Marc Kline has a great post on ways to optimize the landing pages. What I took from this post was the fact that you should not only check your links but check the landing page. I will take it one step further than that. You need to experience what the user experiences. Get the email, click the links and do a desired action. How easy was it for you to order the item? What was your experience like in going through the order and what sort of response or “love” did you get after it was placed. Bottom line is..the email can get folks there, but if you have no idea what they are going thru once they get there, the email wont make a difference.
I am still blocked from collecting any feeds from Technorati and STILL cannot access their site. I have contacted their support twice and no response. I had an individual contact me as a result of my blog postings about Technorati and still nothing. I was able to get to their site yesterday, but now its same old……403 forbidden error.
If you are a blogger or a person of influence in the blogosphere, I urge you to take note of all my postings about them and rally behind me to see if we can get Technorati to perhaps change their ways of blocking people and customer service.
Wow…talk about viral. Tide has hit a home run here for sure. At mytalkingstain.com you get to create your own talking stain video and have a bunch of downloads. Guess it does not hurt that they ran their $2.7 million dollar spot at a good point in the game. As soon as I saw it, I said to myself…”this will stick” “what viral potential”.
So with out further adieu…I give you the one and the only……”The Scrappy Software Marketer” as THE talking stain. Look closely…
I recently wrote a strategy brief for my current organization on recent email marketing trends and issues facing email marketers. In it, I discussed a few of the most prevalent issues and offered up solutions for those vexing problems. I was on a call yesterday with someone in my organization who said that he read my document and that it contradicted itself on whether or not to use images or mastheads within email.
I think what some people fail to realize is that email marketing is both an art and a science and there is no generally acceptable practice or method by which you should engage your users in email marketing. Each piece of email is unique to audience and depending upon your audience and message, will determine whether or not you use images within a particular piece.
However, one of the things that I do caution against is the use of image laden emails with calls to actions embedded in your image or the use of images as a primary driver for your email. I am strictly speaking about B2B email as this might not apply if you are selling toasters online in the B2C area. Often, I run across people who are more hung up on moving the masthead image over a 1/4 of an inch to fit in that last bit of text thinking its going to drive ROI. I also run across people who will wait weeks for a custom image to be made and embedded into the email, but give little thought as to their message content and whether or not its compelling enough to drive actions.
Bottom line: Be smart about the use of images in your email. Worry more about the content and the compelling drivers to action in the email and worry more about nurturing the user and establishing a healthy long term relationship with them as opposed to choosing red or green for that must have background image of the hotel your seminar is at.
I receive alot of email. I also receive alot of spam. Here are some of the worst subjects I have received in the recent days. Would love to know yours.
Milkshake Solid Chocolates Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:04:42 +1200 Toilet
Ashamed of your size!
Keep her on it all night..
i êîðïîðàòèâíàÿ èíòåãðèðîâàííàÿ ëîãèñòèêà (my personal favorite)
I am attending a training session today and tomorrow for one of our sales group on some of our most important products. I think its great for a software marketer to not only understand the products that their company has, but to more importantly hear from the sales folks who are in the trenches selling the stuff. Alot of great ideas can be spawned from these folks about creative ways to market or even message the product for them.
While I don’t have a ton of opportunities to do this sort of thing, I find it refreshing and energizing to sit in the back of the room as the “token marketing guy” to glob ideas from these folks.
If you don’t talk with sales people in your marketing role and try understand their pain or issues in selling as well as the folks that they sell too, you are missing out and I encourage you to get to know “your other customer”
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.
As most of you know, I don’t do alot of promotion on my blog, but thought it might be prudent given the fact that this is a really neat event that we have coming up. As most of you know, I work for Quest Software and on February 6th, we are having a Notes to Exchange Migration Virtual Conference. Its completely online and geared to those folks who are interested in moving from Lotus Notes to Exchange and Sharepoint.
I think virtual conferences or trade shows are great since you can do it from the comfort of your desk and really have no “sales” interaction which on some level is a good thing. Anyway if you or someone you know is interested in attending, I would encourage you to register and attend this great event. As always, let me know if you have any questions.
Do you remember your first time at learning something new. Perhaps there was confusion or elation. For example, I will never forget my first time I learned what email was. My father explained it to me with something like this. “Yes. There is thing called electronic email. You type out your message and then send it off and people. It goes around the world and then people get it in their mailbox and read it” I was like whoa….that is cool. I remember asking something to this effect “What if I wanted to send something to everyone who had a mailbox? Man…that would be cool” (early email marketing opportunity)
What is my point you ask. My point is this….sometimes a new concept or idea can be overwhelming or frustrating to some. To others, they see it as an opportunity. However someone sees a new idea, be patient and be sure you explain it fully. Don’t be afraid to try new things and try something new. Often the path of resistance is a opportunity to win and win big.
Although a bit basic for experienced email marketers, those of you just starting out or wanting a refresher in some of the basics, EMMA has a good post of things to not do in email marketing.
There was a an article today in Daily Mail about lying. It says that everyone tells an average of 4 little lies a day or 88,000 over a lifetime. So without further adieu, I bring you the top 10 enterprise software marketing lies overheard at recent meetings.
10. No.I really think that storyboard where that pygmy is drinking carrot juice totally represents comprehensive dynamic reduction on the server level
9. The customer is completely happy with the recent patch and will be easy to get a reference out of.
8. Version 8.0 is way better than 7.5
7. Pop up banner ads really work
6. I don’t think scrolling down 15 times on our newsletter with 37 links is too much information for people to read.
5. Dude….viral campaigns are easy..we can bust one out by the end of the week!!!
4. No one ever told me I need to create a tactical plan to run a campaign.
3. I think a great way to gain awareness is to create a community….no a discussion group….wait….how about a Community Discussion Group with a blog where we have people talk about the product? Yea..thats great…will totally build awareness man!!
Barry Harrigan over at Accelerating IT Sales has an interesting post about what IT Marketing folks can learn from the personalization feature of Guitar Hero. While his logic seems simple enough, getting web folks into a development cycle to produce something like this is hard, especially in a large organization. Tell me what you think
I dropped my son off at school this morning like any other morning. However, instead of taking the same route back to my home office I decided to branch out and take a scenic route. Sure I went totally out of my way and burned more gas than usual, but it was refreshing. I was able to crank some music, chill, feel the road and enter a different but relaxed state of mind. It was a change and it was great.
If you are a software marketer or just a marketer in general and have taken the same path home with your prospects or customers each and every time, a change can sometimes be refreshing. It could backfire and people will get freaked out, but sometimes branching out and doing something different even if its minuscule can make a world of difference. So change your newsletter up a bit. Market that white paper using non traditional media. Make a vidcast or a podcast series to reinforce brand. Do something goofy to get the sales folks engaged with marketing.
Think about this….can you imagine the person over at ad agency that introduced the whopperfreakout? At first pass you would think that is stupid…pretend you are not having your biggest product anymore and secretly tape peoples reactions. How would that ever push brand and Burger King? Sometimes new ideas and change work and sometimes they don’t. I would rather try and fail than not try at all.
So go ahead….take a different road today…let me know how it goes.
Software marketing is hard enough without having to worry about things such as having a mentor or career coach. If you don’t have one or feel as if your manager does not act as a career coach or have your best interest in mind, then you have 2 choices: Find one or find another manager.
You cannot scrape your way through the software marketing jungle without one.
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 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.
1. Vow to do more attracting than selling.
To use a high school analogy: Be the charismatic kid with a winning smile, a charming personality and a good dose of humility. Don’t be the tard who farts and throws firecrackers at cats in that desperate vein of “Look at me! Look at me!”
2. Adopt the 5th P.
If your company relies on the classic marketing model of the four P’s, add a fifth one: Participation. Build a model of how customers, partners and employees can meet, share and participate with the company or with one another.
3. Build a niche.
The future is micro-specific. It starts with people who share highly specific characteristics that defy traditional demographics. Define an ideal customer to the n’th degree, like unemployed college professors who wear corduroy sport coats (with elbow patches) and drive old Volvos.
4. Conduct a word of mouth audit.
Put every customer-facing experience up for review, from reception to the floor person, to accounts payable. Does the customer experience generate good word of mouth, or bad word of mouth? Adjust then measure again.
5. Create a social network.
Do it on Facebook, or Ning or the good ol’ analog way: a customer advisory board. Any form of social network among customers, partners or employees (current or former) is a tangible asset. Treat it as you would your grandparents (respectfully), not as you would your younger brother whom you randomly punch in the head.
6. Vow to eliminate a stupid rule.
You know what it is. Customers (or bloggers) have already told you. So eliminate it already. For extra points, give it a funeral.
7. Create a social media training program.
In 2008, expect word of mouth and customer evangelism to be accelerated by social media considerably more than it was in 2007. What people say online will reach deeper into the B2B world, too, like long-term services contracts and enterprise-wide computer systems. Understanding the basics of social media, how it works and the effects it can have on reputation and sales should be part of annual training programs.
8. Ban use of the word “consumer.”
Nothing says “I’m like Borat” more than using “consumers” to describe your customers, or end-customers. If you call the sales channel your customers, then their customers are your end-customers. To call them consumers is so Borat-like.
9. Raise the ethics bar.
Be a hero to people who still believe in ethics. Make 2008 the year you set higher standards for ethical behavior. Make the standards clear to employees, partners and vendors. Enforce them. Gaming the system is for congressmen and crooked military contractors.
10. Do what you love.
It may be trite but if you don’t love what you’re doing, how can you expect anyone else to?
If you think about it, we have alot of commitment in our lives. We have a commitment to our wives or husbands, we have them with our children, our family our friends etc..
However one of things we don’t necessarily understand or wonder about is our commitment to the companies that we work for. In that same light, I often wonder about the commitment that the company has to us as an employee. Each year we spend more and more time working at a company. In fact we spend more time working than we do outside of work in terms of hours per day. (some will argue this point, but in these times, we just don’t shut off our computers at 5 and never think about work outside of work..its just not possible)
I went to my wife’s Christmas party on Friday like I have for the last 14 or so years. At her organization they have several Holiday parties coupled with scattered events throughout the year to engage the employees to show the companies commitment to their own. They do alot for their employees and as an outsider looking in, I am a bit jealous.
Here is a confession. In the last 15 years, I have never been with a company that had a holiday party. Oh wait..there was one, but I joined the company too late in the year and was not able to attend.
The idea of commitment goes waaaay beyond holiday parties of course…… In my opinion its the feeling of being valued when you walk in the door. Its the feel
