What kind of content should you send?  How often?  Should you include file attachments?  How should you deliver the emails when the lists get larger? These questions, and more, are answered.

http://www.mortgageorb.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.11399

Our CEO answers these questions and more in an article for Mortgage Orb Magazine:

http://www.mortgageorb.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.11200

I’m not talking about your local browser cache on your computer.  I’m talking about Google’s massive database of browsing history.  Because, they’ve been tracking everything you do and saving it for a rainy day.  It’s time to break out your galoshes.

In a highly controversial move, Google announced that it’s changing it’s privacy policy to allow it to collect, store and use your personal search history data for its own purposes.  And it’s extending that policy to cover the entirety of the search history it has already been collecting.  It plans to leverage this information across all of it’s properties (e.g. YouTube, GMail etc.) and not just on the Google search engine itself.

This data will not be held anonymously – it will now be tied directly back to you.  In perpetuity.  The things that you do anonymously today will, in the future, be directly associated with your name, email address and/or phone number.   For example, private details sent in email can crop up later in Google Maps searches.  Imagine an off-color video viewed on YouTube informing your search results a week later at a client meeting when trying to demo an unrelated business application.

You can turn this off (opt out) and pause Google from continuing to collect your private browsing history.  Follow these steps:

1. Go to Google.com and log into your Google Account.

2. Next, go to  https://www.google.com/history

3. Click “Remove all Web History”

4. Click OK

Doing this will not only clear out your browser history, but it will automatically “pause” Google from collecting and storing your history over the long term.  To be clear, they will still collect record of your actions, but it will be anonymized and not tied back to you personally, but just used in aggregate with other users to inform general trends and analytics.

Years ago when I heard Google touting their mantra as “Don’t Be Evil” I thought it was cute and clever, and I was hopeful.  But I was also extremely cynical.  I knew that if they grew enough, the day would eventually come when the growth slows, competition heats up, the suits take over, and pressure to perform (financially) starts to mount.  These things have a way of changing.

To mix metaphors, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  So much for “Don’t Be Evil.”

If you need to send out regular emails to your customer base, whether B-to-B informational in nature, or consumer-focused eCommerce mailings, special offers, and the like, there are many options available.  We have been using MailChimp for the past year and can highly recommend it.

“Back in the day” when we owned and operated the popular Screensaver.com download site, we had nearly 2 million (yes, MILLION) names on our email list.  It was so massive (and we mailed regularly) that we dropped a combined $24,000 (in 1997 dollars) on a dedicated server and a software license to Lyris Listserv.  We needed a “big iron” solution.   And it took nearly all day to process.  After selling Screensaver.com, our needs were far more modest.  We’ve been through a series of options including 3rd party services such as Constant Contact, and purchased software such as Campaign Enterprise (a more modern, and far less expensive alternative to Lyris that didn’t exist back in the late 90′s when we really needed it!).

Today, there are a range of options available and we use a variety of them on an ongoing basis, depending upon the needs.  If the list is of a moderate size, there is a point where it makes more sense to buy the hardware and software to do it yourself versus paying ongoing subscription fees to a 3rd party service.  But for small lists, it’s nearly impossible to justify that kind of  investment.

Some of our clients use Constant Contact.  We’re not here to disparage Constant Contact – it’s a fine service.  We remember when they first launched, and met with folks at their headquarters. They wanted to take over the world, and they’ve done pretty well for themselves since.    But we personally find them a tad expensive for start-ups and small businesses.  As your list grows, the cost can balloon pretty quickly.

About two years ago we learned about MailChimp, and we’ve been fans ever since.   It’s basically a direct competitor to Constant Contact.  But we prefer their interface and UI, and their pricing structure is VERY hard to beat:  free for lists up to 2,000 names!    That covers a huge swath of start-ups and small businesses.

MailChimp will allow you to create basic emails from standardized templates, or implement your own custom design.   Our 401 Consulting and 401 Social email newsletters are both custom designed templates.  Our internal designers created the templates, then our programming team sliced and diced the graphics and built the appropriate email-optimized code to power it.   We loaded it up into MailChimp, did some tweaking and customization, and create our own custom template.  The next step was to import our list of names.

Now each month (…or so) we fire up MailChimp, load in the content, and press SEND.  Pretty, HTML-rich emails flow into inboxes on the other end.

We highly recommend MailChimp. They’re doing well and growing like gangbusters.  This past fall they surpassed 1 million users.  They’re constantly innovating, adding new features, announcing new partnerships and releasing mobile app updates.   That’s right – there’s an app for that!   The MailChimp iPhone app allows us to monitor the status of our campaigns, view analytics and manage our lists right from an iPhone, wherever we happen to be.

MailChimp supports tracking, analytics and metrics, and integration with a variety of performance-monitoring tools including Google Analytics.  They have hooks to link into Facebook, Twitter and more. And of course, you can do all of the common things you’d expect, such as track “open” rate, delivery rates, clickthroughs and more.  We would be remiss not to mention, too, that the 401 Social Newsletter Signup Facebook App integrates nicely with MailChimp as well.

In our case, the total investment was in designing a custom template, then programming it into MailChimp.   Now, each month, we can manage and maintain our list, add subscribers, and send blasts.  For free.   What a country!

Yes, I do.  That’s not really “news” though – just about every industry analyst thinks that Apple will release an actual HD TV.

But I’m going to go out on a limb here and prognosticate on a key feature of the device.  I’ve been thinking/saying this for several months now, but I’m going to put a stake in the ground here, for fun, to see if it holds up (or not) before I hear anyone else say what I’m about to say.  And by the way — I’m not claiming that nobody has said what I’m about to say, just that I have not heard it yet…

Ok, what is “it”?

I believe that Apple is going to release a consumer television, powered by Siri.

Steve Jobs made a statement that he felt that he found the missing piece that he needed to make a TV under the Apple brand.   It was a cryptic statement, and could mean many things.  Personally, I believe Siri is the missing piece.  In my opinion, the iPhone 4S was a proving ground for Siri. Notice that Siri is still referred to as a “beta.”  They’re working out the kinks.

Think about it:  Apple has all of the pieces.  They make flat screen displays.  They have iOS.  They have AppleTV working.  They have AirPlay and all the technology to make all of the devices in the house interoperable over WiFi.  They have iCloud and iTunes for content.

And now they have Siri.

I think Siri is the “missing link.”  And the magic!  I mean, they could have made a TV before.  They make flatscreens, and the AppleTV device has been out on the market for years. But it’s awkward and unwieldy to really control apps with the little TV remote.  When Netflix forgets my username and password, I cringe at having to hunt and peck it out again with the remote.  And besides, we have that now — Samsung and the other manufacturers already have apps integrated into their flat screen HD TVs.  A Samsung “Smart TV” is basically an HD TV with the equivalent of AppleTV (or Roku or whatnot) built-in.  That’s not revolutionary, it’s evolutionary.

Steve Jobs’ style was to transform industries, not just release yet another “me too” gadget.

And quite honestly, trying to control apps from a TV remote is a hassle and the average consumer does NOT want a keyboard to run their TV.  We’ve had that for years already, and they’re duds.

But imagine just TALKING to it!    “Turn to channel 10″ or “show CSI Miami”, and BAM!  It does it!

Now that is killer!

And, I think it’s going to be @?!*#$%! huge.

Not because I’m an “Apple fan boy.”  Because it just is.  Think about it.

As stated above, this is my opinion (that is, Eric Robichaud, CEO of 401 Consulting).  I’m neither a laywer nor a politician, so I invite you to view the actual, full text of the proposed bill here and judge for yourself.  That said, here is my overview / option on the matter.

The “Stop Online Piracy Act” bill, aka “SOPA”, is aimed at, well, stopping online piracy of copyrighted materials.  I certainly have my own opinions about copyright laws and approaches to this subject, but at no time am I debating the validity of protecting one’s copyrights.  This debate isn’t about whether or not to stop piracy online.  It’s about how to stop it.  And SOPA isn’t the way.

SOPA is far too broad-reaching, and far too vague in it’s language.  It overrules carefully crafted provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (aka “DMCA”), makes the wrong people liable for infringements, sets up website owners for massive lawsuits, and more.

For example, the DMCA has “safe harbor” provisions for web site operators and digital carriers. If I post an illegal video to Facebook, then Facebook is required to forcibly take it down if notified about it.  Stated another way, Facebook’s liability is merely to respond when notified.  They’re not liable for the original posting.  Under SOPA, Facebook itself is liable, and could be legally shut down, and sued!

The bill targets sites that are “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property.” That seems reasonable at first.  Except when you read how they define “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property.”  They define such a site (and therefore subject it to being shut down) if it is “primarily designed for the purpose of offering services in a manner that enables copyright violation.”

Read that closely.

The site does not have to be design for the purpose of copyright violation (such as “The Pirate Bay”).  No, it only has to be designed in such as way that it offers services that enable copyright violation!   So basically, Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, Dropbox, and nearly ANY site on the internet that allows anyone to upload content, would all suddenly become violators!

Facebook has no idea what it’s 800 million users are doing in real-time, at any given moment.  It’s impossible to police.  Facebook provides a communication and content-sharing platform.   But SOPA puts the onus squarely upon the website operator (eg. Facebook).

The DMCA already states that posting copyright materials is illegal, but doesn’t make the website liable (unless the website itself posted the content of course) — the website is required to remove offending material when alerted.  SOPA overrules all of that.

SOPA also grants the U.S. Attorney General the sole right to police foreign websites where it has no jurisdiction.  If it notices infringing materials on a foreign website, it can censor the site in the U.S. by requiring all internet ISPs, DNS providers, search engines, etc. to permanently block access to the site, making it invisible to U.S. citizens.  If it’s a foreign site that the U.S. government can’t take down, it can block it.

Personally, I try to not be a conspiracy theorist, but I see this as one of the primary motivations behind SOPA — to give the government the ability to censor websites it doesn’t like.  Is Wiki Leaks embarrassing?  No problem – gone in a heartbeat.  What are we now, China?

There’s a lot more to this bill too.  For instance, a copyright owner can now sue the offending website without any ceilings or limitations on damages, including attorneys fees, and will win if the website cannot prove that they’re not “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property.”  And the way this is all worded (see above), it’s nearly impossible to prove that it isn’t!  This becomes a field day for attorneys, and an entrepreneurs worst nightmare.

SOPA tramples free speech.  SOPA makes the wrong people liable for copyright infringement.  And it will kill innovation — who wants to launch a new site that will just get you sued or worse?  We’ll never see the next Facebook, YouTube or Google.

I’m not here to debate the merits of Wiki Leaks or copyright law in general.  Just merely giving the high-level overview of why I’m against SOPA. It’s the legal equivalent of using a nuke to kill an ant.  So what if hundreds of square miles are a radioactive wasteland now, millions of people were killed, and billions in property destroyed — we got the ant!

There are proper and reasonable ways to do things.  This just isn’t it.

First and foremost, it ends the old “VHS versus Beta” quandary once and for all.  Now instead of “wait and see,” or going down a path of obsolescence and continuing to invest in a dead-end technology, we all know into which basket to place our eggs.  This allows all developers to get off the fence and start focusing in the same direction — towards HTML5 and open standards.

Additionally, with all developers moving down the same path, all of those resources will accelerate progress towards HTML5 as opposed to when resources and attention were divided.  This will speed the adoption of newer technologies.

The announcement, in my opinion, is long overdue.  Flash was breakthrough technology at the time (harkening back to it’s Macromedia days), but it’s past its prime.  Flash is inherently un-indexable by the search engines, appearing as a big void in web pages.  I’m sure I don’t have to comment on the incredible importance of search engine optimization in this blog, and having big pieces of content disappear in the eyes of the search engines is just bad business.   And with mobile access accounting for a significant and increasing percentage of all web traffic, having a page load up sans-Flash elements on an iPad or other mobile device is just not acceptable.

Trust me, I know Flash’s value.  Flash was the cornerstone to a multi-million dollar annual business I once ran.  I “get” Flash.  But I must also admit that Adobe has done a terrible job with the technology from a technical standpoint.  Most end users see the “cool” results of Flash in action, but don’t realize what goes on under the hood (and thus never really understood Steve Jobs’ main issues with Flash).   Flash is notoriously buggy, and a huge resource hog.  When it crashes (as it constantly does) it looks like your browser crashed.  Or Windows / Mac OSX. etc.  The vast majority of the time when things run slow or crash entirely, end users blame the web site or the OS or the browser, never realizing that the *real* culprit is the Flash plugin!    And on mobile, it just drains batter and resources way too fast — it’s a massive resource hog.

Adobe has been sprinting towards producing next-generation HTML5 development tools, in essence obsoleting its own technology.   I do not begrudge Adobe the opportunity to make a buck.  Not at all.  I hope they make just as much money with their new HTML5 tools.  I merely applaud the move to make the money from new HTML5 tools versus from Flash tools. And, in the process, allowing the industry at large to all start pulling in the same direction and accelerating the speed of adoption of these new open standards.

It’s good for the industry at large and for end users, who will see better, faster and more responsive web apps on both smartphones and desktops.

If you pay attention and process quickly, you may notice the Great Lakes in the U.S., the Sinai Peninsula, Italy’s “boot” and more.  The flashes in the clouds are lightening, and the night scenes are amazing – especially those showing the green magnetic “aurora” effects in the atmosphere!

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls9yJTphLxg

It all began when they started running an ill-conceived ad of an attractive woman losing her Chapstick behind the couch. The print ad was essentially a huge shot of her bent-over, skinny-jean-clad backend.

Regardless of whether you think the ad crossed beyond the line of good taste, or couldn’t care less one way or the other, the undeniable fact is that it caused a (negative) stir and consumers started saying so, posting negative feedback comments on the Chapstick Facebook fan page.

In this case it went viral in the worst sense — like its real world brethren, a contagion of negativity and dissent.

What happened next was downright shocking to anyone who works in social media: the folks at Chapstick started deleting the negative comments!

Presumably the folks managing the Facebook presence of a national mega-brand ought to know better!  This breaks one of the cardinal rules of social media. It’s like censoring a newspaper and removing any articles critical of the government or a certain person or business, for example.

Social media is supposed to be about engaging your audience and interacting with them. This would have been a non-issue (and non-story) if they had merely responded to the negative posts with empathy and a promise to rethink their approach.

A simple “gee, we’re sorry you were offended. We certainly didn’t mean that. We were just trying to be funny. We’ll pass along your comments and see if the creative team can rethink their approach” would have not just quelled the negativity, but in fact would have been a major “win” for the brand. The folks at Chapstick would have demonstrated that they listen to their customers, and are responsive and approachable.

That sort of approach would have been exactly what social media is all about — interacting and engaging your audience and being responsive.

Instead, by trying to cover up the problem by deleting the negative posts, they just inflamed the community. Now even the people who didn’t care about the original ad were taking up arms.  It wasn’t the ad that was the issue, it was the handling of the issue — the censoring of comments.

The story grew legs, so to speak. Facebook postings went thru the roof.  The Twitterverse went viral with the story. And even worse for Chapstick — it crossed over into the mainstream media!  It’s been a PR disaster.

Like Watergate, it was the cover-up that inflamed a citizenry.

Lest any reader get the wrong idea here, the takeaway from this is not to stay out of social media — do that at your own peril.  As I always say: the conversation is going to go on with or without you. If you don’t participate then you have no hope of ever steering it or, in times of trouble, “setting the story straight.”

No, rather the issue here is how one handles its presence.

C’mon people, it’s not that hard. It’s like you were taught as a kid — honesty is always the best policy. If a bad situation arises, tackle it open and honestly, head on. Your customers will appreciate you for it.

That is the takeaway from this debacle.