Jenkins’ The Truth About Email Marketing Worth Reading if You’re Mailing

Although I started it over a month ago, I finally got around to finishing Simms Jenkins’ The Truth About Email Marketing earlier this afternoon. As far as nitty-gritty topics go, this is about a nichey as you can get but Jenkins kindly divided his thoughts into 49 different points (I think there are actually only about 40 here if you consider some of the overlap but I wasn’t hired as the editor of this text) to make it easy to pick up and return to as time allows. If you can get past the first few points which really seem to be selling his services (or that of any email agency), I found some great content inside.

Jenkins spends a great deal of time on U.S. CAN-SPAM legislation, noting that at the time he published the book some 81% of marketers were unaware of the guidelines (did you know you can be charged $250 per email spam?), and repeatedly reminds readers to visit (and also direct their subscribers) to review the latest details on the FTC site. Since publication, the FTC has also launched this consumer facing site filled with good tips for senders and receivers.

He provides a “Best Practices for B2B email marketing” List in point #46 that starts with some obvious ones like know your audience but moves on to how to prepare for Mobile readers. If you can’t find time to read the whole book, just read this point while you’re standing in Barnes & Noble.

In closing he takes the time to put things into perspective citing the results of 2008 E-Consultancy and Adestra Report showing that businesses were using email 52% of the time for retention and just 26% of the time for acquisition, an important point to note when planning your media mix.

Email List Maintenance 101: Don’t Offend Your Subscribers

You work hard to build a list of qualified subscribers to your email marketing list. You need to work equally hard to keep them. List hygiene is just as important as dental hygiene: if you don’t do it, your list will fail you.

After each campaign we carefully review not only the results of the campaign (clicks throughs, opens and conversions) but we need to take time to look at the opt outs and undeliverables. This week eMarketer.com shared the results of another great study citing the reasons that most people opt out of a permission-based list:

It shouldn’t surprise you to find that irrelevant content and frequency were the top responses. If you send off-topic messages, you’re confusing your audinece. They subscribed or granted permission because they wanted to hear about whatever your primary area of expertise may be. If you get off topic you confuse and offend them. Sounds simple enough but you’d be surprised.

Frequency is the baseball bat that I’m constantly waiving over client’s heads. We need to respect the permission granted and deliver timely, relevant content as often as the recipient needs to hear from us. How often us that? Depends on what you are selling. Starbucks & McDonald’s could deliver several times a week but I don’t want to hear from my Realtor nearly that often. Think carefully about the frequency with which you deliver and make sure you’re not just shoveling !#$%  to keep your name in front of them else they put you out with the trash.

Value in Content Marketing

It used to be that you could create a really visually appealing advertising vehicle and in the absence of other competitive noise, people would buy. Today that forum has gotten increasingly busy as the competitive noise from a wide range of media competes for eyeballs and air time. As a result, people are shutting out the noise of even the most visually attractive print, broadcast and electronic displays.  They are quickly looking for more information to help establish your credibility as an expert. In the absence of that information coming from you or your company, they are going to turn to your competition and then to their network of friends to help them make an informed purchasing decision. 

Your task is to serve as the educator. It’s not enough to tell them what you can/will do. You need to tell them how. How you do it. How it will benefit them. How they can buy. How they can measure. How you compare.

This trending response towards providing more information is driven partly by these emerging buying habits and partly by the search engines which crave content. The appropriate response? Feed the beast. Give them more information. Tell them what you know. Don’t be afraid to share what previously may have been viewed as intellectual capital but what today is recognized is content marketing. Establishing your position as an expert in your space is key to the continued success of your organization in an era where content is king.

Mother’s Day Publicity Stunt Done Well

In honor of Mother’s day, a local jewelry store held a contest where they invited students from area schools to write a letter explaining what made their mother special. The winners of the content would receive one of several 1/4 carat diamond pendants the store would be giving away.

The concept here is pretty basic but what the store did well was to connect with area schools. The contest wasn’t marketed broadly to everyone, just students from certain schools near their store. By focusing on those schools, they were guaranteed to reach people in their target geography — prospects who might actually shop at their store.  By encouraging the children to write an essay, they were able to connect with teachers and administrators trying to help elementary age children look for different ways to demonstrate their vocabulary and composition skills (essential components of their Language Arts curriculum).  And when it got close to decision making time, they were able to pitch their campaign to the local media (I saw the story as a CBS Cares feature on CBS 46) by leveraging the angle of the large number of kids who submitted essays (in the thousands).

Media love kids. Call it crazy but the visual of kids talking about their Mother’s day essay put this campaign over the top and helped the local jeweler to gain publicity far beyond his investment. His real costs were limited to the prizes. In actuality he and his staff spent an enormous amount of time creating, promoting and officiating the contest but the image, awareness and good will he received will pay handsome rewards for his business.

I regret that CBS 46 removed the video about this stunt from their website but I was able to locate documentation of a prior campaign: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox2oq6LMP2Q.

New Coke: Was It Really That Long Ago?

As a marketing pro, I get great pleasure out of hyper-analyzing campaigns good and bad. And as a type-A personality with a steel trap mind, I tend to remember all kinds of useless information. But New Coke falls in that category of a marketing snafu that I thought everyone remembered, especially those of us who live/work/market in Atlanta and drink lots of Coke.

Apparently I was wrong. Yesterday at the PRSA-Georgia Annual Conference I enjoyed the “Legends in PR”  panel presentation that included Harold Burson, founder of  Burson/Marsteller; Bob Cohn, founder of Cohn & Wolfe; and Ofield Dukes, president, Ofield Dukes & Associates. One of the questions posed was “worst PR blunder” to which Burson quickly piped up “New Coke.” The room burst out laughing. Except for the two women across the table from me who asked our table mate, “What’s New Coke?” I was appalled. How can you work in PR and not know about New Coke. Well, apparently the new generation of PR Pros may just be too young to know about New Coke unless they are reading about it in textbooks. That was 1985. Can you believe it?