photo credit: solidstate_

Over the last 2 days, we’ve talked about poorly thought through emails.

Today, one more email that should have been thought about a bit more.

Last week, I received an email from a guy whose email newsletter I receive. The subject of this random email? ”I saw you open my newsletter, any questions I can answer?”

On top of that, there was no email body text.

That’s right. An email that says “I saw you open my newsletter” with no other text.

Where’s the spy cam?

So how can emailers figure out that I opened an email? Several ways. Legal ones, of course.

Emailers can tell if you opened your email if they include an image in the email that has a unique “web address” (like http://www.website.com/markriffeyopenedmyemail.jpg). If you open the email, that image is loaded from their web server.

Like any web server, it logs when a file is loaded into a browser (or elsewhere). If the name of the image is unique (or there is software on the server to make it appear that way internally to them), then it can record that someone (not necessarily you, but probably you) viewed that particular image.

It doesn’t see onto your computer or anything like that, it simply notes that a computer somewhere (yours or someone else’s) asked it to load an image file name associated with you.

Emailers can also tell if you opened if you click a link in the email – not because there’s a spycam – but because links in the email are customized by their email software to make them unique to you. Same principle.

These links still go to the page you wanted, of course.

All of this is decades old technology, but we haven’t gotten to the dumb part: The discomfort of the subject line of the email.

Discomfort leads to unsubscribes

A programmer (as others might) knows how the emailer might know I’ve opened (not necessarily read) their email, but for anyone else, saying “I saw you open my newsletter” is inviting them to unsubscribe.

Saying it to a programmer is kinda dumb (not that the emailer knows that). Saying it to anyone else could be fatal to their email list.

Be very careful with those who have chosen to value your thoughts enough to subscribe to your blog, newsletter or email address.

You can lose it all in a heartbeat with one inopportune comment.

photo credit: Renneville

Imagine you’re talking with a prospect or client on the phone and right before the critical word or phrase that almost always closes the deal, you suddenly hang up.

You’d never do that, right? Would make it kinda hard to close the sale, don’t you think?

Thing is, your email, social media and website might be hanging up on prospects, albeit in a slightly different way.

Let’s talk about paying attention to some details you might not be watching. They’re details that might completely change the message you’re trying to get across to a client or prospect.

I’m talking about the repercussions of being just a tad too wordy.

Isn’t that funny? Yeah, I know I have zero room to talk on that. It’s an effort I have to stay focused on, so today I’ll show you why it’s important.

Twitter Cutoff

In Twitter,  your message can be 140 characters long.

BUT…if the message is more than 120 characters long and someone retweets it (sends it to their followers, which is very desirable for you), the characters past 120 are cut off as shown below.

See the … after “Jonathan Bu”? You’ve been snipped. Cut off.

If there’s part of a URL or some other important info at the end of your message, bummer.

If there’s anything there that’s critical to your message, you’re not a happy camper.

Outlook Cutoff

Outlook’s notification window shows approximately 30 characters of the title of your email. The number varies slightly because a proportional font is used in that window, meaning that some letters and numbers are wider than others.

I had my friend, mountain photographer and graphic artist Leroy Schulz send me 2 emails with totally different subjects. As you can see below, they look the same in the notification box.

Identical notifications, yet their messages are totally different: One says “Mark, Are you voting for Obama? You’d be crazy not to”, while the other says “Mark, Are you voting for Obama? I wouldn’t dream of it”.

How’d you like to make that mistake?

Sure, some people do it on purpose to provoke you to open the email, but are those the folks who gain your trust? I doubt it.

Likewise, at the default width, Outlook’s inbox shows you only a part of the email’s subject (see below).

As you can see above, having the subject cut off might cause a big problem, especially if someone doesn’t bother to read the email (like that ever happened).

The actual subject of the email above is “Dude, I caught your wife cheating last night at our weekly poker game.”

In fact, the cut off subject might just keep your email from getting read – and that’s what this is really about.

If your prospects and clients use some other email program, it’s bound to have similar limitations.

Google Cutoff

In Google results, page titles longer than 70 characters get cut off with a “…”.

This is the place where I get bit, because my blog post titles are occasionally too long.

Here’s an example:

In the example above, the title tag is too long (thus the … after “smart business moves”).

If the word after “moves” is important to finding your site, your prospect will never see it. For example, it might say “moves wisely to accept competitors’ cards” (which is what they did).

Sure, if the word is important, it should occur before that point if at all possible, but sometimes it isn’t.

Eliminating the … is the goal because you want the words in your title to be optimized for a) Google and b) those humans you want to see the title and be motivated to click on the link.

In each of these 3 cases, you typically want the truncated info to help answer the question that’s on their mind at that moment or provoke them to take an action.

Needless to say, “…” doesn’t even begin to do that.

Where are you getting cut off?

photo credit: kevindooley

About a year ago, I ran some tests to see how clued in re: email use and mobile/internet marketing each Presidential campaign was.

Each campaign got an email address all to themselves, one that I use for no other purpose so that I could track what their campaign did. In fact, the candidate name was the part before the @ sign in the email address – hard to mistake for another campaign:)

One of the reasons I didn’t leave the lists after the election: I wanted to see what they did with the lists after the campaign – something you should be very aware of as you build an email list in your business.

Here’s a summary of what happened:

Ron Paul

The Ron Paul list ended up in the hands of a number of what I would categorize as “freedom fighter” lists as well as on Mr. Paul’s fundraising list. The email from this list was of such volume and high rhetoric that I finally had to unsubscribe out of annoyance: the interruption factor was just too high. Examples include the “Free Foundation” (Mr. Paul’s Foundation for Rational Economics and Education) and “Campaign for Liberty”.

I wasn’t asked to opt-in, they simply included me on their list because that email address specific to Ron Paul’s campaign was on Paul’s Presidential campaign list. They had it, they used it. I suspect someone there simply hasn’t taken the time to understand the written (and unwritten) rules/laws about email marketing, opt-in, etc.

Hillary Clinton

Hillary’s list ended up in the hands of HillaryPAC (which may be on hiatus now that she is U.S. Secretary of State) and while I was sent an email from Hillary’s list asking me to sign up for the “American Democracy Institute” (EmpowerChange.org) list, I wasn’t added to it without permission. The same type of attempt was made by MediaMatters. Since she was named SoS, no emails have been sent by anyone to this Hillary-specific address, which makes sense:)

John McCain

McCain’s list ended up going to the Republican National Committee (RNC). That one probably annoys me the most because it is most like the lists related to Mr. Paul’s original campaign email list. I now get emails about Norm Chapman and any other issue RNC Chairman Richard Steele thinks I simply must know about – and in a tone that is just about unreadable. Think “National Enquirer” with a little Rosanne Rosannadanna added in, along with an Obama-esque donation button at the bottom.

Barack Obama

Obama’s list appears to still be in the campaign’s hands (yes, he’s still campaigning, but that’s a post for someone else’s blog), as I’ve received nothing from other lists to that address.

Mitt Romney

Last but not least, the list from Mitt Romney: Amazingly, I havent received a single email from his list since he quit the campaign and it appears that his campaign didn’t give the list to anyone else.

Treat them like customers, not list members

With the exception of Mr. Paul’s list (primarily because of the volume), I’ve decided to remain on these lists to see what happens to these specific-to-the-campaign email addresses as time moves forward.

How you treat your customers’ email addresses will reflect back upon you. Stay on topic, stay on message and NEVER, EVER give your list to another vendor, business or associate.

What Hillary did (sending an email to her list, suggesting that you might check out another entity) is somewhat common – and still acceptable – business practice, but automatically signing up your customers to umpteen other lists as Mr. Paul’s campaign people did is not.

photo credit: Zesmerelda

After requesting a beta invitation to a web-based service, I received the activation email.

*ONE* minute later, I got an email from the CEO asking how I liked the service. 

Careful there, Sparky. 

While I’d be the first to encourage such emails, you have to think about how – and particularly, when – you send them. 

It doesn’t make sense to send them 1 minute after sending an activation email unless you want to send the wrong signals.

IE: “I’m sending everyone the same email even though my email is worded otherwise” and “I don’t really want your feedback since you couldn’t possibly have any yet”. 

Neither one is really what the sender wants. 

It doesn’t make sense to send the emails until some period of time after the activation email has been clicked on, since they couldn’t have any feedback for you until they’ve activated the service and had at least a little bit of time to use it and see what it’s really like. 

You see the same thing in blogs where you can generate emails automatically the first time someone comments. Sounds great in theory, but if the email comes 20 seconds after you post the comment, it isn’t personal.

Instead of doing that – what if the automated email was sent to the blog owner, giving them time to check the commenter’s website, find out a little about them, much less actually read their comment – then a personal touch can be applied to the partly pre-written email thanking someone for their comment. 

That’s the kind of personal follow up that is appreciated – and it’s still mostly automatic.

There are some hacks to existing tools that auto-email first time commenters. If you use those tools, I suggest using the hacks. Keep it personal.

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

With all that direct mail talk over the last couple of posts, I can just hear the eyes rolling.

After all, direct mail is dead, right?

Perhaps in your market it is. Or, no one needs to use it because other things work better in your market, or because everyone in your market uses it poorly.

Regardless of the reason, if you’re convinced that direct mail is irrelevant – or at least no longer useful – in your market, those last couple of posts were a big waste of your time, right?

Psst…Think about them again, but replace “direct mail” with “email”. Or “face to face sales”, “telephone”, “television”.

Likewise for radio, newspaper ads and any other media you use to communicate with your clients and prospects – including Twitter, blogs, video and other social media tools.

After all, if this message wasn’t carefully crafted to be of use to you…you wouldn’t likely be here.

Each of these tools are simply another way to have or start a conversation with a person.

Never, ever forget that.

Download audio file (DirectMailIsDead.mp3)

People don’t want to buy from people who place sales calls to them during dinner (duh). It isn’t because they don’t want to buy your item. They just don’t want to buy it from someone they don’t know. Someone they don’t know hasn’t got “permission” to sell to them, because there isn’t yet a relationship with someone who knows better than to call during dinner.

People can get violent – electronically, at least – when people they don’t know send them an email asking them to buy something. Usually it’s a poorly written email, so it wouldn’t sell anything to most people in the first place.

Of course, because email costs so little to send, when you send out 62 million emails, the .0001% that buy (and yes, they actually do) make it worthwhile to the slimy character who sends them. That is, until their internet provider cuts them off. More on that shortly.

It isn’t as bad with U.S. Mail because you don’t have to pay to receive it, but so-called junk email still gets some people pretty steamed up.

The message itself determines a lot of what happens when it gets delivered.

If you send email, you can be a total putz and not think about your message at all. Send it to everyone with a heartbeat. Who cares if you try to sell a comb to a bald guy? Maybe he collects them.

Direct mail has a way of sorting out the lazy. They go broke rather quickly if they mail poorly.

Not many people have my cell number. I only get text messages only from my kids, my wife, kids in the Scout troop, and from my kids’ friends.

Parents of teenagers know what happens when text messages go big: Big cell bills. Imagine if you got even 10% as many spam text messages as you do spam emails. Suddenly, we’re talking real money unless you’re paying for unlimited texting.

For the most part, you have two choices: Get all text messages or get none. Some cell carriers have filtering tools, but they are mostly all or none choices. As in “filter all text messages that arrive by email” or “allow all text messages that arrive by email”. Not much of a choice, particularly if you’re the parent of a young adult, or if your business automation uses emailed text messages to alert you to various situations.

But today’s column isn’t about Verizon, most days I actually like them – especially the nice folks in the office in C-Falls.

It’s about not making the mistakes that lazy marketers make, and they make them in every media there is.

For example, I recently received a poorly targeted pitch via text message. It says “Four Phones sharing UNLIMITED minutes only $xxx.xx/month. Quality, Service, Value. Cellular ONE in Polson. 885-xxxx.”

Misguided.

First of all, if you emailed this text message to every other 406-249-xxxx number in the Valley, you probably got a lot of nasty phone calls and emails. That probably wasted your time. Wasting time is not typically the goal of your marketing:)

Second, I don’t live in Polson. Why in the world would everyone in the North Valley want a cell number that’s local to Polson – over an hour south of us?

The really unfortunate part was using a Bresnan email account to send your message. See, Bresnan’s terms of service for internet service include a clause that says you can’t spam people. So when Bresnan gets all of the complaints about your message, they’ll probably terminate your account. And of course, since you don’t use a CellularOnePolson.com email like you should, any legitimate email to your Bresnan account will just disappear when they cancel your account for being a spammer.

That’s probably not the desired effect.

Fine tune your message. Send it to the right people. Send it at the right time (which is likely “more than once”).

And for heaven’s sake, don’t call during dinner.

Yesterday, I received an email from someone whose clients are video stores. Because they subscribe to my print newsletter, I asked them to put me on their email list.

Part of today’s email to their video store clients included this comment:

I had a customer ask us how to compete with RedBox (emphasis mine). I’ve been doing some thinking and asking questions about this. I’ve watched people in our Albertsons store waiting in line to get a $1.00 movie from a machine. I kept thinking how impersonal it was.

So xxx went down and rented at Redbox to see how it worked. He rented a movie. Then when he got home, he got a receipt for the movie in his email. When he returned the movie, he got a receipt again in his email. Later on he got some offers for a free movie and information about new releases soon to be available.

I *love* that they noted right off the bat that this kind of rental was impersonal and created a line – but also noted the smart things RedBox does as well.

photo credit: fabbio

2 strikes against RedBox, right off the bat. Impersonal. Lines. Every store has lines now and then, but will people stand in line to wait for a machine? Maybe an ATM, but a video dispenser? Time will tell.

If 10 people are in the video store, think about how 10 of them would mill around a RedBox machine (it’s about the size of a Coke machine).

I’m sure you can think of some things to pick on regarding Netflix – while noting that you (you being the video store owner) can clearly see their primary advantage (no late fees).

What’s easy to overlook is the primary advantage to Netflix: No matter how many videos you watch, they get their monthly fee, month-in, month-out. As I’ve noted in the past, you should be looking for ways to implement this model in some part of your business.

Our goal is to give you the tools to compete with RedBox, Netflix, Blockbuster, and anyone else. But, there is one thing you have to do… use the tools!

No doubt. Kinda like all the things we talk about here.

Implement them. Otherwise your time here is largely wasted, don’t you think?

I was listening to Gary Vaynerchuk on Donny Deutsch’s The Big Idea last night and he repeated what Dan Kennedy says regularly: “Money loves speed.”

He means speed of implementation. Do it today. Not next month or next quarter, or “someday”.

P.S. I’m testing Windows Live writer to write posts for the next few days (it works on WordPress blogs too) so if you see anything funny (other than that photo of me up on the right), please let me know.

Back in January, Denny Hatch was discussing some emails he received: some personalized, some not.

photo credit: batega

Would you rather receive this (his example):

Date: 14 Jan 2008 03:58:31- 0800
From: “Ticketmaster”
To: xxxxx
Subject: Event Reminder: Young Frankenstein
Ticketmaster Event Reminder
Hello Denison Hatch. Your event is happening soon!
Young Frankenstein.

When:
Friday, January18, 2008
8:00pm

Where:
Hilton Theater
213 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036

Or this:

Dear Valued Customer,

On behalf of the hundreds of Delta Global Sales professionals dedicated to serving you and your travelers worldwide, “Thank You!” for choosing Delta as your preferred airline

To Delta’s credit, they no longer send me “Dear Valued Customer” emails, they got a clue sometime after I posted that and started using my name. I don’t know if the blog post had anything to do with it or not. I mean, sure, I know that automated systems sent the email, but someone, somewhere at Delta had to write the template. A real person. Presumably, that person was charged with writing a personal note to a client whose business they appreciate.

However, there are dozens of other businesses that continue to send me “Dear Valued Customer” emails.

Credit card companies. Utility companies. Car dealerships. Clothing and outdoor gear vendors.

The fact that Ticketmaster was smart enough to send a reminder email was pretty cool. People are busy. We need reminders, even if we have a Day-Timer, a PDA, a smart phone, a spouse, Outlook reminders and a personal assistant.

The fact that Ticketmaster made the email timely and personalized made it seem real, as if a person typed it.

Would Denny be as impressed if he received the email after the show? Or if it said “Dear Valued Ticketmaster Customer” or similar?

This doesn’t just extend to emails. Same goes for letters, postcards, phone calls, packaging, shipping info, and so on.

How many contacts in your business touch your customers personally? How many are annoying, impersonal Dear Valued Customer grams?

What would you rather receive from the businesses you frequent?