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Every day it seems that another once well-respected sector of the business world finds itself under fire from the economic downturn. For whatever reason, many analysts seem eager to add email marketing to the list of soon-to-be casualties of the recession. Tweets, texts, and pokes – oh my! (or is it OMG?!)

My advice to the pundits: don’t call the coroner. Even better, you can un-friend him on Facebook because he won’t be visiting us anytime soon.

Now, I realize that I have covered this topic on our site before, but there have been some over-reaching statements made recently regarding the viability of the email industry that require a response. Let’s have a look at what’s being said about email right now and think about what’s really going on.

From ReadWriteWeb, responding to a Nielsen report showing that more adults are now on Facebook:

Our take away from these findings? People prefer the clean, controlled, multimedia and publicly social experience of social networking communication over the relatively open, individualistic and spammy medium of email. The fact that there is effectively no data portability allowing communication archives to be ported from one social network to another as there is with email doesn’t appear to be bothering people in the short term.

While the Nielsen numbers do confirm that adults have definitely warmed to social networks, they do not indicate what people “prefer” or how they interact with them. To suggest that MySpace became popular because it provides a “clean” experience is patently absurd to anyone with two functioning eyeballs. To suggest that the 15 Zombie/Vampire War requests I have in my Facebook account or the now-famous “work from home” Facebook ad scams are not “spammy” is equally ridiculous. For the record, I would also point out that there’s a difference between being private and “individualistic” – I would consider my email account private, while my tally of Twitter followers skews more towards the realm of “individualistic” and ego-serving.

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An interesting piece popped up in a recent edition of the New York Times that makes you realize just how different the marketing universe has become thanks to interactive web technology. It seems that Tropicana, the fine purveyor of orange juice, has scrapped its latest re-branding effort and will bring back their old packaging in the near future. I see this as a smart move for Tropicana – a solid way to gain a reputation as a company that listens to its loyal customers.

In the good old days, marketing agencies would hand out new branding ideas and even if consumers didn’t like the changes, they would eventually accept them. With a few notable exceptions (New Coke is the classic example), it used to be difficult for consumers to make a fuss about their displeasure with corporate marketing. But in the brave new world of Web 2.0, one customer’s voice can be heard fairly easily. And in some cases, that one voice can lead to an avalanche of public opinion over the web. As the Times piece states:

Such attention is becoming increasingly common as interactive technologies enable consumers to rapidly convey opinions to marketers.

“You used to wait to go to the water cooler or a cocktail party to talk over something,” said Richard Laermer, chief executive at RLM Public Relations in New York.

“Now, every minute is a cocktail party,” he added. “You write an e-mail and in an hour, you’ve got a fan base agreeing with you.”

…Or disagreeing with you, as the case may be.

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The question about whether double opt-in (confirmed consent) is an email best practice has been asked for the last 10 years.

In Bill McCloskey’s recent ClickZ article he takes the strong position that double opt-in consent is no longer a best practice and should be discarded. In my view, McCloskey is correct – double opt-in will not facilitate list growth.

At this point in time, individuals are largely familiar with the traditional single opt-in email sign-up process. Double opt-in requires more effort from the person who already completed the email sign-up process, which in some cases, can be a time consuming affair to begin with. For example, many registration forms (especially for sites handling sensitive personal information) now require the customer to repeat letters and numbers (CAPTCHA forms) for security reasons.

If your sign-up process is clear and straightforward, there is no need to require an individual to work even harder to join your list. Read More »

The social networking site Facebook recently scrambled to react to negative user feedback arising from recent changes to its term of service. The most telling lesson from this latest controversy is how quickly Facebook has responded to user concerns and how welcome this response has been to the aggrieved users, privacy advocates and the media.

Every emailer gets some complaint feedback from recipients, often routed through direct ISP ‘feedback loops’ where users press the ‘spam’ or ‘junk’ button. While studies have shown that a portion of this feedback may be ‘false positive’ mistakes, the substantial majority are clearly negative feedback from aggrieved users.  Unfortunately, few email marketers closely track these complaint percentages or use this data to quickly respond to trends/spikes in complaints. 

The message here is simple; every email marketer can quickly respond to increases in complaint feedback.  The reasons for complaint increases are usually very clear, and often tied to subscriber acquisition practices. Email is the greatest testing vehicle ever created, and complaint reduction can be tested along the same lines as subject lines. However, if the complaint reasons or testing processes don’t seem clear, then comment here and I’d be happy to point you in the right direction.  

It took 64,000 complaints for Facebook to pay heed to their users.  After doing so, their users are now further endeared to them.  How much negative feedback do you need to before you re-examine your privacy practices? 

We all know what our branding exercises say about our companies, but how do we know if our customers are absorbing the message? One way would be to follow the lead of Axe Body Spray (a.k.a. Lynx, for those of you in the UK), who was recently the subject of a scientific study by the International Journal of Cosmetic Science.

According to a recent Ad Age report, the marketing behind Axe’s product lines produces a placebo effect among its male users, making them feel more attractive and more confident, which in turn leads female observers to note their confidence and rate them as more attractive than their competing non-Axe suitors. To put it succinctly, Axe Body Spray works — not because it smells great to women, but because men believe it does. 

Regardless of how you feel about their products or message, you’ve got to hand it to their marketing team. While their TV spots are probably their most memorable, the brand does an excellent job of extending that identity across print, the web, although to a lesser extent, email. 

As Stephen Colbert pointed out on Monday, if spraying Axe on something makes it more attractive, why can’t we just spray some Axe on the economy and forget this bailout business?

An interesting story trickled out in today’s New York Times about AT&T using less-than-responsible mobile messaging tactics in a recent American Idol campaign.

AT&T sent the promotional message to a “significant number” of its subscribers but did not seem to apply traditional opt-in practices to this campaign. Apparently, their standards of what constitutes spam is different from what email marketers consider it to be, with their corporate spokesman going so far as to assert that “it couldn’t be more open and transparent.”

Mr. Siegel said the message went to subscribers who had voted for “Idol” singers in the past, and other “heavy texters.” He said the message could not be classified as spam because it was free and because it allowed people to decline future missives.

First of all, what exactly is a “heavy texter?” That sounds like some sort of text messaging addict who needs a 12-step treatment program. And second, how can you blindly justify sending these people communications as if they’d opted-in?

While I’m not a compliance expert, I would guess that AT&T could have saved themselves a boatload of trouble by sending the message only to previous Idol texters, and then phrasing their message as a request to opt-in more than a straight advertisement. If I was running the show over there, my 160 characters would have gone something like this: “American Idol is back! Calling all past Idol voters: visit us online at (web address) to find out more. Would you like to receive future messages from us? Opt-in at (short code) or ignore this message to be removed.” 

That would have been rather easy, no?

As 2008 comes to a close, I’ve done some thinking on the myriad of issues facing the mobile channel compared to email, at least here in the USA: largely sub-par devices are tied to a single carrier, carrier networks operate independently from one another, consumers are locked into year(s)-long contracts and are penalized for terminating them early, all of the carriers seem largely the same, and no one can clearly explain the myriad of charges that appear on your everyday phone bill.

The New York Times recently ran a particularly damning piece on this last point, entitled What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting, and it is well worth looking at. The article poses a number of pointed questions (arising from a simple inquiry from Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl) that none of the mobile carriers seem eager to answer. The main issue at hand: why does text messaging cost so much? 

Think about it. Your marketing emails are what, 15-45KB in size? Standard text messages are only 160 characters in length (less than 1KB). How much does each ISP charge you to send an email to a recipient at their domain? Zero. How much does it cost your customers to open your email marketing campaigns? Zero. How much does it cost them to open your mobile SMS campaigns? 2-25 cents, usually. 

Why does texting cost so much? Is there some hidden but necessary cost in SMS that the general public is simply unaware of? Is a rise in texting costs due to increased volume?

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