2008 Email Marketing Trends

ExactTarget has a great white paper out on trends for email marketing in 2008. 2 of the trends that interest me the most are #3 - The birth of the Marketing Gadget (widgets for you Mac Heads) and Trend #8 Rendering (which mostly deals with mobile email marketing)

While my organization is very far from even thinking about Trend #3, Trend #8 is an interesting one and I am about to put things into place in order ensure we are doing the best we can with mobile devices. Since there is no clear cut standard on mobile email marketing as of yet, it will be interesting to see how this will evolve in the coming 18 months.

This white paper is one of the best white papers I have read in the last 6 months or so as it does provide some valuable insight into what professional email marketers can do to increase success in the marketplace. Since organizations rely heavily on email marketing these days, this is a cant miss opportunity for you to at least try to implement some best practices discussed in this paper.

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The top 10 wireless trends for 2008

***This Article was from CNN Money/Fortune and the original post can be found here*** ***It was written by Michal Lev-Ram***

A lot happened in wireless this past year, from the debut of the iPhone to Verizon Wireless’ move to open its network. But 2008 promises to be just as eventful, starting with the Federal Communication Commission’s spectrum auction in January. Here’s a look at the 10 most significant events and trends in the coming year.

1. Wireless networks will remain the domain of wireless operators: There’s been talk that the upcoming 700-MHz spectrum auction could present an opportunity for a new carrier to emerge, given that companies like Google (GOOG) and even oil giant Chevron (CVX) have registered to bid. But most analysts agree it’s unlikely anyone but the current big mobile operators will win the showdown. “AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless (VZ) will be the most aggressive bidders,” says Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin. But regardless of who wins, the wireless world will change given an FCC requirement that the 700-MHz spectrum be open to any device.

2. The first Android phones hit the market: Taiwanese phonemaker HTC has said it expects to launch the first cell phone based on Google’s Android mobile platform by midyear, and other phonemakers are expected to follow. (Android is a wireless operating standard that aims to make the mobile data experience more Internet-like.)

3. Cameraphones will get even fancier: Have you checked out Nokia’s (NOK) N95 - a picture-taking machine that comes with a five-megapixel camera and still fits in your pocket? That’s the future of multimedia phones. “For the first time, in 2007 cameraphones became the majority,” says Mark Donovan, an analyst with research firm M:Metrics. “In 2008 we’ll see the technology continue to improve.” In the United States, 61 percent of phones already have built-in cameras, and there’s a growing range of uses for them. In addition to uploading and sharing photos directly over cellular networks, people will be able to take pictures of ads to get coupons sent to them via SMS or get product information by taking a shot of a barcode.

4. Mobile ads will come to a cell phone screen near you: Sure, estimates of mobile advertising revenues have often turned out to be overblown, but that doesn’t mean the industry isn’t making headway. In 2007, many of the big players - Google, Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) - made mobile ad-related acquisitions. Expect to see the fruits of that shopping spree start to appear later in 2008. It will be a while before subscription-based models lose ground to ad-based ones, much like what happened on the Internet, but the wireless industry is slowly opening up to ads.

5. WiMax will become available: This is the year Sprint (S) will launch its Xohm mobile broadband service in select markets like Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. By end of 2008, Sprint expects to reach 100 million customers with its new ultra-fast mobile data service. While Nokia’s Internet tablet will be one of the first compatible devices available on Sprint’s new network, analysts don’t expect to see affordable WiMax-enabled phones anytime soon.

6. Openness will continue to dominate the wireless lexicon: You can thank Google for this one - ever since the Internet search giant began lobbying the FCC to open up the 700-MHz spectrum, “open” has become the latest buzzword in the cellular world. At first the big mobile operators tried to fight it, but once they realized they couldn’t beat Google they joined in. Look for holdout AT&T to become more open to the possibilities of open in 2008.

7. Nokia will become a major mobile software player: With its new chief technology officer based in the Silicon Valley, a reorganization that will make software and services one of the company’s main business groups and the upcoming launch of its Ovi web portal, expect the Finnish phonemaker to become much more than a hardware player in 2008. The company’s buying streak (it’s already snapped up startups like photo-sharing service Twango and digital mapmaker Navteq) is likely to continue.

8. Getting lost will get harder: What, you don’t have a GPS-enabled phone? Don’t worry, you will soon. That’s because the FCC’s “Enhanced 911″ rules is slowly forcing U.S. carriers to make their handsets GPS-capable. That in turn will drive more and more location-based services (think social networking and advertising) in 2008.

9. More touchscreens: The iPhone wasn’t the only touchy-feely phone to come out in 2007. There was also the HTC Touch and Verizon’s Voyager and Venus devices, which launched in time for the holiday season. But expect to see even more all-touch devices in 2008. According to ABI Research, over 100 million handsets with touchscreens will be shipped in the new year By 2012, that number is expected to reach 500 million.

10. Silicon Valley will become a wireless industry hot spot: The Valley is home to iPhone-maker Apple (AAPL), Android creator Google, Nokia’s new CTO and countless mobile startups. With the increasing focus on software and services - not just phone manufacturing - Silicon Valley will become even more prominent on the wireless map.

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New Year…New Marketing

Is 2008 going to be more of the same for you in marketing?

Is the lure of communities and new media marketing speaking to you in a special way?

Are you going to continue down the same path as you have for the last several years of rinse and repeat marketing?

As the new year has come and you begin to solidify your 08 marketing plans, try to think a little bit outside the box and talk to those folks who can bring in a fresh perspective to perhaps your stale ways. Don’t get caught in a marketing rut and don’t think for a moment that what you did in 2007 or 2006 will work again in 2008.

Branch out and fly young one….don’t be afraid.

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Viral Video Update…

Several times this year I have updated my readers on the current state/video views on my organizations corporate account on YouTube. Well, since its the last day of the year, I thought I would give you the latest numbers which are simple amazing.

In March I blogged that we had 15,000

In April I blogged that we had 21,000

In August I blogged that we had 63,000

In October I blogged that we had 85,000

In my October post, I was hopeful and excited that we would go over 100,000 by the end of the year. Well, its December 31st and we just went over 130,500 views!! This means that in 3 months we went up by 45,000 views…which in my opinion is awesome. We continue to provide fresh content and I am truly proud of our accomplishment.

Hello 300,000!!!

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How to Fix Your Email Deliverability - 4 Easy Strategies to Lift Deliverability

MarketingSherpa has a great case study today on email deliverability. One of the practices that my organization has gotten away from is dealing with bounces/permanent failures. This is something that I hope to correct in the coming months. One of the things we have done is sign up for the feedback loops from some of the ISP’s, but since we are B2B and we send email to all over the world, its sometimes hard to identify all of the major ISP’s that we deliver through.

Nonetheless, this is a great case that everyone can gain value from.

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Don’t pay any attention to this post…….

How often do you pay attention to industry sites ads? Ya…I thought so………I have been hearing alot lately about how online ad budgets are either flat or slightly increasing next year and I am wondering if the money that software companies pour into online advertising is worth it? Do they have an hard ROI on the leads that they generate or are they pie in the sky numbers? What if a company were to find out that they poured $500k into ads for a particular product, generated a ton of leads, but the sales folks got no where with them? I wonder how much the company would be willing to invest in more ads the following go around.

Often marketing departments are so focused on bringing in the leads and looking that the CPL that they tend to lose site of the big picture of what it truly cost them to get that lead in and what happened once it got there. Yea yea yea…age old closed looped issue right?

How about instead of sitting around and talking about it, more companies begin to put a plan of action in place to either eliminate or curb the spend of online ads until they can be truly measured. Sounds deceptively simple huh?

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Software Marketing for Idiots

So you work in software marketing right? Here are a few simple rules to live by if you are a product marketing, PR/AR, internet marketing, eCommerce or anyone related to marketing the product

1. Keep it simple. (make the message simple and make it stick.)

2. Make it easy to understand.

3. Don’t ask for much

4. Success is not dictated by the amount of leads you generate

5. A new relationship is harder to make, than trying to keep the existing one going

6. Watch, learn and listen to those around you.

7. Hear what others have to say about you in the marketplace. Reach out and respond

8. Try something new.

9. Talk to your customers.

10. Don’t undermine those that have expertise in their respective areas.

I can go on and on and on…………………perhaps for more posts down the road.

Branding For a Software Company

John at Duct Tape Marketing has a great definition of branding that I would like to share:

“Branding is the art of becoming knowable, likable and trustable”

So with this definition in mind, how can something like this statement above apply to any software company of any size? Does Microsoft or Oracle need to brand their software anymore than they already have? Some people trust and like Microsoft and Oracle and some people don’t. I think more where this applies to is company’s who have a multitude of products or services and are well known in the marketplace for some piece of software.

Branding takes alot of patience, time, money and creativity. You cant just buy a Super Bowl Commercial and expect that it will instantly brand you. (ok..maybe GoDaddy is a bit of an exception) Buying the back cover of trade magazine is a good start but for some is expensive. I feel that in todays transparent world, a great way to brand yourself is to open up the doors, knock down the walls and show the IT community that you are all about collaborating and solving the pains of their world as well as being a thought leader in your respective marketplace. You can have the best products in the world, but if you play the secracy game with the public, branding will be difficult.

Here are a few (yes a few) ways to build a good brand in software

1. Start a blog. A good blog..not a chest pounding advertisement, but one which adds value to your expertise

2. Hire an evangelist.

3. Build a wiki or a community centered around pain and have that evangelist dedicated to fostering both

4. Educate educate educate through as many new mediums as you can (podcasts, video, white boarding sessions etc….)

5. Do a super bowl commercial (kidding)

6. Do things that are fun for your audience…show them that you are real

7. Monitor your reputation online and comment and acknowledge people that talk about you and your industry.

This is just a start, but if you manage to do the above you are well on your way to branding your organization

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The abuse of email in software companies

Hi..I am Joe Blow and I recently downloaded a piece of trial software from your company. Within minutes, I got a crappy autorespond email thanking me for the download as well as my trial key. (some other software companies say in the crappy autorespond email that I will be contacted by a salesperson in order to get my key). Within the next few hours, I get a phone call and email from my sales rep asking me if there is anything they can do for me. I politely decline as I have not even unzipped the file yet.

Every so often I get a ping either from the sales rep by phone or an email asking me what is going on with my trial as it nears the end of the trial period. I get emails to go to demo’s, take part in surveys and go to seminars all from the same company. In fact I just got an email the other day indicating that since I download the XYZ product trial, I might be interested in this FGH trial….and since I have not finished XYZ trial yet…it all seems a waste.

Wow..then I noticed from this software company a really cool white paper on the same subject matter as XYZ product and decided to download it. Another crappy text autorespond, another follow up from the rep both by phone and by email and more emails I am sure to come. When I finally decide that the XYZ product has some legs, I get contacted by the sales rep to do a demo and I get scheduled for a demo, get more crappy emails confirming the confirmation of the demo. I then get a form crappy email thanking me for the demo when its done, another crappy email to fill out a survey about the demo and a thank you email thanking me for taking the survey.

Too bad….I lost budget and cant buy XYZ product…but I get an email once a month from the sales person, who has now switched twice since downloading it. I get about 2 or 3 emails a month asking me to download other white papers and other trials and of course to attend that precious breakfast seminar to talk about how the XYZ product, that I cant have can solve all of my problems.

This fictitious company and email onslaught depiction was brought to you today by a concerned software marketer who knows your pain and understands that in today’s world email can be abused by all. It can be used as a shroud, a wall, a sales tool and even an abuse tactic not only by overzealous software folks, but by many companies in general.

We live in a digital world where email is king. We live in a world where marketers use email to promote everything and anything. We live in a world where marketers dont treat the customer base or prospect internal database as a precious resource that needs to be nurtured with relevant content. We live in world where marketers need to come to grips that the user is in control of what they see and want to see. We live in a world where Marketing 3.0 is taking over.

Marketing 3.0 lesson 1 - The User is In Control. Identify, adapt and overcome……or be left behind.

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Building an online community for software companies - Step 1

Want to build an online community in your organization? Great….do you have a plan?

Many companies jump into building an online community but have no idea what they hope to accomplish with it. Some companies are so product focused that they feel that building a community centered around talking about their products will draw tens of thousands of people to it. Others want to build a community on the assumption that its what the customer wants. Others want to build a community cause its the “in” or “latest buzzword” and they must have one.

Step 1 - Define what you want with clear cut goals and expectations. Organizations need to answer some tough questions when building out a community

1. How will an online community further our companies mission?

2. Will there be an evangelist for this community? In other words, will there be one person or a team of people with the same goal in mind and that is to be nothing more than figure head for this thing?

3. How do you envision the community growing over a 10-18 month period? How will you keep the community vibrat and full of energy?

4. How will you empower the users of the community to feel they are the owners and not you the organization?

5. Are you wanting to start big and have a promotional strategy around it or are you wanting to start small and gradually build your base?

Once some of these questions are answered, companies then need to move into Step 2. (Step 2 tomorrow)

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Marketing 3.0

We hear alot of things today relating to Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 or even Web 3.0. I think its time that marketers wake up and realize that we don’t have a choice in marketing anymore to want to relate to New Media or Web 2.0 technologies etc…..

Its a new era for technology marketers and we need to stay ahead of the game that is out there. We need to somewhat abandon traditional methods of marketing and look for inventive ways to build brand, awareness and of course leads for the sales folks. Marketing 3.0 is knowing the marketplace, the technologies available: harnessing and executing on all of the above to win the end game. As a marketing professional we should always think and be ahead of the world around us.

Marketing 3.0 - Thinking and executing ahead of everything else.

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ITS Profiles - Don’t do business with them.

We do a fair amount of list rentals at my current organization and about 2 or 3 weeks ago we rented a list trough a company called ITS Profiles. It was a disaster to say the least. First and foremost, they had a bunch of selects that seem fairly dead on for our target audience. We were promoted a tech brief geared toward BSM and hoped to yield more than what we got. What we got was nothing. Nada. Zilch….in terms of new leads. Ok ok..before you jump all over me, I clearly expect that some lists don’t work, and I am willing to concede this. However, it was the manner in which this company conducted itself when we questioned them on their methods of distribution for this particular email campaign. Let me explain.

First and foremost, there was no header or footer on the email which explained to the end user where/who the email is coming from. Normally on list rentals that we have done through respectable vendors such as TechTarget, Redmond, CMP etc…they normally prepend the message that it is coming from them and how they got onto the list. Second, the email was sent from a yahoo.com account. ITS Profiles set up a yahoo account with the Quest name on it and sent the solicitation from the Yahoo account. So basically it appeared that we set up the account sent the email (which I am sure has SPAM written all over it) with nothing. When we questioned the company on their practices and I indicated that it appeared as if they not only violated the Can Spam Act, but the Yahoo service agreement we were responded too in a very curt manner indicating that they are Can Spam Compliant and that it was an oversight or mistake on their part that they used the yahoo account. Ok..how can you make a mistake in using a yahoo account to sent an email to over 10,000 people. I have an email from ITS Profiles, but chose not to display it hear unless for some reason someone from this really questionable organization wants to challenge me on their sheer stupidity and flagarent violation.

That said, after threatening to contact my legal department and report them, ITS Profiles comped us for our email, but it still does not excuse their ignorance, inexperience and lack of general email marketing etiquette. If you rent lists in your company, my advice it to stay as far away from doing any sort of list rental or purchase from this company. They don’t know what they are doing and it appears that they don’t have what they say.

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Can an organization change?

Seth has a great posted entitled the “meatball mondae”

Here is my question..when you work in a organization which totally does not operate with transparency and believes that what you did 3 years ago will work today in technology marketing, how many people does it take to change the feeling of the organization?

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T-Shirt Giveaway….

We have been running at my current company a T-Shirt giveaway promotion in that we ask the user to download a whitepaper and in return, the first 2500 people will get a free T-Shirt. While it has been successful, I recently came across a T-Shirt that I think a technology company should experiment on a giveaway type basis.

So without further adieu, give away this THING and I will be first in line to download and try whatever you want me to try.

I love being a geek.

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A Google Phone?

A completely unsubstantiated rumor surfaced today indicating that Google is 2 weeks away from the launch of a GPhone.

Some are saying that it would be a marketing disaster, but I think it would be a marketing homerun. Nothing like keeping things a secret and then springing it on everyone. Look at the iPhone…it was hyped for months and has done well. If Google wanted to hype this thing, they would have been overdshadowed by the iPhone hype.

If this rumor is true, Google will hit a homerun.

What are your thoughts?

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Viral Video update…..63,000+ and counting

Chris over at Raw Stylus asked that I update him on our viral video status with YouTube.

I believe the last post I had on this was on April 6th, where I mentioned that we had 21,000 views on YouTube of Quest Software Videos. As of today, we have over 63,000 views on the 51 vids we have posted on YouTube. Some of the most popular videos that I have seen have been the instructional ones where we had an expert presenting. For some reason however, I don’t consider any of these videos viral. I consider this as a part of doing business in the new Enterprise 2.0 model. If one should happen to go viral great, but its nothing that I am counting on.

One of the things that we have learned in doing this process is to keep them simple and educational. Most of the videos that we have on YouTube are recorded webcasts that we have done in the past and all provide a high level of technical knowledge and training. We never set out to have this account to pound our chests and let everyone know how great we are. We simply want to educate folks in our recognized areas of database management, application management and windows management.

I have tasked my team to ensure we have fresh content posted consistently as we do have quite a few people subscribing to our channel. I believe fresh and engaging content keeps our numbers respectable and hopefully people want more.

I am excited to see how our account will progress in the next 6 - 10 months, but I can honestly say I am very optimistic and proud of our current accomplishments.

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