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

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

Count me among the 11%.

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.

You can boil Nielsen’s work on web page usability down into ten basic rules (you can find them on Nielsen’s site here).  Web designer Theresa Neil provides a listing and a series of very useful examples of these ten basic rules in practice:

1. Visibility of system status (FEEDBACK)

The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.  (Examples include BaseCamp from 37 Signals, Picnik and Tick.)

2. Match between system and the real world (METAPHOR)

The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order. (Examples from iTunes and Mindomo.)

3. User control and freedom (NAVIGATION)

Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Supports undo and redo and a clear way to navigate. (Examples from CollabFinder, Wufoo, Pages and Balsamiq.)

4. Consistency and standards (CONSISTENCY)

Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions. (Examples from GMail and Microsoft Office.)

5. Error prevention (PREVENTION)

Even better than good error messages is a careful design, which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. (Examples from Yammer, Wef form Design, Google Auto and Wikipedia.)

6. Recognition rather than recall (MEMORY)

Minimize the user’s memory load. Make objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate. (Examples include Quanta IDE and Keynote.)

7. Flexibility and efficiency of use (EFFICIENCY)

Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions. (Examples include Omni Focus and Numbers.)

8. Aesthetic and minimalist design (DESIGN)

Dialogues should not contain information, which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility. Visual layout should respect the principles of contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. (Examples include Kontain and Harvest.)

9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors (RECOVERY)

Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution. (Examples include Digg, among others.)

10. Help and documentation (Help)

Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large. (Examples include Picnik, GoodBarry, Zennos and BaseCamp.)

You can view her entire article on her blog.

Adobe’s Mark Asher also provides some basic rules to follow when designing a web site:

As you approach Website design, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Can my users get to their desired information in two clicks?
2. Are my visuals distracting or useful?
3. What technologies are appropriate and not overkill?
4. Do my users know where they are within the Website at all times?
5. Can users get back to the front/home page with one click?
6. Is my content accessible to disabled users?

This list is simple enough, but many Websites continue to violate these basic rules–and frustrate users in the process. Remember, your competitor’s Website is only one click away, so removing these barriers above will aid in keeping users (and their dollars) at your site.

Remember the key takeaway from all this advice: No matter how nice your site looks, if it’s hard to use, you’ll lose your visitors.  Design the look and feel with the clear intent to make it a simple, elegant and intuitive process to visit and transact business there.

We’ll save the content relevance lesson for another day …

Have a great weekend.

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). 

Specifically, we’re talking about companies contemplating – or trying to cope with – the following:

• Blogs
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Private social networks (i.e. Ning or Webs.com)
• eNewsletters
• Social Bookmarking Tools
• Virtual Couponing
• RSS-driven Content
• Webinars
• Social Media Monitoring
• Blogger Relations
• Discussion Boards
• Social Media Releases

… and the list goes on (and on).

If you’ve been there before, you know exactly what I mean.  The game-changing nature of these tools opens up a range of possibilities (and potential) for your business.  And because it’s so easy (and usually so cheap) to get into it, enthusiastic marketing people tend to fall all over themelves on their way in only to find themselves neck deep in a morasse of tweets, posts, updates and more that consumes a lot of time and doesn’t produce much in the way of results.

So, what’s my point? 

It’s this:

You have to take time out to figure out a mission for each message and each tool in your social marketing toolbox before you get to work.  Go in with a purpose and some idea of how you’re going to use each of these snazzy new applications to help you get there.

And most of all, don’t be afraid to leave something on the table for later.

I’ve been in a lot of meetings with clients and agencies where there’s interest in a new online service or application but noone has a clue as to where it fits in the mix.  The intentions may be right and honorable, but the execution is doomed to failure unless someone learns how, when, where and why that tool is the riht tool for the job.

If you don’t know what to do with a new technology or a new social media opportunity, you have to either be ready to fail the first few times out of the gate with it or to put it aside to see (and learn from) the mistakes others make.  There’s no lack of “early adopters” in this line of work, so all you have to do is wait and watch and then jump in after the smoke clears.

Making the mission fit the tool …
Key to making social media work for your business (or your client) is making sure you have a good, working understanding of what each piece in your social marketing toolbox can do and how that capability can help tell your brand’s story in a compelling and relevant way. 

It should seem obvious, but make sure you’ve spent time figuring out the best way to use Facebook, Twitter and the rest before you test things out on your brand or your client’s business.  Less obvious is the need to narrow the focus for each tool from what it can do to what it should do with respect to your brand’s story.

Just because you can get thousands of followers on Twitter doesn’t make it a good fit for your brand.  If, on the other hand, you’re able to identify key bloggers, writers and industry thought leaders’ Twitter ID’s you may want to consider using Tweets as an easy and convenient way to keep them in the loop and to alert them of new developments.

Taking that line of thinking to the next level, if your team decides you want to maintain several Twitter feeds as a core element of your social marketing program, you need to have some idea of which application will give you the control you need to manage and monitor activity on each feed.  And for heaven’s sake, don’t just go out there and recommend a social media strategy to a client (or your boss) without having tested it out on your own first!

Knowing the practical application of each social media tool is just as important as clearly defining the story you want to tell with it.  Just as I encourage clients to develop a message matrix – I insist we do the same thing when it comes to developing their social media marketing program.

If I don’t, I run the risk of being the “social media tool” at our next meeting.

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.

That was until the Internet and attendant technologies made measurement of every customer interaction with a commercial message a measurable event. Clients, sitting along side their agencies and the media reps who sold them the space, could see exactly what was working and what wasn’t.

And not much was.

Not all of the conventional marketing and advertising wisdom had to be thrown out the window – but a lot of things had to change in order to make sense of the new realities of an interactive and completely measurable medium. The marketing profession – both on the client side and on the agency/media side – has been scrambling to find ways to produce results from online campaigns that meet reasonable expectations of management.

Traditional display advertising, like print ads in newspapers and magazines, seem to take up plenty of real estate on the web page, but no matter how many impressions the web site is able to guarantee, there has not been a reliable methodology in place for associating the media inventory purchased with the customer transactions that result.

PR efforts – attempts to tell the client’s story in the form of editorial content – are helpful in forming opinion but usually lack a significant or engaging call to action. Consumers may be educated, but the ability to act on that education is an issue.

There are a lot of possible solutions out there. And one of them debuted this last Spring (on April 20th) at ad:Tech in San Francisco. Hydra, one of the largest CPA ad services in the country announced its partnership with OnDialog, Inc. Leveraging the combined resources of OnDialog (and its partnership with landing page optimization company, Site Tuners), Hydra now claims an ability to increase conversion rates of online ad campaigns by as much as 80%.

But first, a little background on Hydra. Hydra is the largest and fastest-growing, pure performance-based, CPA affiliate network. For those of you not familiar with Internet ad-speak, that means that Hydra produces and manages online ad campaigns for clients and gets paid only when a customer is captured by the campaign. This is the same premise as the old “per inquiry” television ads that allowed television stations running the ads (usually late at night) to receive a fee for each sale made as a result of the broadcast of the ad.  Similar campaigns in magazines required the advertiser paid the magazine a percentage of the orders received using the order form from the magazine.

As a performance-based, CPA network, it’s in Hydra’s best interest to make sure the landing pages customers click-through to are effective and hard-working.

Enter OnDialog/Site Tuners.

The Site Tuners engine allows OnDialog to create customized landing pages from a set of variable elements. As customers click and interact with the landing pages, OnDialog learns what elements perform the best and serve the most effective content accordingly. At any given point in a campaign, the OnDialog/Site Tuners system can test up to 10,000 different combinations of elements sewn together in various combinations to create a myriad of landing pages.

As time goes on, the effectiveness of the landing pages continues to improve and additional customer data is fed back to the creative team for the on-going development of more and more effective page elements. For a company like Hydra, shortening the “learning curve” of what makes a landing page effective is paramount. The partnership with OnDialog/Site Tuners does that in a big way.

In my conversation with Mason Wiley, SVP of Marketing at Hydra, he explained why the OnDialog/Site Tuners relationship is so important to Hydra:

“We have a lot of entrepreneurial clients who need to make sure every dollar they spend online is working as hard as possible for them. Our model offers clients an opportunity to run a high-impact, online campaign with no upfront expense because clients pay on the back-end.”

“Only the biggest companies could run campaigns like this before – now anybody can. Our CPA model helps make things accessible.”

The technology can also be used in the creation of display ads to be placed in web sites as part of a larger campaign. Those ads, like the landing pages, can be built on the fly from a database of elements hosted by OnDialog/Site Tuners and placed via Hydra. The more successful ads (and elements) are then used and enhanced for future placements over the duration of the campaign.

Hydra’s partnership with OnDialog positions the ad network as one of the first adopters of this kind of technology. “We’re thrilled to be working with OnDialog as this partnership further builds on Hydra’s suite of services for maximizing campaign performance,” said Zac Brandenberg, CEO of Hydra.

So, what does all this mean for marketers? Well, it looks like it could be a significant breakthrough in the world of online advertising. The ability to test literally thousands of variations of your landing pages and ads and then review the data and make creative decisions as a result is significant. The thought that this kind of service would be offered on a “use it first, pay us when we perform” basis is outstanding.

One word of caution, though. Companies that provide marketing services on a “per inquiry” basis don’t do it out of the goodness of their heart. They’re experts at what it takes to make things work and they expect to be compensated appropriately for it. This caveat is issued in two, primary areas:

• Creative ownership of campaigns and landing pages is too often given to people who don’t understand how or why things work in the world of advertising or web development. Hydra, for example, has their own creative team who understand how to get customers to engage, where links and buttons should go, etc. Let them do their job!
• From a cost standpoint, remember that nothing is ever, really free. The back-end fees for a CPA campaign like this may appear large when compared to other ad options – but remember, you’re paying for results here. Be prepared to provide some money into an escrow account (in some cases) to reassure the service provider (no matter who it is) that you have the funds to make payment in the event of success.
• Also, I’ve run “per inquiry” campaigns where a “minimum fee” was expected in the event the campaign under-performed. Realize that there are fixed costs to any campaign and some providers may require it.As a special note – I did not discuss either of these financial points with the folks from Hydra, so please don’t misconstrue my observations as a reflection of their policies or practices.
   
• And finally, if you’re considering using a service like Hydra or any other kind of “per inquiry” marketing program, it’s vitally important you understand what the “lifetime value” is of a customer relationship.

Do you know what a customer is really worth to you?

If you don’t know how to figure that out then it looks like I’ve got more blogging to do, doesn’t it. We’ll cover that later on next week.

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.

Email marketing isn’t exactly like other forms of marketing and common practices for medias like newspaper or television (like increasing impressions by increasing frequency) can backfire.  Aaron outlines the three most common mistakes below:

1. You can increase revenue by increasing frequency with little or no negative consequences. This may be the biggest myth of all. While increasing the number of mailings may result in short-term revenue gains, many program managers are finding out the hard way that sustained increases in frequency result in a number of negative consequences, including:

-          Lower long-term revenue as recipients become less engaged

-          Higher cost of list maintenance and subscriber acquisition as unsubs increase

-          Deliverablity issues as a result of higher spam complaints

-          And worst of all, damage to brand equity

In “View from the Inbox 2008,” a report jointly produced by Merkle and Harris Interactive, 32% of consumers said they stopped doing business with at least one company as a result of poor email practices.

2. Good email creative isn’t different from direct mail or banner ads. While there are certain universal marketing tactics that can be applied equally to email, print and television channels,  consumers engage with email in very specific and measurable ways. It’s possible that taking a print flyer and sending it out as an image-heavy email message may be better than not sending a message at all, but truly effective email creative takes into account factors that make the channel unique. Understanding the limitations of email and the inbox environment like preview panes, disabled images and the nuances of various email readers such as Outlook 2007, is critical to successful messaging.

3. It only takes an hour to prepare and send an email campaign – AKA “how hard can it be?” Yes, and the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus are real. From a marketing perspective, one of the most attractive things about the email channel is the ability to react quickly to shifting marketing goals and turn around campaigns in a short amount of time. And while I have seen truly miraculous turnaround times, effective email campaigns still require strategic and tactical planning, copywriting, designing and coding. Writing effective copy, designing for the inbox environment and coding with an understanding of the many email readers out there are all tasks requiring a high degree of skill and specialized knowledge that only comes with experience. Theoretically you can prep and send a message to your subscribers in under an hour, but odds are it won’t be worth the cost of sending the mailing.

In summary, it’s important to take some time to learn as much as you can about email marketing best practices and consumer preferences (they continue to change) in order to be a “good” client and make smart decisions.  The resulting customer activity and consumer loyalty to your brand could pay dividends for years to come.

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.

The best job sites to explore (and connect with) include the following:

1. Mycareer: A popular source of jobs for the job hunter in Australia. Owned by Fairfax media who bring us the Sydney Morning Herald everyday. Post your CV for recruiters to find. Get detailed personality type information.

2. SEEK: Australia’s #1 recruitment, career and employment site. It has special sections for 100k plus executives and offers helpful tools and job hunting sector statistics.

3. CollegeRecruiter.com: If your firm wants to hire promising entry-level employees, check CollegeRecuriter.com for candidates with college degrees.

4. Monster: Post often to separate your business from all the other big companies that use this site to advertise job openings.

5. Sologig: Top freelancers and contractors post résumés and look for work on this popular site.

6. AllFreelance.com: This site “offers self-employed small business owners links to freelance & work at home job boards, self-promotion tips” and more.

7. Freelance Switch Job Listings: Freelance Switch is the freelancer’s online mecca and boasts articles, resource toolboxes, valuable tips and a job board.

8. GoFreelance: Employers looking to boost their vendor base should check GoFreelance for professionals in the writing, design, editing and Web industries.

9. CareerBuilder.com: Reach millions of candidates by posting jobs on this must-visit site.

10. Career Journal: The Wall Street Journal’s Career Journal attracts well-educated professionals who are at the top of their game. Post a job or search résumés here.

This list is just part of larger list of social media sites found on Christopher’s Copywriting Blog.  For the entire list, click here.