It was Super Bowl, which is one of the last mass media experiences that we share. Super Bowl is particularly important for the ad industry ($3 million for a 30-second spot) and we think that spending $3 million is not ballsy, but handing over the creative direction of your ad to your consumers is a really ballsy move.
First let me tell you a story. It’s actually Seth Godin’s story from The Purple Cow, a book about what it takes to create and sell something remarkable.
Seth and family driving in France, enchanted by picturesque cows grazing in lovely pastures. Kilometres and kilometres of cows. New cows suddenly are just like old cow, now cows are common. Now cows are boring.
“Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring. They may be well-bred cows, Six Sigma cows, cows lit by a beautiful light, but they are still boring. A Purple Cow, though: Now, that would really stand out. The essence of the Purple Cow—the reason it would shine among a crowd of perfectly competent, even undeniably excellent cows—is that it would be remarkable. Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to. Boring stuff quickly becomes invisible.“
In the land of email distribution services there are some big players and companies with lots of features. How do you choose who to spend money with?
I looked at everyone’s websites. I tested the tools.
I like that CampaignMonitor.com has a self-explanatory website. The home page tells me about the immediate benefits I will see using the service: control, design testing, reporting, and the blowing-away of clients. Wow, they know what I need.
Free sign-up. Yay!
Easy set-up. Double yay! (Although it did take me a bit to realize all the moving parts for creating the on-site subscriber links and thank you pages. As a methodical beginner this was all fine, and now that I’ve done it once, I’m like a rocket ship.)
Simple reporting of complex info. Love the opens, activity reports, subscriber reports—fantastic!
Plus, they have a rockin’ newsletter with lots of tips. It’s important that the company selling me email distribution actually understands how this works and writes a good newsletter.
And, they continue to provide value to the community by creating tools for designers, like this CSS Support Chart that details what CSS elements are supported in various email clients. Hello Superstar!
Campaign Monitor is my Purple Cow. They make email marketing “refreshingly simple”, which is also part of the tagline for Freshview, the company responsible for Campaign Monitor.
And “refreshingly simple” makes them my favourite. It makes them remarkable. So remarkable that I’m willing to recommend them to friends and colleagues, which is what I did recently on Lab with Leo.
Now how did I get that wine?
In June, Mathew from Campaign Monitor spotted me on Lab with Leo and sent me an email thanking me for mentioning Campaign Monitor. He also said, “We’d love to send you a Campaign Monitor shirt to say thanks.“ Sweet!
Since James is the t-shirt wearer in our family, I picked a size for him. On a related note, James gets a lot of t-shirts from Threadless, who also use Campaign Monitor.
Somewhere along the line, I also ended up with 2 bottles of fantastic Australian wine from my Sydney-based friends at Freshview.
My bookkeeper pointed out the other day that the backup on her computer hasn’t been working for the past couple of months. Eek gads! What that means is that all the information she is entering for my bookkeeping purposes could disappear. By “her” computer, she means my computer, which I’ve set up for her to use.
Documents, photos, music, videos ... there’s all sort of valuable stuff on that computer because it used to be my home computer.
So here is my data loss disaster story in a series of photos.
It starts like this:
Oh, that was weird!
Oh, that was really bad.
Oh, I don’t know how to fix this.
Oh, I really don’t know how to fix this.
====
Oh, James?
Oh, geez.
Oh. Ooooooooh.
Oh. No.
Have your own story? A single photo will do.
One of my clients is PutPlace. And they are all about preventing data loss disasters like this one.
* PutPlace offers real-time backup.
* PutPlace protects and organizes your photos, documents, emails, music and home movies.
* PutPlace enables you to publish a file on multiple sites and find it later.
PutPlace is more than file backup. It’s a lifesaver and they are running a photo contest.
All you have to do is submit a photo of your shock or horror with a caption about your data loss fears. The prize is an annual subscription to PutPlace for 100 GB of data + $200 USD Amazon gift certificate.
We don’t get to Toronto as often as we might like. Just this past weekend we had a long conversation with a friend from Toronto that made us consider a trip. Nothing planned yet, but thinking in the works. (Are the tulips up yet on Queen?)
But interesting work keeps happening in Toronto, and we thought we should highlight an upcoming example.
No one working in social change these days can afford to ignore the opportunities offered by the web. Most organizations get stuck, though, on “How do we do it?“ “Where do we start?“ and “Who can help us?“ Interest in high, but the talent pool of people equipped to understand, prioritize, and implement these tools and ideas remains limited.
We’ve gathered the best and the brightest leaders in this sector, and we’ve put together an agenda that will help take your organization to the next level. Each participant will emerge with new technical, creative, and leadership skills, a powerful network, and a customized, comprehensive “Web 2.0 Plan” for their organization.
Susannah Gardner of Hop Studios and Shane Birley of Left Right Minds are the authors of Blogging for Dummies, 2nd Edition (published by Wiley).
Both are friends, but I would recommend this book regardless.
Susannah and Shane offer expert tips for new bloggers and bloggers looking for ideas and resources on improving their blog. The book includes explanations in plain English, quick information for techies and non-techies, tear-out cheat sheets and top 10 lists.
Blogging for Dummies, 2nd Edition is a great resource book for business and personal bloggers.
What’s the promise?
Discover how to create and maintain visitors to your blog, protect your privacy and your job, deal with spam and inappropriate comments, find your voice, and use your blog to promote your business.
Who should take the survey?
* people familiar with, and actively engaged in, at least one type of the search engine marketing practices.
* people engaged in such programs in the capacity as advertisers (including both marketing staff and management), site managers, marketing agencies and search engine marketing service providers.
The survey takes 10-20 minutes. (I know it’s long, but without community participation there’s no information, no data, no analysis.)
A special portion was created for Canadian advertisers this year, which means real information about the state of the Search Marketing Market in Canada will be reported.
You could win a 8 Gb iPod Touch.
You could win one free pass to a North American Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conference.
You’ll be the first to receive the summarized results of North America’s most comprehensive snapshot of the search marketing industry.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and the other major search players will know your thoughts, observations, and concerns about where search is and where it’s going. (They rely on this survey for that information!)
About the Survey
The survey is conducted by Radar Research, and all responses are kept strictly confidential. All results are aggregated and made anonymous. The more people who complete the survey, the better the data.
More on SEMPO Canada:
SEMPO Canada is Canadian Non-Profit Professional Search Marketing Association working to increase awareness and promote the value of Search Engine Marketing in Canada. This Working Group was founded in November 2006 by Ken Jurina and Alexandre Brabant and focuses on improving the growth, awareness and understanding Search Engine Marketing (SEM) in Canada including Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Link Building, Pay Per Click Management best practices in this new field of marketing and how it uniquely pertains and is of relevance to Canadians worldwide across any sector, vertical or industry.
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Vancouver internet marketing strategists James Sherrett and Monique Trottier are experts in online marketing strategy. Talk to us about internet marketing, web design, search marketing
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