Golden Leads

I was looking at the email marketing campaigns in my inbox thinking to myself, “I hope that our users don’t look to the big boys of retail to copy their email campaigns because, well, they’re just wrong.”

Will someone tell these guys to stop using image-only emails for their campaigns? Sure they probably pay fancy agencies to do wonderful-looking work (they are pretty) but these guys for sure aren’t up to snuff when it comes to creating email marketing campaigns for deliverability.

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So before you even enter my office, you will now know that like most boys in the US, I am a fan of Star Wars. Not a light saber wielding freak that camps out for weeks leading up to the next release, but one that is just enamoured with the creativity and the energy that this media property brings. Now that being said we have clients like Konami and Sega using our email platform, but I still like the simplicity that Lucas Arts brings to the inbox with these well written and well designed emails. They have a clean balance of imagery and text… yes text does score high with me even with some of the other emails I have shown you over the past few years.

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Take a moment to look how they use compelling graphic headers to build a clear separation between the game properties and help me to know where to go next. It works well sometimes just keeping it simple and sticking to the basics.

Now I have to go as a droid (account Exec) is knocking at my door again.

Thanks to The Email Wars for this great article.

Dear Email Diva,

I have a permission-based, single opt-in email list of 50,000+ addresses. Recently I’ve turned my attention to getting white listed. A majority of our emails are corporate addresses, so there’s an IT person somewhere I need to get in touch with to discuss getting through any filters they’ve set up and save our email from having to jump through too many hoops. Just how do I go about convincing someone my emails are worth letting through? So far I’ve had limited success: where the admin has heard of our company it goes well, but those that haven’t question why they should allow us through. Do you have any foolproof methods for how to strike up the dialogue that will end with my name being up there in white on someone’s very own copy of Spam Assassin?

Tristan Welch
Communications & Circulation Manager

http://www.planetconfidential.co.uk

http://www.manchesterconfidential.com

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At CES, you couldn’t help but run into the big blitz for Yahoo! Go, which promised “All your email, news, photos, and more on your phone, always up-to-date and ready for you.”

After demoing the first edition on my Blackberry 8703e, and then downloading the upgrade, I have deleted it. Here’s why:

1. It is slower than a ‘62 VW bus driving up a hill. The “revolutionary” carousel design is clunky and not very user friendly. You have to switch to the panel, then scroll through the panel, then click on the story, then open the story, etc…..An RSS reader like www,freerangeinc.com offers is SO much better and easier to use.

2. The email piece is light years behind GMail mobile. Many HTML emails simply had no content at all. No text version, nothing. On the last upgrade I did, Email magically disappeared.

3. I thought the Local Search feature had promise. This was shot down when it for some reason couldn’t remember my Zip Code?

The Flickr function showed promise, but it wasn’t enough. I could go on and on, but save yourself the time and pass on this mobile app. It literally just plain wasted my time, not what a Mobile app is supposed to do.

Thanks to Return on Subscriber for this great article.

This post has two real thoughts in mind. One of course ties directly to email marketing and the other to this blog.

Email: When is a lurker a lurker in email? And what is a lurker in email? A lurker is someone that is on your list, and active reader but does not ever engage in clicking through or converting. I know you all have lurkers on your list. What do you think about them and what do you do with them?

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My team has seen at least five RFPs this year alone specific to selecting an Email Service Provider (ESP). The business requirements look similar across every company, but when we peer underneath the stated requirements into what they really want, these are quite often not reflected in the RFP. Here are five critical questions you need to ask yourself before selecting a new email delivery partner.

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If you are missing me at the beginning of the week, it is because I have hit the road again on Sunday for Hollywood for my twice annual pilgrimage to OMMA, the best Mediapost show out there. This is the event I look forward to each and every year.

The EEC (Email Experience Council) will be leading the email marketing sessions at the event again and you are sure to get some good information that you can use. Join us if you can. I will be making another appearance at the Liars Club panel with the likes of David Baker from Ave A/Razorfish and Jeanniey Mullen from Ogilvy.

I will try to post during the event if I can, or have Ryan post them on Emaildays.com. Cheers.

Thanks to The Email Wars for this great article.

The March Inc.com column Dressing for Success in the Women in Business section was fun to write . If you don’t know us we’re pretty casual in the VerticalResponse offices. We work hard, we play hard and we’re comfortable. Check it out if you’ve got a minute or two.

Thanks to VerticalResponse Email Marketing Blog for this great article.

Now being a creative myself and not just an email marketer, I love it when I get beautifuly designed emails. I know that there are flaws with over designed emails but our Portland Advertising Federation has a collection of very talented designers that get the word out about the events we put on each month in a way that says… wow.

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Now Anne Holland and the Marketing Sherpa team deliver a GREAT email and I love what they do. But their new owner/partner needs some TLC from the Sherpa crew. I regularly get hard to read, narrow text emails from Marketing Experiments and love the content, but damn if these things are not hard to read to know what to do.

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