Marketing with Technology and More

The Power of Seven Words

Wow!  When the team at SubscriberMail assembled our latest white paper titled “The Seven Dirty Words You Shouldn’t Say in Subject Lines (Plus 100 others you shouldn’t use either)”, we had no idea they would draw the level of interest and discussion they have.

I’d like to make sure you understand what this list is (and what it is not).  The list is not (as reported by some media outlets) a list of words that will definitely get your email blocked by spam filters.  Will these words have an impact, yes.  Some spam filters examine the subject line, and these words will weigh in the scoring.  These words also should be avoided because of the potential of filtering on another level, the human one.  This is where some of the discussion about this list misses the mark.

In our experience the subject line can make or break an email campaign.  Creativity and testing are critical components to the success of an email.  While it is easy to use many of the words and phrases on the list, they could eliminate a message from connecting to the recipient on many levels, so why risk using them. 

Tom Gray who writes The Evolving Internet Marketer gets it.  His key point: never use words in your subject line that YOU would block.   

Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports also is on target when he points out in his post that there is a danger in over emphasizing one aspect (subject line words in this case).  Delivery is a dynamic puzzle of interconnected pieces.  You have to address all of the issues.

Melinda Krueger, aka the “Email Diva,” states “there is far more to deliverability that the 7 dirty words would have you believe.”  I completely agree with her point that email deliverability is about many different factors.  Our white paper never mentioned deliverability.  While banning dirty words is a start, best practices require email senders to test subject lines, use dynamic content and remain relevant if they want their emails delivered.

I also agree that you should use an email service provider (ESP) to help with your deliverability.  Of course (with great bias) I think that ESP should be SubscriberMail.

ATT /Cingular Isn't Alone with Rebate Card Customer Ill Will

The ATT Rebate saga, and the ill will it has created among consumers has been a very popular topic on this blog.  From a marketer's perspective, it just is not the way to do business.  Seems like ATT is not the only company that gives only to take away.  A great blog posting on The Red Tape Chronicles goes into great detail about the practice.  Rebate cards certainly sound like a trend in the cellular business, since the article details Sprint's sneaky practice with these cards as well.

This kind of marketing flim flam may have worked in the past.  Companies that wanted to take advantage of their customers did so, and word of mouth traveled slow.  In internet time, if your customer feels ripped off or that you have done some kind of hocus pocus to get them to purchase your produce, and it spreads across the web like wildefire.  Any benefit in dollars today is going to be offset by the loss of customers tomorrow.

We Are Growing Fast

I don’t use this blog to talk about our business very often, but I am very excited.  The Inc Magazine List of the top 5000 fastest growing companies in America was published today.  Subscribermail is ranked number 596.  We are also one of the top 20 fastest growing companies in the state of Illinois. 

Since we have focused on email marketing, we have been blessed with absolutely fantastic customers that have accounted for this growth, and a group of remarkable, dedicated team members that have delivered on our promises to these customers and have made it happen.  I can’t tell you how proud I am to be part of this team.

When is a white paper not white?

An interesting blogger by the name of Jonathon Kantor raised a question about the recent SubscriberMail white paper on subject lines.  In his blog The White Paper Pundit he explores whether it contained enough “educational content” to be considered a white paper.  We use the term white paper, much like most of the other firms in the our market sector.  I’m not sure anyone ever provided us with a definitive explanation of what one is (nor do I think most readers really have a definition).  We look at it as a communication in which we seek to educate (not to promoted).

This being said, the blogger who wrote the comment really knows white papers.  He is the founder of a company that specializes in creating white papers, and has done so successfully for many firms.  If you create or use white papers in your business, his blog is a goldmine of useful information.

The Seven Dirty Words You Can't Use In Subject Lines

I started up my six part series of Webinars for the DMA last week.  The first one titled “The Top Ten   Things You Need to Know about Email Creative” was well attended with over 100 participants.  Obviously a critical component in any email creative effort is the subject line.  There are many keys to a great subject line, but there are some definite dont's.  One of the questions from the participants in the webinar was what words should be avoided.

George Carlin has always been a favorite comedian, and back in the early 70’s he had a routine called “the seven dirty words you can’t say on TV”.  Well, it is pretty safe to say, that you should leave all of George’s words out of your email subject line.  Here at SubscriberMail, we have compiled quite a list of words and phrases that can also get you into trouble.  So we issued a new white paper, titled “The Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say in Subject Lines; and 100 Others you Shouldn’t Use Either.”

Are you going to get filtered out if you use them, not necessarily, but there is a likelihood that some filters will stop your mail if you do, so the safest bet is to leave them out.  Even if your mail makes it past the electronic filters, these words are definitely likely to get you filtered out by the human ones.

The New Man Behind The Curtain

I sat next to the marketing manager for a major online travel provider yesterday, who was telling me about how truly awful his past couple of days had been.  They are a major player in the online travel space, and if you go to Google most days and type in something like “New York Hotel,” they are likely to be the top pay per click (PPC) ad.

Not yesterday.  As you may have read elsewhere, Google is overhauling their PPC bidding process.  I guess they made some of the changes, and did not tell some of there major advertisers when it was going to happen, or educate them on the true impact that some of these changes would have.  The bottom line, according to this executive, traffic to this well-known site was down 35% yesterday.

The financial impact on an organization like this of a 35% decrease in traffic overnight is overwhelming.  There is no amount of financial modeling or even disaster planning that can help you prepare for this kind of a hit.  Multiply this by the number of other organizations that depend on Google PPC traffic for their livelihood, and you suddenly see that Google really is the man behind the marketing curtain that has tremendous power over the electronic economy.

So what is a marketer to do.  The lesson is clear.  PPC and SEO can produce great results, but there is great danger in relying too heavily on it as a major percentage of your business.  It is like having WalMart as a customer.  They are great when you get them because of the volume, but if they leave, you are likely to go out of business.  Marketing strategy has never been more important than before, and online marketing strategy is becoming more critical than the success many marketers could garner by simply throwing some money Google’s way.

The other side of the equation, is it would really be nice if the major on-line media market players (aka Google) would communicate more effectively with the customers who keep the lights on about the potential impact about their changes. I’m not saying don’t make them, just give everyone a heads up.

The Power and Irony of the Web

If you have been following this blog over the past couple of weeks, you have seen my postings about what I think was an outrageous marketing mistake on the part of ATT and Cingular marketing executives.  The amazing difficult to redeem reward rebate card.  Tonight I was looking through the blog log and I see a visit from "att.net."  Well if you are not familiar with blog tracking, you can usually dig into a blog hit, and learn something about the source (for example if it comes from a search engine, what search term did the visitor type).  Low and behold, this was a  search done from the AT&T Worldnet site on the search term "at&t rebate cards."  Every hit on the first page (other than the paid ads) is a complaint or blog posting about the card issue. 

The web really does change the playing field, and just because you own the ball, doesn't mean you get to set the rules.

ATT / Cingular Rebate Card Lands Company in Court

The ATT / Cingular rebate card fiasco has blown up in their face.  Let this once again be a lesson to marketers everywhere that honesty with your customer should be your guiding principle.  Try to get cagey and hide details in small print, and it is going to bite you.

I have posted about the problem, as well as the inability to use the rebate cards previously.  To bring you up to speed if you are not familiar with this issue, some brilliant marketer at Cingular decided that it is not enough to drive consumers nuts with rebate forms.  Everyone hates filling out the stupid forms.  Of course, it is no secret that traditionally rebate redemptions are extremely low, in some programs it can be as low as 5%, so the more paperwork the better.  So this marketer, or perhaps it was a committee of marketers (committee sounds better so not single person gets blamed), decided that rather than provide the cash rebate as cash, let’s send a Visa Rewards card.  Only, let’s make it so difficult to use the card, that even if people fill out all the forms, they will have such a difficult time using it, we still won’t have to pay out.

Our family received three cards.  You can’t use them at the gas pump.  I didn’t try but according to one post you can’t use them to pay your cell bill (nice).  You can only use them if you know the exact balance remaining on the card.  Sometimes you need a PIN (which we didn’t get).  It took ages to use them.  I finally was able to figure out how to get the balance, and was committed to using every penny (because I felt so abused by this company).  Last weekend, I spent the last 47 cents at Jimmy John's on a soda (probably cost them more than that to process the card.

Well today I find out they were sued in California for deceptive marketing practices.  A press release from an organization called The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights spelled out what those of us who received the card felt, we were duped.  Of course ATT tried to get the case dismissed, and had it kicked into Federal Court, but I guess the judge didn’t like what he saw either.  He has allowed the case to go forward stating that “The "numerous terms and conditions" of the VISA Reward Card "raise an issue of fact about whether the VISA cards could be reasonably interpreted as equivalent to cash or check."  Since the Cingular Sales person told us we would be getting a rebate, not a restrictive debit card, we could not agree more.

It should be pretty easy to prove this case.  They need only look at the usage rates on these cards and compare them to the number of rebate checks that are actually cashed for similar promotions.  I think the number of rebate cards that actually get used has to be much smaller, just because they are so difficult to use.

The age of the huckster is dead.  Consumers want to do business with companies that offer good products that promote them fairly and honestly.  Deceptive practices like this will land you in court, and will also lead to word of mouth damage difficult to undo.  We’ve told many people about the lousy rebate card fiasco.  Just do a Google search on Cingular rebate card lawsuit, they could not have paid for this kind of publicity (nor would they have probably wanted to).