Objection: Irrelevant!

I’ve been working in various capacities in the email marketing industry for the better part of a decade. From front-line tech support to deliverability consulting to message design, I have had the opportunity to see many facets of email marketing and I’ve spoken to thousands of clients who are using email as a part of their marketing efforts. On a regular basis, though, I’m still amazed at the number of businesses who are more concerned with quantity than quality when it comes to email marketing.

Many companies simply feel that if they put their message in front of 100,000 readers, they will see a better result than from putting the email in front of 25,000 contacts. It’s a reasonable assumption, sure, but one that doesn’t take into account the Relevancy Factor.

Let’s use a more detailed example to illustrate the benefits of relevancy:

Company A is sending to 100,000 contacts who were acquired through a vague opt-in process. There was no expectation of frequency, no specifics on what they would be receiving, just an email field and a “Sign Me Up!” button. Yes, these readers have given Company A permission to contact them, but they have no idea what content they’ll be receiving or how often. It’s impossible to tailor mailings to this audience because Company A has no idea what they actually want to receive.

Company B, though, has a different idea. They’ve designed an order confirmation email that’s sent out whenever someone completes a purchase on their site. In that email, there’s a link to sign up for weekly product updates. Through this process, Company B acquires 25,000 subscribers to their updates and sends the weekly emails accordingly.

Which company is more likely to see better results?

Those who work in the email marketing industry know that the answer is almost always Company B. Sending an untargeted, possibly irrelevant email to 100,000 contacts is likely to produce a low response rate. On the contrary, mailing to 25,000 contacts who have not only purchased but are actively engaged and know what to expect from the sender will produce not only immediate results, but residual business. Targeting your most loyal customers, even if the list size is smaller, will always generate a higher response rate than mailing blindly to contacts who were almost “tricked” into signing up.

So what can you learn from Company B?

Providing relevant content doesn’t start with your graphic designer or the marketing team who puts together your emails – it starts with the sign-up process. Be sure to set clear expectations around frequency of mailings and the precise types of content that will be included. Better yet, provide different subscription options: a weekly product update, a monthly newsletter, or a daily deal email. This not only allows contacts to choose the frequency that’s best for them, but gives you insight into your customer base and how you can tailor your practices to their needs.

What steps have you taken to make sure you’re providing relevant content to your subscribers?

Facebook Fail of the Day – September 14th

Facebook can be a great way to keep in touch with your friends – and a great way to find out just how strange they can be. Today’s FotD gives us a little insight into the mind of this particular friend and their personal belief system:

Maybe a bit of instant redemption?

Dell Cares: a Customer Satisfaction Story

Often, social media conversations about a company or brand tend to be largely negative in nature. In fact, I recently experienced a situation with Dell that elicited an initial negative response. However, Dell quickly addressed the concerns and seized the opportunity to turn negative buzz into positive. In light of their adept issue resolution, i felt Dell deserved a bit of praise. Here’s how it all went down:

Given the fact that I’ve got a little one on the way in just a few months, I recently decided that I really wanted to pick up a pocket HD camcorder. Something that I could carry with me most everywhere, but with decent quality for full-size playback on our HDTV. Soon after coming to that conclusion last month, I stumbled into an ad for a great deal from Dell.com on a Kodak Zx1 HD camcorder. After running across the ad a couple of places on the web, I thought about it for an hour or so, and finally pulled the trigger on the deal.

A few minutes later, I got a confirmation of my order, including a link to track its status on the website. As I didn’t need it right away, I had chosen the standard shipping. Even so, I still felt the need to check the site rather impatiently for updates. For the rest of that day, the status remained at “processing.” Then the next day, still “processing.”

“No problem,” I thought, as I was sure many others had taken advantage of this same deal, and the great price was worth a few days’ wait. Overnight on that second night, I received a shipping delay notice, telling me that due to overwhelming demand my shipment would be pushed back by an extra week.

The prospect of more delays wasn’t exactly ideal, but again I chalked it up to the popularity of the deal. So when, around noon that day, I received an email telling me my order was canceled…well, I was a bit unhappy.

Frustrated with the lack of concession or even an explanation, I took to Twitter and Facebook, directing questions about how the issue was handled and what options were available to jilted purchasers. Within the same day, Dell Support had both DMed me and sent me a Facebook message offering to help.

I ended up dealing with a contact who manages Facebook operations for Dell, who not only exchanged online messages, but called me at least 3 times in the course of addressing my concerns. And, in the end, he worked with me to provide a solution that was beneficial to everyone involved. I did get a camera – though not the original one I ordered – and I was very pleased with the compromise we reached.

In social media, bad press can be especially damaging for a company like Dell that caters to a tech-friendly market. Instead of letting this issue cause social media backlash, Dell addressed it swiftly and helpfully, forestalling any major negative effects from coming to fruition – a skill that many other brands would do well to develop.

Don’t Spammers Know Only Men Use Email?

Okay, so that’s not actually true – despite their differences in style, both genders do use email.

However, it would still seem that spammers would realize that sending a message that purports to be from a potential lover (who is also a stranger) might be much more effective when targeted at a male audience. In many cases, though, these emails turn out to be wholly unappealling to any gender. Case in point: this email I received today from one Mister Horace Reeves.

I’m not sure who would read this and think, “Oh, yeah, Horace! He sent me those nude pics and I completely forgot to respond!” Actually, I do know the answer to that:

Who on Earth wants to see this guy nude?

No one.

Can Facebook Really Make Email ‘Go Away?’

At a press conference held yesterday, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told her audience that email “is probably going away,” citing a statistic that only 11% of teens use email on a daily basis. This prophesied death of email comes as people everywhere are spending increasing amounts of time on social networks, both on personal computers and increasingly-connected mobile phones. But will the social network really take the place of email for communication?

In the business world, the answer is almost certainly no. Even in high-tech companies, email remains a vital form of communication both internally and externally. Social networks, no matter how secure, will never provide the type of direct, personalized contact one achieves via email. While many companies are scrambling to create or bolster their presence on networks like Facebook and Twitter, they continue to rely on email for the most important communications.

The landscape for personal contact, though, is far different. The dynamics of how people connect – along with the technologies that support it – are rapidly changing. Yet it seems pretty unlikely that social networks will completely usurp email’s role in person-to-person communication, despite a relatively high level of acceptance to advertising inside these networks. In an article on Sandberg’s speech, Business Insider says that while users consider advertising in their inbox to be spam, many of those same users will accept or even “like” the same type of advertising on Facebook. Even if this is the case, there are many other Facebook users who reject the advertising either passively (by ignoring the ads) or actively (by installing plugins that hide or cover ads). To continue with the spam email analogy, it’s also important to point out that many people actually click on – and sometimes even purchase from – email considered to be “spam.” Think about it for a minute: why would spammers be so prevalent if they weren’t seeing benefits from their pursuits?

The teens of today, with their supposed disdain of email and propensity for all things Facebook, will inevitably grow up. And when they do, they’ll have jobs and obligations that will lead them to the realization that email, despite what Sheryl Sandberg might think, is here to stay.

Verizon Customer Service FAIL

Almost two weeks ago, on May 12th, Verizon Droid Eris owners across the web rejoiced at the commencement of the rollout of the Android 2.1 operating system. Since then, Verizon has been pushing the over-the-air (OTA) update at random to owners across the country. During that same time, Verizon’s Twitter support account, @VZWSupport, has been responding to questions from customers eager to update or those experiencing problems.

One of the most commonly-asked questions pertained to leaked versions of the Android 2.1 OS that were released just weeks before the official rollout started. Those who had installed the leaks repeatedly asked via Twitter whether they would receive the OTA update – and the answers they received have served as the catalyst for a potential PR nightmare.

Since the OTA update was first announced, @VZWSupport has repeatedly said that those users running leaked versions of 2.1 would receive the update, and not in any uncertain terms. Every time they were asked, the answer was always yes – until yesterday.

On Sunday, a Verizon responder known on Twitter only as ZC began telling users on leaked versions they would not receive the update, going so far as to provide links to “cooked” ROMs for the T-Mobile G1, indicating leakers could use those links to downgrade to Android 1.5 in order to receive the update. This came as news to many leaked version users since to date no way has been found to roll back the Android 2.1 leak. Those who responded to the suggestion with skepticism were eventually told the G1 file might “brick” their phone but, ZC said, the warranty was already void so why not?

ZC’s tweets prompted a flurry of activity on Android forums and generated dozens of responses to @VZWSupport. This morning, in response to those tweets, Verizon rep “NK” continued to say that leakers would receive the OTA update. However, the account also sent out sporadic replies without a rep’s signature stating that no leakers would receive the update. When pushed, NK finally stated that the information they had provided was wrong and the OTA update would not be pushed out to users with any leaked version.

Since then, angry Eris users have bombarded the account, demanding answers and, in some cases, an apology. @VZWSupport, though, simply repeats the mantra that they “never guaranteed” the update to leaked version users.

Right now, Verizon has two issues: the consistently incorrect information they fed users over the past two weeks, and the responses to those customers who were given the incorrect information. Most users of the leaked 2.1 OS didn’t expect Verizon to provide them with the OTA, which is why they asked Verizon Support outright. Imagine their suprise when they were adamantly assured, over and over, that they would receive the update. Those users, who had given up on the months-long wait for an OS that was promised in Q1, thought that finally Verizon had listened to them. That, just maybe, the carrier wanted to make up for the extended delays in releasing the update.

But alas, it was just a cruel joke. To wait until the last day of the update, in the eleventh hour, to pull the rug from under those users is the worst kind of wrong. And to then denounce their “unofficial” software condescendingly – well, that’s just inappropriate. If Verizon knew this update wasn’t going to leaked users, they should have said so from day one. They should have immediately rebuked the leakers and let them know there was no chance of receiving the update. That response would likely have discouraged future leakers and kept the current ones from a vocal assault on Verizon’s Twitter account. Instead, they chose to alienate their most technical customers, those who are the first to try new technology and who spend money on their smartphones – a true customer service FAIL.

Quitting Facebook is the New Black

Over the past few weeks, conversations on the internet have been overtaken with tweets, articles, and blog posts about quitting Facebook. It seems like every day, another web personality or social media guru spreads a new batch of anti-Facebook sentiment, usually citing information privacy concerns. Typing the words “How do I” into Google evidences this phenomenon, producing searches on how to delete a Facebook account.

While users of Facebook – like those of most any web service – are generally uneducated about potential privacy risks, encouraging them to cancel their accounts does nothing to prevent sharing the same information on the next big social network. And after reading quite a few self-satisfied tirades against Facebook, I’m fairly convinced many of those cancelling their accounts have no intention of educating non-techies how to avoid privacy dangers – or even drawing attention to lesser-known Facebook policies. It’s become nothing more than a “let’s all hate Facebook” party, an outlet for social media pundits to express their personal dislike of Facebook and recruit others for their anti-Facebook cause.

Perhaps most ironic of all is the fact that many of these same people who are so vocally renouncing Facebook are those who have gained the most benefit from it. Facebook (along with Twitter and other social technology) has helped propel local marketing specialists into nationally-known names. Without the surging popularity and vast reach of Facebook, these same faces might not even have an audience for their blog posts denouncing one of the world’s most popular companies. And, if they continue to distance themselves from the general, Facebook-loving public, they may face that reality all too soon.

Give Subscribers an Offer They Can’t Refuse

I’m a big fan of Palmer Cash. The online retailer known for its pithy T-shirts has recently branched out into providing lots of novelty items – labeled as “Fun Sh*t” on its site – and marketing them via email newsletter.

I’ve been a Palmer Cash newsletter subscriber for years and in that time I’ve found they’re pretty methodical when it comes to their emails, in spite of their whimsical nature. Today’s message managed to balance both perfectly:

The subject line was fun, attention-grabbing, and literally dared me to open the message. It took me all of about 3 seconds to decide I had to see just what was inside.

Palmer Cash knows their audience, but that didn’t happen overnight. Over the years, their team has done testing to find out the type of headlines that grab their subscribers’ attention and get great open rates.

If you’re marketing via email, you can get the same inside knowledge that PC has – with a lot less work than you might think. You can run split tests to your contacts to find out which combinations and calls to action generate the best response from your audience.

If you really want to get to know your contacts, you can test more than just the subject line: trying out different greetings, different images, and even different offers in the body of your email can all help you to pinpoint exactly what drives your subscribers to act – and generates the best possible ROI from your email campaigns.

Facebook Fail of the Day

Welcome to the all-new BradGurley.com! For my first post, I’ll start off with what I hope to be a semi-regular feature on the site, the Facebook Fail of the Day (FFotD).

Today’s fail might look familiar if you have friends that just LOVE their Facebook groups:

You be the judge…