On 10/23/2009 Facebook sent out an e-mail newsletter titled “Ads Manager Announcement” to its Facebook Advertising users.

This newsletter is a great example of how to implement permission marketing, how to avoid the brochure mentality, and how to do seamless product placement.

How to Implement Permission Marketing

Click here for a full explanation of e-mail permission marketing.

Facebook provides its users with a check-box so they can decide whether or not to give you permission to contact them.

Here is a list of the Facebook ads e-mail notifications:

Facebook is asking its users: “Do you want to hear from us?” This little question is very powerful because Facebook is already engaging in a conversation with its users.  Facebook is letting them know that it wants to keep in touch with them and likewise it is asking them, if they are ok with it.

How to Avoid the Brochure Mentality

Click here for a full explanation of the brochure mentality.

Facebook did not mess around with the objective of this e-mail.

The business objective is clearly defined (go to the Ads Manager right now!) and how this e-mail fits into it.

There are 5 mentions of the Ads Manager tool and they all are clearly defined as hyperlinks to the Ads Manager tool.

Facebook sent you this e-mail because it wants you to use its Ads Manager tool right now. Facebook will measure the success of this e-mail campaign not by the CTR on those links, but by how many dollars are generated from the use of the Ads Manager in a certain period of time.

The brochure mentality is avoided by putting the brochure as a simple link on a side bar (if you want the brochure, here it is), rather than presenting the brochure first and then putting a link to the Ads Manager at the end.

How to Do Seamless Product Placement

Everybody wants to do a little bit of money with its e-mail communications right? Facebook appears to want to do that as well.

Facebook may or may not had planned to sponsor the services of Box.net, but it surely ends up just being that!

The message is clear: Facebook uses Box.net for sharing files via e-mail.

Conclusion

Great e-mails don’t happy by accident! Take some cues from Facebook and improve your e-mail marketing campaigns today.

]]> http://idaconcpts.com/2009/10/23/how-facebook-does-e-mail-newsletters/feed/ 9 http://idaconcpts.com/2009/09/29/alumni-in-touch-with-facebook/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=alumni-in-touch-with-facebook http://idaconcpts.com/2009/09/29/alumni-in-touch-with-facebook/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:51:47 +0000 Damian Davila http://idaconcpts.com/?p=840

Back in May 2009, I wrote a review of the application LinkedIn Polls available on LinkedIn and how LinkedIn Polls can be used to do some great permission e-mail marketing polling.

I strongly believe that this LinkedIn application is a great way to gather data fast [...]]]>

Back in May 2009, I wrote a review of the application LinkedIn Polls available on LinkedIn and how LinkedIn Polls can be used to do some great permission e-mail marketing polling.

I strongly believe that this LinkedIn application is a great way to gather data fast and to create actionable bar graphs that you can e-mail to your colleagues.  More importantly it follows the fundamentals of permission e-mail marketing by making polls more personal, relevant and anticipated.

On this post I wanted to provide an example of how we can use LinkedIn Polls not only to meet the fundamentals of an e-mail permission marketing campaign but also to gather useful qualitative data from your respondents.

Background

Currently I am working for a non-profit organization that has as one of its goal to provide its Alumni and Associates (anybody who has either participated in a conference, seminar or event) engaged through its world wide network.  My job is to develop and maintain our online presence, which includes a website, a blog, several online communities (e.g. LinkedIn) and e-mail newsletters.

Details of Current Scenario

Notice that I mentioned “several online communities”. We have a LinkedIn Group, 2 Facebook Pages, 1 Facebook Group, and 1 Harris Connect Online Community. There’s now even talk of creating several Ning communities and a Twitter account.

Are all of this online communities necessary?

To answer this question, I created a quick online poll on LinkedIn.

Methodology

I access LinkedIn Polls on Linkedin:

I create a LinkedIn Poll:

You can submit your poll to either your 1st degree connections or a target audience of professionals in the U.S (this option is free for premium subscribers).  I would recommend to stick with the first option (targeting your first degree connections) because this makes your poll personal (”Hey Mike can you take a loot at this?”), relevant (”Susan, your input is important to me because I know your expertise in marketing while we worked together), and anticipated (Linkedin is a site for networking!).

This is what all of my connections received:

Bonus

Even though you may have lots of connections on LinkedIn, you should consider including the link to you LinkedIn Poll on RELEVANT LinkedIn Groups. In this case, I included this poll in the Alumni groups or associations that I belong to in LinkedIn such as University of Alberta Alumni, Beta Gamma Sigma, Delta Upsilon Fraternity, among others.

There are lots of different kinds of groups on LinkedIn. Join the ones that you strongly believe that will provide you added value. Also, make sure that you actually qualify to join because some may have a list of requirements (e.g. company e-mail, student ID).

Results

How do people prefer to keep in touch with their classmates?

Facebook. There’s no contest.

Notice that this poll was conducted on LinkedIn and still LinkedIn is only preferred by 16% of respondents. (Disclaimer: Yes, it is a small sample, 62.

Here are some reasons why Facebook is preferred:

Male software consultant:

Use what most of them use – Facebook. It’s better for casual conversation.

Male small business entrepreneur:

For 20 to 40 somethings…Facebook, Facebook, Facebook!

However, still for those that realize that Facebook is the best way to keep in touch with the bulk of their classmates, they comment on the need of a more professional network such as LinkedIn.

Male consolidator trainee:

Of course Facebook is the most popular way to keep in touch with classmates. I think it can work for students who stay in the same unviersity over 5 years. But when you travel, you get to know a lot of people and facebook isn’t the most appropriate for keeping in touch with classmates. Therefore I do prefer Linkedin.

Female communication and marketing professional:

I think that people’s preference depends on how they see their classmates – as friends or colleagues. In my case, some of my classmates from my graduate classes are, of course, my friends, but often they are more in the category of colleagues who share the same research interests. For me, Facebook is great in order to maintain a relationship with close friends but not necessarily with somebody from your professional community. Therefore, in my case, I prefer definitely LinkedIn over Facebook.

Female consultancy entrepreneur:

Facebook primarily, but LinkedIn also works.

Male consultant:

Most of my former high school classmates that use technology are hooked in with me via Facebook, because they tend to be “personal” connections, while my University faculty of business classmates are “linked-in” because it was business school where we launched our careers, and many of those relationships are primarily career related. Again, as others have indicated, which medium is best depends on the individual relationship. My closest alumni friends are hooked in with multiple media; we use LinkedIn for business networking and Facebook for personal “fun” stuff.

Conclusion

Facebook is the preferred method of keeping in touch with classmates by people. However, there is recognition of the need of a professional networking such as LinkedIn.

One important caveat raised by 16% of respondents:

Don’t forget about the “social” in social media

Female writer and photographer:

I prefer Skype. Because they are those selected people that you actually keep in touch with and share valuable updates on each others’ lives.

Female student:

I prefer either to meet them in person or talk to them on the phone rather than chatting over the Internet.

Male consultant:

In person (i.e. drinks or lunch) is always best for those we were closest with. Next best is phone (if they are a long distance away) followed by email.

Measuring the success of your permission e-mail campaigns is often oversimplified.  Marketing managers are often happy to see rising open rates and click-through rates. (If you have no idea on how to measure the click-through rates of your e-mail campaigns, here’s an easy tutorial using Google Analytics). The problem of being content with just measuring open rates and click-through rates from our e-mail campaigns is that we are victims of the brochure mentality.

What’s the problem with the brochure mentality?

The brochure mentality is the mindset that tells us that as long people get our brochure, open it and browse it for a while; somehow they will get “aware of our brand” or that they will “eventually act on it”. Notice that how exactly the readers of a brochure become aware of the brand or act on it is not really defined, it is just left to, yes you got that right, pure chance.

I am sure that newsletter services and talented newsletter writers will challenge the above statement. But think about it for just a second. When discussing with a graphic designer or an e-mail newsletter, how often do you discuss about the actual objective of your e-mail campaign defined in one sentence and whose success can be tracked with one simple measure?

I am not talking about how many people click on your “read more” link or how many people open your “Labor Day Blowout Sale!” e-mail. I am talking about how many people actually end handing you cash in exchange for the product or service that you offer.

Let’s take a look at what Avinash Kaushik has to say on this (Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, p. 220):

Before you start your analytics, it is important to understand, at least at a high level, that there several important steps to the process of executing e-mail campaigns:

• Define business objectives and how e-mail fits into them.

I just quoted the first step out of 4 to emphasize the importance of this concept.  If you’re a frozen yogurt shop, are you in the business of selling frozen yogurt or are you in the business of making people open e-mails? If you’re a humane society that protects animal rights, are you working hard towards increasing the number of people adopting stray dogs or are you working hard that people click on a YouTube video of a sad dog looking for a home?

Before jumping into e-mail (and social media, for that matter) campaigns, you’ve got to have a clear idea of what objectives you want out of it. A clear one sentence objective that can be tracked with one measure.

Here are some great real life examples that I have encountered during my online marketing practice:

• Bake shop: Sell my daily excess inventory of red velvet cupcakes, about 14, before they spoil.
• Online coupon service: Generate 5 paying customers during a week.

Not so fast, monkey!

There are several e-mail newsletter services that work great (e.g. MailChimp), but before you sign up for any of them,  do your homework. Even though some offer free trials, hold off signing up for them until you have figured out your one sentence objective whose success can be tracked with one measure.

Helpful Links:

• How to Measure the CTR of Your E-mail Permission Marketing Campaign with Google Analytics
• E-mail Permission Marketing Fundamentals
• E-mail Permission Marketing: It Works!
• E-mail Marketing Open and Click-through Rates Worldwide

]]> http://idaconcpts.com/2009/09/09/are-you-deceived-by-your-email-campaigns/feed/ 2 http://idaconcpts.com/2009/06/24/a-guide-to-permission-marketing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-guide-to-permission-marketing http://idaconcpts.com/2009/06/24/a-guide-to-permission-marketing/#comments Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:24:01 +0000 Damian Davila http://idaconcpts.com/?p=655 A Guide to Permission Marketing

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1. E-mail Permission Marketing: It Works!
2. E-mail Permission Marketing Fundamentals
3. How to Measure the CTR of Your E-Mail Permission Marketing Campaign with Google Analytics

A Guide to Permission Marketing

Since February 2009, I’ve been talking about permission e-mail marketing here at idaconcpts.com because it turns regular e-mails into personal, relevant and anticipated messages.  An important part of the work of online marketers is polling because it provides greater insights to our questions and allows us to have better, more educated decision-making.

I have used Surveymonkey in the past and it works great but I have found that LinkedIn Polls allows polling to become more personal, relevant, and anticipated.

LinkeIn Polls is one of the applications that LinkedIn launched in October 2008 and as all of these applications they are free but require you to have a registered account with LinkedIn.

To access LinkedIn Polls you need to first add the application to your LinkedIn profile:

Creating a LinkedIn Poll is very simple and intuitive:

You can submit your poll to either your 1st degree connections or a target audience of professionals in the U.S (this option is free for premium subscribers).  I would recommend to stick with the first option (targetting your first degree connections) because this makes your poll personal (“Hey Mike can you take a loot at this?”), relevant (“Susan, your input is important to me because I know your expertise in marketing while we worked together), and anticipated (Linkedin is a site for networking!).

An important caveat is that LinkedIn Polls is only as good as your networking power is already at LinkedIn.  However, don’t believe that I’m just talking about having several contacts, I’m also referring to the number of groups and associations that you belong to in LinkedIn.  If you’re active in several forums, you can get a lot of responses, and more importantly long threads of valuable qualitative data.

If you do have lots of contacts, LinedIn Polls has made it easy to segment by location and/or industry:

One of the most attractive feature of LinkedIn Polls is that it makes segmentation of your poll results a snap.  It provides attractive bar graphs by job title, company size, job function, gender, and age.

One could easily argue that LinkedIn Polls needs options for cross-tabulation ,like Surveymonkey does, and further options for segmentations, but I strongly believe that this application is a great way to gather data fast and to create actionable bar graphs that you can e-mail to your colleagues.  More importantly it follows the fundamentals of permission e-mail marketing by making polls more personal, relevant and anticipated.