Posts Tagged ‘Email’

October 20, 2009

On Body Odor and SPAM

On my flight back from Europe last week, I was sitting by a man who decided that he needed to claim the armrest between us by making himself as large as possible while not moving his arm no matter what happened. There was also an odd scent of body odor permeating from our group of seats (which could have been me- I couldn’t remember if I had put deodorant on both armpits or not). This meant that I was crammed in my seat, 9 hours into flying, smelling body odor that may or may not have been my own.

To pass the time, I watched an entire season of Spaced (that is a great show) on my Blackberry and read anything and everything I could get my grubby little hands on. After finishing 9 Stories and exhausting every periodical provided by the airline, I moved to October issue of Harper’s I had in my bag. While I was perusing through the Harper’s Index, I came upon this little tidbit of information: According to Vern Paxson of the International Computer Science Center, 1 in 12,414,000 spam emails actually receives a response.

1 in 12,414,000. That is not a good clickthrough rate.

How “spam” is defined isn’t explained in the magazine (the definition depends on who you talk to and who is trying to sell you what), but ol’ Vern seems to know his stuff. He even writes papers on spam- Spamalytics: An Empirical Analysis of Spam Marketing Conversion, so I will accept his numbers. If that number holds true, then my question is this:

Who is the moron who is the 1?

Here is some Spaced for you: Spaced | Return of the Jaffa

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October 5, 2009

Cell phones kill bees? But my iPhone… OR Data Ecosystems

I work for a largish international company focused on B2B sales with offices in North America, 16* European countries, and 8 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. In the U.S., the company is divided into 6 autonomous Business Units and smaller offices focused on regional, partner, and public sector marketing and sales. Then throw in the fact that we pull all data from the same 9 pools and that contacts can have interests in multiple product areas and everyone wants to send email.

This is not always the best example for a good customer experience.

The data structure for a company of this size and complexity is very fragile. Every office wants to send to their “base,” not realizing that their base actually coincides in many cases with the other offices’ bases and sales. It’s a big Venn diagram (I can’t believe I actually referenced a Venn diagram) and acts like a big data ecosystem- when one section does something bad, it effects everything, like plankton in the ocean or when bees die because of everyone needing to check Facebook or Twitter every 5 seconds on their iPhones.

venn

If business units/different offices/any entities with different goals and incentives share a database, a higher potential for DB exhaustion exists than in an environment where only one interest is focused upon. “No kidding,” you may say. To combat exhaustion and generally pissing off contacts, the users of a shared database must observe and respect recency and content relevancy. If not, contacts can receive multiple offers from different sources within the same company without the company even realizing. However, the contact notices and will let you know (HINT: this is bad).

For some companies, specifically those focused on B2C, email frequency doesn’t seem to matter. I get at least 1 Banana Republic/Gap/Piperlime/Old Navy email per day, sometimes 2 or 3. Same with Tiger Direct and Amazon. Some B2C companies are able to send frequently from different divisions to the same database (I’ve never signed up for Piperlime emails) because they are sending coupons and deal offers. I never unsubscribe, just always glance and delete- someday they may have a good deal.

B2B doesn’t have that kind of leeway; most sales decisions require more than a knee-jerk reaction that B2C businesses try to invoke. If the B2B marketer emails the same person more than 1 time in a week (or day), no matter if it is from a different division, expect a nasty email (best case), an unsubscribe (not terrible, but not optimal), or a spam complaint (oh shit). Once any of these scenarios occur in one division, it affects the entire company, from IP/domain reputation to contacts unsubscribing from all emails.

In this type of data ecosystem, it is important for the email marketing team (or whatever team is responsible for list pulls and segmentation) to completely understand any and all of the data they are required to obtain on behalf of requestors. In short, list generators must be proactive, not reactive, and given to the tools uphold standardized rules (such as recency) and the ability to make suggestions to optimize lists. And content must- MUST!- be relevant to each receiver.

In turn, email list developers must show the ability to add value to the list pulls by citing in-company testing and have knowledge of best practices for email as a whole, the industry, the company’s own database (this is accomplished through running statistically relevant tests to show the value of segmentation and cross-promotion, experience, and probably a little luck).

* In his book Jailbird, Kurt Vonnegut specifically uses the number form for every numerical reference. Either because I enjoy that book immensely or because I am too lazy to remember back to my AP Style class to figure out when to use the number or spell it out, I will do the same. I have better things to do, like play Scrabble on Facebook.

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Posted in Email, Marketing | 2 Comments »

September 2, 2009

But I Don’t Want to Give a Penny to Charity

Yahoo! is researching a pay-per-email system called CentMail, which would require senders to pay a penny for every email sent to Yahoo! servers in hopes of reducing spam. The twist is that the one cent “stamp” would go to charity. There are many questions that go unanswered, even in the 10 page case study CentMail provides on their website. What happens if an email bounces? If there is no “stamp,” do the emails get dropped? Will Yahoo! senders need the stamp to send to another Yahoo! user? Is this just a ploy for Yahoo! to pass expenses to senders under the guise of reducing spam?

Spam is a problem, yes. It is dangerous due to trojans, viruses, 63 year old women who open and click on every piece of email they receive, and the morons who continually give money to Nigerian princes. That being said, spam filters and junk mail folders are getting better at capturing actual spam. Check out your Gmail spam folder next time you log on: rarely do those male anatomy enlargement offers or free Viagra pills actually get through. Nay, a vast majority of what gets through to the inboxes are newsletters and offers that people inadvertently signed up for when they got the “free” $5 Starbucks gift card or signed up to play Flash games on that website. That is not spam: No, good reader, that is you opting in, forgetting that you did, and then complaining.

Why do Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google offer “free” email services? They want your information and what you talk about in email so they market to you. The “payment” for you to use that service is ads. Yahoo! isn’t letting Netflix and Bank of America spam me with ads for free (by the way, where is my “This is Spam” button for the ads, hypocrites?).

Yahoo wants me to pay for my ads in my email...for charity

Yahoo! wants me to pay for my ads in my email...for charity

Spam is a cost of doing business for ESPs. If Yahoo! forces everyone (including private senders) to pay actual currency for sending to their servers, then they are essentially asking senders to pay for the spam filtering and hosting of the message, which is part of the Yahoo! mail service and you STILL get the ads. Paint me pink and call me crazy, but with the price of memory dropping to almost zero and Yahoo! offering unlimited email storage, I doubt that it costs Yahoo! a penny to house that email.

Even though there are reports claiming that between 90-97% of all email sent globally is spam (which I don’t believe), 89-96% of that is harmless or ignored.* Spam costs the receiver essentially nothing, especially if they are using a free internet connection (in a public library or at work) and a free email service (such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail) except the annoyance of deleting or unsubscribing from the message. Spam is costing is the free email providers money, because they are housing all of that crap.

Conveniently, the email service providers, the authentication services, and the makers of spam filter software are the people funding and releasing the spam studies. Yahoo!, ReturnPath, Symantec, and Goodmail wouldn’t define spam as broadly as possibly to make another buck, would they?

“But charity gets that penny, and I love charity.” you say. But what if, in the future, Yahoo! needs cash? Also, in the United States, when getting something in return for a charitable donation, the value of the product received cannot be deducted from taxes. Will Yahoo! give an actual value for the cost of the storage of the email? This would be necessary for large B2C companies that marketing to Yahoo! mail users. And if so, why not just charge that $0.00000001 per email directly to the companies?

(Not only would businesses be pissed, but can you imagine the uproar and push back from the free email users if their friends stopped emailing them because it cost money? People leave Yahoo! because they have to pay for POP3 access- unless you go around the system. People were pissed when Facebook changes its look or its policies for free services rendered. Paying to get emails to a server? My Yahoo! friends would never get that YouTube clip** from me again. People would bolt for Gmail even faster than they currently are.)

While I am all for reducing spam, I don’t believe CentMail is the answer.  Since its inception, email has promoted free communication due to the economics and environment on which the Internet was created, for better or worse. Normal economic thought points out that monetizing sending would deter spammers, but it would also deter legitmate users and drive them to other options, and the internet has never really followed traditional economics. Other plans, such as Microsoft’s (yes, the Evil Empire) Penny Black plan are much better and don’t cost normal senders anything.

* this is from my personal research

** This YouTube Clip. My mom used to buy me GoBots because we were poor and couldn’t afford Transformers.

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August 23, 2009

Email Marketing- The Cow Udder of Marketing Execution

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the criteria essential for an email marketer to possess. These were in addition to criteria any manager should possess (the ability to read your company’s balance sheet and income statement AND know what it means, have ability to think strategically, blah blah).  A majority of those requirements were technical in nature- write code for an email, explain tracking, stuff like that. Two of the five points dealt with data: first, retrieving data (SQL and Access) and second, reading data (pivot tables).

Hint: Pivot tables are marketing GOLD, and no one knows how to use them.

Data is the Force of marketing- anyone who can retrieve the data AND understand the data and trends it provides becomes both valuable and important to their company. Why? Because there are a lot of people who can do one or the other, but the ability to execute both of these skills allows one to see the company’s big picture.

Email managers are in a unique position to be close to both the data and results, and the ability to retrieve and decipher both gives way to the opportunity to be at the forefront of knowing the data and deciphering results, allowing strategic thinking and insights before anyone else. This assumes the email manager doesn’t have to go through someone else to get it (which is what a majority of the email managers currently do- which explains to proliferation of consultants and outsourcing of email services when companies already employ an email or internet manager).

To better explain, look at this cow:

Bessie, the Marketing Cow

Bessie, the Marketing Cow

Dairy cows are gigantic animals whose value to humanity comes down to their teats. That 1200 pound, 4 stomach-having, methane/ozone-killing fart-producing, blank-staring stupid animal’s value comes down to its 4-6 little openings on its nipples because that is where the milk comes from. And as beverage, you can drink your soy, your wine, your expensive acai juice, but as a beverage, you don’t much cheaper per ounce with more benefit than milk.

There is a point to this. Stay with me, friends.

If the farmer can both feed and milk the cow without help, the milk is cheaper. If the milk is bad, they can find the problem and fix it. If the email manager can both retrieve data AND decipher the data, using other resources isn’t necessary and email becomes VERY cheap (or the ROI increases). Who reaps the benefit of cheaper products and increased ROI? The farmer and (hopefully) the email manager.

More and more frequently, especially in today’s economic environment, companies are relying on their in-house databases and email as their main outreach vehicle to prospects and customers. Yes, budget money is still being spread around to paid search, ad buys, list buys and all that jazz, but email is relied upon to keep reaching contacts and move them through marketing and sales cycles. It’s cheap, it’s effective, and it has trackable results. Henceforth, e-mail is the teat of marketing.

If the email manager can do neither, then they’re just the people person who uses buzzwords, gets boners over new products like ICQ, Friendster, Twitter, or Google Wave replacing email so they can catch up, and outsources everything. They are no cow teat. In fact, push them enough and they are Toms:

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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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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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