A Sherpa reader who’d like to start an email newsletter for his company emailed in, “What are the pros and cons of using one of the free list hosting services on the Web to send my newsletter? Why should I pay for this when I can get it for free?”
I’m not against using free services (in fact Sherpa launched using a free email list hosting service, and then transferred to a paid service after we hit 1,000 subscribers in the first month) however, be forewarned that:
1. Free list hosting services such as Topica’s free version and Yahoo Groups do put ads on your newsletter when they send it out. Which may not suit your company branding.
2. Free list hosting services have a disconcerting history of either going out of business, or getting bought and merged into a different service, or switching to paid only. In fact today About.com’s free newsletter list hosting service shut down its free offering.
“You write about how important subject lines are to the success of email marketing. What about ‘From:’ lines? Do they affect my email campaign success?”, asks a Sherpa reader today.
Answer: yes, yes, yes. Many people go through their email in-box reading “from” lines to decide which emails to open and which to dump. So the “from” line should be a name they will recognize as being not-spammy, and as being someone useful they know. So instead of having a “from” line read “Customer Service” or using your president’s name who they might not know, use the most recoginizable brand name they would know.
Also, be forewarned — the name you use had better be a name they remember giving permission to email them. So if you are renting an email list, you can’t put in your brand name in the “from” line because they didn’t give permission to you — they gave permission to the list owner. If you use your brand name instead, you risk being labled a spammer, being put in black holes, etc. It’s dangerous business.
MightyWords announced this morning that they are ceasing operations as of Jan 12th 2002. The Company, which sells digitally downloadable text-based content — basically short ebooks although they always called them “very long articles” –, was ContentBiz’s very first sponsor. In fact they are part of the reason we survived our early days. I also admired and personally liked a lot of people who worked there.
But fact was their marketing stank. I felt they wasted a real opportunity to grow, especially in the genre fiction area where rabid fans will buy anything by certain authors. (A niche that Fictionwise has now happily, and profitably, taken.) And for mysterious internal reasons they never were able to take advantage of sister-company Fatbrain’s exceptional corporate intranet bookstore program to sell digital docs to the biz world.
MightyWords RIP.
The sacrifices I make for my readers! I was hanging out at Debbie Weil’s WordBiz focus group yesterday because she called and promised free food. Unfortunately it was gourmet pizza which I’m completely allergic to. So I sat there and chewed on the random olive instead.
Sooner or later, the discussion between her email newsletter readers ended up where almost all online content discussions end up these days. Does anybody pay for any content online? One exec maintained with utter and loud certainty that “I’ll NEVER pay for content! … unless my company reimburses me.”
Another WordBiz reader said that she would not be interested in paying for a subscription to general email newsletters — but if those newsletters offer special reports on niche topics that fit her, the sale is a home run. A third focus group attendee said of paying for an online subscription, “It would have to be really dynamite content that I really couldn’t find anywhere else for free. It would have to be relevant to me beyond the point of reason for me to pay for it.”
All of which made me realize that selling online content subscriptions, due to our current free heritage, is going to continue to be harder than selling offline subscriptions for a bit. Those of us in the game need to rally our best marketing tactics, and test very targeted landing (aka splash) pages so sales prospects clicking through from highly targeted campaigns, then see highly targeted sales pitches aimed at convincing them we meet their personal information needs *beyond reason* and in a way no free content online never could and never will.
This past January, we sold off our UK newsletter, MarketingSherpa.co.uk to British trade publisher Chinwag. Now they’ve relaunched the publication under a new name — Marketing Monitor. (Not quite as snappy as Sherpa but I guess the new economy requires a bit more serious sobriety in terminology.) Anyway, the first issue is out and it’s got quite a useful article on how British banks and banking customers are moving online. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, go here.
I was going to write today that, “hey a trend, nobody’s sent me any viral holiday cards yet.” And then just in the nick of time Sherpa fan Paul Barrs sent me one. It’s very different than last year’s hottest viral cards which featured snowmen that beat up little children (trust me, it was funny at the time.)
This year’s best viral card (yup I’m brazenly predicting it will be the best, no matter what else I get) is entitled “A Blessing” … and thoughtfully reminds recipients of just how lucky we are. Because we can read, eat, go to any church we chose, have our health, etc. The accompanying photos are gorgeous and save the card from potential sappyness. To check out this best holiday viral card, click here.
I’m very pleased to report that Contentious, the ezine for journalists and publishers involved in online content, is back in regular publication. Check out editor Amy Gahran’s overview of the online content scene at the link below.
Best quote, “If you’re an online content publisher (even for a corporate or institutional Web site) you’re probably being pressured to slash your budget severely. Think very, very carefully about how to accomplish this.”
(BTW: Thanks to everyone who emailed in to let me know that Amy gave me a link in this issue. And yes, even if she hadn’t I would have still happily brought this news note to you!)
http://www.contentious.com/articles/011210.htm
“The one good thing about this switch from Excite @home to AT&T email, “ Kelli J Fields, a copywriting consultant who works from home using a DSL account, just told me on the phone, “is that now I’m not getting any crappy emails. My in-box is spam-free!”
Since Excite@home went bankrupt Friday night November 30th, the millions of people around the US relying on Excite-related addresses – including @home dsl users – have been switched over to the broadband and email providers in their local area. For example, for about 850,000 former @home email users this is AT&T. The good news is these folks still get email — and for the time being their in-boxes are spam-free.
The bad news is their in-boxes are also opt-in email free because NO email going to old Excite addresses is going to be forwarded to the new addresses! That means your marketing message to rented opt-in lists, or to your own house file, is not getting through to them.
#1 most useful thing I learned at @d:tech was from Kevin Lee of did-it.com who’s done extensive research on conversion patterns of consumers who click on search engine results. He’s noticed that the type of consumer who clicks on the very first result is FAR LESS LIKELY to convert into a customer of that site, than people who click on the second or third ranked results of their search. Why? Apparently it’s due to personality types. People who click on the very first thing are more likely to be impulse clickers who didn’t bother to read the decription of the site to see if it was right for their needs. People who click on lower-ranked sites are considered clickers, who carefully decided which site was right for them.
This definitely means if you pay for placement on systems such as Overture or Ah-Ha, you should be tracking the conversion on the clicks you’re buying based on what rank you purchased. Make sure you’re paying for a rank that brings clickers most likely to convert – not impulse clickers.
Sherpa reader Tricia Robinson, VP Marketing at Socketware, just sent in the following useful factoid:
“Mondays stink for sending email campaigns! We attribute it to ‘Weekend Wearies’ Since Monday is a
back-to-business day for most people, less time is spent with commercial email promotions. We encourage marketers to not send on Mondays.”
At the very least, her observation, based on watching results for dozens of clients sending email, means that you should be testing day-of-week for your campaigns. Yes, this definitely affects b2c marketers too, because so many consumers check personal email accounts during the working day, often because their office Internet access is so much speedier — and because at work you’re not competing with the kids to use the family’s home computer.
