MindComet

Miami, Here We Come!

Only 3 days until our email marketing team arrives at MarketingSherpa’s Annual Email Marketing Summit in Miami!

We are so excited for all of the email info we can fit into our ears!  Hopefully a lot of our readers will be attending as well, but if you are not and would like real-time updates, I will be blogging live from the Summit! I will be sharing breaking news from the presentations, workshops, and one on one interviews, so make sure you stop by the blog a couple of times each day to receive great info and updates.  If you have any specific requests, don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I will follow-up.

Until then, to get your fill on some email marketing news, check out a special report MarketingSherpa just released: “Dirty Dozen: Email Newsletter Mistakes That Nearly Everyone Makes”. It’s available only in PDF so download here: http://DirtyDozenPR.MarketingSherpa.com

This report has samples of well-known, frequently made mistakes that happen with email newsletter campaigns and messaging as well as examples of companies who are doing newsletter emails correctly.  It will help you understand why your newsletters need to change in order to keep results moving and examples of what you need to change to show successful results.  This report touches on mobile readers, increasing revenue by focusing on good deliverability and subject line importance.  It is a great read for any email marketer who is looking for direction to increase newsletter campaign success.

Stay Tuned!!!

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 21, 2008

The Week of Mistakes

I know mistakes happen, but I didn’t think my inbox would be so bombarded with them in just over a weeks time.  It started with a colleague emailing me a story about an email campaign gone bad where the company was sending out communication to update users on something particular to their software game.  The company sent out batches of emails (not sure how they were sending them out) but apparently they were supposed to use the BCC field for all the emails in that batch but forgot so everyone that received the email also received the long string of the other users emails. 

Next was an email to me, one of my favorite weekly emails I might add, however this time it was addressed to Brooke and not myself.  I began to question whether it was a joke considering the companies tone yet I find it hard to believe they would make that a joke.  Then I received an email I had already received months prior.  I remembered the email instantly because the content was good and it came from a credible source.  A server maintenance issue was a fault and I was immediately followed up with an explanation.

Lastly, and one of my favorites was an email I received in terms of requesting specific information that I never requested and of all things, it was about advertising on adult rated sites.  Fortunately enough I was immediately followed up with an apology email and explanation that it was a email-sending software error.  At least I got a good laugh out of that mistake.

Although it is nice to see that nobody’s perfect and mistakes do occur I couldn’t agree more with Chad White’s Media Post’s Email Insider column the other week about the Oopsy Hall of Fame and his pointers in terms of testing your emails prior to hitting the send button.  To recap for those that might have missed it, he noted the following guidelines to ensure flawless execution:

1. Develop an email testing process and stick to it!

2. Spell-check.

3. View a test send in accounts from all the major email clients such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN to ensure consistent rendering across platforms.

4. Check image source files to ensure they load accurately.

5. Only resend an email where the mistake has significantly impaired the first message that was sent.

6. Try to halt the send if you immediately catch a mistake that was sent. You may be able to stop your entire list from receiving the erroneous email.

7. Develop a protocol for your apology emails, to allow for quick responses when a serious mistake happens.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 03, 2008

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Back in July, Ben Chesnut over at MailChimp wrote an excellent article on deliverability and rendering.  He states that emails are more or less “just miniature web pages” and I couldn’t agree with him more.  Any web designer new to the email design-game should not hesitate to read this.  Here are a few bullet points to sum up the article:

• Not designing for the preview pane is stupid.
• Assuming the images will display on all clients is stupid.
• Using images to communicate your message is stupid.
• Not testing your email in different email clients is stupid.
• Not including an unsubscribe link, a physical address and privacy policy in your footer is stupid.
• Including Javascript and Flash in your email is stupid.

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Posted by MindComet on Nov. 05, 2007

Email Mistakes to Avoid

I enjoyed reading Chris Marriot’s article today in iMedia on email mistakes to avoid.  We are on the same page and with that, Ill keep this short and to the point.  Of his 5 mistakes to avoid Id like to respond to three of them: having too much text, open assumptions and relationship abuse.

I have read some email newsletters recently that have had an overload of content but all great content.  With that, if you are going to load your email with content Id follow the format Ive seen in having links at the top of the email that take you to that specific area of content or doing something that makes each piece of content one of its own so you know what to expect in future communication and can skip down to what you are interested in.  Of course, having snippets of content with links that take you to a site with more information is still among my favorite.

In regards to open assumptions, I completely agree in that you should never assume if someone has opened your previous email or not.  Youve got the stats, so why not put them to good use.  Don’t send out an email to everyone saying “in my last email,” because everyone may have not opened it.  If anything at all, start off by saying, “for those that read the last email,” in addition to a link to the archived email newsletter if in fact you are referencing something.

Lastly, since we are known as the Relationship Agency I had to touch upon relationship abuse on how not to affect your current relationship status.  If you communicate to your members that you will be communicating to them once a month, then stick to that.  If members allow you to send them additional information from partners and so forth, use your best judgment and don’t bombard their inbox.

Email is a great communication tool and should not be taken advantage of.

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Posted by MindComet on Aug. 30, 2007