I have been reading Douglas Karr’s blog for awhile now and he has a really good post on why go with an ASP. He provides a great explanation in his post and its something you should definitely read about if you are considering this move.
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…
Unless you live in a cave, one of the hottest trends around these days is video. I have long talked about sending video in email but understand the limitations of rendering and blocking etc. However today, I am going to conduct a series of experiments unbeknown-st to some of my peeps in the organization about the delivery of video in emails. If my experiments work, I will start to do some testing with a group with my organization that seems keen to being the testing bed/guinea pigs of new and exciting things. In addition, if I am successful, it might change the way alot of us think about video in emails
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)
There was a post by Erick over at TechCrunch today talking about a company called Visible Measures. Visible Measures offers data-collection software to capture every play, pause, rewind, and e-mail-to-a-friend button that viewers click on while watching videos on a given site.
As you know video is a hot thing and for us marketers we are always interested in engagement of our stuff. Let me know your thoughts if you have tried this thing out.
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.
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!!
Kristina Cooke over at Reuters has an article about how those that telecommute have less stress and a higher morale compared to those that are left to come into an office everyday. She mentions that “their co-workers tend to find the workplace less enjoyable, have fewer emotional ties to co-workers and generally feel less obligated to the organization”
I have to agree and disagree with a few things in this article. I for one have been telecommuting for 6 years with my current organization. While I do tend to have less stress and enjoy a very good work/life balance, I sometimes do miss having face time with other people in the office. Sometimes I look forward to traveling to other offices merely for the social interaction, but also enjoy the solace and comfort of my home office. There are days where I am grateful to have my situation and others where I wish I could balance going in more with home office time.
However, I do feel that one challenge in particular hurts us as telecommuters. Since I don’t have that regular face time with executives or upper management, I often find having to either reinvent myself or do something over and above for people to get to know me as a manager and as a person. When you are in an office and can have that interaction with others, people notice and sometimes I believe can lead to accelerated promotions. Since telecommuting often portrays you as that “online guy that works from home” often your true talents and personality does not come through to those that need to see it most. You are not looked at as that “strategic person” or “go to person” sometimes, because you are not given that chance to be strategic. In addition, you don’t become a “top of mind” person because you are not around.
I love telecommuting but I can can say with almost certainty that it has hurt my career in terms of advancement within my organization. I see others around me being elevated into positions not only because they have talent, but that they are in that office and interact with people that can elevate them. So one needs to ask themselves if the work/life, less stress and balance thing is more important or is the need for new challenges and opportunity for advancement more important.
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.
Brian Suda over at Sitepoint has a great article on the future of the web and what we can expect in 2008. He goes on to list 10 things and I think the thing that excites me the most is #3 in which he states that Pull is dead and that Push is the new king. You will have to read all about it, but Brian gives some great insight into the future.
Here is my prediction for the web in the next 4-6 years. A microchip or tiny PC which you will be able to embed in your head which you can switch on and off via brainwaves and surf the net in your head. Basically you have the abilityy to be the internet and view things but just staring off in space. Ok, I know is sounds a bit nutty, but how cool would it be to wake up at 2 am, turn on the net in your head and see if their are any breaking news stories or check overseas markets without turning on a light or even using electricity to power anything.
It appears the Yahoo is changing the game a bit on deliverability issues. In this post from Word to the Wise, it explains the new method that Yahoo will use to block connections from listed IP address.
Good to see that Yahoo is taking some measures to really block spam, and although its a hurdle for legitimate email marketers, I view it as an opportunity for those of us who live in the email marketing world to boost deliverability rates to yahoo. If done right, a legitimate email marketer can capitalize.
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.
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.
