In this article written for Mortgage Orb, our CEO gives a high-level “101″ intro to email marketing.
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
If you’ve seen our periodic email blasts, hopefully you like what you see. (And if you don’t, then you ought to be subscribing poste haste! Zoom down to the bottom of this page and and enter your email address to subscribe.)
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!
Chapstick evidently didnt “get it,” and they’ve paid a huge price while taking a big hit to their brand. But the story serves as a great reminder for all business folks, albeit at Chapstick’s expense.
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.
It’s not the first time I’ve said this, but I just did NOT see this one coming!
Today NetFlix announced that their much-discussed and much-embattled price hikes were actually just the precursor to splitting out the DVD and Internet Streaming services as essentially two different companies with two different CEOs and separate respective teams running/focusing on each. The original NetFlix business will be rebranded “Qwickster” and the Internet Streaming service will retain the NetFlix brand.
Within the coming weeks, the two services will further split physically. Each brand will have its own dedicated web site and once and for all split apart the online features and functionality. The two services will no longer interact and work as one. You will no longer be able to log in and view your Instant Queue and your DVD Queue side by side.
Although Netflix is nowhere near the size of Coca Cola, for some reason this strikes me as a gaffe nearly on scale with Coca Cola’s changing of its formula in the 80′s. However, Coca Cola was able to issue a mea culpa and merely re-introduce original Coke as “Coca Cola Classic” side by side with “New Coke” and keep trucking — it was merely a product offering change. In this case, Netflix is changing it’s entire business operation and dealing a major blow to its brand. I doubt recovery will be so easy if it turns out to be a misstep.
And in my eyes, this is a massive misstep, to say the least. In one fell swoop they have just gutted the brand that they’ve spent years and millions (hundreds of millions?) to build. Not only that — they’ve done it at a time when that very brand is already battered and bruised from the massive upheaval caused by the pricing changes. After nearly a decade entrenching NetFlix as the leading player in DVD rentals, the company is now starting all over with $0 in brand equity in Qwickster. Aside from the fact that it’s a stupid, meaningless, forgetful name, in my opinion.
Add in the fact that NetFlix lost its rights to Starz content for the Internet streaming service as of February 2012, which is the source of the bulk of its most valuable new releases and top-line Hollywood titles.
In my opinion, Netflix has gone from an Internet darling to a slow motion train-wreck-in-progress in a matter of months. Can it be saved? Is it too little, too late? Are there any more surprises forthcoming?
I think they have completely destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars in brand equity, and disenfranchised millions of customers. I expect this latest announcement to be received about as well as the last one (the pricing changes) and I smell the death of the DVD business. I think it’s all over but the crying.
The chinks in the armor have been revealed, and it won’t be long before Blockbuster (which has been purchased by DISH Network and is being reincarnated to once again go after the Netflix mailorder DVD business) and Internet streaming companies such as Hulu jump on the bandwagon and start capturing market share from the once invincible Netflix.
As I’ve said, it’s just my opinion. But I see these moves as major brand gaffes.
Now Netflix is wounded. And it’s self-inflicted.
UPDATE: This blog entry was written as the news was unfolding. In hindsight, a month or so later, we now know that NetFlix has doubled-back on its plans, scrapping Qwikster entirely, and said: “Mea culpa! Don’t worry folks, we’ve listened and changed our minds — things will stay as they were.” As a customer, I’m thrilled. And as a pundit, I’m smiling… 
“So what do you think about QR Codes?”
Someone asked me this question recently. My answer: “Not much.”
In case you didn’t know (and I wouldn’t be surprised — most consumers are NOT familiar with them), they’re the square little matrix barcodes you see in magazine ads these days, such as the example graphic accompanying this post (this hyperlink links back to this article online, in case you’re reading this in a news feed that doesn’t show the accompanying graphics). Where as traditional barcodes (such as UPC codes you see on all of your grocery product packaging) are 1-dimensional (side to side), QR Codes are a 2D square matrix that packs more data into a smaller area.
I will be the first to admit that I’m a techie gadget lover. And not just hardware gadgets, but I love software and web apps and all manner of cool techie toys. I’m definitely an “early adopter” checking out the best and latest tools to use in my business as well as personally. But I really don’t “get” QR Codes. I think it’s a fad. I could be wrong, and I’m not trumpeting this from the rooftops with any kind of missionary zeal. Just saying…
It’s entirely possible that we’re just still in its infancy, on the leading edge of the new wave. But somehow I don’t think so – I think it’s as mainstream as it’s going to get. And that’s not very… Sure, you see them in everything from People Magazine to coupon mailers, but taking a quick poll around my family friends, end consumers for the most part have no idea what they are.
The only people who love them and are using them are marketers. I don’t know the last time I heard someone say “I saw this great ad and scanned the QR Code!” In fact, there hasn’t been a first time either.
So *why* am I so pessimistic on QR Codes?
I can understand the benefits of a 2D code to pack more data and meaning into a “barcode”. More data density. Sure. I can see them useful in behind-the-scenes business applications, for inventory management or recording SKU details and more. Similar to RFID tags and UPC symbols that are very useful for business applications. UPC symbols (traditional 1 dimensional barcodes) are hugely helpful for inventory management at retail, but the average user doesn’t own a UPC scanner or really interact with them directly very much. It’s more of an internal thing for retail stores to scan at the register for price lookups and recording sales & inventory transactions, or for scanning inventory asset tags, and so forth. But end consumers don’t walk around with UPC scanners.
Similarly, QR Codes require a scanner, most commonly in the form of a smartphone app that uses a camera to capture the image for processing and interpretation. Then the app launches a web browser to pull up the appropriate URL.
But let’s break this down. While cell phone penetration is high (over 90%), not everyone has a cell phone. Of those that do, only about 1/3rd of the U.S. cell phone customers have a smartphone capable of handling QR Codes. This is about 20% – 25% of the total target audience of, say, a magazine (i.e. including people who don’t even have a cell phone to begin with). What percentage of those use apps and actually have a QR Code reader on their smart phone? I don’t have an actual statistic to back this up, but anecdotally I’d have to say it runs about 2%.
So why are we wasting valuable space, cluttering up an ad with a QR code that is only accessibly by 2% of the target audience, just to encode a URL? Print the darned thing right there in the ad and you reach 100% of your target audience! And “…because it can encode lengthy, complex URLs” is not an answer: that’s what friendly URLs (and URL re-writing) are for. Problem solved.
QR Codes in consumer marketing (B-To-C) seems like just a fad. We do it because it’s cool and we look all modern and hip and stuff. But in reality, it just creates more ‘friction’ in the marketing process in my opinion.
To encode more data into a driver’s license, or plane tickets and other such behind-the-scenes business uses? Sure. But for consumer marketing purposes, I just don’t see the need. At 401 Consulting, we *can* generate QR Codes (see the one attached to this article), and we will include them in the print media we design for our clients if it’s a requirement for the project. But in my personal opinion, I just don’t see the value.
Quite honestly, the only people I see excited about (and using) QR Codes are marketers.
