MarketingSherpa Blog

Matt Mickiewicz, editor of SitePoint newsletter for Webmasters, just posted a quick useful column on buying and selling existing
Web sites and ezines. His point that now is a great time to acquire content sites and ezines that are ad supported is a good one. The economy is starting to improve (in the US anyway) so great deals will not be around forever. If you have a series of ebooks, PDFs or other stuff that you’re already making good money selling to your own list, then it might be cheaper to acquire a list with a highly similar demographic than it would be to build
the list on your own.

They will not perform as well as your own home built list though. In the print world we used to assume a 30% paid conversion rate
when we bought competing subscription newsletters and merged them into our own. So 30% of the acquired subs might pay to keep
getting ours when their initial term was up, while on average 55- 65% of our own home-grown subs would renew. If these numbers hold
true online, you need to assume that acquired names may buy about half the stuff your home grown names will.

If anybody out there has actual figures on this, I would love to hear them. editor@contentbiz.com

http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/viewissue.php?id=2&issue=193&format=html

Speaking of email subject lines that express your site or ezine’s branding, I gotta admit (disclaimer) even though I rarely
visit their site, every Friday afternoon I really look forward to seeing what Nerve’s weekly email subject line will be next. The
site is famous for being youthful, sexy and witty. And despite the fact that I get about 800 (no joke, the Intern counted) emails a day, those Nerve subject lines stand out every time, clearly proclaiming their branding without ever actually saying their name. Some recent samples:

Birds Do It, Bees Do It And Now You Know How Bulls Do It!
It’s Time to Start Screwing with Your Mind
Pubic wigs are the new black mini…

You know, they don’t have to actually say “Nerve News Vol 12 Issue IX” for us to get the point. That’s true marketing communications craftsmanship.

http://WWW.NERVE.COM

Thanks to an article in SiliconAlleyReporter (which, by the way, has been been putting out more and more solid editorial these days), I learned about the new Blog published by Agency.com’s team.

It’s interesting from two angles — the first is that they pop in some useful notes and comments on the online advertising scene, the second is the idea of a blog itself as a corporate communications tool. US News & World Report’s online media sales team tried a faux blog from their publisher (at least I assume it was faux) as a marketing ploy earlier this year. However, this is the first time I’ve noticed a blog written by an agency.

Makes me wonder if — trendwatch! — Blogs are going to be the hot new online B2B marketing tool now that we are all starting to get bored of receiving official company email newsletters. Instead of formally written articles, Blogs usually contain little dashed off notes with, hopefully useful, nuggets of info. Blogs are more human and personal than newsletters are. If you are running one as a PR or marketing move for your company, lemme know and maybe I’ll link to you. Thanks — AHolland@MarketingSherpa.com

Should you consider trademarking your email newsletter subject line-style? Unlike print publications and Web sites that can use
graphics and colors for immediate visual branding, email newsletter publishers only have two tiny text-only items. Your subject line and your from line.

Recipients scroll through dozens, even hundreds, of emails daily looking mainly for “what can I delete?” Establishing a brand stance in both has become imperative to open rates, readership, clicks. As we all know, many email recipients look at subject line first, and then only glance at from line if they are not sure if they should open the message.

This was brought home abruptly to me this week when a competitor to our other publications sent out an issue using a subject line
that was strikingly similar to our typical subject lines.

Examples of our recent subject lines:

CASE STUDY: 5 Email Newsletter Publishing Rules
CASE STUDY: Redesigning Your Site to Get More Sales Leads
CASE STUDY: Viral Marketing Online – Ecards, Email & Petitions CASE STUDY: Lands’ End Newsletter Results
CASE STUDY: Reach Biz Purchasing Depts Online

Notice a pattern? Yeah, it is on purpose. I figured lots of people do not look at “from,” they just glance at subject first to seen
what to delete or keep. If we started every single newsletter the same exact way, it would help our fans deal with their inboxes. Then, this week a competitor sent out an issue with the subject line:

CASE STUDY: Copy & Design Makeover Increases Site Revenues by 30
Percent

Almost immediately we began getting emails from our readers. One wanted to know if we had been bought by that competitor. One wanted to know if we were now publishing thatcompetitor. The third simply said, “Thought you should know they are trying to rip you off.” Other readers let us know they had set up filters
on their email, and anything with “CASE STUDY:” was automatically sucked off into their MarketingSherpa email folder. They were a little annoyed that something else had ended up there.

We contacted the publisher who did not share our concern about our publications being mistaken for each other. (They did not say,
“Why get your panties in a twist?” but it was implied.) Then when we contacted our lawyer who specializes in publishing
companies and who is known for being very levelheaded, we were advised that this could be a trademark violation.

Which brings me to the point. Subject lines matter. Consistent subject lines that are not boring (i.e. not “Sherpa Case Study
May 17, Vol III Issue 17),” and somehow build your brand, are critical to success in email publishing. They are, in effect, part of your logo. How long will it take the law to catch up to this? Goodness knows and I certainly do not want to be the one spending the money to create the precedent.

The bad news is that iMarketingNews, my personal favorite daily newsletter on what’s up in online marketing, has been folded by its publisher into sibling-publication, DMNews. However, the good news is that iMarketingNews’ head of editorial, Ken Magill, who many of us in the industry respect a great deal, is staying on board to continue covering Internet marketing for the publication. He assured me today, “I’m more than ok. Many, many good things.”

I’m spring/summer shopping now that the weather is turning warm and after a long winter of crouching next to the light of my PC monitor I don’t fit any of my old clothes anymore (reasons why jeans and shorts should be tax deductable, because they are work-related expenses in the computer age)!

Best bit was the Eddie Bauer online operator who was awfully nice when I asked her a question about a Lands’ End product. Apparently lots of people besides me get them mixed up (whoops). She was so pleasant about it that I ended up ordering from her in the end after all. And then going to LandsEnd.com afterwards and guilt-buying on top of that.

Second best was the OldNavy.com site, who have still not improved their product description details online (the bane of most e-retailers who don’t come from a catalog background), but when you submit an order and leave their site they do have an exceptionally smart note at the end:

If you are using a kiosk, or someone else’s computer, please click the Sign Out button to clear your personal information from this computer. – oldnavy.com Nicely done.

Yesterday, market research firm InsightExpress released the results of their latest survey revealing that (in the words of the Company’s COO Lee Smith) “publishers would be better served to cut their losses when it comes to online publications and focus on their readers’ overwhelming preference, high quality paper magazines. And any hopes of growing revenue with online magazines seem to be misguided as most readers expect online content to be free.”

Other publications covering content have begun to pick up this story with varying degrees of alarm. Here’s a cautionary note from moi — I called InsightExpress and learned something the press release didn’t mention. The results bandied about in their release, such as only 32% of Internet users read any magazines online, were based on surveying just 500 people. So, I don’t know how statistically relevant they are to the industry as a whole.

Many of the results, though, were good common sense. These 500 people still prefer to read long magazine articles in the bathroom or in bed or on the train while they commute. Well, duh.

However, this doesn’t mean there’s no way magazines can profit online. You can sell ads against, or sell subscriptions to, many things that make zero sense to read in the bathroom — such as back issue archives, instant messaged or emailed content too newsy to wait until the next printed issue, or audio/video supplements. Or heck, you can use your lovely Web site to gather new paid subscribers for your print edition (very handy now that direct mail costs are rising precipitously.)http://WWW.INSIGHTEXPRESS.COM/PRESSROOM/RELEASE_042202.ASP

I just got a piece of advertising email that I thought might be spam because I’d never heard of the sender, let alone signed up to get messages from them, so I scrolled to the bottom of the message to see where they got my name. It said:

“Please do not reply to this email.

You opted to receive Lycos Special Offers when you registered on a Terra Lycos Network website. You can change your registration and email subscription information at:

http://ldbauth.lycos.com/cgi-bin/mayaRegister?m_PR=3&m_RC=3

“on a Terra Lycos Network website” huh. Which one??? I don’t remember everywhere I’ve registered over the years and anyway my relationship was with that particular site – not its parent company (which I might not have even known was its parent company – do you know all the sites Terra Lycos owns off the top of your head?)

It gets worse. So I clicked on the link to see which site, and guess what? It doesn’t tell you. In fact you can’t change your settings or unsubscribe until you give them your password. I’m supposed to remember a password for a site, when I don’t even know which site it is?

Lesson — don’t rent lists from Terra Lycos because they are abusing permission and make unsubscribing unusually difficult.

Hysterical. Our tech columnist, Alexis Gutzman, just emailed me her own personal spam filter list. She’s got her email set up so if any of the following terms appear, the email goes straight to her deleted items folder and she never even sees it. Alexis says, “I just kept pasting in subject lines…” whenever she gets spam.

Aside from being funny to skim – you’ll recognize so many familiar spam lines – it’s also a good list to match your own email campaign subject lines against. Are you inadvertantly using a subject line that looks like spam? That may hurt your results. Alexis’ list (it’s long):

penis, enlargement, debt free, debt-free, out of debt, million messages, million emails, ‘viagra, viagara, horny, breasts, between my legs, accept credit cards, your own merchant account, extra cash, they will spend more, slut, toner, boost your windows reliability, double your money, phone rates, long distance, rates are low, consolidate bills, life insurance, windows reliability, unsecured credit card, unsecured visa, unsecured mastercard, refinancing your house, refinancing your home, eliminate IRS tax problems, are you in debt, losing your job, work at home, free party line, stock pick, porn access, start accepting credit cards,ADV:, woman will love you, girlfriend will love you, kids will love you, women will love you, wife will love you, free cash grants, lock your rate, saw your site, dvd library, your own business, be free, pay your bills, look great, free vacation, you have won, money making, stock market news, news from day, real psycologists, real psychologists, rates have fallen, penny stock, unlimited calls, get cash, handpicked referrals, energy-levels, energy levels, financial success, new and improved, stop smoking, XXX, get a bigger hammer, gay sex, your ebook as per your posting, company merger

Peter Platt VP Marketing at SMART Internet Marketing taught me a valuable lesson in email newsletter publishing this week. We ran a text ad for them in one of our newsletters last week and it tanked, tanked, tanked. Plus we hurt our circulation. It was all my fault.

While we let the advertiser say anything they want in the 8 lines of space they’ve bought, we control the line above their ad where it describes who the sponsor is. Frankly, this comes in handy because I can sometimes help sponsors’ clicks by doing a very brief peppy intro. Peter’s ad copy had an offer that he worded, “enter our “Optimize your Vacation Budget” sweepstakes. I was in a rush, so without thinking I slammed a peppier version in the sponsor line, Win a Free Vacation from SMART Internet.

Peter got 35 clicks, total. Then over the next few days readers began complaining, “how come there’s no issue this week?”
Turns out my sponsor line was “caught” by many companies’ and some ISPs anti-spam programs. So the issue didn’t get through to a whole bunch of people.

Now that the content of your advertisements can affect your deliverability, should email publishers add a list of “forbidden terms” to their media kits? To learn more about what terms can get caught in spam filters, check out this short article by our Tech Columnist, Alexis Gutzman.

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1932