EightBlack.

One of the best things about being stuck in a plane for 14 hours is that it gives you time to think. And clean out your inbox.

I remember when Dave used to work with me, he would just cringe every time I went away. Too much time on my own, perhaps the odd glass of wine or 10 and a lack of oxygen gave me the impetus to write a gazillion emails and then fire them off to him when I reached a wi-fi connection at the other end.

He was always good natured about it. But I reckon he used to think “what a pain in the arse he is”.

You know those stories you hear where exciting things have happened to people when they’ve flown long haul - well, I don’t think they’re true. Jessica Alba has never been on any plane I’ve been on. I’ve never had anyone remotely gorgeous sit next to me (and if they did, they promptly moved), and nothing even anywhere near terrifying has happened, apart from getting into a fight with a drunk Russian on a Qantas flight from Singapore one day.

Oh, I nearly forgot.

There was a time when our son was only a baby and I had to take him to the bathroom to change his nappy. How on earth you’re supposed to perform a task like that in a toilet the size of a shoebox is beyond me. This one had one of those folding tables in it. How hard can it be - I thought.

So, I put him on the table, removed the nappy (this was only the 3rd nappy I had ever changed mind you) and then, much to my horror, a piece of poo fell out and started rolling around the place. The little prick started giggling. I started to panic and wave my arms. But no one could see. I then started yelling loudly. But no one came and my wife was in a coma, out cold, safely back in her seat.

So I pushed the button. The one you’re supposed to push if the toilet explodes or your kidneys get sucked down the toilet bowl after you flush it.

What else was I supposed to do? Touch it? Pick it up? No way.

All of a sudden, there were 3 flying mattresses knocking on the door, thinking something dreadful had happened. Which it had, if you asked me.

Son was still laughing, only because he was now naked from the waist down and he could see I was clearly in a state of panic. I opened the door and at the same time, screamed for assistance.

Suffice to say, I was not met with the most sympathetic of audiences. My wife to this day, still cannot believe it happened. It is probably one of the reasons that after 10 years of marriage she still uses her maiden name.

Anyway. Back to plane travel. And a lack of exciting things happening. Not once have I ever been on an action packed flight.

No massive clear air turbulence. No wing falling off. Nothing bursting into flames. No air marshall running down the aisle, gun drawn and yelling for assistance. And I’ve flown a shitload. Easily 3 million miles. No worries.

I suppose I should be grateful.

So this post was written at 32,000 feet. While I was sober. And semi-awake. With complete tranquility onboard.

I decided to put a link to all the great content I’ve collected over the past 12-months. Some of it has to do with the web. And some not.

Like the session with Seth late last year. Like this piece on how to be creative from Hugh McLeod.

Or like this manifesto written by the legendary Tom Peters.

We all suffer from information overload. The web has seen to that. And Google has made sure of it.

But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t share it. What a great reason to start a blog (if you don’t have one already).

We’re all sitting on great content - its on our hard drives. Time to set it free and then move on.

And as the saying goes - I’ve shown you mine. Now it’s time to show me yours.

Domaining is one of those things I never really paid much attention to.

Now I sort of wished I had. A bit like your parents telling you the story of their wise old uncle who bought beachfront property all those years ago - when everyone was wondering why.

Now the same old uncle is laughing in his grave. And his children are eternally grateful - thats one thing for sure.

It makes sense though.

Virtual property (ie domain names) is similar to the physical stuff. There’s only a finite amount of it available.

Apparently - the .mobi and .tv extensions will soon become as valuable as the plain old dot com extensions.

Later this year (supposedly around June/July) the Australian regulator of domain names will be in essence, de-regulating the market and when they do, you can bet there will be a frenzy of activity in the space.

Now’s the time to act if you haven’t already registered every domain name with every extension possible of your own business.

For example, with our new entity - TaguchiMail - we own every variation of the domain (well, the ones we want at least). If you’re starting up a new business or have an established one, it’s hardly good business sense, especially for the sake of less than $20 bucks a year, to forfeit any domain even remotely attached to your business.

There are a lot smarter domain guys in Australia than me. Ed Keay-Smith is one of them. He’s also a trusted colleague who I’ve known since 2004. More on him here.

The biggest guys in the US play in a league of their own. Guys like Bob Parsons and Monte Cahn make the whole industry of domaining look easy. Which it isn’t.

Bottom line - especially for the Aussie’s who read this. It’s time to put some resource in protecting your Australian domain name. No point crying about it later.

Very much alive. Much to a lot of people’s amazement. And still very, very effective. But with the volume of email now, and the relentless offensive activity of corporate and personal SPAM filters, the actual job of engagement and grabbing attention is getting harder.

One of our core focuses at Eight Black is email marketing. We’ve been doing it for 4+ years now and during that time, we’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. On average, we’re sending out around 6 million messages a month, so we’d like to think we’ve earned the right to talk about it as a subject. Our bias is towards large, hard core e-commerce sites. Sites which transact. Which ask for a specific action.

In this post, I want to share with you some of the lessons we’ve learned, plus give you a glimpse of what we’ve been working on over in the corner of the “garage” so to speak.

I also want to disclose that while the examples I refer to are actually real, I am unable to reference the actual client. I know you always should when quoting references, but I can’t. So that’s that.

I then want to outline the top 8 mistakes companies, both big and small make, when it comes to sending email.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The first place is with your list. In many cases, clients we talk to say that they have a database but its split up into three areas and they need some guy from IT (who only works every third Tuesday) to come in and show them how to run a My SQL query, which takes all night, to then export it in a CSV file to someone in accounts, who has a PC who can read the file, to then send it to them.

Or something like that. What nonsense.

Your database is your most critical asset. The more “fields” of information you can collect, the better your email marketing efforts will be in the long run. I’ll explain why later.

We know of a company for example, whose website generates 12,000 transactions a month who does not send email of any sort. To me, that’s plain dumb. And leaving a lot of money on the table. It’s not just the “money on the table” issue either. In this case, there’s a whole section of the customer base giving you permission to talk and communicate with them.

Good email marketing starts with the right opt-in policy on your website. You need to give people a reason to opt-in. Why should I give you my email address? What’s in it for me? To help reassure people, have the privacy policy link right beside the opt-in area. And a lot of people simply think that ONE opt-in box is enough - or simply having the same opt-in text link at the top of each and every page is ample. It’s not. Visitors to your website are a lot smarter than that. Banner blindness is growing so if you have the same link at the top of each and every page, you’re not going to get very far.

You’re also assuming that people come to your website and interract with it logically and sequentially. They don’t. Your web analytics interface will prove it to you. All you need to do is look at the top 10 pages by traffic to your site. Mix it up a little. Use an opt-in box on one page, a text link on another. Move the opt-in call to action around. Test position. And above all, take advantage of the most important piece of real estate on your site - the “thank-you” page (applies to ecommerce sites). Always, always have an opt-in box on this page.

First of all, opt-in’s should be a metric on your website that you treat exactly the same way you treat “bounce-rate” or “time on site”. Or any other key web analytics metric you so choose.

Top 8 Mistakes in Email Marketing.

1. Emailing once a month is SPAM.

Frequency and relevancy is the key. Once a month is a complete waste of time, no matter what you are selling. Think about it. What relationship does a marketer have with you if you only ever hear from them once a month. None. Squat, Nada. That doesnt mean you turn the autoresponder up full bore and bombard someone with crap. It means you provide valid content, and provide a lot of it. You ask questions, you survey when you are not sure, you drive people back to your website and you do what it takes to engage with your audience.

2. Split Testing.

Not enough people are split testing effectively.

It’s all about context now. And relevance. You need to be aggressively split testing subject lines, the “from” field, opening paragraphs, link location, the PS area, the call to action. Assume nothing. And the worse thing you can do is have your ad agency write the copy. Short is better if you’re writing email that requires action - like a travel booking site. We’ve also found that too many companies are wanting to ensure that the email looks good, and so they design these magnificent looking HTML newsletter templates. Then, when it comes time to send, they wonder why their open rates and click thru rates are so low.

When we broadcast, we not only split test subject lines, but all parts of the creative. See image below.

Our advice is always push from text - especially if you’re starting out with a relatively cold or lukewarm list, one that hasn’t heard from you before. Or it’s a new promotion for something. What you’ve got to realise is that if you insist on sending out HTML from the start, then most modern email clients or SPAM settings on corporate firewalls, will strip away all the images and graphics anyway and trap the message in the Junk folder. Use plain old text at the start, until you can educate the recipient to add you to their “safe senders” list will do wonders for conversion.

3. Aborting too early.

We’ve often gone into clients and worked with them on devising a fully integrated email campaign. The HTML newsletter has passed all the legal, branding and visual standards checks and balances, the links work, the offer can be fulfilled, the call centre is ready. Everything all set to go. Then we launch. At the very first sign of a “hiccup”, the client panics and wants to stop everything. The hiccup is someone complains to the company or writes an email complaining how his identity has been stolen, that he is the victim of some Nigerian scam and why on earth have you sent him this email. He threatens to get legal on your arse, wants compensation for having no life and demands a Royal Commission.

Folks, remember this. Email marketing is a pure numbers play. Consumers are a lot braver behind their 20 inch monitor than they are on the phone and more so, face to face. You cant just say that you’ll try email marketing for a week and see what happens. You need to commit. To have a strategy. To have the right resources. And to be able to be consistent.

4. Number Overload - Click Thru Rates, Open Rates, etc.

The only metric that matters is conversion. Pure and simple. People get carried away with statistics. We’re not so worried about list sizes, we’re more concerned with actual engagement and conversion. While it is important to understand metrics at a base level, and to be committed to relentless testing, I am far more interested in the statement by the client that says, “we sent out the email and we sold X”.

5. Scrimping on costs.

If you have a database of any size, (ie above 30,000 records), why then would you consider using a $300 off the shelf product? It’s only asking for trouble. There are so many email marketing solutions out there that are cost effective and scalable. Whether you choose to use a company like ours is of no consequence. What matters more is that you invest the same amount of time in developing an email strategy as you do the rest of your marketing. Commit the right resources. Consult with specialists. Buy good advice and then act on it. And, if you do choose to outsource the function, use well respected experts with a track record in the space.

6. Not Remailing.

If you’re promoting a product or offer or competition, the biggest mistake we see is a lack of desire to communicate the message. This does not mean bombarding someone’s inbox. And it assumes that your are committed to “permission marketing” rather than what Seth Godin refers to as “interruption marketing”.

We do a lot of “viral” marketing work for clients. Here’s a specific example. Let’s say we’re promoting a competition for a client with the specific purpose of building their opt-in email database. The creative is solid and with a heavy emphasis on “refer a friend”. The initial broadcast goes out to the entire list and the promotion is under way. Using the technology we’ve developed within our proprietary mail application lets us then send a follow up email 4 days later to all those people who have yet to enter the competition or even open the initial launch email. Look what happens to engagement and entry/referral numbers. The lighter shade on the graph is entries into the competition and the darker shade is how many people were referred by a friend to enter.

7. ISP Reputation

Your email marketing provider - or indeed your own application, needs to be able to track and monitor ISP activity and effectiveness. Many ISP’s will throttle you back if they notice a large volume of email coming down the pipe to their users. Our application (see shot below), tracks how each ISP treats our mail and we then analyse deliverability statistics.

8. Tell A Story.

One of the best examples of good emailing marketing is where the sender, perhaps one of the best online marketers I’ve met, sent a 3 part email. Only he didn’t tell you it was a 3 part message. He just put “to be continued”. This guy by the way has a list which is probably 500,000 plus records in total and one which is highly responsive. So why don’t more of us tell a story. I don’t care if you’re selling property, travel, cars, accommodation. Too often, we’re so consumed with getting the look and feel right that we forget about the actual relevance of the content. And we don’t stop to think about splitting the message up over the course of a week or so. All we want to do is blast the message out there, so we can cross that task off our list.

SUMMARY:

I am constantly amazed at just how many large companies still don’t place much emphasis on collecting and then sorting email addresses. It’s not because they lack resource. Many large corporates I come across have invested literally millions of dollars in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions. Perhaps many think that email is not an effective medium anymore. Perhaps it’s too hard. Perhaps they simply just can’t be bothered.

It’s inexcusable to to have a customer base of 1 million people and less that 20,000 active email addresses. Everyone’s website needs to give people a reason to “opt-in”. The sales and marketing channel of a company needs to be fully committed to email marketing.

And finally, a wise word from our resident email technology expert - Ben Dyer. Ben is the key driver of TaguchiMail, our new email marketing platform that’s in Beta. He’s got some wise words about “deliverability” issues. Worth watching.

I’d be keen to hear your stories and receive your feedback on your experience with email - good or bad. Over to you.

If you have anything to do with marketing online, and unless you’ve been hiding under a rock - you no doubt will have heard of Joel Comm.

He’s one smart bastard. And he clearly has the midas touch.

Joel’s latest creation has taken the web literally by storm. The Next Internet Millionaire is a very successful adaptation of the proven TV reality series. And after talking with Joel, it sounds like it was no mean feat to execute. In fact, it sounded like a nightmare. The logistics must have been astonishing. Over 300 auditions, a full size production and camera crew, a 9000 square foot warehouse, multiple sets etc. The list goes on.

It’s this effort and attention to detail that sets Joel apart from a lot of the “snake oil” salespeople that exist in the online marketing world. He’s all about content. And delivery.

The thing that struck me about Joel is that he knows how to build online businesses that are “saleable”. Ones that have clear exit strategies and ones which don’t depend on the sole efforts of the lone “guru”.

His background includes writing a gaming site that was eventually sold to Yahoo! and then renamed “Yahoo Games”. He then went on to write a New York Times best seller with “The Adsense Code”.

And now The Next Internet Millionaire.

One thing is for sure. Joel has impeccable instinct when it comes to the online space. He’s a good guy to know. A better marketer you will not find. And like I said at the beginning, one very, very, smart bastard.

More about him here.

Here’s a quick access link to an MP3 of a call between Perry Marshall - the undisputed global authority on Google AdWords and Avinash Kaushik, the Analytics Evangelist for Google, plus the author of the best selling book “Web Analytics, An Hour A Day”.

In my humble opinion, 2 smarter guys you could not find. I am lucky to count both as friends and have had the pleasure of working alongside each one. Avinash’s book is a must read and Perry’s Renaissance Club is worth it’s weight in gold. Enjoy.

McDonalds is getting a lot of traction around its recent “You Name It” burger competition. Probably because when they concocted the damn thing in one of their test kitchens in Collingwood, the marketing folks promptly exhaled it as quickly as they inhaled it and went running off to the dunnie to get rid of the rest. They then decided, in view of wanting to keep their jobs, that they should blame the whole fiasco on the public and make the naming of the new gut buster the public’s responsibility.

Or something like that.

Anyway, there’s plenty of back slapping and cocaine inhaling along the corridors of their ad agency because, and I quote from B&T,

“A campaign by fast food giant McDonald’s to name its new burger has received 24,100 suggestions since launching on Sunday night, and is predicted to become Australia’s most successful online engagement campaign this year.

As of 11am this morning, a name was being submitted every six seconds to the NameIT Burger promotion – based on 24,100 names divided by 36 waking hours.

The campaign was developed by Leo Burnett in Sydney and features fictitious burger naming legend Ken Thomas who has retired from the ranks of McDonald’s but wants to hand the naming baton on to a younger generation.

Todd Sampson, managing partner and head of strategy at Leo Burnett said: “We are hoping that this will be the most successful online consumer engagement campaign in the country this year”.

I might take offence to this. As would one of our clients.

You see, we’ve been running viral competitions for a while now and we, unlike McDonalds, do not use above the line media (like TV or radio) to help boost registration or enrollment. I absolutely think that they work hand in hand - if you have the budget. But we don’t, and we rely purely on the internet as our sole marketing channel.

The most recent viral competition we ran over 6 weeks - which ended over a week ago, drew the following numbers.

That’s a fair bit more than McDonalds. And it’s been repeated 8 times now - in the sense that we have pushed promotion after promotion to the same database. In all cases, the total prize was no more than $10,000.

The stats above reveal that over 144,000 people actually entered the competiton we ran and more importantly, 338,000 people were referred to the competition. On average, each and every person who actually entered, referred 2.33 people.

Our competitions are always “member get member” based, because ultimately, we want an email address. A good, permission based, opt-in email address is worth anything between $5 and $20. There’s no sane acquisition manager within a credit card company or finance company that wouldn’t pay this.

I applaud the success of the McDonalds promotion. But in perspective, you need to look deeper at conversion. What was the intent of the visitor to the site? To merely engage with the company to enter a name for their product, or to tell 3 friends about it and actually go into the store to sample one. I’m betting that McDonalds would have sold a truckload anyway, given their above the line media saturation.

The McDonalds and their ad agency folks are all up in arms about this campaign being “the most successful online engagement campaign in Australia”. Is it too cynical to say “so what?”. Maybe. But really, so what and who cares.

I’m more concerned with what a client can do from the data they collect from the competition, what can they (or we) learn about our market and how can we leverage this going forward. And more importantly, can we repeat the success. Again and again.

Getting a rational answer out of IT/Web staff is like talking to a 13 year old teenager. When asked a direct question, like “when will you be home?”, there often comes a flurry of abuse, a fair amount of emotion and then a fair amount of unresolved issues with the said teenager and his/her mother because the smaller human wasn’t allowed to go to a rock concert with a gang of tattooed bikers last weekend. Or something like this.

But what you never get is a direct answer. There’s always drama. Theatre. Complexity.

Anyway. How on earth is the average company and it’s leadership ever going to get their head around the internet when they look at the web and see this?

It’s an amazing take on what’s involved. My humble advice with this mind map - just remember where the customer is in all of this.

(PS. Link courtesy of Seth Godin. Disclosure: We have used Aaron Wall as an external consultant before. One smart dude).

If you haven’t had time to digest Avinash’s video below - let me save you some time. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest the 55 mins to watch it. You should.

But for those “time poor” folk (ie all of us), here’s the crux of the message.

Avinash believes that traditional web analytics is dead. Has no future. He refers to Web Analytics 2.0. And it’s not simply just his way of jumping on the whole 2.0 euphoria.

“Hard core” e-commerce sites as he likes to refer to them as, need to take the time to understand “the intent of the visitor”. The analytics data that any tool collects is virtually useless without customer insight. And it makes sense.

Here’s the 3 most important questions to ask any visitor to your website:

1. Why Are You Here?
2. Were You Able To Complete Your Task (ie what you came to do)?
3. If You Were Not Able To Complete It, Why Not?

The analysis of these open ended text based responses will be far more beneficial to you than gigabytes of simple clickstream data.

You might grapple with creating an exit survey or using a survey tool of any kind, but you owe it to yourself to test it. Extract a sample from your database that will provide statistical relevance. There are great survey tools out there - ASK Database, Survey Monkey etc. All cheap to use. The findings however might just be priceless.

A bank and the web. Now thats an oxymoron.

But here’s an interesting story. I met a young guy this week, Dan Payne, sharp as a tack and a sales managers dream - he loves picking up the phone and calling people. He loves selling stuff he’s passionate about.

Thats nothing new. Well, maybe it is in this day and age.

But what got me is that Dan works for a regional bank as a core member of their web team. Let me say it again. He sells online solutions to small to medium sized customers that come into the bank for money and walk out with a website.

They have a simple offering. Chocolate. Vanilla. Or Strawberry. For a little more money, they’ll add a shopping cart. For the same again, merchant facilities. And once a year, you’ll get a modest hosting bill plus the offer of 1-2 hours support. Oh, and the solution also includes setting up and hosting your email. The bank even takes care of the initial domain registration.

Talk about lateral thinking.

I love it.

Imagine the big banks with something like this. They would sit around a boardroom, with key stakeholders from every department. Legal. Finance. Marketing. IT. Compliance. HR. PR.

“Lets get into providing our small to medium sized customers with online solutions. Like websites, web hosting, email management and online payment solutions”.

“Are you nuts?”

“What about the brand of the bank? Where would we put the logo?”

“How would we make money?”

‘”What would the value proposition be vis a vi the synergistic ratio to the cost of capital”. Or something equally as idiotic.

At the Bendigo Bank, on other hand, someone said “You know what, I reckon our customers would buy websites and web services from us if we offered it”. “After all, they keep asking for them”.

“Screw it then, lets do it”.

And they did. See for yourself.

Now that’s better. A lot better.

First up, Glenn Livingstone. This is the second time in the last 4 weeks where I have been totally intimidated by someone’s stratospheric intelligence. The first was at Web 2.0 a couple of weeks ago when I met Avinash Kaushik (who I’m interviewing this Thursday).

And the second time was Sunday, listening to Glenn’s 90 minute presentation to a packed room.

The thrust.

A scientific approach to entering markets without risk.

Next up, Dave Taylor. He’s a blogging expert and a veteran of marketing online. A breath of fresh air is all I can say. He calls it like he see’s it and approaches marketing online with the long term view in mind, rather than most marketers desire to constantly have one night stands.

I loved Dave’s single slide that says “The home page is dead”. Hooray. Because it is.

Check out his 2 blogs - here and here.

Third - Sherman Hu. SEO and Blogging wizard out of Canada. He made such an impression on me that in 2 weeks time, I’m jumping on a plane to go spend a day with him in Vancouver. I like the fact that he specialises in the Wordpress platform (which is what this blog uses) and the fact that he gives away so much content via his tutorial sites here and here.

(Do you get the general idea now that a lot is happening in the blogosphere…)

Fourth - Marc Harty. Marc is a master of the PR craft. And he uses this skill to drive unbelievable amounts of quality traffic to his and his clients online properties. I met Marc a few years back and have watched his influence online go from strength to strength.

The content is hugely important to most people when attending these events. To me, it is the coffee, lunch and dinner breaks that are invaluable. Because thats when you get to make contacts like the ones above.

This year, The System Seminar 2007 Faculty proved their worth.

PS. All links above do not include an affiliate ID. Our affiliate connections are with EBI Mail, our email marketing platform, our video and audio platforms, and anything to do with Perry Marshall, the world’s most authoritative expert on Google Adwords. And that’s it.