Chris Baggott's Email Marketing Best Practices

Corporate blogging software - Where do you turn when everyone is inboxed-out?

Corporate blogging software - Where do you turn when everyone is inboxed-out?

Posted using ShareThis

Posted using ShareThis

Chris Baggott's Guide to Blogging

Chris Baggott's Guide to Blogging

Posted using ShareThis

Compendium Blogware Update

I just wanted to update everyone on what's happening with Compendium Blogware (www.compendiumblogware.com)

Obviously, if things were lousy then I'd keep my mouth shut about it, but the fact is things are going great.  We are now up to about 22 employees and are looking for 7 more if you know anyone...

Our client list has grown to about 150 and our bookings are basically doubling every quarter. The product works really well and our clients are getting some very tangible results.   Check out one of my favorites:  http://blog.wilderness-voyageurs.com/blog.php/wilderness-voyageurs

Compendium Is looking for a director of Marketing

Compendium is looking for a Director of Marketing

The Director of Marketing owns all marketing-related activities and is responsible for identifying, implementing, managing, and analyzing all marketing initiatives for Compendium Blogware. The primary function of this position is generation of qualified sales leads.

This is a fast-moving, high visibility role. The ideal candidate is both creative and analytical, and welcomes the opportunity to continually set goals, measure against those goals, and adjust.  As a company, Compendium has set aggressive lead generation goals for 2008. This individual must roll up his or her sleeves and and help drive the business.

Corporate Blogging Webinar

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to give this group a heads up that I've come up with a "Top 10 Trends in Corporate Blogs" for 2008.

I'll presenting this in a webinar on January 31st 2008.  If you are remotely interested in Corporate Blogging strategy for the coming year (as least as I see it), please register for the webinar on the Compendium Blogware site.

Thanks,

Chris Baggott

Inbox 2.0 - Long Live Email

I just read Scott Dorsey's debate with Robert Scoble in the Business Week Debate Room.   The title of the debate was:

E-mail Faces Deletion: Web 2.0 applications such as Twitter will unseat simple electronic mail as the No. 1 business communications tool. Pro or con?

I thought Scoble made a great case in favor of some of the Web 2.0 technologies that do in fact help overcome some of the weaknesses in email.  Obviously, since I'm now in the Corporate Blogging Software business, I feel strongly that technologies like Blogging have a strong place in any Corporate Marketing Mix.  The debate continues in both Scoblizer and in the blogs of folks such as Lisa Barone over at BruceClay.com. 

In full disclosure, I was a co-founder of ExactTarget and as such have a vested interest in the success of email.

My point goes to support Scott's comment on "Inbox 2.0" and is driven from relevance and data.

The problem with email through out it's history is the abuse by organizations who looked at the medium as "Cheap Paper".

In that light, these people replicated an broken Reach & Frequency advertising model by applying those same Mass Marketing tactics to Email.

This is changing quickly.  The beauty of email as a marketing tool is the ability to leverage data and deliver the right message to the right people at the right time.   

I may be brand-loyal to Goodyear Tires, but their product isn’t the type for which I would subscribe to their RSS feed or visit their site very often.  If they want my business they have to recognize who I am and the best time to send me any communications.  To be successful they have to pay attention to me. Know how I buy.  Know when WINTER COMES where I live.  Or how many miles I’m likely to drive so they can send me the right product reminders...the sort of thing that can be done brilliantly with the right combination of strategy, creativity, email & data.

Beyond face-to-face or the telephone, email is the only way to have a dialog, an actual one-to-one conversation in a medium that is almost universal.

It's been abused for sure...but the profits from email abuse are diminishing....and market forces are driving email marketers to become much more timely and relevant.

What's happening with this Blog??

Contrary to what you might be thinking, this blog is not dead :-)

As I've mentioned, I started a new company, Compendium Software.  We are open for business and happy and excited to demo our new Corporate Blogging Software to anyone who would like to see it.   Just send me an email [email protected]

I'm also actively blogging on Blogging Best Practices and the many benefits of Corporate Blogging on my Blogging Best Practices Blog.......Geeze; a little keyword stuffing there??  lol

Anyway, Check it out and don't give up on this blog yet....we are going to reignite it soon.

Chris Baggott

Good day for Relationship Marketing

Why is it a good day?   Because I opened my email this morning to two great articles:  One from Email Insider from MediaPost and one from Forrester (subscription required)

The following are direct quotes:

Personality Goes A Long Way Posted May 10th, 2007 by Chad White 

 

"I’ve been reading Chris Baggott’s newly released book Email Marketing By the Numbers: How to Use the World’s Greatest Marketing Tool to Take Any Organization to the Next Level, and one of the things that got me thinking was the advice “Be human.” Chris says, “People don’t fall in love with institutions… Your chance of landing in a great relationship increases exponentially when you show a human side.”

With that in mind, I decided to see how retailers do when it comes to injecting humanity into their emails.....

Okay, so how human are retailers? Not very. By my estimation, about one in six major online retailers tracked via RetailEmail.Blogspot regularly has a person with a name telling subscribers something. That was my threshold for being human — the person needed to have a name that was mentioned in the email. So models don’t count, and copy that sounds very conversational doesn’t count, either.

There’s an even smaller group of retailers that almost always has a human voice in its emails. That group consists of the Sportsman’s Guide, which always carries a folksy message from Gary Olen, the founder of The Sportsman’s Guide; TigerDirect, whose emails are signed by Carl Fiorentino, the very enthusiastic president of TigerDirect.com; and Crutchfield, whose emails are signed by Bill Crutchfield and regularly feature pictures of staff members with products.... Read the entire post here

So Follow that up with a new report by Forrester analyst Mary Beth Kemp.  The title of the paper is "What the Long Tail Does For Relationship Marketing"  Now you need to be a client of Forrester to read this report, but hopefully they won't sue me for clipping one germain item:

....Although email marketing is embraced by 93% of marketers, emails are still not up to standards. In Forrester's annual review of email programs only one of the 63 reviewed passed our test, mostly due to lack of customer centricity. 

Generic blasts of email newsletters, too often the online relationship marketing silver bullet, are not dialogue-building tools. Nor is simply substituting emails for direct mail the right approach. Forrester recommends building email conversations to guide customers through the consideration and purchase cycles. Relationship marketers can use their data skills to understand how and which consumers are using social media and in which way — and then tailor tactics for reaching them.

Gold Jerry, Gold!!

Other Email Blogs I Read

I wanted to introduce you to another great email blog...RetailEmail.Blogspot.   And NO, I'm not just plugging them because the liked my book...

What's cool about this focus is it's specifically looking only at Retail Email and pointing out what they do well or poorly.  Good specific examples....

Over the weekend I was reading Chris Baggott’s newly released book Email Marketing By the Numbers: How to Use the World's Greatest Marketing Tool to Take Any Organization to the Next Level. One of the things that got me thinking was the advice “Be human.” Chris says, “People don’t fall in love with institutions… Your chance of landing in a great relationship increases exponentially when you show a human side.” I think Crutchfield does a particularly good job of doing this, and this email is a perfect example. Not only does Crutchfield have a little note from Bill Crutchfield in every email, they regularly feature pictures of staff members and customers in their emails. This email also includes an article on how to take better pictures with your digital camera. Providing advice and customer service is extremely human. Although many major online retailers are adopting this way of thinking, there are still quite a few that would rather hide behind their product assortments and continue to engage in faceless mass marketing.   Read More....