Archive for the ‘I'm so angry about email’ Category

August 5, 2009

Skills? Not Necessary- I write a blog

There are 5 basic skill requirements of a good email marketing manager:

  1. Be able to code an email
  2. Be able to write and run a SQL query to run advance queries, or at least create a relational database in Access
  3. Be able to technically explain how an open is tracked, not just that is by allowing graphics in an email
  4. Be able to explain how the clickthrough rate actually relates to the sales database and lead generation
  5. Be able to create and manipulate a pivot table of results

After sending email for five years for many different companies and organizations of varying size and complexity from many different systems, I can confidently say that if you are an email manager that is unable to do all five of these things, you are extremely lucky to have a job.

Why? Because if you can’t complete these five little tasks, then you are having someone else do them, either other company resources or a consultant. That costs money, which makes that unbelievable ROI on email you are reporting to your boss a little less unbelievable. You better hope that they don’t catch on, or at least latch onto a new company before they do.

All the talk about spam, marketing automation, deliverability, and every other email marketing buzzword that is used in email marketing blogs is bullshit if you are unable to accomplish these five tasks *. Every single buzzword you use in your blog will cost your company more money, either in capital AND variable costs (because you couldn’t get the current/old email system to work up to its potential and purchased a new magic system) or in third party consultants to do the work for which you will take credit **.

“Well, this seems harsh. I can’t code my own email, but I know what DKIM stands for, I can log into Eloqua, and I write a blog” an email marketing manager may say in response. “My blog has so many links and trackbacks that I’m basically a search marketer. I even Twitter. In fact, I’m going to TwitterBlog how good I am at my job.”

I am biased because I am an email & database marketing manager who can do all of these things. Actually, I’m grateful that more email managers are unable to accomplish these tasks- it keeps me employed and provides enough low-hanging fruit that every normal thing I do makes me look like a genius. It also keeps my freelance work hopping.

So I’m an idiot for writing this- I’m giving away my competitive advantage. I take it all back- go back to writing your blog about your reaction to whatever the DMNews said the Gmail blog said they were doing yesterday *. Keep up the good work.

* 95% of all internet marketing blogs, not just email blogs, are completely worthless. They just refer to other blogs, who refer to other blogs, who refer to other blogs. In each IM discipline, there are probably legitimately five blogs that are actually writing real and useful information that aren’t opinion or trackbacks. This post is probably in that initial 95%.

** Don’t worry- they don’t care- you got that prestigious spot in DMNews. They got your budget money and you probably don’t know the cost per lead, but at least Ken Magill mentioned you.

I do actually like the DMNews blog and Ken Magill’s stuff.

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August 3, 2009

Don’t Be Evil, You Evil Robot OR Say No to Standards

Lifehacker surveyed their readers, and a majority said that they prefer web-based email and use it more than desktop clients. 54% of approximately 11,000 responders said they only use applications like Gmail, YMail, and other (Insert Letter Here)Mail services; another 20% said they use both.

What does this mean? It means that people love free things, like 132 GB free email accounts, and will trade any personal information for it with no consideration of what they may be doing. By “free”, I mean that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft now owns, tracks, and documents a majority of electronic mail those 74% of people create and send, along with their personal information and much more.

Think about that- some intern at Google can see every piece of inappropriate email that you are sending your friends at work and at what time, and tie it to your searches, your web analytics, your Picasa photos of your mom, and then use Translate to turn it into Cyrillic for Russian pron hackers to use. Inevitably, someone will get upset and start complaining about the AdWords links that are popping up in their Gmail window (again) because apparently free email is a right, not a Web 2.0 service put forth by publically traded companies with shareholders (this goes back to my spam discussion in my previous post).

We’re about 8 months away from HAL- a robot that knows everything about me, from knowing all of my friends, to my weird search preferences, to what I did last week. Hell, if you use the desktop search apps and Google Apps, and then get an Android phone, Google will know absolutely everything about me. If we get lucky, this Slurp/Googlebot/MSNBot robot (I’ll throw the search junkies a bone) will be a cross of Dr. Manhattan, Data from Star Trek, and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit *. Ridiculous power, but cute and lovable and won’t hold its artificial intelligence over me in a demeaning way, even though it has a laser bazooka on its shoulder. I’m a delicate flower that couldn’t handle that kind of judgement and scrutiny.

That is why I am cutting myself off from all email and Google, even though I work in email marketing. This inevitable Don’t Be Evil but Actually is Evil robot won’t know anything about me**. From now on, I will be sending all correspondence via telegram, analog phone, my beeper, and horse-drawn carriage delivered snail mail. I’m going to disappear, like Jason Bourne or like Michael Jackson did between Dangerous and his pedophile trial.

(This may be too soon, but did everyone just forget about that trial? The man showed up in court, where he was being tried for allegedly fondled little boys, in pajama pants. Yes, he made Thriller, but he also made 2001’s Invincible. The man lived off of the success of 2 albums and his childhood success. There, I said it)

But the point of this blog entry is email, not to be a harbinger of doom and paranoia. For email marketers, if these numbers hold up and aren’t just representative Lifehacker.com’s dork readers (of which I am one) but the population as a whole, then that means that soon, B2C companies may not have to worry about designing for Outlook anymore, which sucks to design for because it reads code like a blind, illiterate monkey. Hooray!

Wait- If anybody should be worried, it should be the email industry, because if everyone is using webclients for email, we can no longer hold the “We know how to code for Gmail AND Outlook” argument over real web designers’ heads (which is why they should stop complaining about crappy Outlook 2007 and the forthcoming 2010. That’s right ESP- I’m calling you out). I love not having email standards. If we had standards, that would mean we, as a profession, would have to show actual value instead of just using buzz phrases and writing blogs about respect and opt-ins. We, the email marketing industry, shouldn’t have fixoutlook.org. No! We should have Thank-You-Microsoft-and-Google-for-your-crappy-email-clients.tv for giving us job security.

Google Trends
This is what Slurp/Googlebot/MSNBot evil robot would know about us today: In Today’s Hot Trends on Google Trends, the #1 trend is “obama joker poster” and the #3 trend in the USA searches is “Tiger Woods fart” (which has been removed from YouTube by the PGA). #4 is Rob Newbiggin, a professional boxer who is getting a sex change, but still boxing as Mercedes, a female boxer. Awesome. He will be one attractive woman.

* Whatever happened to Steve Guttenberg? He seemed like he was on the Soul Train to stardom in mid-80s, with Police Academy 1-20, the aforementioned Short Circuit, Cocoon, the venerable 3 Men and a Baby and its unmatched sequel 3 Men and a Little Lady, and then – BOOM – gone. That is what happens when you pigeonhole yourself, I guess. Working as an email manager can be pigeonholing; email could be thought of as the Steve Guttenberg of Internet Marketing. (back to where you were)

** I think that, soon, if you don’t show up in Google results, you’ll be deemed an outcast by society for your lack of popularity or considered a terrorist that is trying to hide something. Seriously. (back to where you were)

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July 23, 2009

Opens, Metrics, and Turds

Man, my computer screen is dirty.

And thus, with those immortal words, my Monkeys with Handguns career begins.

I send a lot of email. I’ve been responsible for tens of millions of messages being sent to anyone and everyone about a variety of topics, mostly soliciting money or soliciting someone to buy something in my career. To my credit, I have never sent a message promoting Rolex watches, Nigerian princes, Vi4Gra, or any product that focuses on enhancing anyone’s male members. But who knows? That day may come. Someone is opening this shit, otherwise they wouldn’t keep sending it.

Side Conversation #1: You know, most of the “spam” you receive is your fault one way or another. Somewhere along the line, you’ve done something for someone to get your email address, either signing up for that whitepaper or the time you got lonely and ventured into the nether regions of the Internet or you illegally downloaded Dancing Queen from that Russian site. Or you say “They crawled my site to get my address.” You put your email on that site so that people would email you. That isn’t spam, my friend, NO! That there is a conversion. You shouldn’t be mad- you should thrilled. Mission Accomplished! Drinks for everyone! Put that in your Ad Words goal conversions, Google!

Side Conversation #1b: Nothing is free, even if you feel like you deserve it. Remember that the next time you’re going to hit the “This is Spam” button like a vindictive prick. You think those Nigerian princes just randomly typed your email into their To line? Absolutely not- they are reaching out to you because they think you can help them spend their millions and they found your address. This is America- take some responsibility for yourself.

(None of this includes phishing or spoofing domain names. That is wrong and those people doing it are the opposite of those poor Nigerian princes. Those princes don’t even have a family to share their fortune with)

I digress.

The real topic of this post is falling email metrics, which is blamed on spam. The government blames spam (We have CAN-SPAM- the most horrible acronym ever for a piece of legislation, by the way. EVER. That probably cost us, the taxpayers, millions of dollars to come up with that gem). Bloggers blame spam. ISPs and ESPs blame spam. Readers blame spam. Spam, spam, spam. I’m sick of it.

I blame the content creators- Create something that people want to read, something they want to open. Just because no one opened your damn email DOES NOT mean that it went to the spam filter- maybe, just maybe, your content was that boring.

“GASP! But it couldn’t be that… I have a degree in (insert Marketing/Public Relations/English or combinations here) and (# of years) exprience. I know my audience. It must be something- anything- else,” you say. “You, sir, have offended me.”

One should not present a problem without presenting a solution, and, good reader, I will not do so. My solution to the falling metrics and to spam is the following: a picture of a turd. That’s right- human feces. It is immature and it is juvenile, but stay with me  (I’ve been doing email for a long time- I’m a professional. I know what “Deliverability” means and the difference between a 400 and 500 bounce error. I even know how opens are tracked. These facts alone put me ahead of 90% of the email marketers currently employed. Don’t even get me started on how I can actually code my own emails to work in both Gmail AND Outlook).

You want opens? Take your next corporate email and in the preheader text (if you’re feeling ballsy, put it as the subject line), type the following:

“Download the pictures to see a TURD.”

And then put a picture of a turd right beside the company logo and go on with your crappy and boring content. No one expects it. The reader will be so surprised they’ll click on the link just on principle, raising your clickthrough rate. That email will have so many opens and forwards you won’t know what to do. You have to think big- these people get a ton of email. Make yours stand out with a turd.

Your boss will be happy, the company will be impressed, you can even use the words Viral Marketing and Conversions in meetings. Hell- throw in ROI and Value-Added while you’re at it. Put it in a powerpoint- if you’re really on your game, put the results in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send that around- this is so Web 2.0! Maybe even 2.5! You’ll be hella popular. We all know how buzz word happy the Internet Marketing industry is (which is why I will bold any buzz word used in my posts- I want people to notice how with it I am and the synergy I bring to all situations). Any schmuck can get a job- have you read most of the blogs? I even have one. Remember: turds = opens.

Addendum: No sooner do I post this piece, my landmark treatise on turds in email, when I get an email about the Direct Marketing Association about the Creative Direct Marketing Strategies Seminar. I am a shoo-in for Keynote Speaker.

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