6 eNewsletter Reminders

A good eNewsletter best practices article by Jordan Ayan, the chairman of Create-It! Inc., a technology consulting firm, as well as the CEO of SubscriberMail (www.subscribermail.com), an e-mail marketing company that provides permission-based marketers with services and tools to develop and deliver e-mail. This appeared in Chief Marketer magazine.

A new subscriber "opts in" to receive your newsletter. Great!
So you respond with a simple "Thank You" — right?
Not exactly. The right welcome message can—and should—do a whole lot more.
A recent study reported that 40 percent of Americans who use the Internet changed their opinions of brands as a result of information they gathered online. This underscores the importance of making sure the image you project online, especially the one you communicate in your email campaigns, accurately reflects your core brand values. Often, it all starts with something as basic as your welcome message.

Here are some tips that will enable your organization to succeed in creating and maintaining an email dialog with valued customers and subscribers in the moments after they click on the “subscribe” button.

1. Remember to say thank you. As Bogart put it in Casablanca “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” We all hope that the initial email message is the start of a long-term conversation with a subscriber, customer or prospect. Remember the old adage, ‘you never get a second chance to make a first impression’? Make sure you welcome subscribers to your mailings with open arms using a concise welcome message that confirms who you are, their interests and preferences, assures their right to privacy, and reassures them that they can unsubscribe at any time.
Briefly highlight the content they can expect to receive over the coming weeks and set expectations regarding how often they'll receive it. This is also a good time to build trust with your subscribers. Reassure them that you will not share their personal information and provide a link to your corporate privacy policy.
Don’t forget to use the welcome letter to both reconfirm the value of the email they just signed up for.

2. Dress your welcome letter for success. Get your subscribers used to the look and feel of your email newsletters. Borrow the same or similar graphics used in your current newsletter, literature, or logo. With minimal effort, your welcome message can build brand identity and ensure that future emails will be read.
You've taken the time and trouble to design and develop a beautiful email newsletter that reinforces your brand image, so why send a plain text email to welcome subscribers to that newsletter? Get your readers excited to receive the first issue, and give them a visual preview of what the email newsletter they signed up for will look like. With the flood of email these days, anything you can do to build awareness helps get your email read.

3. How to avoid spam filters and bulk mail folders. Subscribers won't read your newsletter if it never gets delivered or if it gets lost in a bulk mail folder. Make sure your email gets delivered to their inbox where it's easily accessible. At the location where subscribers sign-up, provide the address that the emails will be coming from, and invite them to add it to their address book or white list to ensure delivery (some mailers who know they have problems ending up in the junk folder even actively encourage recipients to check there for the message). Encourage subscribers to add the email address your newsletter will be sent from to their address book. Of course, make sure that you're in compliance with the latest CAN-SPAM legislation and that your email service provider is using the most up-to-date email authentication systems.

4. Give them something special. Everyone likes to get something special, and when you are new to something, it makes you feel even better about your decision. Try to offer subscribers something unique. Maybe it is a special article or white paper they can download, perhaps it is an extra ‘newcomers’ coupon. Whatever you choose, let the subscriber know that, in your eyes, they are special for having taken the time to give you their email address.

5. Make it easy for them to contact you. Don’t bury the 'Contact Us' or 'Unsubscribe me' links in tiny type at the end of the email. This will just annoy someone who needs to contact you. The needs and interests of your readers are always changing, so reassure them that they can easily contact you, update their email preferences or unsubscribe at any time, and provide an easy-to-find link where they can do so.
With a little extra care, you can make your welcome message a dynamic platform for action that makes subscribers feel connected and respected but also communicates a lot about your brand. If your email newsletter is easy to work with, your organization may be easy to work with too.

6. Design basics. Always choose a subject line that is simple and accurately reflects your message, whether it's "Welcome to XYZ newsletter" or "Thank you for subscribing to XYZ news."
Have a mechanism in place that sends your welcome message automatically and immediately after a subscriber signs up. (SubscriberMail and most major email service providers do this automatically).
Keep the message brief, with as much important content "above the fold" as possible.
Remember, first impressions count. And while the medium may change, the quality must stay the same - whether in person, online, on paper, or in your welcome message.

Who wants ads on their cell phone?

How much of a sap does one have to be to allow advertising into a device we hold in our hand? Don't get me wrong, I am an advertising evangelist, but this makes me a little nervous:

U.S. mobile advertising is expected to grow from $421 million in 2006 to $4.7 billion by 2011. Worldwide, the market is expected to expand to $11.3 billion by the same year, and it is a market ripe for business information companies.

A recent Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) survey calculated that in five years, 52% of the brands surveyed expect to spend between 5% and 25% of total marketing budget on mobile marketing. Worldwide mobile media ad spending will reach $14.4 billion by 2011, up from $1.4 billion in 2007, according to Strategy Analytics.

I smell a backlash coming.

Global Findings Show Decline of TV as Primary Media Device

I forgot where I plucked this. Whereever it came from it is interesting. . .

A new IBM online consumer study, a component of the upcoming report "The end of advertising as we know it" planned for the fall, shows that among consumer respondents, 19 percent stated spending six hours or more per day on personal Internet usage, versus nine percent of respondents who reported the same levels of TV viewing. 66 percent reported viewing between one to four hours of TV per day, versus 60 percent who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage.
When it comes to mobile and Internet entertainment, consumers are seeking consolidated, trustworthy content, recognition and community. Despite natural lags among marketers, advertising revenues will follow consumers' habits, concludes the report.

To effectively respond to this power shift, the study sees:
Advertising agencies going beyond traditional creative roles to become brokers of consumer insights
Cable companies evolving to home media portals
Broadcasters and publishers racing toward new media formats

Marketers forced to experiment and make advertising more compelling
Bill Battino, Communications Sector managing partner, IBM Global Business Services, says "Consumers are demonstrating their desire for both wired and wireless access to content... an average of 81 percent of consumers surveyed globally indicated they've watched, or want to watch, PC video, and an average of 42 percent indicated they've watched, or want to watch, mobile video..."
The steady growth of consumer adoption of digital music, video, and other entertainment services -- though markets are still small by comparison to traditional media -- show households are no longer one size fits all:

23 percent of respondents reported using a portable music service
7 percent reported having a video content subscription for their mobile phones
11 percent reported a PC-based music service
18 percent reported an online newspaper subscription

Saul Berman, IBM Media & Entertainment Strategy and Change practice leader, said, "The Internet is becoming consumers' primary entertainment source. The TV is increasingly taking a back seat to the cell phone and the personal computer among consumers age 18 to 34. Just as mobile communications have replaced traditional land-lines, cable and satellite TV subscriptions risk a similar fate of being replaced as the primary source of content access."
In the largest digital video recorder market, says the report, 24 percent of U.S. respondents reported owning a DVR in their home and watching at least 50 percent of television programming on replay. 33 percent in the U.S. reported watching more television content than before the DVR.