The Email Wars

I was taking a look at all the tools and sites I use the other day and thought that it might be beneficial to share some of them with other marketers. I am often amazed when I sit in a meeting with a client to learn that these tools we use on a daily basis are often unheard of by some. And many of the times they see them in action they are fast to jot them down and ask for a list for later.

So here is goes… here are the tools that I use all week long that you might find are beneficial to not only your email marketing but your digital marketing as a whole.

Images and Design Tools:
Skitch – As a mac user I am always looking for tools that make the capture of images I need for presentation decks, blog posts and sharing. Skitch is one of my favorite tools out there. I can quickly grab the capture I need, annotate it if need be, resize it and drag it to my desktop. The other benefit it that it carries a history file with it so that you don’t need to keep those shots anywhere else and you can go back again and again.

Hotgloo – what used to be a comp tool is not in a paid model. Do I fault them, nope, as everyone should make a buck. This is a great quick sketch tool that I use to wireframe ideas with clients on the fly and illustrate functions. Often this tool helps me pass back the visual outcome of a meeting when the team is not with me. The new release even adds ecom and iphone design systems.

OmniGraffle – This is serious business but not a tool that is too overly complicated for most to use. The real value with OmniGraffle is that there are a handful of designers that develop great tempting tools for it. iPhone, iPod, App, emails etc all have great tools for creating wireframes and flushing out user experience.

Evernote – Now imagine clipping anything you wanted on the web, saving a page, image, button style, campaign design etc and having it live with you anywhere you go. Are you there with me? Well if not you need to investigate Evernote. This tool is worth a paid subscription to simply for the fact that allows you to make your ideas and research library portable. You can now (mobile phone in hand) have your research with you in any situation. Ok, now that we covered that let’s take it to the next level. Handwriting recognition and search. Yep you heard me here, so what does that me for you. Well here is a situation we find ourselves in all the time… the white board session. So for the last two hours you have been locked down in a con room, dry erase fumes waffling through the air, everyone a little cranky and tired. You have solved the approach, worked out the kinks and now have an idea. Wait was no one writing this work down and taking notes this whole time? What happens next? Someone writes “SAVE” on the board. Like that is the best way to handle it. It might live there for the next 20 days if no one dares to ask. So instead (as half way through this section you jumped over and set up the demo account right) you grab the digital camera on your iPhone or Blackberry and you snap off a shot and load it into the Evernote mobile version. Not only is it going to sync with your desktop but it is also going to be able to be keyword searchable as it can recognize the words in the photos. Wild.

Google Browser Size – Ever wonder what how your designs might be viewed by those clicking from your campaigns? Is your button in the right place? Your image sizes right? Your headline copy and calls to action going to be viewable when they first hit your landing page? Well wonder no more. Google has released a tool that takes all the data they have on screen resolutions and made it free for you to use. I use this all the time to make sure that the designs we are producing have the best chance of success. Often something people don’t consider when making beautiful things.

Social
Tweetdeck – The mainstay for me when using Twitter. The abilities it has added so fast are great. Dot releases every few weeks keeps the tool on the top of my screen. Not only do they provide Twitter content in an AIR desktop app but they also integrate LinkedIn and Facebook for me. Keeps me from wondering during the day and keeping to my goal of “Do Your Work. Don’t Be Stupid.” (if you see my desktop on my mac you will see that it actually says that. Now on top of those features it helps to remember everyone’s Twitter handle, can ad searches on the fly or even create multiple columns based on terms or groups you follow. Really a great tool.

Tweetie – Now Tweetdeck does make an mobile app that syncs over, but my problems with many of the new Twitter mobile apps is that they have a limited about of history you can go back to. It might seem like I am always on Twitter and watching, but honestly I get slammed and go dark many hours of the day. Using Tweetie (I use both V1 and V2) you can roll back time and catch up in 20 minutes with a full day of tweets. Most likely the only reason I keep using it is for the roll back functionality. I know Twitter is about now, but how can we know the future if we don’t look at our past.

Twitazlyer – I am a noob (newbie) to this app but after a personal tour from Erik Peterson there I can find some real value in it. Not only does it help to benchmark some key points of measurement on your engagement and generosity using Twitter for yourself, your company or your clients, but it also helps you chart a plan to keep you growing in your goals of interaction on Twitter. There are so many features built into it that I heavily recommend setting aside some time to really explore it and get to know it. One cool feature is the ability to add multiple accounts. So even if you are not an active participant in that account, you can monitor the use by your clients or team and help them to grow.

Radian6 - Oh how to I love thee? Let me count the ways. One you are very easy to get up and rolling. Two – I am always amazed after spending some time using it what new trends I find about our clients and products. Three – it allows me to build a case not only for an email campaign, but for the copy writing style, voice and approach to a new campaign idea for a client. Four – response and responsibility. The fact they they have a system where, if you have multiple people at your company engaged with answering questions/comments on social media sites, blogs and other sites, you can see if anyone has answered or responded to it yet. Why is this so damn sexy? Because nothing ruins a good time like too people rushing in and telling a different story or giving conflicting answers.

Geo- Location Tools:
Foursquare – Hello Addiction. Yes sure if you are foolish enough to live your life in complete public visibility (my own personal bias) and you tell people when you are, aren’t, are in transit, are drinking, etc that they can break into your house and steal your stuff. (PleaseRobMe.com) But for those of you that own 2 Rottweilers and a pit bull like I do know, it is so much fun. Now what makes it fun, well you can network and see not only who in your circle of friends is where and drop in to join them along the way BUT you can also get Crunked, Jetsetter, Night Owl, School Night, Overshare and other badges along with “Mayorship” along the way. Now none of these things listed prior truly matter but they have built this app that really is fun to use and can be a great tool. Now as a tool who can benefit from it? Well if every small business owner is not paying attention to it then they are missing the boat. The ability to make offers, advertise specials or crowds ounce customer recs and feedback is huge. This application really can allow you to know and recognize your customers that are always in and promoting your business. On top of this the social data being learned right not about human behavior from this app, travel patterns, new experiences and more bundled with geo location data is going to really help us as mobile marketing moves into it’s awkward teen years we are experiencing now. Others to look at are Gowalla and Yelp in this area. Not the biggest fans of each but others are.

Email Tools:
PivotalVeracity - How does your email look in a live inbox environment before you send it? How does it render on a mobile client? What if images are off? How are your alt tags set up to help you past this hurdle? PV can help you answer these questions and more. Really why would you risk the loss of revenue when you can be aware of what you don’t know prior to a send. Sure there are some emulators, you can send it to a few machines and seed addresses yourself, but do those solutions show you and tell you what to correct? Nope. Nor do any of them have a system like IQ that tells you what locations (i.e. devices) your subscribers are reading them from. Now you know that Jim Smith reads his emails on an iPhone in the AM, then Outlook at work. Genius right? With data like this not only can you better optimize the code of your emails but you can also look to better target content and offers based on this information. Oh the possibilities are endless. Another tool to look at that I have also used for years is ReturnPath.

Premailer – What a radical tool. by using this tool you can actually optimize your HTML emails to include inline CSS. Know for many of you that are not utlizing this now you should be. By simply changing your code with this tool you can prevent some of those nasty rendering issues that might be plaguing your email campaigns. For best email delivery results your CSS should be inline in your code. Why not try it out and see how it might make a difference for you.

Beautiful Email Newsletters – Hello Inspiration. BEN is the curator of good looking emails. Now I have a bad  habit (as do many others of your in this digital/email industry) of signing up for everything under the sun and filtering them to folder called XMAS, because it is like that to me, to review and look at for ideas, failures, and competitive analysis. BEN on the other hand finds 90% more emails that are organized and tagged for me to peruse as I search for inspiration, trends and more. What I would love to see is a way to comment and add more user ideas and feedback as I think it could become a very valuable site for designers and email marketers to share thoughts around the creative curated there.

Inbox Award – Now although they do some similar things as Ben, it is more recognition of good work then anything else. As they have been growing the content I find that there are quite a few people globally doing some good things. Worth a look every few weeks.

Flowtown – If Social and email had a baby it would be named Flowtown. Why am I so hot on this right now. Well to tell you the truth is not about the social integration ideas in email. It is about one the data that you can grab to help you better segment and build your programs without profile updates, progressive profiling, or contesting. What if you knew the age range, sex, DOB, geo location, had a photo and could no top of that know up to 50 different social, news and content sites where your subscribers exist. I think you would be salivating for this data. Now besides all of the amazing data and segmentation you could be rocking in minutes from your subscriber base, you could also be running it in real time firing off targeted Thank You and Welcome messages that would deliver the content based on the rules you could construct without asking. So hot, I need to step outside of a minute here, Whew. Well let’s not stop there, what about if you could then, due to your prowess and super powers you wear under your social/email guru hat only use the social targeting that is relevant to your subscriber. Really not everyone is on Facebook, Linked In and Twitter… so why use all three buttons and why not target sharing of content based on what you now know they use. I am really excited not only about the ideas that they have me thinking about but also the ways that I see this growing with other data that we are all making public in the coming two years. Hold me back.

Google Wonder Wheel – Now for some reason many people have never seen this in action. But it has remained a hidden treasure we use constantly when thinking about copy, subject lines, and ideas to run with. What is it? Well it is a new way of looking at the data that Google has amassed on how people use keywords to connect with ideas. So next time you run a Google search, notice the little text link at the top that states “Show Options”. Now in this example I used the key word “shoes”. Take a look at what happens. What this does it build search into a mind map that allows you to search through based on the key word you start with and get to terms that are used by real people and related. What a great way to work on your copy and subject lines to relate better to real people and not simply advance your message. Try it out and see what inspiration it might bring you. Be careful as you can tumble down the rabbit hole here in so much information.

Analytics and Testing:

Swix – The new kid on the circuit I have been playing around for it for a few weeks. Now it is not an analytics replacement tool. So sorry if that is what you thought, but it is an aggregator or measurement data from all over the web where you have content living. From Google Analytics, to Feedburner, to Twitter, to MySpace, to Flickr, to YouTube, Vimeo so on an so forth they have you covered. Now being able to see all your data and analytic in one dashboard is cool, but what takes this open beta to a new level is the fact that you can assign actual costs to each metric, tag events into it and then see a dashboard report that helps you to put some costs behind your actions, time, and spends. Keep your eyes on this as I think it has the wheels to be a great tool. Personal note is would love to see it open up for you to bring other data from your ESP into it as well.

Optimizely – This is a new tools that I have been experimenting with. It was introduced to me at a conference as the tool that the Obama campaign used to optimize landing pages, content buttons and copy in order to drive higher conversions. This is a email marketing testing tool dream. Here is what is awesome… it is really easy and it gives you all the tools to build all of your tests and quickly find out what is working with your site, landing pages and the emails that are driving the results. I was amazed when I saw them present and share this tool as the changes in donations driven using this tool was impressive. A simple 4 part subject line, hero shot and button copy change actually made a difference of $57,000,000 in campaign donations on one test alone. That in itself should be motivation enough for you to give it a spin.

A few other sites that I review daily are as follows:

Smashing Magazine

TechCrunch

ReadWriteWeb

Mobile Awesomeness

So there are 23 new tools that you might have not known about before. I encourage you to find some time to check some of them out and see if they can help you with your digital marketing, email creative, delivery, rendering and overall knowledge. Now is this time for some new in your life and I hope that I brought you a few hidden gems.

If you have some to share I would love to hear about them. Add yours to this post.