Archive

Archive for 2004

Using Print Monthly Offer to Sell Online Subs – Comic Book

July 28th, 2004

Gotta love it — as their premium (free gift with order) to a new multiplayer online role playing game, the marketing team behind City of Heroes is offering a printed monthly comic book.

Reader Mary Murphy at Studio Artifacts emailed me to say both her husband and 11-year old daughter have subscribed and get, “a 4-color comic book every month to subscribers. Decent art, good content with multi-story arcs, and fan created art and fiction.” The continuing story arcs and fan fic probably both help with loyalty and retention.

And retention is the name of the game when it comes to subscription profits.

Another Reason to Mail on Monday: Better Delivery

July 27th, 2004
A new index from delivery consultant Return Path backs up research we reported last week claiming Monday email gets the best open and click rates.

Return Path`s own analysis of 3.4 million messages showed email sent on Monday is more likely to get where you want it to go, and mornings between 6 and 10 ET are the best times of all.

That`s when delivery rates are 2% better than normal. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., delivery rates fall 3%. Weekends between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. ET are the worst, with delivery rates falling 9.5% to 10% below normal.

Why the variance? Mainly in the way ISPs manage bulk email and spam-control measures, such as limiting how many emails from a single address the ISP will allow through at one time and how it tunes its spam filters at different times.

Return Path`s conclusions:
— Mail on weekdays, not weekends. Delivery rates on the weekends are generally lower and fluctuate more
widely than delivery rates for campaigns sent on weekdays.
— If you have to send on a weekend, do it 6-10 a.m. ET or 10 p.m. – 2 a.m. ET.
— Email campaigns sent 6-10 a.m. ET have higher delivery rates than any other time period no matter which day.
— Monday delivery rates are highest overall, followed by Tuesday, Thursday, and Wednesday.

See the research reported in EmailSherpa here: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2770

Is Your Online Content Being Stolen? How to Find Out (Quickly)

July 26th, 2004

Fun link for online publishers — type your URL into Copyscape’s search box and see where else on the Web your content shows up. It’s not perfect, and only covers Web pages (not file sharing, etc) but easier than doing the basic Google search yourself.

Aggregated Headlines More Profitable Than Original Content?

July 25th, 2004

At about the same time that Microsoft announced it’s selling off Slate.com, it also launched the beta-version of MSN NewsBot. The Newsbot is basically a Google News clone. So, they’re betting publishing hotlinked headlines to content sites is more profitable than actually publishing the content itself.

Should publishers of original content balk at this? You can certainly stop MSN Newsbot or Google or many others from linking to your site and/or caching pages, but then you risk losing a potentially invaluable traffic source. If you’re able to monetize the eyeballs that the headline aggregators send you, then fine.

However, as the law firm of Levine Sullivan, Koch & Schultz pointed out in their May 2004 memo to NEPA members, aggregators (such as bloggers, digest newsletters, and search engine news services) can be prosecuted for profiting off of others’ hot news stories. It’s based on a WWI-era Supreme Court ruling where an AP scoop was copied by a competitor deemed to be “appropriating to itself the harvest of those who have sown.” The Court said others can’t free-ride on someone else’s original content if this hurts the originator’s economic viability.

So there’s lots of grey area – and as Google and MSN announce how much cash they are making from selling ads against other publishers’ headlines, I think we’re gonna see some legal rumblings….

Copywriting Tip — Swipe Exact Wording from Prospects' Notes

July 22nd, 2004

We’re hiring (yes, again), so I’ve been plowing through stacks of resumes emailed in response to ads I’ve placed.

The quickest way to sort the pile is by glancing at cover letters to see if they refer to specific skill sets from the ad.

I’m dismayed by how many applicants spotlight their favorite talent in their cover letter (“I’m great with people” “I love writing”) even though it’s not a skill our ad mentioned.

So there they are singing and dancing about how wonderful they are at something, but it’s not the thing my ad very specifically said we were looking for. The tiny percent who took the time to craft a letter that said, “I’m great at X, Y, Z that you say you want” are the ones who we call for interviews.

My top runners all used the exact wording we put in the ad itself to describe the job. So if I said, ‘You must be good at spread sheeting’, they don’t reply “I’m good at Excel.” They use the exact term “spread sheeting.”

Copying exact terminology not only can help you land a job, it also applies to: – search engine marketing (and how!) – ad headline writing – reply notes to RFPs and enquiries from business prospects

In fact, if you’re in b-to-b, you could try training your sales reps to cut and paste key words directly from prospect’s inbound requests when reps reply.

The nice thing is, it’s such easy copywriting. No brain required. (So why doesn’t everyone do it?)

eBay to start selling audio downloads

July 21st, 2004

According to new from Peter Zollman over at Classified Intelligence Alert, eBay is about to test selling music downloads. Which will no doubt throw the RIAA into a tizzy. I also wonder if the folks at Audible (who sell digital audio downloads to bestsellers, newspapers, and their own original content) will soon find themselves competing with “used” copies of their audiobooks, kinda like the print book world.

We just did a case study on music downloads this week. Steve Winwood is giving away an eight-minute song free for file sharers from his latest album in hopes it will raise CD sales. I’ll bet you a dollar that somebody sticks that song on eBay, and another buck that somebody else is dumb enough to buy it there because they don’t know you can get it free at RazorPop….

Oh yeah.

How Tough Are Corporate Spam Filters?

July 21st, 2004
Pretty tough, based on what 168 IT executives of major North American companies told Forrester Research in a study sponsored by email delivery consultant Return Path.

Here“s what you“re up against when you send email to corporate addresses. Since the numbers add up to more than 100%, you can assume companies are using more than one tactic to block suspect email:

1. 61% of IT execs said they use a readymade commercial filtering application or appliance.

2. 49% said they create their own rules to block spam based on message weight /size, keywords, attachments or message type.

3. 37% said they run each message sender through their own blacklist, while 34% said they use public blacklists. The most frequently cited blacklists are Mail Abuse Prevention Service (MAPS), Open Relay Database (ORB), SPEWS, SpamCop, Spamhaus and WireHub/Easynet.

4. 27% use a client-side application like Norton Anti-Spam (about a quarter of respondents said they use that application, the largest single bloc in the study)

5. 10% use an open-source application like SpamAssassin.

A couple other findings:

— Nearly half of respondents who filter say they customize the settings on their filtering application or appliance to be more stringent than the default settings.

— 23% of the people who said they use a public blacklist to screen out spammers didn“t know which blacklist they use.

Return Path has packaged the findings in a free three-page whitepaper which you can download here.

Survey Says: Shoppers Would Sacrifice Privacy for Personalization

July 20th, 2004

How much data can you extract from your customers and prospects on your mailing list before you scare them away? More than you might think, especially if you market to a younger audience.

More than half the respondents to an online survey said they would give up some personal info in order to get more relevant shopping and content, and people under age 35 are more likely to blab than the over-35 set.

Here are a few data points from a new survey on online-personalization from ChoiceStream, a Cambridge, Mass. company that specializes in designing personalization systems for e-retailers and online content providers, as reported Monday in Internet Retailer’s email newsletter:

— 64% of people who filled out an online survey said they would share some of their personal preferences in order to get “a more personalized shopping experience” online

— 56% would hand over some demographic data for the same end.

— 71% of the 18-34 age group would provide personal preferences and 63% would share demographic data.

— In contrast, 57% of everybody over age 35 would specify preferences, and 49% would share demographic data.

— Although people were less likely to permit Web sites to track their clicks or purchase histories (40% said that was okay), younger people had less of a problem with (47% to 32%).

Age also determines the kind of personalized content people want online. The youngest online adults (18 to 24) wants personalized recommendations on music (45%), DVDs (29%) and books (26%).

Personalized Web search results ranked highest with over-50 respondents (35%), followed by books (30%), news (22%) and travel (21%).

Boosting Newsletter Open Rates with Reply Required Contest

July 20th, 2004

Chuck Woodbury, editor at RV Travel newsletter is testing adding a regular reader contest as an involvement device. (We do the same thing at our SherpaWeekly.)

Chuck’s taken it one step further and stolen an idea from radio. If you win his contest, you have to click on a link to fill out a form to get your $50 prize. Which means you have to watch your email like a hawk, looking for a note from Chuck to see if you’ve won.

Plus, he gives a reply deadline. And he notes “And for the record: this newsletter is typically issued at 8:45 a.m., Pacific Time, every Sunday” so folks know when to start watching their in-boxes.

Great idea! We’ll contact Chuck to see how things are going with this in a couple of months when he has some good before-and-after data.

'Spam King' Fined $50K

July 20th, 2004
Scott “OptInRealBig” Richter“s final fine, levied by New York State, will end up costing him $50,000, or about a quarter-cent on the dollar. Or maybe the proceeds of one spam mailing.

Oh, and he also has to stop using bogus headers and deceptive routing and domains from now on, and turn over customer records and copies of all emails he sends so that Spitzer“s office can monitor him for three years.

NY Attorney General and anti-spam firebrand Eliot Spitzer made big news last December when he sought a $20 million fine against the self-described Spam King, a figure he said at the time would “wipe out whatever profits he made.”

The fine breaks down to a $40,000 fine plus $10,000 to cover lawsuit costs.