MindComet

Blackberry Adds HTML Email Rendering To Its Bag Of Tricks

In order to keep up with ground-breaking mobile devices such as the iPhone, the developers at Blackberry have announced that “users will be able to view HTML and rich text email messages with original formatting preserved including font colors and styles, embedded images, hyperlinks, tables, bullets and other formatting.“  The update is apart of the Enterprise Solution v4.1 Service Pack 5.

Along with the email rendering improvements found with the update, users will also be able to “Download and edit email attachments in their native file formats” which allows users to “save file attachments to their BlackBerry smartphones, work on the documents and include them in replies to colleagues”.

Sources:
Research In Motion
BlackBerry

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Posted by MindComet on Jan. 28, 2008

How Well Do you Know Your Customers?

As an email marketer I try to contribute and give my feedback when possible to companies that I subscribe to receive communication from, not only for my own benefits of receiving more targeted communication (hopefully) but to also allow them to more effectively market their campaigns to everyone.  I made a purchase online recently and received a survey from the company today asking for my feedback on my latest visit. 

The survey was around their check out process.  Upon opening the survey, I was faced with a plain jane survey template.  They sent me from a nice branded html email to a generic survey tool with only one question that didn’t even pertain to me.  The question was asking me why I didn’t complete a purchase during my last visit.  There was an option I could have chosen that would have best fit my situation which was “I came back later to complete my purchase” which I don’t think I did however I can’t be too sure.  Regardless, I didn’t feel I could check that option because it didn’t allow me to explain my actual situation so I checked the option “I had trouble completing my purchase,“ which was the only option that allowed me to leave a comment.  So I left my comment explaining that although I may have come back at a later time to complete my purchase, they should know that I made the purchase since its in their system.  So why would I be receiving this survey especially if my answer was “I came back later to complete my purchase”.  Since they should already know this, I can’t see them benefiting if I had simply responded with that answer.

Moving on, upon submitting the survey, I wasn’t even redirected back to their site, it dropped me off on the survey tools home page.  I’m not sure this communication was carefully constructed but who knows, maybe my response will encourage them to do some more pre-planning around gathering customer data, ya think?

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Posted by MindComet on Jan. 24, 2008

Mailing Lists: Why Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better

Many businesses consistently make the common mistaken assumption of “the bigger the email list, the better and stronger it is”.  I understand their logic in theory, but in reality, that’s not always the case.

It really all depends on your business and what your goals are.  If one of your focus points for the year is to grow your list, you need to be prepared for the consequences such as declining returns via email and a decrease in delivery performance.

If you do plan on your growing your list for the year, I must suggest that you try to keep your lists’ hygiene as a top priority as well.  If you’re cast net fishing with an extremely wide net, of course you’ll catch some fish, but you’ll also catch some sharks, electric eels, jellyfish and other menacing sea life… same goes for email lists.  If you’re purchasing lists or taking new addresses in without scrubbing them, you’re bound to get a lot of invalid addresses, which certainly does not make for a strong mailing list.

Side note:

In 2008, use email as a means to provide your customers with relevant content, not just merely trying to be there “at the right place at the right time”.  Take three to four weeks to come up with a strategy that complements your business model all the while leaving some “breathing room” in between sends to adjust your send schedule as the year progresses.

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Posted by MindComet on Jan. 08, 2008

Busy Busy Busy

You may have noticed recently that we’ve been a bit inactive with this blog.  But it’s for a good reason…  we’ve been extremely busy with a lot of very exciting projects for our various clients:

- Numerous system integrations for automatic database transfers for timely sends.
- Year-long email campaign planning for various clients.
- Utilizing dynamic content to engage end-users with more compelling content.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  We have BIG things planned for the New Year.  2008 will be the year of EMAIL!

More updates soon, we promise!

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Posted by MindComet on Jan. 04, 2008