Internet Marketing Blog

The Ultimate Email Marketing Tool

Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough but I'm extremely frustrated that I cannot seem to find an email marketing tool or service that has all the features I want at a reasonable price.

I don't ask for much.

I've used Constant Contact quite a bit and I am generally pleased with it. It is perfectly suitable for most email marketing needs and when you consider all the features you get for the price, Constant Contact is certainly a bargain.

So, starting with all the features of Constant Contact, I'd like pre-set templates for various uses that are customizable. I'd like the ability to create separate mailing lists out of my master list. I'd like the ability to schedule emails. I want unsubscribe and bounce handling and spam checking, of course. And I want the analytics that show opens, aggregate click-throughs, individual click-throughs, and opt-outs.

Constant Contact also recently added integrated surveys as an additional service, so that'd also be a nice feature for my Ultimate Email Marketing Tool.

Constant Contact's features covers the bases for most people's email marketing needs.

But I'm not most people. I need more.

As a blogger, I want an email service that will read my RSS feed and send out a branded email newsletter based on my template with hyperlinked headlines and a text teaser for each post. I'd like to be able to schedule said email newsletters to be sent daily, weekly, and/or monthly.  The trick is for it to be smart enough to read the RSS feed, compile the posts and package them in email newsletters as today's posts , this week's posts, and/or this month's posts.

Zookoda was supposed to be that service but it just isn't ready for prime time. It doesn't quite format the individual blog posts properly and sometimes it just breaks down and forgets to send pre-scheduled emails.

Google's RSS service FeedBurner actually is positioned quite perfectly to be just the RSS/email marketing tool I want. For every RSS feed you burn, you can also offer an email update service for blog posts. The emails can be branded by uploading a logo that will appear at the top of each email, but aside from that, there is no customization. The emails themselves are very clean looking.

The problem is that you cannot schedule emails at all. You can set the time of day you want the email to go out--and even that function isn't ready for prime time--but you can specify if you want a daily, weekly, or monthly email.

The people at FeedBurner know there's a demand for just such a feature, but it doesn't seem to be a priority. If Google wanted, they could enter the email marketing market by putting some resources behind FeedBurner. Throw in Google's amazing analytics, and you'd have a hell of a good service.

iContact wants to be the Constant Contact/Zookoda/FeedBurner solution, but fails on the RSS side because it doesn't compile individual blog posts from an RSS feed.

Lastly, I want integrated A/B testing like MailChimp has. And I want all that for the Constant Contact/iContact/MailChimp price range.

Emoticons - An Essential Online Communication Tool :-)

Emoticons
Originally uploaded by d.rex

The humble smilely face :-) emoticon [and it's opposite: :-( ] turn 25 years old today.

The text symbol for happiness,  approval, and humor was invented by Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman twenty five years ago today as a tool to avoid misunderstanding of text-based online communication within emails and online forums by clarifying that the writer intended the preceding text to be a joke or ironic.

The smiley face and frowning emoticon inspired many more emoticons, which have now become standard practice for clarifying online text-based messages used in emails, online forums, chat rooms and instant messaging, and text messaging.

Though the use of them might seem cute, silly, or juvenile at times, as anyone who has had an email disasterously misunderstood can testify, emoticons are an essential tool for clear communication. Though the emoticon was invented for use in old school email and obsolete Usenet newsgroups, they will not be fading away anytime soon in the multimedia age. They remain a central component of clear communication not just for email, chat rooms, and instant messaging, but also and increasingly within mobile communication mediums such as text messaging.

Do not think of emoticons as something just the kids use. They can certainly be a great device to use in marketing campaigns targeted at younger demographics, but properly and appropriately used, they can be an essential tool in delivering a crystal clear marketing message to any audience.

Emoticon Examples

Micromarketing Strategy - 3 Words

Fred Smoot Tackles Steve Smith
Originally uploaded by bpatton

A friend of mine told me yesterday that Washington Redskins' and former Minnesota Vikings' cornerback Fred Smoot had been cut.  I was skeptical. As a football nut, I follow NFL news quite closely, so had Smoot been cut it would have caught my eye and I surely would've known about it.

Turns out Smoot wasn't cut, at least not during this round of roster moves. But he had been cut previously and that is why my friend thought Smoot was out on the street. He'd read a headline from a blog aggregator that had not been updated in some time. The headline was an old one and the headline was all that my friend had read of the story; it read "Fred Smoot Cut."

Three words.

My friend got the message; it's just that it was wrong. His mistake is understandable. It happens to me all the time. I read only the headline of a vast amount of content because there's far too much for me to consume. Even if the headline is current and accurate, I've got absolutely no context or depth to the story that goes with it.

I constantly preach that you must be able to boil your message down to three words.

As information distribution channels proliferate through RSS and as more and more people consume information through an increasing array of mediums and devices such as RSS readers and smart phones, the importance of developing a micromarketing strategy only increases.

The reason your message must be boiled down to three words is that it has to fit in an email subject line if you're doing an email marketing campaign, it must be easily scannable when read on a smart phone if you're doing a mobile marketing campaign, and it must be easy to digest when read in a list such as a in a blog reader or when you're doing online PR when using an Internet wire service.

But it's not just the logistics of where your message will be displayed and how to make it fit that you have to think about. As the aforementioned Fred Smoot story illustrates, you have to think about what knowledge your three-word message will convey to the recipient now and in the future.

AliShops.com: New Twin Cities Shopping Web Site Launch

On Monday we launched AliShops.com, The Insider's Guide to Twin Cities Shopping. The site is the brainchild of Pioneer Press Savvy Shopper columnist Allison Kaplan, and features short, informative, and engaging reviews of Twin Cities neighborhood stores.

Graphic Design

The site had to be visually appealing, quick loading, easy to navigate, and, just as importantly, search engine friendly. The illustrations for the site were designed by my friend Patty at Spot Design. They give the site both elegance, visual charm, while also immediately identifying that the site is about shopping.

Search/User Friendly Database Design

AliShops.com features a database backend to handle the content and administration of the site but we specifically designed the database to include search engine marketing features. Each page on the site can have custom meta titles, descriptions, and keywords. The URLs for each page use keywords rather than ID numbers to describe the content of that page. All of these features contribute to help optimize an individual page on the site for a specific search phrase while also providing more information for the site's visitors.

We also designed the database to make it easy to sort the stores on the site in numerous ways, such as by category and neighborhood, city, county and even zip code.

The site search function is fairly robust, searching nearly all the database fields for the stores. Site visitors can further refine their queries by sorting their searches by name, category, county, neighborhood, city, state and zip code.

Search Friendly Coding

The pages of the site use cascading style sheets for formatting and layout in order to both follow website design best practices and to make the pages as easy as possible for search engines to understand, and therefore index. The site looks and works well in all major browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari for the Mac.

Advertising Management System

Though AliShops.com does not sell advertising, we implemented an ad rotation/management system for Allison to run internal sitewide promotions, such as one encouraging visitors to sign up for her free email update. The advertising management system allows campaigns to run sitewide or within specific sections. Ad campaigns can be set to expire automatically at a date certain or after X number of impressions or click-throughs. The system can handle graphical banner ads, text-based ads, or even rich media.

Social Bookmarking Integration

In order to promote sharing of the site and to provide a helpful feature for visitors, we built in the capability of visitors to save individual store review pages (example, scroll to bottom) to popular social bookmarking services such as digg, Google Bookmarks, del.icio.us, Furl, or to email the page to friends.

Not only does this help visitors keep track of their favorite pages, but it also allows other people who are using those services to find AliShops.com.

Email Marketing

We also designed a template email to match the look an feel of AliShops.com for her to use for her weekly email update. The update service provides subscribers with sales and specials and notice of when new stores and shops are added to the site. Email newsletters are a superb way to build an ongoing relationship with visitors.

Blog Marketing

Finally, we designed a companion blog for the site, AliShopsBlog.com. The blog provides Allison with a communication vehicle that is personality driven--more intimate and informal--which helps to make a personal connection with her visitors. With the ability for readers to comment on her blog, she can engage her audience in a conversation while gaining valuable insight into what they'd like to see in her Internet presence.

The blog features the same social bookmarking features that AliShops.com boasts, as well as RSS feeds for popular RSS readers.

We designed an email update template for the blog that matched the look and feel of the site, as well. The blog's email update allows her subscribers to get a weekly email containing all the blog posts for that weeek.

Valentine's Day Sales

Constant Contact's survey of business owners, "2006 Small Business Valentine's Day Outlook," shows that most respondents feeling rosy about the Valentine's Day sales season:  55%  expected strong sales  leading up to February 14th, while 71% were expecting healthy online sales. Fifty-one percent said that Valentine's Day was an important holiday for their business.

Seventy percent planned on promoting Valentine's Day offers through the following methods:

1. Email markeing, 76%
2. Online marketing, 49%
3. Direct mail, 25%
4. Flyers, 25%
5. Advertising (TV/Radio/Newspaper), 16%

Thirty-two percent of small business owners expected customers to spend less than $25 on Valentine's Day gifts; 35% expected them to spend between $25 and $50; 14% expected customers to spend between $50 and $75; 9% expected them to spend between $75 and $100; and 10% expected customers to spend more than $100.

Small business owners believed that flowers would be by far the most popular gift bought by their customers:

1. Flowers, 59%
2. Jewelry, 21%
3. Chocolates, 16%
4. Clothing, 4%

Viral Marketing

I rarely forward humorous emails or Flash animations or movies because humor is so subjective and if a person doesn't find what you've sent them funny, then all you've done is waste their time. I'm the exception.

On the other hand, I have a friend who regularly forwards funny stuff to me and a bunch of other people. I always open his emails because I know him and I trust his judgment since everything he sends me is funny. He's the rule.

And now we have stats to back it up.

A survey commissioned for Sharpe Partners conducted in September 2005 and released late last month show that the vast majority (89%) of adult Americans share content with others by email.

Frequency

Twenty-five percent of the respondents shared content daily; 23% did it several times a week; 15% about once a week; 11% several times a month; 15% several times a year; and 11% had never shared content via email.

Friends Lists

Most people email content to more than one person. Forty-one percent shared content with one to three people; 34% shared it with four to six people; 13% shared it with seven to nine people; 9% shared with 10 to 20 people; and 3% emailed more than 20 people content.

Hot Topics

Humorous content is by far the most popular type of content shared, with 88% of respondents saying they forward jokes or cartoons. Fifty-six percent said they forward news; 32% shared health care or medical information; 30% shared religious or inspirational content; 25% shared games; 24% emailed business or personal finance related information; 24% shared sports or hobby-related content; and 12% emailed sexually provocative material.

Branded Content

The fact that content is overtly branded does not seem to affect the likelihood that someone will email it to others. Only 5% said they would not share content that was branded, Thirty-five percent said they'd be slightly less likely to send branded content and 17% said they would be less likely; but 12% said they would be more likely to send branded content and 31% said they would be slightly more likely to send branded content.

Demographics Of Sharers

The most likely people to share content are southern or midwestern women in their late 30s to early 40s.  Blacks and whites (63%) are more likely to share content via email than Hispanics (56%) or Asian-Americans (46%). Education level doesn't seem to matter much: Sixty-four percent of people without a college degree shared content weekly versus the 61% who had a college degree.

Make Sharing Easy

This survey makes clear that, even if you aren't conducting a explicit viral marketing campaign, you should make your content as easy as possible to share. That means giving the consumers of your content all the tools they need to share. That's why you'll find my "Save to My Web" and "Furl This Page" and "Post to del.iciou.us" and "Email this Page" links on sidebar of this blog. That's why you can bookmark or instant message individual posts on this blog. If you have an email newsletter, be sure to include a "forward this to a friend" function.

What Is Spam?

Yesterday, I discussed the fact that 70% of email is considered spam and, serendipitously enough, today AOL won a $5 million judgment against our own homegrown spammer, Prior Lake, Minnesota's own Christopher William Smith.

While Smith's spam ran afoul of the Can-Spam Act, as I discussed yesterday, most consumers have a much looser definition of what is and is not spam.

A recent survey by Return Path sheds some more light on the topic and flags some issues you should be aware of in your email marketing efforts.

The Return Path survey found that 34% of online North Americans reported the sender of what they believed to be spam email to their ISP; sixty-eight percent just deleted emails they considered spam; and 30% unsubscribed from what they considered spam.

Perhaps the surge in the volume of email received during the holiday season increases the perception that people are getting more spam. Seventeen percent found the surge in email volume overwhelming; 26% believed they just got more spam; and 24% said they got much more email but it was manageable.

The survey also confirmed the "known sender" phenomenon: That people are more likely to trust opening an email from a known source. More than 60% of online North Americans said that knowing or trusting the sender was a key factor in deciding whether to open that email. Forty-eight percent said they opened email from companies that had sent them prior valuable emails.

70% Of Email Considered Spam

Doubleclick's "Sixth Annual Consumer Email Study," [PDF] released last month, found that people consider that 70% of their email is spam, regardless of whether or nor it actually is spam. People often forget that they've subscribed to an email newsletter, and so if they've forgotten they actually subscribed, they will naturally consider it unsolicited, and therefore, spam.

That's a perception problem inherent in email marketing. On a positive note, the study does find that consumers no longer consider spam scary, but merely a nuisance that they've learned to deal with.

The study includes some other interesting statistics:

The vast majority of us (90%), send or recieve email several times a day; while 44% of us (myself included) use email constantly--getting and receiving email every 15 minutes or so, in my case.

There's a lot of clutter: The average consumer gets 361 emails a week, an increase of 17% from 2004.

Most (51%) consumers would like to see email replace telemarketing, 44% would like to see it replace face-to-face sales calls; 41% would like it to eliminate direct mail, a thrid would like to see it replace retail offers and coupons, and 31% would like to use it for ebills and electronic statements.

Email should be a critical part of your ecommerce system.

94% of consumers expect confirmation of orders via email and 90% expect shipping confirmations to appear in their inbox.

74% of email users would find information on a merchant's return policy useful to get in their marketing emails; 59% would like special offers for products they purchase regularly; 49% would like information about membership rewards programs; 48% would like store locations; 39% would like special offers for related products from the same vendor; 37% would like to recieve sweepstakes or drawing offers; only 19% wanted special offers for related products from partner companies; and only 9% wanted offers to subcribe to other companies' email programs.

E-Mail Marketing

In November of last year, the e-mail marketing service provider EmailLabs released interesting survey results on an often overlooked aspect of email usage: The "preview pane."

The preview pane is that portion of many email programs such as Microsoft's Outlook that shows a "preview" of the full message, i.e. the first lines of the text of the email message.

The EmailLabs survey revealed that 90% of business-to-business e-mail newsletter subscribers have the preview pane function available to them and that 70% frequently or always use it. Half of these respondents read just the first few lines in the preview pane to determine whether they should read the rest of the email; a third read all of the contents of the preview pane even if they have to scroll or expand the preview pane to do so; and 15% will read as much as the preview pane allows but won't scroll to read the rest, if necessary.

Further, 45% rarely or never allow images to be downloaded into the preview pane portion of their email messages. Lastly, only 31% of B2B e-mail newsletter subscribers add those addresses to their "safe senders" list.

All of these statistics point to the importance of creating compelling content specifically for recipients to read in the preview pane of their email programs.

The Meaning Of Colors - Color Psychology & Internet Marketing

A subscriber to one of the email newsletters we manage wrote to the client asking why they used blue text instead of black for the body copy. The client didn't know if it was just a silly question so they asked us if there was a specific reason why we decided upon blue rather than black text.

These are the types of things we're paid to pay attention to, so we did have a response for them:

We decided on the color blue because it represents wisdom, trust, and loyalty. People wear blue outfits for job interviews because the color suggests dedication and loyalty. Blue is the favorite color of the majority of both men and women. The color relaxes our nervous system and has a sobering effect on the mind; it can cause people to be more contemplative. Studies show that students score higher and weightlifters lift heavier weights in blue rooms. People retain more when reading information written in blue text.

Black, on the other hand, is a controversial color. It is associated with demons, witches and the devil. It is the color of despair and morning. It symbolizes evil characters and criminal activities—think of the black-hatted villains of Westerns.

You may think difference between black and blue text in an email newsletter to be a distinction without much of a difference. But think about how people consume information online. When reading a print publication, people tend to devote much more concentration to read more words. When people consume online information, however, they tend to devote far less concentration--scanning instead of reading--perhaps because of the sheer volume of information at their fingertips.

Given the short attention spans of people online and one of the primary goals of email newsletters--to build a relationship with subscribers--any minute edge can be the difference between subscribers opening your email or ignoring it. One of the primary reasons people open one email over another is that it comes from a trusted source. Any way you can reinforce that trust--even if it's through blue text--will help your email newsletter efforts succeed.

More reading on color psychology:

• Color Wheel Pro - Color Meaning
• FactMonster.com - What colors mean
• About.com Desktop Publishing - Color Meanings
• ColorMatters.com
• Sibagraphics.com - Colors in cultural context
• WebWhirlers.com - Colors on the Web

Targeted Internet E-mail Marketing

One of our clients, The Great North Alliance, publishes an email newsletter that will help to illustrate some of the elements that constitute succesful targeted Internet e-mail marketing.

The Great North Alliance is a regional civic leadership organization that focuses on the economic vitality of the Twin Cities, Minnesota metropolitan area.

In order to build a relationship with executive-level professionals in Twin Cities organizations that play a large part in the Twin Cities vitality, we suggested that The Great North offer a free, valuable email newsletter that would appeal to that audience.

We created a twice-monthly compilation of links to news stories that have a bearing on the economic vitality of the Twin Cities. The elements that made the newsletter a success are that it offers value in the form of compelling content that subscribers use in their jobs and it saves them time.

The numbers tell the story: The thousands of subscribers consist of corporate CEOs, nonprofit executive directors, entrepreneurs, government and elected officials at the state and local levels, members of acedemia and the media.

The Great North email newsletter allows the organization to communicate with these people on a regular, ongoing basis. It positions the Great North as an expert--if not the preeminent expert--on the Twin Cities econmic and competitive capacity.

The Great North publishes the semi-annual Oppportunity Forecast, which is the core of it's purpose. They've just released the most recent Forecast and the success of their email newsletter provides the Great North with an excellent distribution channel to the people in position to have the most effect on the vitality of the Twin Cities economic competitiveness.

You can subscribe the the newsletter (and get the Opportunity Forecast report) at TheGreatNorth.com.

Email Deliverability

Email newsletters will only get harder to deliver due to the increasing sophistication of spam filtering technology. A 2004 report by Return Path indicated that on average 22 percent of legitimate opt-in commerical email did not make it to subscriber's inboxes.

I see mistakes every day that could be the difference between inbox or junk mail folder. Fortunately, there are a few simple steps you can take to help improve the chance your email will make it through spam filters.

Here are five things you should be aware of:

1. Be aware of spam filter trip words. Some trip words are given more weight than others by spam filters; the higher the points allotted, the more likely they’ll trip a spam filter. Some spam trigger words are entirely avoidable (the word "spam" is itself a trigger word, which is why many people spell it with the @ symbol in their emails). "Click" and "Click Here" needn’t be used because the presence of a hyperlink implies that people can click on it. The words "here" and "now" are triggers that are often throw-away words that are not needed or redundant in a sentence. Don’t use them if you don’t have to. There are many other trip words. Take a good look at your copy and try and spot potential trip words and rewrite accordingly.
2. ALL CAPS TRIP SPAM FILTERS so try to avoid them as much as possible. That means using Title Case For Section Headlines and trying to spell stuff out as much as possible rather than using acronyms. All caps in your subject will practically ensure your email gets filtered.
3. Ask Subscribers to add you to their whitelist and/or email contacts. If your email address is in your subscriber's contacts, it's more likely spam filters will consider you a known sender and let your correspondence through. Likewise, many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) block mail before it ever gets to their customer's inboxes. In such cases, it is important for subscribers to add you to their whitelists. You should ask subscribers to add you to their whitelists/contacts during the signup process to help insure that they get your email from the outset.
4. Avoid Personalizing your subject line. If you're email marketing software has a personalization feature, avoid putting recipient's name in the subject line because it is a tactic that spammers have adopted and spam filter software knows this and acts accordingly.
5. Don't be so enthusiastic!!!!! Keep the punctuation in your subject line to a minimum; they usually don't need much, if any, punctuation, anyway. The use of exclamation points make it very likely your email will get filtered.