E-Biz Booster Blog

Welcome to the 23rd edition of email marketing tips on June 6th, 2010.

The carnival is back after having had some wild turbulence including this blog getting hacked three times during the last six weeks. I am traveling and the last thing I needed was someone taking out my blog. The guys from blogcarnival.com lost patience with me and simply deleted the 21st edition which I had almost prepared for being posted. Shame on them.

Luckily a friend stepped in. Thanks to Pat Doyle, who hosted the 22nd edition of email marketing tips on her blog. Update in Feb. 2013: Unfortunately the blog has disappeared. So that edition is lost forever.

Now let’ start with today’s content.

editors pick

John Jantsch wrote The Right Way to Buy an Email List posted at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing saying, "I’m am not talking about buying or renting so called opt-in lists from list brokers. I’m talking about offering something of value as a way to motivate someone to willingly exchange their email address with you in order to receive your offers and additional contact."


Nick Moore wrote Better Email Newsletter Sharing on Facebook and Twitter posted at Inbox Ideas: Email Marketing Tips saying, "Social media is a big part of the marketing world these days. Most net-savvy businesses have a presence on Facebook and Twitter. That being the case, we’ve found that people are always looking for ways to make their social media and email marketing campaigns work together."


Chris Brogan wrote Stop Adding Me to Your Email Newsletter posted at chrisbrogan.com — Learn How Human Business Works – Beyond Social Media saying, "According to sources, it’s not illegal to add my name to your email newsletter list if you’ve done some kind of business with me in the past. Evidently, this means that it’s perfectly fine to add me to your list if you’ve sent me an email. Ever. Because I’ve gotta tell you: I’m subscribed to a LOT of email newsletters that I didn’t sign up for, and I’m not very pleased with it. To me, it’s spam, whether or not that’s the legal definition."


Carol Ellison wrote 8 Email Marketing Tips posted at destinationCRM.com - The leading resource for Customer Relationship Management - from the editors of CRM magazine saying, "Experts provide commonsense advice about ‘one of the most powerful and yet one of the most dangerous mediums of communication.’"

general tips

GreatManagement presents Avoiding The Pitfalls Of Internet Scamming posted at We Build Your Blog, saying, "Anyone who surfs the web on a regular basis can probably remember the very first time they fell victim to an attempted scam."


Sheryl Owen presents Top 10 Reasons to Use Snail Mail posted at Change of Address.


That concludes this edition of email marketing tips. Past posts and future hosts can be found on my email marketing tips page.

Continue reading the next email marketing tips - edition 24.


Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you like this edition, check out the preceding email marketing tips - edition 20, too. Note: Edition 22 got deleted from the web. It was on a guest blog. Edition 21 was canceled.

Technorati tags: email marketing tips, blog carnival

Isn’t it fascinating how social networking platforms are taking over the Internet in a storm?

Ease of use and multimedia capabilities seem to be the main driver behind this development. It makes it fun for non techie people to use the Internet, to play around, and to communicate.

Fred Wilson, principal of Union Square Ventures, discussed today that he was quite shocked—even though he had anticipated it—when he realized that social networking has overrun email (↑) already.

Here is the corresponding slide from Morgan Stanley’s latest Internet trend report (PDF file, 2.5 MiBytes ↑). (Update in Feb. 2013: 404 Not Found)

Now, let’s be honest and compare the two.

Email

Common email clients (even Gmail) smash a wall of incomprehensible letters into your face. I am talking about the inbox displayed as a dense list. Too many emails, too many of them irrelevant, and mostly not fun at all.

On the other hand when composing a new message you are staring at a scary white page. Ever had writer’s block in that situation?

Social Media

In contrast to that you are basically navigating in a space that’s comparable to your email client’s address book. But an address book on steroids.

You see avatars and blurbs with what your friends are up to right now, videos, pictures, full multimedia. And it’s so easy to use. You don’t need to compose a new message, you just click one time or even type your response directly. Takes you seconds and you don’t have to switch platform to do so.

Much of what’s happening on social networks is not private between two people, but it can be. Twitter’s direct messages and Facebook messages are a good example for this. And many users get email notification about activity on social networks anyway.

Don’t write off email, yet.

An email address is still a valuable asset of contact information for a business. For now and the near future. And I have pointed out some additional reasons in a previous discussion about email marketing versus social media.

But the one piece of contact information that might prove to be even more valuable in a short time is a mobile phone number.

Mobile Is Coming With Light-speed

When I compare the quality of contact information, then mobile phone number is a clear winner. It has certain advantages:

• It’s more intimate than an email address.
• Is tied to a device that is on almost 24/7.
• Less likely to be a fake one.
• Has direct billing capabilities built in for some classes of products.
• And much more.

Regardless of mobile Internet usage with iPhone, Blackberry, Google Phone, whatever. Messages from the Internet can “ring through” to the user. An increasing number of services are taking advantage of this.

Facebook and Twitter can optionally handle your mobile phone number for texting purposes. Airlines offer to notify you about delays, etc.

Besides those “Internet attached cases”, the Net arrives at more and more users while they are on the road so to speak.

The mobile Internet user base is growing faster than desktop usage ever did. Morgan Stanley predicts that the number of mobile users of the Internet will outgrow the number of desktop users in 5 years.

What does that mean for you?

Big opportunities of course. Like if you are dealing in information product marketing, it’s smart to think about convergence.

• Your free and paid content accessible from desktop and mobile devices. For some niches you might want to offer editions for Amazon’s kindle as well or put something in the iTunes store.
  
  
• Delivering your content in multiple media formats. Video channels, podcasts, slide shows, classic PDFs, etc.
  
  
• Advertising on mobile devices. Google once again goes that route early on as well. And its CEO, Eric Schmidt, has stated many times that Google is embracing mobile use BIG time.
  
  
• Multiple ways of contact with prospects and customers. From presence on social platforms, having lists of fans, followers, friends to email addresses and mobile phone numbers.

This technological and social revolution does indeed change the way we communicate privately. This happens almost automatically.

However, it takes effort to change the way your business communicates.

Let’s do it.

Expand your sphere of influence.

Yours
John W. Furst

Welcome to the twentieth edition of email marketing tips on April 7th, 2010.

We have a fine mix of submissions today so I did not add any external blog posts this time. Now it’s time to improve your email marketing campaigns. Let's begin.

This edition can keep you busy for some time. Here is how I want you to go about it.

• Get a piece of empty paper ready and a pen or use a fresh page in your journal.
• Draw a vertical line in the middle all the way from top to bottom.
• At top of the right column write the word “tip”, on top of the left column “to do”.
• Now when you read each article take a short note and most importantly write down what you will do as a result of that tip.
• Then of course do it. No excuses.

Today’s categories:

• strategy
• copywriting
• general advice
• tools and services

Browsing Tip: If not stated otherwise all links in this email marketing tips carnival edition will open in this window. Use the back button of your browser to come back here or open links in a new window or tab.

strategy

Jodi Kaplan presents How to Put Your Email Marketing on Automatic Pilot posted at Fix Your Broken Marketing, saying, “I promised to tell you how to market your services without lifting a finger. The secret…”

John’s comment: Solid advice! I suggest you sign up for her email class as well.

John W. Furst presents two articles at once. They go hand in hand: How Often Should You Email Your Subscribers and Are They Burning Their Email Lists?, saying, “The ‘old question:’ How often should I email my subscribers.”

John’s comment: My humble posts.

copywriting

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Something must be up in the air this spring.

Too much is too much.
Really.

Last week I advised you to write more often to your email list members. This week it seems like I say exactly the opposite.

Many friends and colleagues are complaining that they are getting too many sales pitches in their email inbox. They are fed up and told me they have unsubscribed massively from the email lists of company A, marketer B, blogger C, and so forth.

Too Many Affiliate Promotions

The main culprit seems to be those affiliate promotions,

“He’s my friend, a great guy, his product rocks! This helped me so much when I was in the same situation like you are in right now. Really, it’s a steal, you are crazy if you don’t buy this now before it’s sold out. Buy it now, don’t wait!”

It continues the next day:

“I cannot believe that you are still sitting on the fence. You cannot let that go. It’s a once in a life time opportunity. And it’s so affordable. Imagine how you will feel when you finally get the results you and your family deserve.”

Seen in weight loss, make money, find the better job, learn X,Y,Z, …, you name it. C’mon.

And so on.

And once you start not opening and reading their emails, they figure that out and send you the same email again with a different subject line. And again, …

Companies and marketers are loosing customers that way all the time.

For example, a friend told me,

“He and … try to sell me something every day. It’s almost like they are whoring themselves out. If they concentrated on their own products and customer service - which is awful by the way - I think I would be more interested in them.”

I clicked Remove Me From List. Done.

Emotional Bank Account

As a marketing professional you have to understand this. You have an emotional bank account with your email list members and whenever you promote something to them, it will cost you points. You must ensure that your subscribers keep getting way more value from you over time than what you withdraw with every promotion you do. This balance should remain high and ideally continue to grow.

For example:

When Maria just has opted-in to your email newsletter or bought something from you. Think about:

• Does she really need this product right now.
• Can she take advantage of it?
• Does she need it?

It doesn’t make sense to promote an advance course to someone who just has bought your beginner product and normally wouldn’t even have finished to consume your program at this point.

… Webinars and Tele-Classes

Really? Webinars or tele-classes with special, free information are part of so many promotions today.

Honestly, how many time can one listen to the same “old story” over and over again. The content wears out quickly over time and what’s left is a 40, 60, 90 minute sales pitch,

That hurts a lot.

Costs many of those points in the emotional bank account you have with your email subscribers.

And even if your subscribers don’t watch the video, webinar or read the promotions, once the balance in that bank account is low, they start thinking that you want to steal their time and money. There goes your credibility as trusted adviser and friend.

This is not good.

Think about it.


Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: There is a fine balance between sending too few and too many emails and it all has to do with the type of content you send along the way. I shall write more about this in the future.

Image source: Based on Playing With Fire, ©2009 by catsegovia/flickr. Modifications ©2010 by John W. Furst - Some rights reserved. - CC-BY-SA 3.0.

A business owner who publishes a monthly email newsletter asked me for advice. The business in question is a European based specialist for color trends and consults with designers in the fashion and home design industries. In this particular case, Carol, wanted to know how to increase the open rate for her newsletter editions. Her company publishes the newsletter once a month.

I think my response might be transferable to your business or website as well. That is why I thought I should share it with a wider audience.

The content and design of the newsletter I was giving the advice on is rather intriguing. However, it is a constant challenge to keep readers engaged and interested over a longer period of time. I gave Carol the following tips to think about.

5 Tips on how to engage your readers and increase your open rate

(1) Make it more personal!

Have an editor, a spokesperson write the newsletter in a colloquial tone. Introduce that character as a person with a back-story, and also address the reader on the personal level. An email is communication from one person to another. A newsletter should not be an exception.

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Recently I have asked that question in a marketing related, private forum. The answers were quite interesting and mostly driven by fear.

• I don’t want to annoy my readers.
  
  
• I am glad to find something to write about every now and then.

Have you ever been not really in the mood for writing a blog post or a valuable message to your e-mail list members? I have to admit that I felt a bit like that this morning. So I browsed through a popular article directory and wanted to find one useful article, which I can republish and share with you. But before I found an appropriate article, I decided to write this one myself instead.

Here is the lesson I have learned about articles in article directories

• It seems that everybody who can write writes and submits articles to article directories. It takes some time till you find an author who has genuine expertise, who does not rehash the same facts as everybody else.
  
  
• The best and only good part of most articles is the title.
  
  
• Only a few really good articles from a few writers get re-published a lot.
  
  
• In most cases you could and should write a better blog article yourself.

What turns me off most are false claims, and assertions which are not substantiated by facts or resources. For example I read the following statement.

“Studies reveal that one newsletter a month is optimal in communicating with your subscribers.”

That’s Bullshit Marketing!

I mean, come on, even common sense tells you that this is bad advice. And the pseudo-expert author even tries to make it more believable by calling his source “Studies.” Where are the studies? Why doesn’t he refer to them? I guess I do not really need to answer that question, do I.

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