'Nuf said.

This simple yet insightful thought was passed along to you by John Engler from UnsubCentral, quoting Datran Media Co-founder and President Matt Keiser, who spoke at the OMMA New York Conference & Exposition in September.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 06:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I like this retailer and shop at them all the time, so I will do them the courtesy of not mentioning their name.

I don't remember exactly when it started, but many months ago, their weekly (sometimes twice weekly) emails started arriving with a subject line simply telling me that my local ads were online. Nothing in the subject line interested me because I had no idea what their specials were. Eventually, curiosity got the better of me, so I opened the message and was prompted to click through to the retailer's site. At that point, I was prompted for my ZIP code and was shown an electronic brochure of the weekly newspaper insert that I already receive.

After a while, they expanded the subject line to also include some special on their e-commerce site, which is an improvement. However, the phrase about my local ads being online always preceded anything else they wrote in the subject line.

A general rule of thumb is that you don't want to require a click-through for your recipient to get your content. This is one of the major reasons video email stalled--email security locked video out of the message itself, and most customers weren't willing to click to a Web site to see the video. If this holds true for my retailer, then requiring a click-through and a ZIP code must surely have negatively impacted the success and ROI of their email program.

Perhaps there are other goals at work here that might explain the change in their email strategy. Or, maybe this works. So, if any of you have tried minimal content in the email with a required click-through to a site and have found it valuable, please let me know.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my favorite speakers at the recent Silverpop customer conference in London was Michael Nutley, editor-in-chief of New Media Age, the U.K. weekly news magazine. Ignoring the standard PowerPoint and visual aids, Michael got up and did something unusual--he just spoke.

He gave a terrific presentation, and I filled pages with notes on his provocative ideas. I won't take you through them all, but here are a few things he said that really stood out for me:

• PVRs (personal video recorders like TiVo) are the rejection of interruption advertising.
• The hegemony of TV and TV advertising is breaking down because people no longer live scheduled lives.
• Communities are no longer limited by geography--they can now be based on shared interests regardless of where members live.
• All roads lead to interactivity--all media is moving toward a dialogue.
• Quoting G. M. O'Connell, founder of Modem Media, on the overuse of interruption-based advertising, Michael said, "You can't annoy people into liking you." This is a sobering point for marketers of otherwise well-respected brands when they ask, "How often can I send to my email list?"
• In the social media space, you don't buy media--you earn it. This is one of my favorites.
• Brands are no longer what we as marketers tell people they are--brands are what people's friends tell them they are.
• Marketers should aspire to the condition of service. In other words, view your marketing as a service to your customers.
• Each new medium spawns a brand new form of advertising. For the Web, it was search. The question is, what will the ideal advertising form be for mobile? It's definitely not search, Michael said. My own thought is that it's not likely to be any form of interruptive marketing because mobile devices are simply too personal and too awkward to manage a stream of incoming messages.

Michael, thanks for coming out and doing such a great job.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my favorite conferences for general marketing is put together by the eMarketing Association. I've been attending and speaking at this gathering for many years. It's a small, intimate event that does a great job of covering a wide range of current topics from the world of online marketing. I can readily recommend this conference for anyone new to emarketing as well as those who are experienced and looking to brush up on the latest and greatest in the industry today. You can check out the eMA's Web site to learn more about the upcoming eM7 conference in Atlanta October 23 - 24, or its conferences in 2008.

P.S. I really don't get paid for writing this or for speaking at the conference. I just like the what it offers.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I always like simple but insightful models, so I made a note to share one of the better examples I've seen recently. Skip Fidura, who manages OgilvyOne Worldwide's email marketing department in London, presented at Silverpop's customer conference in London last week. One of his many good slides included a pyramid with the six levels of relevance. You'll have to imagine the graphic, but here are the six levels from the bottom up: Offer, Profile, Affinity, Collaborative, Expressed and Behavioral.

Skip pointed out that many marketers debate whether expressed preferences or behavioral targeting are a more accurate way to drive relevance. I happen to agree with his ranking, but it is a good point.

Another interesting note from his presentation was based on what I believe to be Ogilvy research: Who you market to is 50 percent more important than Where, When and What you market. Noodle on that for a while...

Posted by Bill Nussey at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dela Quist, CEO of Alchemy Worx, a U.K.-based agency focused on email, is one of the most thoughtful (and entertaining) people in the email business. He was on a panel at our recent customer conference in London. One of my favorite Dela skills is coining new phrases. And, once again he came through.

People who don't respond to their email for long periods of time recently have become referred to as "emotionally unsubscribed." That is, they are no longer interested in the email, but haven't bothered to unsubscribe. Dela has a different twist on this that, frankly, makes a lot more sense to me. In many (if not most) cases, people do want to receive the email, but they don't care about the content at this particular point in time. He believes that recipients find it too difficult to unsubscribe and then re-subscribe. So they simply remain subscribed, but with every intention of being more interested in the content in the future.

So, there you have it... "unemotionally subscribed."

Posted by Bill Nussey at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm on the tail end of a great trip to our London office to speak at our annual customer conference in Europe.

The event was held at the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, the very same place that Winston Churchill ran Britain during World War II. For those of you who have read my book, you know that I'm a huge fan of Churchill. It was a powerful experience to visit the place where he lived and worked and to see so many reflections of his words and actions. Most of the 120 people at the event had not been to the museum, and they all agreed it was an amazing venue for a business conference.

The conference, which we called Advanced Email Strategies, was a great snapshot of the U.K. and broader European email marketplace. Our managing director, Mike Weston, did a great job of lining up speakers and delivering high impact content. We took the opportunity to introduce our U.K. retail email marketing study, which highlights trends in email marketing here in the United Kingdom and contrasts them with what we're seeing in the United States. (You can read the Silverpop press release, which contains a link to get a free copy of the study, here.)

Keep an eye out for my follow-on posting as I get a chance to transcribe my notes on the many things I learned during this knowledge-filled day.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was just thumbing through the recent Direct Marketing Association report, "The State of Retailing Online 2007." It's a great report filled with statistics from some of the most sophisticated marketers out there. One section really caught my attention: the comparison of email from 2005 to 2006. In every category, the effectiveness and scope of email marketing improved. Among the findings:

• Open rates went up from 23 percent to 26 percent despite the increased use of image suppression by popular email clients.
• The percentage of retail customers who have opted into the retailers' lists went up from 45 percent to 55 percent--clearly customers are buying into the value of email.

Posted by Bill Nussey at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)