Monday, September 01, 2008
In April 2008 I gave a presentation to the Vancouver League of Drupalers (the Vancouver Drupal users group). My presentation, Email Newsletters: WTF?, is a general overview of the issues involved with managing an email newsletter and 6 mistakes to avoid.
These Show Notes were kindly pulled together by Dale McGladdery.
Introduction
00:00 Email Newsletters: WTF? Opening Credits
00:05 Monique Trottier introduces her talk
Monique’s List of Mistakes to avoid
01:50 Mistake 1: Don’t treat Email HTML like Web HTML, they’re different
04:50 Mistake 2: Forgetting to design for Preview Panes
09:53 Mistake 3: Assuming your images are going to work
13:10 Mistake 4: Too many images, not enough text
16:12 Mistake 5: Not testing in different email programs
19:45 Mistake 6: Do not neglect your footer
Questions
23:35 Campaign Monitor
25:36 Email vs RSS
28:00 Newsletter Focus
30:30 Email Delivery Systems
33:50 What kinds of stats do you want to see from a delivery system
Discussion of handling bounces/unsubscribes
37:10 ISP Blacklisting
37:35 More points on newsletter forwarding
38:47 Getting content into Campaign Monitor
41:00 Outlook 2007 especially problematic
41:40 Recommendations of time/frequency/length
44:54 Jacob Neilson eye tracking study
46:48 What kind of stuff gets forwarded?
47:18 Embedding images, objects, and landing pages
You may also find this blog post interesting (Monique on Lab with Leo talking about Email Marketing): More Email Marketing Tips
References
Boxcar Marketing Website: http://www.boxcarmarketing.com
Constant Contact: http://www.constantcontact.com
Campaign Monitor: http://www.campaignmonitor.com
MailChimp: http://www.mailchimp.com
Thursday, August 21, 2008
How I Got Wine from Campaign Monitor
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.”
Campaign Monitor is my purple cow.
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.
Remarkable service means I remark on the service.
Thank You for the Thank You.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Marketing Nonprofit Causes on Chronicle of Philanthropy posted Tuesday, May 20, 2008:
Question from Ken D. Grunke, Pillars:
Hi Seth. Would you share your suggestions for how nonprofits should approach the social networking for the first time? I have heard you should be accessing multiple social networking sites and then I have heard that you should only be concentrating on one.
Seth Godin:
The networks are irrelevant. What’s relevant is the network. Who, not how many. Who, not where.
If your organization can only successfully focus on one thing at a time, then do that. But most urgently, make the relationships you build worthwhile. You don’t need 1000 shallow relationships, you don’t need a long list of friends. What you need is deep relationships, people willing to mortgage their house to support you, willing to host a party to support you, willing to devote a vacation to support you. That’s not about volume, nor is it about the site. It’s about how you build relationships that matter.
Seth goes on to talk about how the terms we use for marketing “miss the mark” (pun mine and intended). He says that “target audience” is not the right way to approach marketing, that it’s more about farming and cultivation.
His advice to all non-profits, and this applies to companies as well, is to do the basics: make big promises, deliver.
“Tell stories people want to hear. Create a service worth talking about. Make it easy for others to spread the word. Get permission from people to follow up and then repeat! The basics are what most organizations are missing. Obsessing about this is far more effective than managing the latest fad.”
See Seth Godin’s post on charity auctions and ways to raise awareness and raise money.
Boostrapper’s Bible is free. It’s written by Seth and available at squidoo.com/seth
Seth gives examples of charities that are successfully using marketing techniques:
1. kiva.org: loans that change lives
2. roomtoread.org
3. the fellows program at acumenfund.org
Seth gives some specifics on why Kiva is remarkable:
1. Kiva grows by connecting people in a way that online folks find remarkable. So they blog about it and talk about it and bring in others.
2. Meanwhile, those benefiting from Kiva’s connection also talk about it. So they bring in new benefactors.
3. Since all Kiva does is connect the two, they scale and scale and scale.
The great question that comes out of this question/answer period with Seth is “if someone talks about you, what do they say?”
Are you remarkable? Are you connecting to people 1-to-1 so that they can go and talk 1-to-many?
Back to my presentation in Kelowna to the Chief Marketing Executives: none of these social media marketing tools work unless you’re doing the basics.
Great conversation. Check out: Marketing Nonprofit Causes on Chronicle of Philanthropy
Monday, May 26, 2008
This Sunday was the 2008 AGM for the Association of Canadian Publishers. I moderated the first professional development session of the day, which was a panel discussion on online marketing.
The panelists were:
- David Caron, co-publishers of ECW Press
- Lynn Henry, publisher of House of Anansi Press
- Rick Wilks, co-founder and director of Annick Press
There were several interesting sites mentioned in the session that I’ll post here for audience members interested in following-up on those discussions. I plan to post some notes about our session too.
Annick Press Livebrary Blog: A great resources for publishers, educators, librarians and anyone interested in what’s happening online in children’s publishing.
Emarketing101.ca: A fantastic source of information on search marketing, pay-per-click campaigns, search engine optimization and anything related to search--the most cost effective online marketing spend.
SeenReading.com: Julie Wilson, also of House of Anansi, keeps a blog that is a perfect example of how to play with books and the web. Simple. Engaging. One of my favourite web sites.
MyNameIsKate.ca: Marketing and Technology Consultant Kate Trgovac’s personal blog, which is a hotbed of links and brilliant posts on marketing and technology.
W8NC is a Canadian marketing and communications company specializing in emerging technology.President is Wayne MacPhail.
OneDegree.ca: The best and most interesting source of marketing news, case studies and interviews related to marketing in Canada.
Boxcar Marketing’s Underwire Newsletter: Full-Support for Non-Techies: Monique Trottier’s monthly newsletter on online marketing, technology, social media tools and tips for web design and email marketing. Free advice. What more could you want?
HorsePigCow.com: A marketing blog for those who see the online world as a place for creativity, community, conversation and collaboration. This girl has it together. Another of my daily blog reads.
Follow the AnnickPress Twitter feed. See how it’s done.
I was in Kelowna, BC, May 22 and 23 for the Meeting of the Centre for Chief Marketing Executives.
My fellow presenters included:
We talked about the growing influence of social networking websites and the implications for Canadian Marketers.
In addition to participating in roundtable discussions, I presented on “Internet and Social Media: Strategies and Tactics”. For the most part, I showed the web sites in a browser window, hence no slides to share with you. But below are my key points.
Introduction
Boxcar Marketing: how can we help your business?
We’re called Boxcar Marketing because we think about online marketing tools as boxcars in a train: you can link together any combination of online marketing tools. When used together in combinations that are appropriate for your campaign, your business, your customer base, they create momentum for your other marketing activities.
One company’s online marketing strategy might include:
Search marketing + Blogging + Email marketing
Someone else might use:
Search marketing + Facebook + Twitter + Flickr
Any combination is possible. My challenge to marketers is to go beyond your current set of online marketing tools.
Most businesses are using:
Email marketing + Websites
Some are using
Search marketing + Email marketing + Websites + Blogs + Facebook + YouTube
But what about these top social media tools:
- del.icio.us
- Flickr.com
- LinkedIn.com
- Ning.com
- StumbleUpon.com
- Twitter.com
- Upcoming.org
- Virtual worlds: SecondLife
- Wikis: pbwiki
~~~ Monique Trottier on Social Media Marketing 101 ~~~
A) Introduction to Social Media Marketing
What is it? Why is it important to you, your business and your customers? What can you do?
Why is Social Media Marketing important?
Because the media landscape has changed. Because customers have changed.
Mass marketing is harder to do effectively because of the fragmentation of attention. Media is fragmented. There are more radio stations, more tv stations, more magazine titles, more books, millions of websites.
There is a proliferation of products, meaning customers have more things to choose from. We have more devices: video games, computers, dvd players, televisions, satellite radios, TiVo, cellphones and PDAs.
With those devices we email, instant message, Google, blog, create videos, podcast. We also Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Ning and Digg.
As businesses, we have to care about these things because interruptive marketing is harder and harder to do.
Customers are not listening. They are busy creating content. They are producers.
They are busy recommending and talking about their experiences with products and services. They are reviewers. They are marketers.
Customers are more demanding and have greater expectations about how businesses should interact with them.
It is harder to get customers to come to your site because they are busy doing other things online. We have to go to them.
No online community has ever sat around saying, you know what we need? More marketers.
We have to get better at connecting to our customers online. At joining the conversation. At being more collaborative. At being an active part of a community. At speaking with our human voice, not our marketing & PR voice.
B) A Few Social Media Marketing Tools At A Glance
What is it? What are successful business uses?
Brightkite: http://brightkite.com/
- Location-based social networking. See where your friends are and what they’re up to, in real time. Meet people around you.
- Good for guerrilla marketing, ARGs (artificial reality games), treasure hunts, location-based marketing.
Digg: http://digg.com/
- A place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Content moves to the top based on user voting.
- Add Digg this Article to your site.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/
• A social utility that connects you with the people around you.
• Online book clubs. HarperCollins Canada has 855 members who actively discuss new books.
Note on Facebook:
As businesses we have to keep in mind the nature of the communities we are joining. Facebook is about personal networks. It became the phenomenon that it is because it’s simple, it’s fun, it has photos, it has spam-free email, there’s very little advertising. If you want to be active in Facebook, go beyond advertising. Create value-add appllications, like the TripAdvisor map. Create fun games or quizzes or tools that help users socialize.
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/
- An online photo management and sharing application.
- Example: Nikon Stunning Gallery. Nikon contacted 16 bloggers who would use the new Nikon D80 and post photos to Flickr using the tag “nikonstunninggallery”. Other Flickr users were invited to also tag photos this way in order to be entered into a contest to win a free camera. This type of contest works because the product (a camera) is directly tied to the activities of the community (taking photos).
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/
- An online network of more than 20 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.
- Connect to me on LinkedIn. See my network of connections. Do we know anyone in common? Do you have a question that you’d like me to pose to my network? Looking for an expert in something? Maybe I can link you up to someone in my network.
Ning: http://www.ning.com/
- Create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds.
- See if members of your industry have already started social networks on Ning. Then join.
- Example: HotelNetwork.Ning.com is a forum for hotel owners, operators, and industry folks. “A wide range of topics are covered from a macro level such as the state of the industry to the property level with development opportunities, best practices, etc.”
PRWeb: http://www.prweb.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/
• A service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Note about Twitter: I love Twitter because it is real-time conversation, it’s easy, it’s mobile (I can send and receive Tweets from my computer and my phone), it’s business and personal. I think Twitter is the tool to watch. The integration, simplicity and mobility of this tool is key to its success.
Examples: Social bookmarketing site Ma.gnolia.com uses Twitter as a customer service and help desk. Instead of emailing the company when service is down or bugs are detected, you can follow the Twitter feed to see if they are aware of the problem and what the fix status is.
Upcoming: http://upcoming.yahoo.com
- A community for discovering and sharing events.
- Add your event. Check for networking events in your area or social media sessions or marketing events such as Case Camp.
YouTube: http://youtube.com/
- Easily upload and share video clips across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.
- Example: Nick Haley, student at University of Leeds, loved his new iPod Touch so much that he created a commercial for it. Apple saw it. Was impressed. Flew him out to New York to re-create the ad, which now plays on television. Watch Nick Haley’s original Apple iPod Touch ad.
Conclusion
Where are we going? What should we take away from this presentation?
- We understand that the media landscape has changed.
- Newspaper readership is down.
- Direct mail success is down.
- TV viewership is down.
- We understand that 80% of offline purchases are a direct result of online window shopping (JC Williams Group).
- We know that the use of social networks, blogs, websites continues to hold steady or rise.
- We are going to see more social media tools.
- There will be greater integration of devices.
- There will be more conversations online, definitely between customers (and hopefully between customers and companies).
- There will be more collaboration online.
- The changes in the media landscape will continue to fragment the market.
- Smaller, more personal campaigns will have greater success and impact than larger, mass media campaigns.
- Community, conversation and collaboration will continue to win over controlled, closed networks.
- As businesses we need to remember to be human. Humans are tool users. Find the social media tools that are right for your campaigns.
About the Centre for Chief Marketing Executives
CCME is an exclusive network for Canada’s chief marketing executives that addresses marketing’s role at the corporate strategy level.
About Speaker Monique Trottier
Monique Trottier is President of Boxcar Marketing, a marketing and communications firm with expertise in online marketing, web design and search marketing. Monique is experienced at bridging social interactions on the web with offline conversation. She’s adept at helping companies understand and respond to how their products or services are represented online. Talk to Monique about in-house consultations, public speaking and presentations.
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