Internet Marketing

Do your email marketing and web site user stats shake hands?

I picked this up from Chris Baggots blog today.

A web site well used can extend on the story your email message started. Whereas in a message you have a few seconds to tell your tale, online you can extend this to a minute or two.

Your email stats will tell you who clicked, but what about their journey after they arrived on your site? This article by David Daniels from Jupiter Research reveals a growing trend for email vendors to integrate their stats with the main web analytics providers.

By doing so they are providing a neat “hand shake” between those that clicked and decided to read more online.

Now you can begin to see how your subscribers interests are revealed from the pages they visit on your site. Technically it’s quite a simple task to achieve. And as always how marketers learn from all this new data will be the key test of its usefulness.

Your subcribers are working away at their desktop. Deadlines are to be met, coffee appointments kept and BANG, in arrives your message, compacting down what was there before.

Say it looks like this one that arrived in my inbox below a few moments ago.

Hmm, will it break the flow of work? Is it using any color properly to snatch some of the limited amount of attention on offer? Nope and nope.

The subject line was OK, the FROM address let me know it was from the correct place but the Preview area was awash with boxes of red making it just remind me that this messages needs my work. I have to open it full size and source the images so I can read what they want me to. (You should see what it looks like full size in the email client – it is a mess.)

The preview area is your only chance to use colour and shapes to entice an open. The remaining fields of From and Subject are just lands of text. Make Preview work for you rather than letting it create work for your subscriber.

Notice the baggy eyes? Up at 4.45am today to sound intelligent as part of a 7 person panel for the Email Marketing Thought Leader Summit for Marketing Profs. Moderated by Stephan Spencer we talked through a couple of hours of content that I am told should be available in a few weeks time. It was a fun thing.

Here’s a quick link to a recent post from the Ask Derek Scruggs blog that made my printer burn through some more toner.

This is my simple video of a scrolling Inbox – I hope it helps you picture the environment your next email message is being delivered into. Because your subscriber’s Inbox is a moving space.

Once delivered your message gradually scrolls downwards as more mail arrives on top.

Some Inboxes scroll faster than others depending on the amount of mail they get.

SPAM (if it arrives) makes all Inboxes scroll faster.

My Inbox is speeding up – as I receive more and more email. My pick is that your subscribers will too.

Masters of the From and Subject line will make it through OK. How will your email marketing survive?

Now this is cool. Instant messaging for person to person works well. But how about person to robot. And then make this robot quite a dab hand at telling you information that you had no idea how else to find. SmarterChild is that bot and here is the wap link for you to see it all in action through your browser.

Hi there, just incase you were thinking of referring this blog to someone else out there, you can click refer this blog by going here.

All the best,

Chris

I’ve been listening in on some recent posts about how RSS may or may not replace email as the way to communicate. Yes the technology is there or near to it so you can set up personalized RSS feeds but I’m not sure if has at the moment the same connection impact (translate this into results) as email.

And this doubt boils down to this one simple question.

Will you use RSS feeds to replace email to talk to your friends and family?

As yet I think the answer is no.

And because of this I think the amount of attention that flows into RSS reader is different, and of a lesser amount, than that placed on the Inbox. So while this format is worth adding to your list to give your subscribers another option to how they receive your content I am still backing (for the moment) email to drive the greater amount of results.

Now all this changes if my Inbox gets so cluttered with SPAM that I tell my close friends to stop sending me email and to switch to another form (possibly RSS)!!

Looks like the Australian SPAM act has some teeth….

Look here

The other day I was working with a client who had a campaign with a startling 2,054 % total open rate. When we worked back the normal unique opens stats showed a normal 40% but there was some serious forwarding happeing with this one to make it peak so high.

This got me thinking.

Total opens are usually missed from most stat reporting. The unique opening stat being the normal benchmark, but perhaps we should start tracking totals just to see if forwarding is growing out there.

My own newsletter averages around the 200% total open rate, and to be fair it’s something that I have never paid too much attention.

Time to change me thinks.

This month’s newsletter is out and about. You can see a copy here Plus here’s the video review of what it includes and why.

Any technology company that claims that over 50% of its revenue comes from selling services must have a web site that’s worth a look at. IBM uses a diverse range of content to help you appreciate what they know and how they can help you with your specific problems.

Here’s a link to just one piece, a great use of video to show case some thought leaders.