Analyst
Spam is the scourge of the Internet. It clogs inboxes, crashes servers, wastes time and money and is an abuse of privacy. More than half of the two trillion e-mail messages sent in 2006 are likely to be spam. According to the anti-spam Web site Spamhaus Project, about 200 spammers worldwide are responsible for about 80% of all spam in Europe and North America. There are an estimated 2,300 spammers in the US.
Spam is one of the costs one pays for being online. Most of us are prepared to pay that cost because the benefits of being connected to the Internet far outweigh this cost, but data from Consumer Reports’ “State of the Net 2006″ report puts some figures to that cost.
I noticed this past week a large increase of spam in one of my gmail accounts (yes I have too many email accounts - more than most humans). This spam was “sent” from Gmail and flagged and caught by their filters as well. Thanks GMail.
Keep your eyes out fot this one as it is flooding the inbox. The odd thing is I only use this email account for opt ins form gaming companies I watch for competitive information for client campaigns… so I wonder where it came from.
One thing that I found interesting in the way that this study was presented is that it covered total clicks and reads. It is something that we all track but rarely find interesting to report on. I am thinking that we could report on some more interesting metrics from some deep reporting deatils our emailroi product features and might take some time next month to pull those numbers together to see how they compare.
If you are testing and aren’t trying new metrics, you aren’t developing campaigns that convert.
Restaurant Industry Leads Open Rates: Harte-Hanks
The restaurant industry had the best e-mail open rates, exceeding 100 percent, according to the Harte-Hanks Postfuture Index for January-June.
Restaurants had open rates of 167.7 percent for the period. Open rates exceeding 100 percent include pass-a-long and reopened e-mail. The industry also had the highest clickthrough rate of 57.7 percent.
Of the 13 industries, retail had the lowest open rate, with 35.3 percent, and automotive had the lowest clickthrough rate, 5.7 percent.
E-mails sent to consumers had higher clickthrough rates of 19.9 percent and open rates of 78.9 percent, while business-to-business e-mail had rates of 11.2 percent and 67.7 percent, respectively.
The 13 industries surveyed in descending order of clickthrough rates were, restaurants (57.5 percent), publishing (55.6 percent), pharmaceutical (23.8 percent), travel and hospitality (23.4 percent), conference events (14.2 percent), financial services (11 percent), technology (10.9 percent), government (9.5 percent), insurance (9.5 percent,) consumer packaged goods (8.6 percent), entertainment (8.1 percent), retail (6.0 percent) and automotive (5.7 percent).
The Harte-Hanks Postfuture Index for January to June is a comparative aggregate including 4,300 business and consumer e-mail campaigns compiled through the Harte-Hanks Postfuture Enterprise Edition, an e-mail marketing platform.
Now this has been reported in many blogs these past few days, but I have yet to find it myself in my own MSN account.
If you have a JPG of it, please send it over or let me know where to find it.
E-mailers Call For AOL, Yahoo! to Follow Microsoft’s Lead
Now that Microsoft has added an unsubscribe button to its e-mail user interface, marketers are calling for other Internet service providers — especially Yahoo! and AOL — to follow suit.Microsoft last week became the first e-mail box provider to answer e-mail marketers’ calls to include an unsubscribe button in its interface so consumers will be less likely to mistakenly report permission-based commercial e-mail as spam.
“We hope that all ISPs follow suit and we get to a level of accountability that is consistent across the Internet,” said Ben Isaacson, privacy and compliance leader for e-mail service provider Cheetahmail’s parent Experian.
Now I am not the kind of person to want to just hire someone from an email, but with a junk email like this hitting my inbox this past week ( and a award winning subject line) why would you not consider them as an ESP. I left all the contact info if you want to place your trust in a person like this too.
Subject: email maketing services
Hello,
We are interested in providing email marketing services for your company at very low costs.(lower charges per hour).We are located in WestAfrica, city of Lagos to be precise.We have highly skilled work force fully proficient internet research, email marketing (mail sending),affiliate programs,form filling and other emarketing services.
We can process large volume of work at a very short time and we operate 24hours /7days,we have excellent high speed internet connection ,30 computer equipped seats (including VOIP).
If interested in our services or expanding your company/email marketing jobs to our region,do contact us so we can discuss further.
Assuring you of excellent and on time service.
Kind regards,
e. david.
B.stone ent.
PHONE:23418985737
Home and work users have different preferences.
For e-mail marketers looking to make the biggest impact, it makes sense to pay attention to whether users are receiving their e-mail at home or at work.
According to a Q2 2006 study of e-mail marketing preferences by eROI Inc., 79% of people who subscribe to business-to-business e-mail marketing messages receive them at a business e-mail address. Just 19% of people who receive consumer-oriented e-mail marketing messages subscribe with their business e-mail address.
Those who receive consumer-oriented messages were also much more likely to use an e-mail address created specifically for e-mail marketing: 24% did, vs. 6% of those who received B2B messages.
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