Convince and Convert Blog: Where Social Media and Email Collide

I just finished an invigorating panel discussion at the Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer. Moderated by Aaron Kahlow from Online Marketing Summit, the session was titled “What Your Customers Really Think of Your Email Program.” (click here for the presentation at Slideshare)

I was joined on the panel by Katrina Anderson of iPost, and Annie Kinnaird of Emma. Stephanie Miller of ReturnPath was the brains behind the format.

The idea was to wade through the ton of email data being published seemingly every day, and focus on the really juicy stuff - subscriber studies - that’s impacting how the email marketing industry is evolving.

Which of These Email Marketing Stats Scare You Most?

1. 21% of email recipients report email as Spam, even if they know it isn’t

2. 43% of email recipients click the Spam button based on the email “from” name or email address

3. 69% of email recipients report email as Spam based solely on the subject line

4. 35% of email recipients open email based on the subject line alone

5. IP addresses appearing on just one of the 12 major blacklists had email deliverability 25 points below those not listed on any blacklists

6. Email lists with 10% or more unknown users get only 44% of their email delivered by ISPs

7. 17% of Americans create a new email address every 6 months

8. 30% of subscribers change email addresses annually

9. If marketers optimized their emails for image blocking, ROI would increase 9+%

10. 84% of people 18-34 use an email preview pane

11. People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than people that do not receive email offers

12. 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email

13. Subscribers below age 25 prefer SMS to email

14. 35% of business professionals check email on a mobile device

15. 80% of social network members have received unsolicited email or invites 

What Do You Think? Is the Future of Email 1:1 Communication? Leave a Comment

More illuminating posts about email marketing>> 

 

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Welcome. If you like the content here, consider susbscribing to my RSS feed. You can also find me on Twitter @jaybaer

Thanks to Jason Falls for the inspiration (okay, it’s a straight rip-off) for this post. Jason pointed out five lesser-known bloggers that he reads regularly (including Convince & Convert). His post seems to have triggered an a-ha moment, as several other excellent social media bloggers including Mack Collier and Amber Naslund have posted similar lists of people to read. 

This is truly the genius of the World Wide Web. A hyper-linked community that enables users to find interesting and useful content based on the recommendations of real people, enabled (but not driven by) technology. 

Here’s my Fab Five bloggers. People I read that may be less well-known by Convince & Convert readers. Also, because I work in email marketing and digital marketing in addition to social media, my list is not purely social media focused, as are those cited above. 

Tamara Gielen

Tamara’s blog BeRelevant is dedicated to B2B email marketing best practices. Tamara doesn’t post a ton of her own content, but her ability to cull down the huge output of blog content about the email industry, and include only what’s legitimate and groundbreaking on her own site is a godsend. 

Tamara is also the founder of the Email Marketers Club, a social network for professional emailers with more than 1,700 members. By day, Tamara is the Director of Email and Digital Dialogue for OgilvyOne. She lives in Belgium, and can be found on Twitter @tamaragielen 

Bryan Eisenberg

One of the few folks out there who have been in digital marketing as long as me, Eisenberg is a conference staple (especially search conferences). His insights into customer experience, usability, information architecture, and conversion rate optimization are simply unparalleled. If you need to get more results from your Web site, he’s a guy to follow.

His blog Grokdotcom is more of a company-wide production now, but still brimming with insights. Watch for his regular series of books too. His new one, “Call to Action” is outstanding, and “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark” is required reading for all Web designers, project managers, and information architects I hire. 

He’s on Twitter @theGrok

Dan Zarrella

A great blogger with no shortage of opinions about social media, search, and cross-linking. Not afraid to rock the boat, Dan Zarrella brings serious science to the discussion of social media and viral marketing. He believes that “going viral” is no accident, and I believe he’s the number one guy to watch in terms of the emerging confluence between blogging, other forms of social media, and SEO.

He’s got some very useful tools for maximizing the search and viral friendliness of your blog. Check them out in his Tools section. 

Dan is on Twitter @danzarrella

Michael Gass

I do a lot of work for ad agencies and PR firms, and Michael Gass’ blog Fuel Lines is redefining how agencies think about business development. A great example of a blogger picking a distinct topic and absolutely owning it, Michael eats his own dog food (and the food of other dogs as well). You see, his consulting business is based on helping agencies use smart blogging, SEO, and social media to generate inbound leads - rather than shooting in the dark making cold calls.

In addition to regular, insightful posts about the future of ad agencies, Michael has added a ton of value to his blog with a sweeping survey of the agency biz dev landscape, and a “best agency blog” competition.

Michael has been a huge help and a great friend to Convince & Convert. If you’re at an agency (and even if you’re not), read his stuff. He’s on Twitter @michaelgass

Jason Falls

Yeah, he put me in his five. But, I would have had him in here regardless. With the tsunami of blog posts, opinions, pass-alongs, retweets, and me-toos out there, Jason Falls maintains an exceptionally high quality level. If he says something on his blog - Social Media Explorer, it’s worth reading. If he sends a tweet, the link is worth clicking.

Unlike many (most?) social media consultants, Jason is actually a practitioner of the art. His work for Jim Beam via his agency Doe Anderson is one of the legendary examples of social media press releases and integrated microsites. His blog isn’t about what social media will become, it’s about what social media is now, and how to do it right. 

Jason is a straight shooter that’s not caught up in his own emerging Web fame, and among the top tier of social media and PR 2.0 “names” I find him to be the most dedicated to sharing and extremely giving with his time. He was an early champion of Convince & Convert, and I’ll never forget that. (Chris Brogan is another one that’s amazingly cool to lesser known folks, despite his insane schedule and content generation volume). 

Jason is a must-follow on Twitter @jasonfalls

Who Are Your Fab Five? Leave Them in the Comments, Or Write Your Own Post

 

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Headed to Scottsdale for the Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer?

I wrote a guide with everything you need to know  - from an Arizona resident. Tips, tricks, booze, and the whole scoop.

I’ll be speaking on the “What Email Subscribers Really Want” panel Wednesday, October 22 at 9am.

See you soon,

jason baer

Download Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer Pre-Conference Guide (PDF)

 

Attendees, what do you think? Comments below please.

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Starting Soon. Follow @jaybaer and @jaffejuice to see Questions and Answers.

I’m happy to announce a new Convince and Convert initiative - Twitter 20. On a regular basis, I’ll be interviewing social media and digital marketing luminaries on Twitter and posting the interviews here for review, comment, and posterity.

140 character questions (x20).
140 character answers.
In real-time.
On Twitter.

The URL for the program (which will take you to the collection of interviews) is http://www.twitter20.com For now, it will be a category here at Convince & Convert. We may give it it’s own site soon.

Friday, October 10 (noon eastern, 9am pacific ) - Joseph Jaffe

The first Twitter 20 interview will be on Friday, October at noon eastern, 9am pacific with Joseph Jaffe (@jaffejuice) whose blog JaffeJuice is a must read (and in fact is subscribed to by 4818 folks).

A digital marketing and social media veteran, Mr. Jaffe is now the President of conversation marketing consultancy Crayon, and is the author of Join the Conversation, How to Engage Marketing-Weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue, and Partnership

He’s also the author of Life After the 30 Second Spot, and produces a twice monthly podcast Across the Sound. 

I very much enjoyed Mr. Jaffe’s presentation at the ExactTarget Connections conference, and I’m honored that he’s agreed to be the first participant in the Twitter 20 interview series.

What Questions Do You Have for Joseph Jaffe? Leave Them in the Comments Below. Remember, 140 Characters or Less!

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Why, What, When & How to Implement Social Media Campaigns

Just finished moderating a rousing panel discussion in Montreal at the Worldcom Americas conference. (Worldcom is the world’s largest collective of independent PR firms) Joined by Mike Corak from Off Madison Ave, Stefan Pollack from the Pollack PR Marketing Group, and Diego Biasi from Business Press (all the way from Milan), we addressed an invigorated group of PR firm principals.

Lots of great questions about the nuts and bolts of social media.

That was the intention of our presentation, to focus on the specifics, not just the usual “social media is important” pabulum.

Comments on the presentation most welcome.

View or download here via Slideshare:

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Convince & Convert launches new training program series to help agencies improve their digital capabilities

Addressing the needs of ad agencies and PR firms to improve their digital marketing competency, Convince & Convert is now providing a series of customizable, in-person training programs.

We are offering 5 intensive, all-day sessions to train ad agencies and PR firms on a wide variety of critically important digital marketing services including:

Digital Marketing Audits & Action Plans
2 days on site interviewing staff and reviewing interactive marketing work samples, followed by creation of a detailed 90 day action plan.

Winning Search Engine Optimization & PPC Techniques
Includes training exercises on SEO copywriting, link building, PPC ad creation, bid management, and reporting.

Relevant Email Marketing That Works
Learn how to segment recipient lists, boost click through rates, and deliver killer email ROI to your clients.

Internet Advertising Tactics and Targeting
Learn how to craft solid online media plans, how to maximize effective targeting, and the 4 rules for effective Internet creative.

Social Media - The Roar of the Crowd
Learn how to create layered social media programs that get measurable results for your clients, and how to monetize social media efforts.

Better Than Conferences

“Sure agency staff can go to conferences, but they typically are full of theory and case studies,” said Jason Baer, President of Convince & Convert. “We deliver training that’s hands-on, tactical, and relevant. After our sessions, agencies can begin implementing the next morning,” he said.

All Convince & Convert training programs are conducted at the agency’s location, eliminating travel time and expense for attendees.

Programs are customized for each agency, and all attendees receive personalized workbooks and implementation materials, including checklists, vendor recommendations, and step by step procedures for digital marketing success.

After the training sessions, we conduct follow up Webinars with all attendees to answer questions and oversee implementation.

“Too many agencies are trying to handle advanced digital marketing for their clients, without the expertise to do so,” said Baer. “These new training programs will give agencies the serious know-how necessary to compete with digital specialists.”

>>Call or email to discuss setting up customized training at your agency

 

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Thanks to everyone for participating in my “Are you man enough to write a PPC ad about a woman VP” contest. Many excellent entries (see original post). Here are the results:

McCain is 72 years old 
Avg US life expectancy is 78 years 
Is Palin qualified? Read This 
DailyKos.com   1.31% Click-through rate      

 

Sarah Palin’s Secrets 
What the GOP doesn’t want you to 
know about McCain’s running mate 
sify.com 

2.66% CTR

 

Sarah Palin Revealed 
What makes her so special and 
why the Democrats should worry 
johnmccain.com 

3.62% CTR

 

Who is Sarah Palin? 
Exclusive stories, photos and more 
on the Vice Presidential candidate 
newsminer.com 

4.89% CTR!!!

 

Congratulations to Russ Hollmann (@hollmann) for winning the PPC Contest. He gets $200 from yours truly. 

Thoughts on the Outcome

I’ve been looking at the results and thinking about why Russ won and what we can learn from this contest. I’ve learned 5 lessons from this experience.

1. Mindset of searchers. Interestingly, Google took 3+ days to approve the ads. A call to tech support couldn’t even resolve it. Amazingly, they began running immediately after Palin finished her convention speech (insert conspiracy theory here).

Consequently, once the ads finally went live, I suspect there were more pro-Palin searchers than anti-Palin searchers, hurting the CTR of the lefty-slanted ad candidates.

On a similar conspiracy-scented note, the ads were set to run evenly for testing purposes. However, Google served 175% more of the pro-Palin or neutral ads than they did the negative ones. Hmmm.

2. URLs matter. I forgot that I had to put “real” URLs on the ads - not like the old days when you could do whatever you wanted. Thus, instead of having the same URL for each ad, I had to have the actual URL of the news story to which I linked. See above. For some, DailyKos is Kryptonite. The JohnMcCain.com URL may have been interpreted as less than objective (shocking, I know). The sify.com URL seems mysterious. Newsminer.com sounds objective and “newsie”. That may have helped Russ’ entry.

3. Don’t minimize your audience. Of all the finalists, the winner was the most even-handed. The other ads were clearly more appealing to one side or the other, which may have truncated their appeal commensurately. If you’re running a PPC campaign and are looking to maximize clicks, it may not work as well to take a strong stand in the ad itself - wait for the landing page.

4. Specific promises. In comparison to the other finalists, Russ’ entry promised stories, photos and more. I have seen through 15 years of Internet marketing experience that when you tell people exactly what they will get when they click, they are more likely to take you up on that offer.

5. Use of impact words. While all of the finalists used turns of phrase to make their ads interesting and engaging, Russ’ inclusion of “exclusive” may have helped win the contest. Given that by the time these ads launched, pretty much everyone not in prison knew at least something about Sarah Palin, the appeal of “exclusive” information may have been extremely intriguing.

How do you interpret these results? Add a comment

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Thanks to everyone who participated in the Palin PPC contest (see post below).

It was difficult to select 4 ads to test live on Google, but ultimately I choose these:

Sarah Palin’s Secrets
What the GOP doesn’t want you to
know about McCain’s running mate

from James Archer (@jamesarcher)
I like this one because it’s a solid tease with a lefty slant.

Sarah Palin Revealed
What makes her so special
and why the Democrats should worry

from Johnny M (@thesoop)
This is a great counterbalance to the first one. Similar approach with a righty slant.

Who is Sarah Palin?
Exclusive stories, photos and more
on the Vice Presidential candidate

from Russ Hollmann (@hollmann)
This one is very plausible as an actual ad. I’m interested to see the CPC of this more factual approach.

Lastly, but not leastly….

McCain is 72 Years Old
Avg US life expectancy is 78 years.
Is Palin qualified? Read this.

From Tony Sirois (@tbonemalone)
Solid. I love that this effort hits right at the core issue of Palin and does it in 15 words.

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What? No Nudity?

Certainly, there were some entries that probably would have generated a higher CTR than those above. However, since I have to actually build an ad group and run these ads - and link them to a landing page - I wanted to stay away from anything along the “Palin: Naked and covered in Skippy peanut butter” vein.

All good interactive marketers know that it’s not about clicks, it’s about qualified clicks, so I selected the 4 finalists in that spirit.

I’m running the same display URL for all ads www.thesarahstory.com since it fits all of the ads. I scoured the Web and found different news coverage and blog posts about Palin to fit each of the ads, in an effort to keep Quality Score high enough to keep the ads live.

Cheaters Never Win

Finalists, please don’t recruit an army of friends to click on your entry so you can win my $200. Hopefully, you value the scientific and social media nature of this experiment enough to not do that. I reserve the right to not pay you if I think you gamed the system.

Ads should be live until Thursday night - again assuming the CTR stays high enough for them to keep running. Results will be announced on Friday. Thanks for playing!

Who Do You Think Will Win? Make Your Prediction In The Comments

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Are You Man Enough to Write a Great PPC Ad About a Woman VP?

I’m using the puzzling choice of Sarah Palin as McCain’s VP pick to engage in a crowd-sourced search marketing experiment. Namely, who among you can write the most effective Google PPC ad featuring her?

The winner will receive $200 cash from the gilded vaults of Convince & Convert, as well as big-time bragging rights throughout Twitter, the Blogosphere, and maybe even among real people. 

The Rules

• Enter this scintillating contest by adding your best effort to the Comments of this post (see below).
• One entry per person please. Honor system.
• All entries are due by 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern time on Monday, September 1. This gives you something to do over your Labor Day weekend.
• The top 4 semi-finalists will be selected by me. I may throw open voting on Twitter if we have some close calls.
• I will create and launch a PPC campaign on Google next week and will run the semi-finalists as an A/B/C/D test. Bid amounts will be the same for all ads, etc. Search terms will be “Sarah Palin” and “Palin” - broad match
• The winning ad will be the one with the highest average click through rate, and will be announced next Friday-ish, September 6.
• Winner will receive $200 cash, check, or PayPal from me, and the opportunity to write a guest post on Convince & Convert about their winning technique.

Remember…

Google Adwords allows 25 characters (including spaces and punctuation) in the headline, and 35 characters for each of the two body copy lines. Please format your entry as:
Headline
Line 1
Line 2

…in the comments section. Don’t worry about a URL. I’ll make something up.

It’s Sarah, not Sara.

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I’m happy to announce that I’ve been elected to co-chair the Consumer Education Roundtable for the Email Experience Council. 

The EEC is the global professional association for email marketers, striving to enhance the image of email as a tactic while advocating its importance for business.

In partnership with the DMA (Direct Marketing Association), EEC also puts on an excellent (dare I say definitive) conference for email marketers called Email Evolution. The next edition is February 9 - 11 in Scottsdale, AZ. (Information here)
 

Help Me Help You

My EEC Consumer Education Roundtable is charged with building the definitive Web site or online application to help marketers understand email best practices, design, statistics, regulations, etc.

Currently, there are a lot of resources online about good email marketing, but they are spread all over the place and its hard to determine to whom to listen. This new EEC initiative will help solve that problem by aggregating “approved” email marketing information.

Even the EEC itself is perpetuating the current problem, as the online resources section links to a variety of white papers, blogs, stats, columns and other flotsam and jetsam. (I’ve been waiting for the day when I could use flotsam and jetsam in a blog post)
 

I Need Your Comments Please

Please help me get the new roundtable off to a rousing start. Please leave a comment (or hit me on Twitter @jaybaer) and tell me what you really want to know about email marketing.

 

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