The Email Wars

From juggling multiple devices to polishing writing skills - Here are some websites that can impact your interactive marketing success…

http://www.dopplr.com/
- Traveling a lot? Well this application lets you connect with others you know on the road. Never know where you might met up.
http://www.tumblr.com
- Easiest way to share yourself from all of your social media, twitter, blogging etc.
http://www.boompaste.com/home.php
- Great Marketing and idea aggregator.
http://shifd.com/
- Shifd easily allows you to shifd content including notes, places, links between multiple devices.
http://www.conceptshare.com/
- Design and collaborate anywhere with anyone.
http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/
- Keep your eyes on the skies with Fire Eagle landing publicly soon.
http://www.brijit.com/
- The World in 100 Words.
http://readwriteweb.com/
- A Resource for what is happening in the fast moving space of whats Next.
http://gridskipper.com/
- Cool guide to urban travel.
http://www.copyblogger.com/
- Need the next subject line? Look no further for great ideas.
http://www.skrbl.com
- Draw, text, scribble & share on this simple & useful whiteboard. We use it for remote wire framing.

Buying Remanant email at yahoo/msn etc? Have you ever heard about this? I heard this topic from an email marketing person that said that they do this every once in a while for clients through MSN and Yahoo. What this immediately made me think about is:

Does it have an impact on delivery? Does this help with getting more email from your brand into the inbox through these ISPs and help on your reputation with the links, domains and sender from lines you use?

Does it help protect feedback loops if timed with house lists? Why I thought of this was if I was dropping a massive double opt in confirmed campaign for a client from their house list, would there be an impact in delivery scores IF I had a timed drop with in house ISP remanent emails? I would think that in the grand scheme feedback, unsubs and other scores would be better balanced if I was doing this?

Is this a trick? Is is a way to leverage the ISPs to deliver 3rd party emails on your brand’s behalf? Seems a little fishy to me? But then this is the first time I have heard of doing this?

Anyone have any experience with this practice?

From Mediapost by Tanya Irwin

The definition of spam has changed from the permission-based regulatory definition of “unsolicited commercial email” to a subjective, perception-based definition centered on consumer dissatisfaction, according to a recent survey.

Jointly conducted by Chicago-based Q Interactive and Warren, R.I.-based MarketingSherpa, the survey’s goal was to reveal consumers’ perceptions of what they consider to be spam, why they report emails as spam and what they think happens when the “report spam” button is clicked.

An overwhelming number of consumers misuse and misunderstand the definition of spam, ultimately hurting legitimate marketers–but also consumers themselves who are seeking the messages they want, but instead are automatically being unsubscribed, said Arend Henderson, Q Interactive’s chief analytics officer.

There is confusion among consumers regarding what they believe will happen as a result of clicking the “report spam” button. Over half of respondents (56%) reported it will “filter all email from that sender”–while 21% believe it will notify the sender that the recipient did not find that specific email useful, so the sender will “do a better job of mailing me” in the future. About 47% believe they will be unsubscribed from the list by clicking “report spam.”

“The people I found to be really interesting were those who thought (by hitting the spam button) they were notifying the sender that they didn’t find that particular email useful,” Henderson said. “The marketer then has to reply to this potentially very engaged email consumer by never ever messaging them again. Who knows how valuable those people are, because most responsible marketers never email to them again.”

When it comes to utilizing the “report spam” button, nearly half of respondents (48%) provided a reason other than “did not sign up for email” for why they reported an email as spam. In fact, underscoring consumers’ varying definitions of spam, respondents cited a variety of non-permission-based reasons for hitting the spam button, including “the email was not of interest to me” (41%); “I receive too much email from the sender” (25%); and “I receive too much email from all senders” (20%).

The survey found that a large number of consumers (43%) forgo advertiser-supplied unsubscribe links in email and simply use the ISP’s “report spam” button to unsubscribe from an advertiser’s list–regardless of whether or not the email fits the consumer’s definition of spam.

Read Full Article

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We are frequently asked by clients to “audit” their current email programs. We have a lengthy process that take a few weeks to go through and return a audit and recommedations document that they can use to implement changes to their current programs. What I wanted to put out to the readers to hear about is do you have an audit process in place? If so what are the key things you look for? Are there things you would like to share with the audience?

I have been working on a series of guides on the new eROI site that we are planning on launching that cover the following areas:

The Opt In Audit
The Opt Out Audit
The Email Delivery Audit
The Email Frequency Audit
The Creative Audit
The A/B List Test and Time of Day/Day of Week Audit
The Competitive Email Audit

What are you testing for and are these things that you are looking at?

Love any comments on this as they may help shape my guides.

I was thinking through a topic this week (when a Microsoft Director was presenting on Advertising at OMMA). The topic is - “Should You Be Automating or Manually Delivering Email Campaigns?” There are pros and cons to each side.

I would heavily lean towards automating double opt-in welcome emails, and a customer education/value email flow about the brand, services, expectations of emails/outreach. These are things that SHOULD be done and it makes the most sense to automate. But when I say that, I do not mean to let them lie static. These automated campaigns must be always reviewed, analyzed, tracked to goals AND tweaked constantly. So although you have automated, you actually are manually working on them ALL the time. Kind of a double standard here right? Well not really as most of these are going to be flowing in and out every day and it is your job to watch them and see which minor changes can make an impact.

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We participated in this article for ClickZ with many other ISPs this week . They got 98% of what I said right, but missed my complete explanation. This line is not too accurate: Deliverability issues still persist with eROI.

What this means is that our servers get varying results each day depending on the tests. We see some days with Yahoo at 100% globally, and then some days that the US rates fall to 12 to 18% missing in TEST results not live campaigns. So we have seen improvements over the past 60 days, but the problem still can crop up from time-to-time based what Yahoo decides to do that day.

We are watching, seeding, and monitoring our IPs everyday and we see great live rates, but Yahoo is a daily challenge.

I actually have moved my wife off Yahoo, as she was missing emails from friends and family everyday. Then they may or may not appear a few days later in the inbox or junk box. So sad. I think that this is a bad issue for Yahoo that is impacting EVERYONE not just ESPs and email campaigns.

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A recent experiment that was FORCED on me the past weeks while at SXSW and OMMA West was not having the ability to send email - from either the wifi at SXSW (I started this article there) or at my hotel via wifi or ethernet. Then at OMMA in Hollywood same issue again, plus while trying to tweak my configuration with other ports (yes total geek speak here), I killed my ability to receive email. I was blind! Unable to use my trusted inbox while on the road, what was I to do? Could I survive? Would someone send a search party to pull me out of this situation and see if I still had a pulse?

So what happened when email was turned one way to the inbox? Well it changed the dynamic. I became a listener and not a participant. How was that you ask, as I am never one to be quiet. It was different. Not complete hell, but close. It drove me to thumb bending feats of danger across the city of Austin, the airports of Denver and LA, and the city of Hollywood. I was a corporate road warrior and I had no inbox pillow to rest my head.

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Here at eROI we go to great lengths to keep you up to date on the latest trends in email marketing. Our latest survey asks for your input on the Subscribe/Unsubscribe Process.

This survey should take just a minute or two, and we will share the results with you when complete.

All survey participants will be automatically entered to win one of a handful of iPod Shuffle mp3 players!

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We have a few loves out here in PDX. Sure we are not the Chicago, NYC or Boston, but hell we love our Irish bars and our St Pats day. If you have not been to Portland, Oregon during St Pats, make some plans. The place starts a few days early and runs about a 5 to 7 day party at multiple venues. Even small borrough parades take place with wagons, bikes and kids. It’s infectious.

We took the love to a new level by helping out Paddy’s in Portland (personal favorite bar) get a new site launched just in time for big day.

This site was thought out by the eROI Creative team, not too over the top, and if you spend enough time on it, you might even find some of the hidden features (aka free drinks). But you need to search for that 4 leaf clover my friends.

Take a look at the new Paddy’s site >

About your personal brand in social media.

Interesting that the whole panel started with asking everyone to submit questions to the panel via twitter. What an interesting way to bring in the audience prior to starting your panel. Love it, but then I am a Twitter maniac, as was EVERYONE at SXSW.

Steve Ganz: Linkedin
Steve Smith: Ordered List

What is social networking?
Any time two people connect. Can be over twitter, linked in, myspace, fbook, flickr, email, im, etc.

Ways to use personal brand
Wanted to promote services and knowledge as web designers. Used the main person to sell design and services. Use social networking as a sales tool

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Tues Keynote: The Future of Happiness: Jane McGonigal, Creative Dir, Avant Game
Is it a game or is it real life? When you get right down to it, is there really a difference? Learn about the growing popularity of ARGs from one of the most innovative minds in this industry. Jane McGonigal explains what it is like to be a puppet-master of this exciting new genre.

Speech starts with a killer movie trailer for “The Lost Ring” At the www.thelostring.com. Worth checking out

It is the alternate reality game for the Olympics in China this year. About a sport that was lost and no one knows how to play. MUST check this out.

This game has been going on for a week now. Flickr photos are tagged with “tr01″ for secret q’s on the game. If you want you should go look these up as I think this is going to be massive.

Back to the panel (WHICH completely was 200% better than I expected)

Alternate Reality Game designer: Instead of making them more realistic, interactive, etc, she is trying to make the real world to be better designed, like a game. Odd idea, but let’s see how it falls out.

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Here are some tips I heard about working on your blog PR/outreach from some film bloggers at ifilm and other properties.

Know who you are talking to or writing to. Think about personally contacting bloggers yourself and not using your PR firm. They get so many PR emails that they often ignore them.

Know what they write about and be up to date with last few months of writing, if possible. This way you can craft your email TO them not AT them.

Create a company feed on Twitter for bloggers to follow you easily and get info as they need it. This way they can watch, and they do watch, for things of interest.

When people are reaching out to you, you need to reach out to them. This in NOT a one way street, but a dialogue.

Be an active listener not always a talker.

Product sampling. Giving away snippets, premiers, teaser shots, product demos, video, etc so that you can empower them to experience, taste and get more of it. Downloadable content to give people the tools to build and make things. (Like our DTI, Direct to Influencer programs at eROI)

IS “Blogger” a bad word? When do people care about bloggers? Does the word blog mean something other than something good? Some people still feel that blogging/bloggers/blog is a really low hanging fruit thing. But it really does not when you are reading real people that are good writers, well read and intelligent, with daily updates and relevant content.

Many blogs have larger readership than many print publications so make sure you are leveraging your blog outreach growth strategy.

Yeah, just a hype title for this panel. But man it was good. I was not expecting Mark Cuban to be the one interviewing Michael Eisner, made it sooo much better than I could have expected.

Eisner and Mark Cuban: The Interview

Eisner comments:
Is this the time for internet delivered stories?
Yes the time is right, make a little money, testing right now to see what works and makes money. In a short time we should find this to be a new distribution stream that will give professionally produced content via this distribution channel.

Remember VHS? I have seen this happen my entire career. “People that watch movie screens will stop watching television…” People always want to say X will kill Y. Just not true. They can coexist.

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Not sure if anyone else has stumbled upon this venture from UnSpam and a few others but it is an interesting site and operation looking at email harvesting, comment spam, domains involved, etc.

About Project Honey Pot
Project Honey Pot is the first and only distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots they use to scrape addresses from your website. Using the Project Honey Pot system you can install addresses that are custom-tagged to the time and IP address of a visitor to your site. If one of these addresses begins receiving email we not only can tell that the messages are spam, but also the exact moment when the address was harvested and the IP address that gathered it.

Very interesting system. I will need to keep my eyes on this. As an ESP I would love to be able to search it by IPs and client domains to see if any clients or prospective clients are involved. Would be a great way to vet new clients before taking them on, as well as a way to audit their practices every so often to look for offenders.

LOPP: “There is a lot of swearing at SXSW - Be Prepared”

What do we know about Apple? Great Design, new ideas.

What words are inside design? Sign, SIN, Dine, etc…. Lots of things that design can become or mean.

How many of you are designers> (hands up all over)

Definition: Design is a present, It is an unintentional discover you make.

The obsessive design story: really odd packaging, and really strange ads. The new Mentos Box, how many people know about it? Why did they change the packaging to a box? When he closed it it clicks. There is an actual latch on it. It really works. That to Lopp is great design. Not just a square box, but one that serves a function and works.

Process = peace: in design and engineering keep them from killing one another.

Apple designs in order to give “presents”. Things that are worth waiting for. Like Apple packaging porn. They talk about how thought out the product packaging it at every step of the reveal when you open it. The stores are modeled after museums. The brand delivers the story about what you are getting for “Christmas”. That is the reoccurring theme, they design for people that look forward to Christmas AM when they get to open something that they are so excited to find out about. Design to excite, stimulate, and drive the person to WANT to own something from your brand.

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