Week 7 HW #11 - Martha's COIN 72
Book 5 EMAIL
Chapter #1-7 Option B
INSTRUCTIONS Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7
OPTION B (TEXT): Browse through your Book 5 text chapters on e-mail and write about 5 tools/techniques that were interesting and you didn't know about or would want to use, related to:
Question 1 - combining e-mail with other media [chapter 1 - Adding Email Marketing]
The most obvious discovery I made reading this chapter is just how important email IS to an online Web marketing campaign. Ten years ago, print advertising drove customers to the Web. Now, it is the electronic medium itself, via email, that brings the consumer from their private home to the public world of online marketing. Each chapter in Book V makes this abundantly clear.
To become an effective online marketer, one needs to:
- integrate email marketing with marketing in all other media;
- be recognized as a trusted sender of emails;
- create and/or use email lists to contact prospective and current customers;
- brand emails to enhance their business image;
- write effective content;
- track e-mail metrics; and
- maximize e-mail delivery.
This may not be easy to do! In particular, the protections (to the consumer) of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, with the revisions of 2008, have made it imperative that the online merchant know just what she's trying to achieve before she begins e-mail marketing. This message has special meaning for me, as I contemplate our final COIN 72 project, because email marketing is the one arena our local chapter of federal employees and annuitants (http://narfe65.org) has not touched. In fact, our organization is not yet even at the starting line of the race to get recruits through email marketing. This may give us an advantage - we haven't yet made the mistakes that the authors warn us about! However, it also means I should study these chapters well, to make sure I avoid the mistakes, and capitalize on the suggestions, and ensure our emails are professional and effective, "right out of the gate".
Question 2 - becoming a trusted/welcome sender [chapter 2 - Becoming a Trusted Sender]
I was actually astonished (and relieved!) to learn how stringent the CAN-SPAM rules are. The title of the Act says it all: it is aimed at "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing". More information can be found in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003. This Act applies to ALL commercial mail, and defines commercial mail as any e-mail that contains advertisement, promotion or content from a business Web site. Commercial email, for these purposes, is distinguished from transactional or relationship email. The broadest interpretation of the law is that anything the consumer defines as spam - is SPAM. Essentially, all email that the sender doesn't want, didn't ask for, or that arrives too frequently and/or with undesirable content, is defined for law enforcement officials (and ultimately the FTC, or Federal Trade Commission) as spam.
The consequences of violating the CAN-SPAM act can be severe. As few as 2 complaints per 1000 pieces of mail [p. 463] may result in suspension of e-mail privileges by the company's ESP (E-mail Service Provider; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_service_provider). Further violations may permanently prohibit the company from mailing anything at all. Another provision of this Act, and one of the most challenging requirements for e-mailers, is that they provide an easy way for subscribers to UN-subscribe. It should take only one link, to only one Web page, to register one's preferences, and the company must comply within 10 days [pp. 464-465].
One innovation most e-mail programs of popular ISPs (Internet Service Providers; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_service_provider) have introduced is the handy button labeled "Spam". This clickable button enables any recipient to identify any individual e-mail, or group of e-mails, as unwanted. In fact, this tool is so popular and so easy to use, the authors advise -emailers to take great pains to ensure their e-mails do NOT look like spam. Otherwise, they make become part of the "false positive" reports of spam mailers that can severely impact their ability to do business.
Question 3 - using mailing lists or compiling your own [chapter 3 - Building a Quality Email List]
Chapter 3 points out that "Building a Quality Email List" is one of the most important steps in protecting the online merchant's ability to create a reputation and brand that will allow him to stay in business. I actually had no idea what a dilemma this can be! In our organization we've talked about how we will get the email addresses of individual members, so we can send them periodic reports, but I had no idea this simple motivation "to keep our members informed" is actually fraught with peril.
Specifically, how will the information in this chapter help me/us? The suggestion that we should decide what information we want to collect before we begin this process makes a lot of sense. We can collect essential information (email address, first name, zip code), behavioral information (such as from click-through-rate reports, to be used privately to segment our list and to prepare targeted messages), and personal information, such as gender, marital and family information, and interests and preferences. To start with, the authors suggest we begin with just the basic information. Over time, after our subscribers have learned to trust us and appreciate our mailings, we can begin gathering information of a more sensitive sort. The demographic information, not surprisingly, is what people are most reluctant to offer up. Therefore it behooves us to earn their trust first, and avoid any appearance of prying.
Beyond advising us what to avoid, chapter three highlights what we should emphasize:
- get to know our list members better before we ask for sensitive information;
- post multiple opportunities to signup online (using text boxes, buttons, text links, and check boxes), and experiment with different locations; and remember to also
- collect e-mail addresses and information in person, and through print.
Why should we do this? Building an electronic database, we learn on p. 469, allows us to:
- organize and view list data easily;
- sort list data into categories to send targeted emails;
- process and keep track of unsubscribed contacts; and
- query our list to extract useful information and reports.
The third section of chapter three, titled "Offering Incentives to Increase Signups", reminds us to:
- give subscribers immediate incentives (inherent benefits) to being on our e-mail list;
- give subscribers future incentives to remain on the list; and
- provide privacy policies that reassure our prospective subscribers, and professional permission practices that reward our customers continued trust.
As a non-profit organization, our needs are quite different from commercial establishments. However, there are also strong similarities: we want to get more members to join our organization (which includes paying an annual fee of $40-50), we want our members to renew their membership yearly, and we want them to increase their level of participation in our activities, and to join us in representing our members. Nevertheless, this need to offer incentives was something I simply had not thought of before. It makes sense - make sure we have something to offer our members, in exchange for their permission to send them periodic promotional information. top
Question 4 - branding your e-mails to enhance your image [chapter 4 - Constructing an Effective Marketing E-Mail]
Chapters 4 and 5 give us the nuts-and-bolts of how to construct an effective marketing e-mail, and how to make each e-mail's contents valuable. Advice given ranges from the expected (use images, but keep them small and well-positioned) to the more obscure. The section on "Creating From and Subject Lines that Get Noticed" was particularly instructive to me. I've become aware recently of the fact that the e-mails our Officers send to one another, to other Chapters, and presumably to members themselves, are from each one's private email account. Why has it taken us this long to realize that mailladymartha, stargazer87, or fritz may not be the most confidence-inspiring of e-mail senders! Our hosting server provides plenty of mailboxes for each of us. Wouldn't it be more professional for the Officers to at least have an email address that identifies them as part of the organization? Using a From line identification as "president@narfe65.org" or "public_relations@narfe65.org" will at least show we have the intentions of being professionals, and we are the officially-elected representatives. This may relay the natural anxieties of some of our older members, who are not very comfortable in the Internet environment, and it will also give us a renewed awareness of who we are and what we are doing.
Another insightful part of this chapter was the admonition to "Brand Your E-Mails to Enhance Your Image". The explanation of what branding is all about (the use of graphic design elements to give our business a consistent and unique identity, while allowing our public to form a mental image of our business) was helpful, and the detailed instructions, on pp. 492-494, on how to match our e-mails to our brand is something I will want to study further. Many of the suggestions made intuitive sense, and were something I've already used before. For instance, I have used colors on Web sites to match their logos. What had not occurred to me was to have an e-mail template that matches the Web site. That makes perfect sense!
I've only touched on 5 of the 7 chapters, and even at that I've only barely scratched the surface. This book, in particular, is one I will return to repeatedly in the months ahead. The most important thing for our organization, at this time, is probably this - build a list of e-mail subscribers, and get explicit permission from them to share our information with them on a periodic basis. After all, we cannot expect to increase our membership, or retain our members, if we don't reach out to them, and show them "what's in it for them". E-mail is a perfect complement to our professional Web site, and it's worth doing right.
Question 5 - writing effective content [chapter 5 - Making Email Content Valuable]
Question 6 - tracking e-mail metrics [chapter 6 - Tracking Email Campaign Results]
Question 7 - maximizing e-mail delivery [chapter 7- ]