Brand Central Station

(from TheList Online’s Sales Intelligence Solutions Newsletter)
by Jen Luna

As marketers and sales people, we all know that companies now employ increasingly sophisticated means to avoid receiving “Spam”. And, since spam has come to dominate email on the Internet, it’s no wonder.

Internet historians believe that the first spam email was sent on May 1st, 1978, by a DEC marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States. The general reaction was one of annoyance, and it hasn’t abated since. In 2001, only 5% of email on the Net was spam. By 2003 this figure had risen to 50%. Then, by 2004 it was 70%. By 2007, almost 90% of business email was characterized as “Spam”.

One line of defense is to buy your email marketing lists from providers who understand the nuances of spam blocking. One low-tech way that companies use to dodge your email is to frequently alter and/or use multiple syntaxes in email address construction. For example, Jamie.Bloomquist@thelistinc.com is an email syntax that suggests that everyone at The List Inc. has an email address consisting of Firstname.Lastname@thelistinc.com.

But that’s not always – or even often – the case. A study of several thousand major brands in The List Online database, determines that major brands frequently change, mix and multiply the syntaxes of their employee email address, in an effort to stay a few steps ahead of spammers.

For example, in a study by The List Online, it was determined that Proctor & Gamble uses 5 distinctly different email syntaxes. Coca Cola currently uses 7 different formats. Microsoft Corporation also uses 7 different syntaxes. General Motors uses three.  These syntaxes can also vary based on job functionality; for example brand managers will differ from marketing directors who will differ with CMO’s.

What does this mean to you? First, it means that deliverable email is getting increasingly difficult to count on as a marketing vehicle. CAN-SPAM Compliance has limited marketers’ options dramatically. Add to that the increasing proclivity for companies to utilize multiple syntaxes and formats and it means that accuracy in sourcing your email lists is essential.

With B2B opt-in email address lists going for $1 per record to as high as $7 per record, depending on the broker, it’s essential that you ask your list broker about multiple syntaxes and address construction formats. If they don’t know, chances are the email list is both filled with junk addresses and violates CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. You don’t want to spend that kind of money on a list that is both in violation of the Law, and, grossly inaccurate. Make sure you know how often your broker verifies email address lists both for syntax and CAN SPAM.

Visit the Sales Intelligence Solutions website

(from Ragan Communications)

When:  Thursday, June 24, 2010
Time:  3-4:15 pm EDT
Where:  Online
Cost:  $209

It’s a new decade in a new century … surely strategic communication must have evolved over the past several years? Yes—and no. While the explosion of social media—and the critical role it plays in reaching our audiences—has added new powers to our communication programs and campaigns, many of us still put far too much emphasis on tactics. Strategy is still you thinking in the biggest way possible about your business, and you don’t need a social media networking poll to tell you that.

Join Shonali Burke, Principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, as she gives an overview of why strategy is still important and how to demystify it. You’ll learn how to frame your communication strategy with the end-results in mind, and tie that strategy to your organization’s business objectives which is, after all, the reason our profession exists.

You will learn:

• The difference between strategy and tactics
• How social media should fit into your overall communication strategy
• How to connect your efforts to your organization’s KPIs
• How the 5W’s and H of public relations can help you frame your strategy
• Why good measurement is critical to the success of your communication program
• And more!

Register Now

This infographic appeared on Mashable this morning and I thought it was worth sharing.  Where do you fall?

Count me among the 11%.

Application Platform Enables Brands To Create a Custom Facebook Fan Page In Minutes At Minimal Cost

June 14, 2010 – Oakland, Calif. – Today, any brand can create an engaging, robust Facebook fan page within minutes and at a cost that is less than one tank of gas, with a new, disruptive platform launched by North Social (www.northsocial.com), an offshoot of Oakland-based Incubator North Venture Partners.

The powerfully simple suite of applications for Facebook enables any brand, big or small, to run viral social media-based promotions, upload photo showcases, create a unique landing page, connect to Twitter and Yelp, link to e-commerce sites, offer coupons and sweepstakes, and more. The North Social Facebook platform launches with fifteen applications, which can all be installed with a single user account, starting at only $29/month.

“Facebook has become the most powerful way for brands to reach their audience, but not every brand has the budget or technical expertise to harness its capabilities,” said Alex Bernstein, Partner, North Venture Partners. “We’re pleased to give brands, agencies and consultants simple tools that remove all obstacles to jumping into the social media revolution.”

The easy-to-use North Social Facebook platform allows any brand with a fan page to install all fifteen custom page applications within minutes. Each application comes with a control panel which allows the features and content on the page to be quickly customized by the user. This unique content management interface enables users to create, update, and manage multi-tab promotional pages at a fraction of the cost of what web developers typically charge to create a single static page.

To see the North Social applications in action, visit their website.

About North Venture Partners
North is a brand-centric incubator that builds, launches, and accelerates the growth of innovative brands, products, and spin out companies. To learn more about North and how they identify and capture disruptive growth opportunities, visit their corporate website.

My business partner and I are working to save a client from his current web site.  The site he has now looks okay.  It should.  It was designed by an award-winning, graphic designer who knows a lot about designing attractive brochures, annual reports and the like. But she doesn’t know Jack about designing a web site.

Or should I say Jakob. 

Jakob Nielsen, that is.  For those of you who don’t recognize the name, Jakob Nielsen is the “guru” of web page usability as a concept in the design and management of web sites.  And while I’m not a big fan of the look of his web site on the subject, it does put his theories into practice in a clear and obvious way.  Which is, I suppose, the point of web usability in the first place.

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Besides when you’re at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, of course.

The answer is when you’re trying to drag your business (or your client) into the realm of social media and/or online marketing (no, they’re not exactly the same thing – but that’s a topic for another post at another time). 

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For decades, advertising agencies and the media have operated under a shared myth about what they do. The canard runs something like this: “Create brilliant advertising that gets people’s attention, run it in enough places the consumers can’t get away from it and eventually you’ll see your share of market increase as a result.”

When it came to generating measurable performance, agencies and the media gave lip-service to “Return on Marketing Investment” and other things that sounded very measurable and analytical; but the hard truth of the matter was that advertising has always been a fairly imprecise endeavor – and everybody was fine with the smoke and mirrors of it all.

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I received a queery from the folks at Trackle.com last week and have to say, it looks interesting.

The site purports to be a service like Google Alerts – but with lots of added features.  Here’s some of the info sent ahead to me:

A free Web app that acts as a standing search engine, Trackle searches the Internet for you, updating you on the news and events you want to know about. Unlike similar services, such as Google Alerts, Trackle doesn’t just search for keywords. It incorporates change into the keywords and provides real-time alerts on the subjects you choose – as often as you choose, and all in one place.

For example, if you see something on Amazon.com you’d like to buy, but only want to spend $50, Trackle can monitor the item and let you know when it reaches that designated price. You can also track things relevant to your location by inputting your address. Trackle will show you local activities, neighborhood crime and even home values.

Keyword searches make it easy to search any subject of interest to you, existing category searches also include: video games, social media, movie releases, politics, sports, health, travel and personal finance, among many others.

Trackle keeps all results on your personalized site, and sends you a daily email with new information, but you can also choose to receive real-time alerts via email, SMS text or RSS feed. Updates can also be shared on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Now, does it do everything it claims?  I don’t know.  I’m going to use it and report back.  In the meantime, if anyone else uses Trackle, hit me up off-blog and let me know about your experiences.

Aaron Smith, writing for MediaPosts’s Email Insider, provided an interesting sumary of the most common misconceptions about email marketing.  Aaron is a founder and principal at Smith-Harmon, a design agency focused on email marketing.  (Visit the Smith-Harmon site.)

In these tough economic times, more and more businesses are turning to low-cost marketing tactics that offer potentially high rewards – tactics like email marketing.

The problem, as Aaron points out, is that this potential for a high return on the marketing investment can lead executives to make incorrect assumptions and uninformed business decisions that can have significant (and negative) consequences over time.

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In the last installment of our series on where your business should be connecting to the social web, we take a look at job sites.  After all, Web 2.0 is all about people – not technology.  And by finding the best people, you’ll position your company for growth and future success.

If you want to secure high-quality talent, you have to know where to look.

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Leveraging your business’ and employees’ experience via the Social Web is another strategy for increasing your brand’s online “footprint”.  In part four of our series of important social web sites your business should connect to, we provide a list of general, informational sites that in many cases serve as the “front line” of online research.

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As part of our week-long series of important social media sites for your business, today we’ll list a number of niche sites that will help you stay on top of important news and trends in a variety of areas.  These sites can be very important for small and mid-sized companies that don’t have the large training budgets or funds available to participate in industry events or conventions.

Although we only have eight niche sites listed below, we’re open to other suggestions as well.  Just email us and let us know.

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