April 23, 2008

Surprising Results to Email Survey Results: eROI Report

We have finally published the Q2 2008 The Cradle & The Grave email survey results

The full report is at this link:
http://eroi.com/online-marketing-resource-center/resource-center/?sec=3

Respondents:
· Over 500 marketers were surveyed about the subscribe/unsubscribe process. While these processes are improving, they have yet to reach what we would call exceptional.

Key observations:
· People are not matching up other marketing efforts like they should
· People are not monitoring feedback loops and complaint rates
· The thank you page, prime visitor real estate is being wasted
· Not surveying subscribers at opt out
· Not allowing frequency changes

Some Results:

I. Opt - in:
--Only 30% of the respondents say they use opt-in; still below where the industry should be

--Of those that use opt-in; only a 4% provide more than 10 ways for someone to opt-in and the majority, three-quarters, have only 1-3 ways.

--Incentives/Content for opting:
§ 88% offering newsletter subscription
§ 29% offering access to preferred content
§ 24% offering discounts/coupons
§ 22% offering some kind of contest

--One-third of marketers don't do any segmenting at opt-in

--Landing page improvements needed

II. Opt-Out
--30% of marketers don't pass opt-in names onto other systems

--65% won't pass on when subscribers opt-out

--CRM Systems - lead way in third-party applications for opt-in/out

--90% of marketers don't follow up with opt-outs - potential for reaching through other channels

--One-third of marketers don't send a confirmation email after opt-out - which can offer the chance for the subscriber to change mind.

III. Feedback Loop:
--Nearly one-quarter of email marketers don't know what they currently do with abuse complaints, or how they are handled. Is this lack of education by the ESP or is it lack of understanding the value of feedback loops and the purpose of them?

--Only about one-half of email marketers currently monitor feedback loops.

Comments (0) | Posted by ryan at 4:40 PM | Permalink

April 22, 2008

We're Bringing Sexy Back to Email Marketing, Part II

Because this is such a SEXY presentation, I had to do it on Keynote on a sexy Mac that I have limited access to, therefore, the "Bringing Sexy Back to Email Marketing" presentation is available via a PDF on our site, but not on the extra sexy technology that my associate Dylan Boyd pointed out on the Email Wars blog, called SlideShare. Look for this blog post to be updated with that soon.

Until then, Download the Full PDF presentation of "Bringing Sexy Back to Email" here>>

It's the second downloadable document on that page. Tell me what you think.

Comments (0) | Posted by ryan at 5:15 PM | Permalink

April 20, 2008

Email Overload? Try Social Media Overload

In today's New York Times Business section, there was an astute article on "The Daily Struggle to Avoid Burial by E-Mail" by Randall Stross. At eROI, we have been covered in the press on multiple occasions for Email Addiction or Email Overload, but it was the combination of today's "burial by email" article AND a recent eMarketing speech where a friend of mine talked of maintaining 40 social media site profiles, where I felt compelled to write this blog post (slightly ironic given that a blog is a basic form of social media).

Stross mentioned in the NY Times article that both Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Mark Cuban of Mark Cuban get upwards of 2,000 emails every day and 700 messages daily in Facebook, and both of these executive process all of these emails themselves. I get about 400 emails per day and usually reply to and send 60 emails/day if I'm not booked in meetings all day.

While email is the killer app and where I spend most of my time "online," I also occasionally blog, use LinkedIn sporadically, barely use Facebook, and Twitter when I'm distracted at a conference. Basically, this blog post is my first online admission of becoming an old man - with so many distractions, I wonder if technology company entrepreneurs and executives will evolve into communicating in truncated sentence grunts with very little deep strategic thinking, planning and writing.

I have clients asking frequently, "how will I have time to do everything I do now, AND blog AND engage in all of these conversations about my brand in every single online community?" I've adapted my answer to a more definitive "You can't do it all single-handedly." Let me get back to my 35-year old friend who has 40 profiles - LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yahoo Answers, Lockergnome, digg, del.icio.us, and on and on and on. The new generation and grandpa-old 35 year olds playing the new generation's world, attention deficit disorder is a requirement, not a condition.

So, what's my advice in this cultural change in expectations of keeping up in the online marketing world? Experiment with all of the social networking sites and tools, and find 3 sites/tools that generate the most value to you individually and/or your company (as an entrepreneur, individual benefit/company benefit is often the same). Thankfully, there is a new protocal, OpenID, where one username/password will carry all your info with you for every online community you join, because in the future, we will all be participants in hundreds of these broad social communities or niche branded communities.

With the acceleration of online communication, it relieves anxiety just to admit that "yes, I too, feel completely overwhelmed and overloaded by using every social site and tool that comes along." I've said it and those words shall set me free. Now, if I could just leave my Blackberry locked in my office desk on a weekend. Fat chance.

Comments (0) | Posted by ryan at 2:00 PM | Permalink