MindComet

Microsoft’s Hotmail Update: Social Media & SPAM-Centric

Microsoft recently unveiled a new look & feel to Hotmail including additional features focused on eliminating inbox clutter and social media. Here are a few key takeaways:

Hotmail Highlights:
This is a dashboard breaking down emails from your contacts, social networking sites, flagged emails and any upcoming events you’ve marked. They’re more or less built-in filters from the get-go. Nicely done.

Filters:
There are also filter tabs that sort out all of your inbox messages based on the criteria of the filter. On-the-fly sorting.

Categories / Quick Views:
Photos, Shipping Info, Documents. The most common emails sent to you will be sorted out automatically based on their contents.

Sweep:
Most importantly, Microsoft has implemented a “Sweep” feature that allows users to remove clutter from their main inbox. For email marketers, this means that your campaigns may suffer with Hotmail users.

Trusted Senders:
You can boil this down to being Microsoft’s equivalent to Goodmail. They pre-approve specific senders and IP addresses for users to ensure delivery, complete with a safety logo next to the subject line.

Their SPAM handling techniques are quite interesting, too. They’ve developed a way of sorting out legit email that you may have signed up for unintentionally (which they dub “graymail”) and actual SPAM, which they’re calling “SmartScreen”.

Most of the updates on the surface seem to be “too little too late” to covert a Gmail user, for instance. But the advances of the new Hotmail user experience as a whole makes the argument that email is further planting itself as the hub for all social communication online. Unfortunately, I don’t think these fundamental changes to Hotmail will go over well with their users, since they skew older and spend less time online. But nonetheless, it’s progress. It’s one step forward and not two steps back (*ehem* Outlook 2007, *ehem*).

There are more features listed on their preview page including Office and cloud storage implementation. It’s a definitive step in the right direction for Microsoft & Hotmail and I’m curious to see what they release next.

So what do you think this means for email marketing? If these features are widely adopted by Hotmail users will email campaigns of the future just be “swept” away, overlooked to never be opened again? I think it’s a definite possibility and one that deserves discussion. Comment below if you have any thoughts.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jun. 17, 2010

Do you have a checklist?

Well, if you don’t, then you should. It’s 2010, people. Get into the habit of including a variety of things into every single email you manage. I’ve detailed my own list or “musts” for any email marketing send. Feel free to comment below and add your own!

Social Media / Network links
For any corporation in this new decade, promoting your business with Twitter and Facebook should be standard operating procedure. There should always be a number of various social media links within your emails to extend your brand’s reach.

If you have a small business and you’re just diving into the email marketing realm, make sure you use an ESP that can track your social media links specifically. Reporting and analytics are paramount to running successful campaigns online, so using a service that offers reports on email stats, as well as social media stats is cruical; I could not stress this enough.

Forward to a Friend
ALWAYS always always include a forward to a friend link or button within your email. Any ESP worth using should have a means to track how many times your email was forwarded through the system. The stats should be able to report who your key influencers are as well as how many new subscribers you have collected from your email. It takes little to no effort to incorporate FTF links in your emails, so stop stallin’.

Navigation
If you’re sending a monthly newsletter, for example, make sure your site’s navigation is reflected in your email. If someone’s signed up for your site, chances are they love your brand and visit your site somewhat regularly. The wireframe for the email should reflect the site’s design.

Preheader
The preheader should always consist of at least two things: a whitelist request and a view online link. A whitelist request asks the user to add your from email address to their contact list to make sure they will receive your emails. Easy enough. In addition to the whitelist request, you should also include a link to both an HTML version or a mobile or text version. Again, any ESP worth using should provide you the tools to do this with ease.

The preheader is so important to maximizing your reach and effort with email. If a recipient is blocking all incoming emails’ images, then the preheader is likely to be the only thing they’ll see. It’s the first thing any user sees, so it’s an undeniably important area of your email’s real estate.

Physical Address
In 2008, new CAN-SPAM rules were added to the original act of ‘03. One of the most notable additions has to be the mandatory inclusion of the sender’s physical address. If you don’t have your address present in the email and for some reason you get blacklisted from Spam complaints, you could get nicked and fined quite a bit of money. Save yourself the headache and add your physical address at the footer of the email.

Preference Update
And last but not least is the inclusion of a preferences link. This is hugely important if you want to retain users who initially want to opt out. If they’re receiving too many emails from you, and they see that they can limit getting sends to once a week, they’re more likely to choose that option than completely opting out. I reported on this a few months ago and I’m a big believer in this tactic.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jan. 25, 2010

2010 Marketing Budgets Increase Spending on Email Marketing and Social Media

We’re going to see a lot more focus put on Email & Social Media marketing in the new year. According to a study conducted by StrongMail, marketing budgets are increasing the most for email and social media in 2010. This is in-line with the continuing success and popularity of the two channels.

The integrating of the two is priority number one for most, right after improving performance and growing their opt-in lists and followers for email and social media, respectively.

27% of respondents claimed to already have a strategy in place, while 24% were still in the planning phase. 18% of executives who want to implement email and social media into their business plan, but don’t know where / how to begin.

The opportunities are bountiful for professionals in the email and social media game. If these predictions prove to be accurate, 2010 will be a stellar year.

Find out more at emarketer.com.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Dec. 10, 2009

Email and Social Media Living In Digital Harmony For Your Brand

Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing.  In many ways, they’re one in the same. Both need to…

a) inspire and become a means of communication between the brand and its audience
b) cross-promote the other
c) involve a certain level of testing
d) be precise, personal and avoid “marketing” speak

Read more after the jump!

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on May. 28, 2009