Chris Baggott's Email Marketing Best Practices

Your Help Needed Please

My cousin is a young filmaker in LA....which means he is hungry. 

He has a music video that he has a good chance of winning a contenst with.   Can you please hit the link below and vote for him?  His name is Matt Johnston.  Someday you will be telling people...."oh yeah:  Matt...sure I helped make him famous."  :-)

Pass it on to your friends & family too!

Hey everyone,

I need your vote!  The band Ozomatli had a music video contest that I
decided to enter.  They just chose my video as one of the top three videos
and have posted it on their website to let the fans vote. So please click on
the link below and vote for the MATTHEW JOHNSTON video. It only takes a few
seconds to vote.   

http://www.ozomatli.com/site.php?content=Video_Contest

Please spread the word.  I think there is only a couple days of voting and I
would love to win this.  Hope all is well!

Thanks!

Matt

The right way to email a blogger

Now, this seems like the right way to email a blogger.  Simple, personal.  It's from the blogger himself not some agency (like you are so important) and there is a benefit to me.

So in this case, I'm happy to link to http://personalbrandingblog.wordpress.com

Is This SPAM?

Honest question:  Is this SPAM?

So I've got a blog.  This is clearly a promotional item designed to get me to read this guys post and hopefully comment on it.   Well ok.....

Do I have  a prior relationship?  No
Is the sender clearly identified and does it explain why I'm getting this?  No
Is there an Unsubscribe or physical address?  No

So is this SPAM? 

Is Branding Important in a web 2.0 world

Ok, so I entered my first essay contest since....well this is the first essay contest I've ever entered :-)

The question was:

"Why should a legitimate business need to worry about branding?"

In the internet age, 'legitimate" incorporates a much broader scope of businesses than ever before...Coke to Jones Soda.   Budwieser to Local Microbrew. 

In the old days, branding was enough to carry the entire relationship.  In the old mass marketing world of TV, Radio, Bill Boards & Print media, you could establish a sense of differentionan through old fashioned reach & frequency.  Pound on people hard enough and they would succomb to your Brand Message and marketers enforce loyalty.

We all know that model is broken...so does that mean branding is over...unessary?

What it means is that Branding takes on a new role.  The role as a key component in a multi-channel, multi-touch strategey.  Branding as permission to continue the relationship.  The tip of the spear.

Branding is that slight edge that gives legitimate companies the edge.  In a world that is increasingly driven by search, people know what they want to accomplish.  They research, the get opinions..then they search.  For the most part they will find lots of choices, similar prices and the slight differentiator will be the brand.

I always love the dating analogy.  Guy walks up to a girl at a bar.  "hey, can I buy you a drink?"   Fat Chance.

Same guy, same girl, same bar:  This time a friend tells the girl; "You see that guy over there?"  "He owns his own business and is really nice."  He's branded.  Bingo. 

That's why branding is still relevant.

Marketing Sherpa Email Marketing Summit

Anne Holland of Marketing Sherpa put up a great summary of the recent Email Marketing Summit.  You should check it out.

This was my favorite tactic:

....Essenctual’s Baier gave the intriguing example of a recent de-escalating promo in which responders received 25% off day-of for an email sent on Friday, 20% if they bought on Saturday and 15% if they waited until Sunday. “Blew the door off any other email we ever did.”

More on Online Video

So Hashim makes an interesting comment:

"I have always disliked the amount and size of the ads on the NY Times site. And so what? Ads will never be liked by users."

To me, it's all about Friction.  It's a tradeoff right?  the value of the reward vs. the friction that stands between you and the reward.   

Will you tolerate a cluttered page to read world class journalism from the New York Times?   Will you sit through a commercial to get to Lonelygirl15?   

How many Lonelygirl's or "mentos in diet coke" are there?   

My point in the previous post wasn't really about disparaging online video as a medium appropriate for advertising.   What concerns me is the percentage of time and focus on this.    I don't have the stats, but I would have to guess if you studied all media mentions regarding online marketing for the past few months...you would find that Online Video has occupied a dis-appropriate amount of our attention.

Marketing is basic.  You acquire prospects, you convert them to customers and you maintain that relationship.   Simple, Fundamental.  There is no magic bullet.

Here is one of my favorite quotes:

"Some people try to find things in this game that don't exist but football is only two things - blocking and tackling."
                                                                                             Vince Lombardi

Online Video - Does it deserve all the attention?

I've been hitting a lot of confrences lately...and of course I read and am online most of the day. What I can't avoid is all the hype surrounding Video. I feel like this is the last gasp of traditional media. I can hear the sigh of relief: 'Finally, we can claim to be leveraging the power of the internet....and still use the same tools we've been feeding the world with for the past 50 years.' Ok....video is cool. I love the long tail aspect and for many folks it's fun and cool. But is it measured? Is It one to one? Can you build relationships? This morning I saw this in The Investors Business Daily...first shot that the shine might be wearing off: 'Internet Videos have too many commercials, said 32 percent of American respondents to a survey by an internet video site. (unnamed) The survey's sponsor added the finding is particularly interesting, as commercial advertising in web videos is still in its infancy.'

Email vs. RSS in the world of Marketing

Interesting comment I came across from back in December. I thought I would share my answer here:

Dear Chris,

I saw this in another blog that discusses the idea that eNewsletters are losing their hold on the market and instead will be replaced by RSS.  What are your thoughts on this?

Veronica
http://www.essentialsecurity.com/

Thanks for the heads up Veronica. The author is right and very wrong. 

If I am not getting useful information in an email...what makes me think that I’m going to get any better information via RSS feed?

I subscribe to  a “newsletter” with an expectation of value.  I’m disappointed most of the time...so I unsubscribe.

This has nothing to do with the technology of message delivery and everything to do with the entire concept of a “Newsletter”.   

The key to success for marketing anything to anyone is relevance.   Use your data to talk to people like they are human beings.  Forget newsletters or anything that is not specifically designed to engage me in a conversation.   If you have nothing to say to me....leave me alone. 

RSS or Email...that’s a different argument altogether.   99% of the internet engages with email.  Less than 2% use RSS feeds.  Even if that goes to 10% with the advent of better technology...that doesn’t mean these same people are going to stop engaging in email.

The problem is the message, not the technology.

Make sense?

Chris

Email Marketing and the Concept of Prior Value

I learned a new term today from Stephanie Miller of Return Path.  Prior Value.  I can’t remember the exact stat, but the basic premise from her research is that the top reason given for a subscriber engaging with an email was “Prior Value”.  The value I felt I got from your previous email.   Brilliant.   Waste my time I ignore you.   Provide specific value to me…duh….I engage.

Prior Value…wish it was in my book.

I'm starting a new company

This appeard in the IBJ today so I thought I'd better share it with you all

TECHNOLOGY
ExactTarget co-founder launches blog software startup


Chris Baggott, co-founder of fast-growing local e-mail marketing firm
ExactTarget, has quit his day job to form a new software company.
Compendium Software will attempt to standardize the blogging process for
companies and turn it into a cornerstone of their marketing. Baggott was
ExactTarget's chief marketing officer. He formed the company along with
its CEO, Scott Dorsey, in 2000. By 2005, ExactTarget had grown to $19.7
million in annual revenue, making it the city's third-fastest-growing
private company, according to IBJ's 2007 Book of Lists.

Baggott remains an ExactTarget board member and shareholder. He said
he'd rather work with early-stage startups than mature firms.
ExactTarget now has more than 200 employees. "This is in no way about a
lack of confidence in what's going on at ExactTarget," Baggott said.
"It's on a great track. It just got to a point where, to me, it's
becoming a big, important company, and they can hire people to do my job
better than I can." At ExactTarget, Baggott wrote a blog about marketing
that has been recognized as "Best of the Web" by Forbes magazine. He
said he's been "noodling" the idea of launching a blogging software firm
for about a year. In January, he raised $250,000 from a dozen local
angel investors to launch Compendium Software. He used the Indiana
Economic Development Corp.'s venture capital tax credit incentive to
help entice them. For now, Compendium has no offices. "The blogging
universe looks very similar to the e-mail universe when ExactTarget
entered it," Baggott said. "There's no question there's a huge pent-up
demand for good blogging tools." Baggott said its software will allow
companies to easily offer branded blogs, as well as monitor and control
their content.