Who doesn’t love email? It’s easy, convenient and trackable. We all have our various systems for managing it. Mine is far from perfect but I’m usually able to make quick decisions about each message I receive. Some emails I file away. Others I transfer to a different folder or project. Some I tag for the future and some I answer on the spot. It’s all about quick decisions. My eternal aim is to have just a few messages(Under twenty) at any given time in my mailbox. That’s the goal anyways.

It works. The field of email management is one where I feel pretty confident. However, the interruptions that come with email are another story.

The Problem

Like most people who work for a living, I keep my email client open all day. I don’t use a visual notification to alert me when new emails show up, but I do have an audio alert set up. I chose the quietest, shortest and least obtrusive alert. It’s a nice, gentle ping. Kind of relaxing actually.

But on some days, I can shoot from 20 to 120 messages in no time at all. There’s also that attention-craving Blackberry buzzing about my desk, also letting me know there are treasures to be read. How do you say no?

I try not to stray off task, but I am guilty of peeking once in a while when something comes in. Again, it’s hard to say no. The pause I take to take a peek at these emails has certainly begun to take chunks out of productivity. For instance, once the pause happens it takes me a few minutes to get back into the groove of writing. A lot of backtracking needs to be done.

This week I decided to face this problem head on.

The Solution

For me, the solution could not be removal of email. I need it. I also can’t even decide to look at it just once a day. Certain emails are time sensitive and that could be a disaster. But I no longer can afford to be run by the ping-pinging of new emails. I needed to turn the tables.

I shut down my email client.

Wait, didn’t I just say I wasn’t’ going to do that? Hear me out. I have more than 12 email accounts coming into my email client. Most of these are not accounts I need to check multiple times a day or even every day.

Also, having those twenty or so emails I have to act on staring me in the face all day tends to get, um, distracting. After all, I am not able to act on a great many of them yet.

As part of my solution, I open my email client just a few times a day to let messages download and to make sure I’m not missing anything important.

I changed my BlackBerry notification settings.

Gone are the vibrations that alert me to new messages. The Blackberry is a silent movie now.

I started using webmail.

My primary webmail account only contains my top-priority email, the messages I need to see quickly. None of these messages are tagged, labeled, colored or anything like that. There is no filtering of any kind whatsoever. This makes it perfect for a quick sneak and peek. Plus, I can delete the junk before it downloads into my email client, making it more manageable later on.

I (am trying to) reset my brain.

This is the hardest part of all. Training your brain into realizing that email WILL be there whenever you are done with what you are doing. You really and truly are not missing anything by waiting an hour to check it. The super important stuff can stream into your webmail and all will be right with the world.

That’s pretty much it. Call it a “zen state.” Call it “email meditation.” Call it what you will. It’s working. I finally feel like email is working at my command and not the other way around. It may seem simple, but I think I’m winning this battle.

What’s Your Problem?

What are your most pressing email concerns and what do you do to fix them?

“Everyone says I need to be tweeting and blogging — Is this true? Do I have to do both? If I can only do one, which should it be?”

Does that sound like you? These questions get posed time and time again at admin panels, showcases and conferences. Oddly, sometimes these questions come from the younger set, studets and the like. Isn’t social networking and blogging supposed to be hardwired to their brains? After all, it does help land jobs, not to mention secure social contracts. Conventional wisdom dictates this anyways. Conventional wisdom can be slippery, however.

Of course, one must answer this question with another question. Very zen, yeah. So, if you are wondering if you should be tweeting, blogging and the like, answer yourself this “What would you Tweet or blog about?”

Listen. Blogging, tweeting and the like. They are just forms of publishing. Micro-publishing, sure. Unless you are writing for CNN’s blog, your words aren’t gonna be read by a macrocosm of people. Still, you are gonna need a strategy. You can’t just start babbling out any old nonsense. That’s not good for you and it’s not good for business. You must have a clearly defined and well-executed content strategy.

Remember the words of Jim Rome, the renowned sports broadcaster. He used to say in his radio show, “Have a take and don’t s*ck.” Strong words, sure, but it’s an apt way to describe a good content strategy. Know what the audience wants and provide it.

Can you deliver content that will have prospective customers reading for days and then, after that, weeks? Can you draft the kinds of newsletters and blog entries that will pique interest and get people to follow you on their RSS feeds? These are all things you must consider before entering into a social networking life.

In short, content is king, no matter what the channel. This applies to blogging, Twitter, Facebook and just about anything else. Remember that.

If you are an MBA student, think about the kinds of things employers would want to read. Always consider your audience. Are they employers, customers, friends or all three? Perhaps a combination of the above.

Think of the daily newsletters you get e-mailed to you from companies you are interested in. They always seem to know where they are going, don’t they? They always have a plan. If seeds of stories are planted one day, sure enough they sprout the day after that. This kind of thing encourages and rewards long time readers. Long time readers convert into customers or employers.

Also, a popular content stream is highlighting and calling attention to other content you’ve found around the Internet. This can be done effectively but be careful. You don’t want to illicit a “Been there, done that” response. If you are not absolutely sure you can find stuff the reader hasn’t seen before, perhaps you should develop your own content.

Sure, there can be a value in aggregating content. The best blogs do it. Doing it right, however, is a tall order. You’ll have to do a ton of reading. You’ll have to read pretty much every single word that is written about your chosen field. It can be quite the dedication. More than writing original content. The idea that aggregation somehow saves you time is a commonly held misnomer.

If you don’t think you have it in you right now to deliver quality content? Hold off. No content is better than bad content. A lot of people and companies make this mistake. Don’t be one of them.

Until next time. Remember, have fun with it. Social networking is a new facet of the business world, but it need not be a cross to bear.

In the 1999 movie “Analyze This,” the psychiatrist(Billy Crystal) asks his insecure gangster patient (Robert De Niro), “What is my goal here? To make you a happy, well-adjusted gangster?”

Keep that question in mind as we move forward here.

Everyone knows segmentation can help success along in the marketing department, but what about other lesser known facets? If you’re a success-driven optimization junkie, the question you always ask is “What to optimize?” This inevitably leads to “What to analyze?” Analyze this.

How Do We Attribute Conversions in a Multi-Channel World?

Over the last decade or so, E-mail marketing has advanced in great leaps and bounds. It truly has optimized how marketers interact with their audience. Marketers who successfully use this information stay way ahead of the pack.

Most of this success has been focused on so-called “point optimization,” which measures an e-mails success as a standalone channel which in turn drives customer relationships and revenue. This model, while successful, only capitalizes on a singular resource. It’s time to move beyond the silo and embrace the whole village.

The next phase is to measure an e-mails impact across a variety of media sources, both online (Web site, e-mail, search, mobile, Twitter, Facebook, blogs) and offline (print, broadcast, out-of-home, etc.). This is something that is helped greatly by hands on support.

Measurement: From Channel-Specific to a Holistic View

The old models were simple. When you’d write an e-mail, you’d ask the reader to clink a link or buy a product. Easy to measure. Easy to quantify.

The new model, however, goes more like this: “Hear about this product on TV. See a mention in a tweet or on a social network blog post. Receive an e-mail promoting this product from a trusted source. Click the link to view the product on the site. Search for more information. Read product reviews. See product display in store and buy it there.”

Yeah. So very many steps. Consumers are savvier than ever before. They practice the “last click” model of sales. The purchase isn’t finalized until interactions with a multitude of media sources. This model must be replaced with a more holistic approach. This, however, will not be easy.

Call to Action: New Standards for Allocating Attribution

Shop.org, an online retail group, is attempting just that. It’s come together to define the standards used in allocating the proper amount of attribution for a conversion. Shop.org’s Online Marketing Attribution special interest group (SIG) recently issued a call-to-arms of sorts. It is looking to standardize conversion rate measurement, even in this new media-saturated world. Anne Ashbey, a group leader with the company, explains the idea in a a blog post.

The initial guidelines will likely be a “good, better, best” evaluation. These techniques will be adjusted for company size and for the types of products sold. Other factors may come into play, as well.

This is not just for online retailers. Anyone marketing or selling in a multi-channel environment will benefit from this group’s findings and results, whether you measure success in sales, registrations, donations, downloads, subscriptions, or even requests for more information. Retailers actually represent a scant minority of people who would benefit from this information.

Attribution Management Is Critical for E-mail Marketers

Models that measure first, last, or in-between attribution are all the rage in search and display advertising, but are also quite important in regard to e-mails. Having said that, there are still some problems with methodology. For starters, look at the American Attribution Index, which measures “the relative effectiveness of each online advertising source and influence factor on consumer purchases and conversions.”

Multi-channel retail outlets find that customers brought in via cold e-mails make up 30-40 percent of their total sales, as measured by the last-click attribution model. The AAI model allocates e-mail exactly 0.0 percent of attribution for “large advertisers” and 1.25 percent for “small advertisers.” This is utterly ridiculous. Clearly there is much work to be done.

Let’s Get Started

Now, back to Billy Crystal’s psychiatrist. Let’s rephrase his question to Gangster Deniro: What is our goal here?

Discussion should follow these main points:

• What is our goal?
• What should the SIG accomplish?
• Do you want to be a part of the standards-development group?
• What special concerns do you want me to relay to the rest of the group members as we begin our work?
• Do you have any solutions we should consider?
• What else do you want to know about attribution allocation or management?

Any questions or suggestions? Drop them in the comment box or send an email on over.

E-mail marketing. It can be really good for small businesses, but it’s also difficult to skate that line between imparting “useful information” and handing out “annoying drivel.” The sad fact of the fatter with E-mail marketing is it occasionally do more harm than good. If you, say, send out some messages to prospective customers that hit the wrong notes it can turn a would-be into a never-gonna-be. We don’t want that for your business or for mine. Webrulon has compiled several lists of helpful information to get you back into the E-marketing game.

List No. 1: Nine Rules for Driving E-mail Marketing Success

You should try to master these in order to drive up your E-mail success rates:

1. Have a good reason to e-mail. Otherwise it just seems kind of desperate.
2. Follow the five elements of success(See below.)
3. Plan your plan. Have it all ready to go should you garner responses.
4. Get the right tools in place. Make sure your website is ready for incoming business.
5. Cross your t’s. Starting to see a pattern here? Preparation is key.
6. Have resources ready. Pattern continues. Can’t stress this stuff enough.
7. Launch and evaluate results. Testing is so important here. You need to figure out exactly who responded and why. Otherwise it’s just shots in the dark.
8. Get fancy. Be brave! Show them something they’ve never seen before.
9. Integrate with other channels. Become part of a trusted network can do wonders for your credibility.

If you follow those nine rules you should have a good chance to see some return on your time investment. You may have noticed that number two referenced a mythical “five elements of success” list. Well, it’s a myth no more!

List No. 2: Five Elements of Success

1. Understand the impact of brand.Old stat: 90 percent use e-mail to engage in/determine the value of a company.

   New stat: Average person will keep an educational e-mail for two years or longer. For instance, Gmail saves everything.

2. Add intelligence to your design.Old stat: 18 percent on social networks, 27 percent texting, 4 percent on RSS.

   New stat: 62 percent use social networks regularly. This number is also rising, privacy issues withstanding.

3. Drive the purchase.Old stat: 26 percent of e-mails are opt-in marketing messages.

   New stat: 28 percent of all people recommend products to friends. As companies figure out how to better integrate social circles this number will rise.

4. Create service messages!See No. 1 and don’t forget to hype your brand and include relevant links whenever possible.
5. Add viral elements.Old stat: Send to a friend (STAF) should drive a 1 percent to 2 percent referral rate from opens.

   New stat: In the Twitter vs. Facebook world, Twitter sells. Facebook sells. Make accounts pronto. Other social circles are popping up all of the time, too. Make it your business to stay on top of things.

You may be experiencing “list fatigue” right about now but there is one final list we’ve cobbled together. A “forgot me not” of sorts. These are the things you need to check up on. Your final countdown on the path to E-mail marketing success.

List No. 3: Don’t Forget To…

1. Make a mailing calendar. Be sure to not E-mail people again and again.
2. Place value on e-mail addresses (opt-in and out).
3. Have activation, retention, and reactivation programs planned.
4. Develop key performance indicators that make sense for your business. Use these indicators as you run tests.
5. Focus on behavior of your list. Also useful for testing.
6. Tailor landing pages.
7. Optimize content based on results. Once you get a few responses you ought to be able to draft new E-mails around it.
8. Develop seed lists that are not on your network. Seed away.
9. Determine multi-channel usage early on.
10. Map out continuity campaigns (aka, triggered e-mail campaigns). It is important to leave nothing to chance.

Making lists and keeping focused and organized can go a long way in creating channel effectiveness. Save, share, or print these lists to help give your year-end results a much needed boost. Do you have any other ideas to help launch E-mail marketing into the stratosphere? Please, don’t hesitate to share.

2010 is upon us. Get ready for another round of changes of both the monumental and incremental variety. Our friends as Last Exit have compiled a list of digital marketing trends for the new year. Some will seem obvious, others not so much.  Read on to discover how the new year will play out:

1. Facebook continues it ’s eventual replacement of personal e-mail – This is already happening, thanks to the massive pre-existing userbase of Facebook and a few key conveniences that sites like Gmail and Yahoo can’t offer. For one, you don’t have to remember any e-mail addresses. Just ring up your friends name and it’s message time. It even has a chat functionality built in. But don’t worry, Facebook still hasn’t made a dent into business e-mail. Maybe in 2011.

2.The Cloud Helps Open-Source Software Make Proper Money – Open-source software projects that were typically a tiny niche market are  now available to the masses. In this example, Beanstalk, a fully hosted, version-controlled code repository that uses the Subversion open-source project has created a subscription based service that – for a small fee – removes the hassle of setting up Subversions and maintaining those pesky servers.Cloud computing infrastructures is the only way to make this kind of business model profitable.  Companies like Beanstalk don’t have to upfront capital outlay for servers. With the right skills any open-source project can be commercialized this way. Bring it on.

3.Mobile commerce finally comes into it’s own -  Mobile commerce was something of a joke until the iPhone app store took the world by storm in the past year or so. This trend will continue as the new Google Nexus phone enters the fray and other companies finally play catch-up with Apple’s business models. Expect your all-in-one smart phones to be able to do all sorts of new things, for a fee, by this time next year.

4. Fewer registrations, less annoyances - How tired are we of remembering password after password after password? We are lazy, dammit! Well, companies are listening. This has already begun to happen. Notice once you sign into your Gmail account, you can pretty much do anything within the Google network. More companies will partner up to make this a reality amongst different websites. You should probably change your password from “hello” already, though. It’s 2010.

5. DIY culture comes into it’s own – Call it DIY culture, Web 2.1, or whatever you want. It’s here to stay. Sites like Cafe Press, Etsy, and even old stalwarts like eBay allow people to run their own businesses from the comforts of their own home. Etsy in particular has turned into a huge success story, allowing people to produce and sell their own art for whatever price they choose. And, of course, Etsy gets a cut. Not a bad deal for them.

6.Crowd Sourcing – Across many industries and organizations, crowd sourcing will become a growing tool as part of various outsourcing strategies. Organizations will mobilize the passionate special-interest groups to not only carry a message but also to lead and take part in activities on their behalf. From political canvassing to software development, from people journalism to environmental activism, expect to see huge growth in crowdsourcing models provoked and led, in large part, by digital social media strategies.

7.Flash overtakes the universe – Every year likes to predict the death of flash, simpler is better after all. That’s a load of podunk, though. Flash is not only here to stay, but it will be wrapping it’s sinewy tentacles into every aspect of the Internet experience this year.  Thanks in part to Adobe’s rich media tool. Also, several tricks, authoring tools and server side scripting workarounds have meant that Flash-built websites no longer serve up single, impenetrable pages. They offer deep, searchable, indexable sites that will allow acute, detailed traffic and behavioral analytics and search engine optimization. Which is good for all of us.

Well that’s it for now. Let’s meet back here at the end of year and see how wrong we were. Isn’t that part of the fun?

Believe it or not, Twitter is very similar to email. The reply and forward functions are similar to retweeting, follow and unfollow are like unsubscribe, and you can be blocked like spam. Despite the behavioral similarities, there are certainly some differences.

Tweets are limited to 140 characters, are usually impersonal and not a focused. Yes you can ad short links to save space and direct the follower to the page you want them to visit. Some of these downfalls are non issues for business tweets.

When using Twitter for marketing, it can be helpful to have a corporate Twitter account and if you have brick and mortar, also have localized accounts. The corporate one can blanket all offers and news that applies to all of your branches. The local one can mirror that and add local events and specials. This gives the follower a more personalized option.

Now people always wonder about Twitter vs Facebook.
Let’s look at some stats showing business success via social media.

Now use of social media in email also shows a dominance by Twitter.

Business + Twitter Essentials:

1. Go get your Twitter name right now… I will wait.  Don’t let squatters stop you from getting an identifiable name because you did not think to sign up.
2. Check out other businesses and how they use Twitter.  Use your observations to create a strategy that works for you.
3. Monitor Twitter for buzz about your brand or products.  Find out what people are saying.  Learn from it.  Twitter is an unadulterated data pot.  Use something like TweetDeck to monitor tweets.
4. Go out there and communicate.  Spend the time to tweet back to others, and get your name and that you exist on Twitter out there.  Open the door to new followers.
5. Make useful tweets.  Make them count.  Try using Twitter only specials and promotions.  Make people want to retweet it to get the word out.  Think viral.
6. Reference your Twitter account on your site and emails.  Don’t forget that you can also use it on direct marketing too.  Make sure you let the customer feel like they are going to get an advantage by following your on Twitter and live up to it.  Build exclusivity and encourage them to promote this opportunity to others.
7. Remember you can use tweets like you would use testimonials.  Use that human touch to identify with your market.

Here are a few tips for getting the most out of your blast emails.  These steps will help you with delivery, engagement, value, and getting the point across while dealing with the image blocking.

1.  Design for low resolution and smaller screens:

The popularity of mobile email and netbooks kind of puts a pinch on screen real estate.  Try to get your important points across within the confines of a BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, even Windows Mobile.  Even placing a link to mobile version after your header will help you reach those stone-age BlackBerry users.

2.  Be Social:

While share this link and email to a friend is a good way to start, motivate them to share.  Making offers and deals that are appealing and sharable gives you a reach that is more enticing.  The ability to share on social sites and bookmarking sites are key.  Provide a way for the reader to share in an easy and straightforward way.

3.  Be human:

Photos of people and customers as well as reviews or excerpts can give your email a personal feel.  Make them feel connected and comfortable.

4.  Video does not have to be annoying:

Tasteful use of video can be quiet useful.  If it can relate to your product or service then including links or embedded videos can help.  Remember do not use videos that start to play on their own.  Be respectful, some people may be at work or might not want to be duped into video viewing.

5.  Animations are eye catching:

If you do not have a need for video, then maybe a nice animation can do the trick.  Remember you are not looking for seizure inducing animations.  Animated gifs can be used as illustrations of features and other things.  Stay relevant and tasteful.

6.  Compartmentalize:

Use graphics and layout to segment different offers or information.  This not only helps the customer understand your offers are separate but also keeps them focused on an interest area.

7.  Use of text links:

Now we all know that many email client suppress the images in an email.  So why let your call to action get suppressed?  Try using contrasting or themed not obnoxious color to highlight your important text links.

8.  Repeating offer text:

If you email subject is 20% off on LCD TVs then maybe having the call to action link from tip 7 should read “get 20% off LCDs”.  Not only does it drive the point home but it provides value and understanding for the consumer for their click.

9: Use a preheader:

This is the top most content in the body of your email.  Remember the screen real estate tip?  Follow up on your email subject in this area.  Provide offer details or additional offers here to draw the reader in.  Follow this up with the header and other design tips and you got a homerun.

10: Email client viewing:

Remember that most email clients supress images.  And keep in mind what your email will look like with out images.

• Use HTML text for navigational elements
• do not put important copy within images
• use alt text to provide details since that shows when images don’t
• get you point across within the preview area so that they are enticed to view the message, images and all.