This incredible list of Email-Geeks are wonderful people to interact with on a daily basis. I find myself chatting them up quite a bit on Twitter, it’s great to hear about and share what we’re all working on. I’m hoping that I’ll get to meet all of them personally, face-to-face. Here are my fellow ‘Rising Stars’:

Luke Glasner, Glasner Consulting

Jennifer Harstad, Online Marketing Manager, Frederick’s of Hollywood

Frances Dugan, Email Marketing Analyst, Permanent General Companies

Scott Cohen, Marketing Copywriter, Western Governors University d

Remy Bergsma, Senior Email Marketing Specialist, Blinker

Chelsea Warfel, Email Marketing Manager, AutoAnything

Amy Garland, Marketing Manager, Blue Sky Factory

Kari Hiscox, Email Marketing Specialist, eHarmony.com

A congratulations goes out to all here on this list, I’m proud to say that I’m one of you. A big thanks to John Caldwell for letting me chat with him for hours about all things Geek and making me sound smarter than I really am.

Viva la Email!

http://scottwriteseverything.com/2010/02/15/an-email-snob-interview-with-rory-carlyle/

Breaking open the cover and diving into the table of contents I was impressed with the break down of topics. While this may be a ‘beginners’ book, it’s worth a read by anyone in the email space. A refresher at the least, this book helps regain focus on the basics and what makes email effective. The book divides into three main sections; Content Strategies, List Strategies, Optimization Strategies with an ending full of CAN-SPAM and regulatory email legislation. I realize there are more pillars in the house that is ‘email’, however being a client-side based book, it’s spot on.

A few main points in the book got my attention. I’ll highlight one in each of the sections to give you a flavor of the innards of this great read. In the first section I came across the ‘Three R’s of Email Marketing: Relevance, Relevance, Relevance.’ This is a simple thought that so many marketers miss in email. It’s too easy to get caught up in the daily list of things to do and just push content into HTML and hit the send button, but relevance relates back to the ‘who cares’ factor of marketing 101. Don’t send emails just to send emails – please, please, please do your research and provide your recipients with relevant actionable data. Otherwise you’ll suffer the consequences of bad results, consistently. The first section of this book tells you about the how’s and why’s of setting up your email campaigns to be recognized and relevant.

The second point I ran across that made a great impression on me was ‘Educate the Entire Company about Email Policies and Procedures’. I know – this sounds stupid and hard to do, but the ramifications of being the only or one of the only people in your company that knows email creates a daily uphill battle against the entire entity you work with. This portion of the book doesn’t embellish the in’s-and-out’s of training and email education, but it raises a valid point. If you don’t solidify the policies and procedures of email marketing within the company, the hard work put in to make the email marketing successful will be a moot effort.

Lastly, the final nugget of knowledge I pulled from the book’s third portion was ‘ Measuring Success One Number at a Time’. All too often revenue drives the email marketing channel into a reactionary ‘batch and blast’ vehicle. This is a bad place to be in as an email marketer, not only do you have to keep the expectation of revenue up with your superiors, but it’s not the correct focus for email. Revenue isn’t the secret number that measures the success of a campaign. It is the reason we all get paid, however; there are too many other tertiary metrics that also need attention. This section reminded me that it’s crucial to pay attention to all facets of the deployment and measurement regarding numbers. If at all possible, take the time to review campaigns for successes in all areas not just the financial, it will help optimization for that ’super campaign’ we all dream of when we hit that send button.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the authors or the publishers of this book. Nor did I receive compensation for this review. I’m just an email-geek trying to share some email knowledge, it’s a great book to add to the collection.

A special shout-out needs to be said for a few of you: John Caldwell, Andrew Kordek, Shannon Holato, Scott Cohen, Loren McDonald, Chris Wheeler and Jeff Ginsberg @ The Email Guide. All of you have been of great value to me and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every conversation, blog post and Tweetup. I’m humbled to speak with all of you and gain insights on the vast amount of knowledge that you all have, I hope that I can contribute in some small part for the betterment of the email community.

A big thanks to everyone – let’s keep up the excellent work.

Rory

Think of it like this, email is a core pillar in the foundation of the internet. Without email, right this very moment, we’d all be useless online. Try going a day without emailing anyone anything – and then repeat forever.  Email is not going away. I can agree that social media like; Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn is a prevalent vehicle for communication online, I also agree that email isn’t as important in certain applications as it was a few years ago.  However; I’m having trouble swallowing the pill of “Email isn’t going to last”. It’s a vehicle of communication that to this day still outweighs the predictability of social media in regards to revenue and measurement, that may change, but it will always have its place in the interactive marketing space.

I just got an email – oh, it’s from Facebook and the subject line reads “Facebook Birthday Reminders for Week of November 2nd“.  Another email,  it’s from Twitter,  “JaCaldwell is now following you on Twitter!” I love that guy, glad we can connect! ” To conclude my soapbox examples, Amazon.com – possibly the most relevant online marketing I’ve ever experienced over email.  They’re not going to tell you it’s failing, because it isn’t.

Email marketing is still in its infancy, the adoption rate in small business is still growing and businesses in general are just starting to apply advanced techniques and best practices to their email marketing campaigns.

Too long has email been treated like postal mail without enough customization and relevant timing. Social media has done a great job of capturing the feelings and emotions of the users at the exactly the time they need to hear something relevant. Postal mail and email have been too far removed from the initial emotion that garnered attention from the consumer/user in the first place, but again that’s changing. Currently the triggers and auto-responders are being put in place alongside powerful CRM tools that provide the user with dynamic content that’s not just relevant, it’s personal.  The days of the “batch and blast” mass mailings are becoming far less frequent and much more worst-practice than main stream.

So, to finish my rant, I’d just like to say that email is far from dead. While social is becoming more applicable to communication online, it isn’t the death of email it’s just the evolution of connectivity. People like to receive information in different forms – the order confirmation for that new book you just bought from Amazon won’t be sent via Twitter anytime soon. The flow of information through the “ancient” inbox is still top of the list for B2B and B2C markets, I’ll bet my career on it.

Through this submersion into everything online I’ve come to appreciate and understand the purpose of each social community; I’m careful not to tread heavily in certain arenas due to the receptive nature of each community. However, the value of each community is still equal to one another, just not applicable to the same tactics – i.e. Twitter and Facebook are both of equal social importance, but not equal in receptiveness depending on the tactics of the campaign. Some would argue in the B2B space that LinkedIn is the vehicle to channel due to its corporate focus; I would say that’s not always the case. (But I’ve been proven wrong before) Point being; each social channel has its benefits and can be leveraged in tandem with other to create a strengthened presence online. To limit a company to one would not only be a narrowly focused attempt at social marketing, it would create a one dimensional approach to a multi-dimensional problem.

So, you say, “How do I implement a strategy that encompasses more than one channel?” I’ll tell you; find the voice of your company within each of the channels and actively pursue the users in that space with relevant engagement. You say, “HOW?” Well, that depends on the channel, right? Right.

Think of it like this. Facebook is a ‘Friend-based community’, approach these people as ‘friends’ and treat them as such. Don’t think that you can get away with a sales pitch to your friends, it won’t work. However; you can provide them information that may profit you – as long as it profits them too. i.e. – A brewery gives up information on a new seasonal beer and the date the beer becomes available. “Why is this relevant? It’s not selling anything.” Au contraire mon frère – The brewery just gave valuable information to it’s ‘friends’ about beer they may be interested in. Therefore, they go out and buy it. The brewery didn’t need to say, “Buy our beer”. It simply updated its ‘friends’ on a new release.

A different approach should be used for Twitter; this community is ‘Follower based’ allowing the ‘Followed’ to apply more implied direction than Facebook. The followers are more engaged in what’s said, BUT are looking for valuable information. Twitter is a real-time micro blogging platform that’s most valuable when leveraged multiple times a day, creating an active feed worth following. A once a week/month Twitter account isn’t going to receive as much attraction due to the nature of the community – it’s fast and furious with an unquenchable desire to consume. The more you Tweet relevant data – the more followers you’ll receive, giving the account more authority in the Twittersphere.

Using the appropriate approaches in each community is the key to the effectiveness of the campaign. Social media is exactly what is says, social. A company can’t  insert itself into a community without making friends and playing by the rules and expect to succeed. The community decides who’s welcome. Respecting the community and applying marketing efforts appropriately to the attributes of the people involved plays volumes in growth and viral affect of the campaign as well, adapting to the community is where the most value is found. The community won’t adapt to the marketing, it’s vice versa.

To conclude; take the time to evaluate who in the organization would be best for these efforts. There are natural online socialites that will carry these efforts without skipping a beat. Forcing unsaavy marketing employees to update Twitter 10x a day isn’t the right approach, choose someone already involved in the community and who has already established a following or a friend base (They may even be in Accounting – I know, scary right?). These people are priceless for corporate insertion into the online social world – they know the rules, they know the people and they like to do it. Why not pay them for it?

I’ve toiled over this for a while now; each client/business has different needs which leads to different configurations of software and solutions. I’ve also struggled with evangelizing a cost-based solution (Omniture) that provides no more relevant data that a free solution (Google Analytics). While Omniture provides, “custom reporting on the fly” it has a terrible time configuring with PPC campaigns; Omniture has “real-time” tracking and actionable analytics while Google lags 3/4 of a day or so.  Google can automatically sync one’s PPC campaigns (Google Based) into GA’s reports while Omni needs click tags for each PPC url; Omniture does high level aggregate trending for multiple domains (50 – 500), but most companies can’t even dream of managing that many domains.

While I can concede to saying that each solution has great value respectively; I can’t say one is better than the other – yet.

Here are a few articles that will help you get an understanding of what may be best for you.

http://www.haiensheng.com/blog/analyzethis/2009/jan/omniture-sitecatalyst-vs-google-analytics

http://www.bartgibby.com/2006/10/14/omniture-sitecatalyst-vs-google-analytics/

http://actionable-analytics.com/2009/05/google-analytics-vs-omniture-site-catalyst/

http://www.evisionworldwide.com/blog/2009/09/30/google-analytics-omniture-winner/

There are tons more articles out there; these seemed to capture a lot of the chatter around the topic.

Contact Carlyle Inc if you’d like to learn more about how one of these solutions can help you.

For more of these great videos check out SEOMOZ.org

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Email Marketing and SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

This is a good video to how different SEO tactics can be leveraged depending on competition and target market.

Nice post Rand.