Email marketing

Email Marketing Done Right

June 4, 2012 by Joe Hackman 1 Comment

It’s no secret that most of us are not fans of receiving newsletters and Email marketing content unless key criteria are met. A lot has to do with the fact that so few companies actually get it right. It might seem trivial but I know in my case personally you can really damage your brand by disrespecting my time with Email marketing done wrong. As I result many of us have become serial un-subscribers and in some cases abuse reporters, I am certainly both of those things today. Imagine to my surprise when something arrives in my inbox from a company that I officially asked for and officially rocks resulting in me liking that company that much more. It happened today and I couldn’t be happier to see people who get it. For that reason I am giving a shout out to the folks over at private Cloud software company Nimbula. I watched a presentation by one of their guys at the #lspe meetup a couple of months ago where they raised eyebrows with their private cloud product that can be used freely (up to a limit) on off the shelf hardware.

What was so great about it?

For the easily distracted, the message really got to the point. Their was a clear purpose:

What they are offering
What it will do for me
How to get it
How to learn more

For a product I can use for free, I know there is a new version of their director and with an hour more of my time I can learn how to “Stand Up” my own Cloud. Not only are they playing on their strengths, they also know their audience and they have a very direct and easy to understand call to action. I was also impressed in another way and that was by the easy integration of social sharing. I actually did follow the link and author a tweet to share with people the news.

Get your own private cloud on. Nimbula Director 2.0 is available for download. Check it out @nimbula website nimbula.com

— Joe Hackman (@hackmanj) June 1, 2012

For the people with a little more thirst for information, there was plenty of it, but only if you wanted to scroll down and consume more. The structure of the content was very easy to follow the most current event was at the top of the list and it went on from there. On the right column you get some additional key points including some core business philosophies of the company and piles of other data to consume if you should be so inclined.

There was additional information beyond that (you can see it all here) but the bottom line was also a pleasant and welcome site, a very simple unsubscribe link. Hallelujah.

Business is personal for me, I want to work with people that will execute at a very high level and bring nothing less myself. Nimbula’s approach exudes confidence, savvy and quality. I signed up for both of their Webinars next month, tweeted about them and wrote a blog post because I love to have the opportunity to recognize things being done right.

How to respond to customer complaints expressed in Social Media

November 16, 2010 by Joe Hackman 25 Comments

Just last week I received the first ever Email newsletter from Safeway. I had used their home delivery once or twice mostly as a novelty to see what it was like. I really didn’t want or need to get correspondence from them, I’m more of a “don’t call me, I’ll call you” type of person, unless of course I intentionally opt in for something. When I did receive the first message from Safeway, I was disturbed to be taken to a website with a login page when I clicked the unsubscribe button. I’ve already written that rule #1 of Email Marketing should be “1 Click Opt out and add me to the “don’t ever send me Email again” list. Obviously me having to login does not meet those criteria, in fact if I’ve forgotten my password (I had) I really don’t want to do a password recovery and waste more time to opt out of this message that is already wasting my time. So what do I do? I took it to Twitter…

The Complaint

Thankfully one of my Twitter friends @katiefelten also RT:

So in all honesty, I had no idea what would occur now. Would Safeway be listening? I had already verified they had a Twitter account. It turns out they were listening and responded:

Acknowledgement

So that was decent of them, at least they were listening and responded. That is certainly better than nothing, right? So I decided to make another suggestion, just driving the point home so to speak:

Suggestion

The Adjustment

Then I sort of did what I should and forgot all about it. This morning I received another message from Safeway. “Joe, MORE Exclusive Coupons Are Here!” oh snap, I guess I better test the unsubscribe rather than assume they did not listen. Much to my surprise it brought me to a screen where I could easily opt out of all of the newsletters. Here is a partial screenshot:

What can we learn from this?

Ultimately I have to say I am impressed with Safeway’s response and approach. I learned that they are:

Monitoring their twitter account.
Responding to “complaints”.
Acting on the feedback.

Sometimes I feel like Social Media is my only outlet to respond to bad service or poor policies. I really try to go out of my way to help companies that provide good services and products, but on occasion I have written bad reviews on Yelp. I certainly won’t be giving Michael Finney a run for his money, but it’s nice to know that you can have a positive impact in some cases by choosing to exercise your voice in Social Media.

Share YOUR story

Have you used Social Media to influence a similar situation? I’d love to hear your examples in the comment section below.

Google Steps up Email Marketing Efforts

July 21, 2010 by Joe Hackman 2 Comments

I noted a very significant event in the form of an Email from Google encouraging me to “focus more on analytics, less on IT hassles” this morning. As an Analytics customer they used that as an opportunity to send the first of it’s kind marketing Email. Obviously Google is ready to challenge and market their services more aggressively at this point.

I cannot help but wonder if this is the tip of the iceberg in a larger campaign to push additional services to individuals and firms that are using many of Google’s free tools. What are your thoughts?

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6 Must Have policies for Commercial Email

April 22, 2010 by Joe Hackman 4 Comments

I have to confess, while I know many companies are depending heavily on Email marketing more often than not I feel inposed upon by it. I’ve had some long running battles with companies re-adding me to their distribution lists. My longest standing offender is Ziff Davis Publishing. Whatever is in the water over there, they are just not doing enough to properly maintain their Email marketing mechanism. I probably have enough evidence over time that if I was litigious to sue them. Luckily for them (and me!) I am not. What I am though is a bit tired of these offenses and I write a blog so I have a voice.

My long battle with Ziff Davis is not the primary motivation for this article, Schneider Electric is. You see some months ago I noticed a big uptick in Emails from APC (Now Schneider Electric) the Uninteruptable Power Supply company. I immediately opted out of those Emails, only they’re still coming. I’ve “set my preferences” (no direct one click opt out option – unacceptible) on 2 occassions already. Today I received this:

Yep, they are back and now they are sending me messages in foreign languages. So how is it that in 2010 a company involved with technology products and a publisher of technology content could be the two greatest offenders in the realm of opt out failures?

I don’t really like Email marketing to begin with and it shows. I don’t have a “list” for my blog aside from the one that Feedburner maintains for me. I also don’t have a “list” for my business, aside from a list of customers that may require service updates, etc. I am definitely not effectively leveraging Email marketing but you know what? I am ok with it, because right now my fear of situations like the ones I’ve experienced with Ziff Davis, Schneider Electric and many others have made it very difficult for me to embrace the medium.

Is there hope for me?

There is definitely hope for me, I am working on a 100% opt in based solution to communicate different kinds of issues through my business. There is definitely valuable content that I can provide and I want people to have access to it. I have not made this a big priority though due to my hesitance. I think I have a solution to that, read on.

What Commercial Email Should Be

I have some ideas about how Email marketing/communications should be handled on the commercial side of things. Here is a list of “must haves”:

1 Click Opt out and add me to the “don’t ever send me Email again” list
Very clear opt in process with disclosure on frequency and nature of messages.
A working reply to address, you Emailed them they should be able to Email you.
Never share Email addresses with “partners” or other groups within your organizations.
End recipient Email addresses should be hidden in the sent Emails. (I know this seems obvious but I still see this!)
Sufficient internal policies and resources to manage and maintain the system.

I think if you can’t do those things and commit to the costs, effort and maintenance of them I don’t believe you ought to be able to send Emails from a business to individuals. I guess I owe these firms a bit of gratitude. Over time their failures have helped me identify what I feel is acceptible policy for commercial Email. If you ever do see an Email opt in from my blog (besides Feedburner) you can bet it will be accompanied by a clear policy on the governance of that list.