So my latest project is all about surveys. Everyone wants statistics. Who's visting my site? Where do they live? How old are they? Why do they come here? Did we influence them to do something? What else do they want to see or buy? What other websites so they visit? What else do they want to know? The list can be endless.

Every department and team within a company have specific information they'd like to know that would help them do their job better (and ideally provide better service or a better product to their customer).

I think most of us have participated in lengthy surveys where we are asked all of our opinions at once and provide personal information too. My thought is, why not break it up? Ask your customer what you really want to know right now. A few months later, do another survey asking different questions. OR if you have a large client base, split the group and send them each a different questionnaire. Everyone's time is important and I'm in the mindset of making things easy and fast for your customer.

Recently I read an article written by Jakob Neilson. He suggests that you keep surveys short and provides reasons why. Read his article here.

Recently I have been working on reviewing email templates.

There is one item that continously struck me about this particular set of emails. It was the way they all ended on a negative note. I am not sure if they realized that this is what they have been doing.

The first item in the footer of their newsletter was all about how to unsubscribe and how easy it was.

While I know that it is important to include an opt-out method in a newsletter, I do not believe this should be the first or only item in the footer. It gives the impression of now that you read the newsletter we know you'd like to unsubscribe, so just click here now!

I have since suggested that the focus should be on how if they enjoyed this newsletter they may want to see what other newsletters were avaiable and how easy it is to subscribe for those. And then added another line afterwards about where to click to unsubscribe (without the enthusiam - just the how-to).

This of course also brings me to welcome emails. The welcome email is (as in thanks for subscribing) is yor first email to your customer, so put some effort into it. It can be argued that no one reads these, but first impressions are important and it can be an easy and quick way to highlight some key areas on your site and also a good way to drive traffic back to it. Length is important as well, so you don't want to it be too long either. You also want to remind your customers of some key items (e.g. adding you to their white list, forward/tell your friend, etc.)

And don't let the unsubscribe message be the key or focal point of the email.

Think positive!

This article was posted in Marketing Sherpa on November 4. This article has limited access until Nov. 14.  So please read it quickly!

It's a great example of the amount of time and thought that is required to continuously have a successful email list and campaigns.

Article:

"EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW:
How Intrawest Resorts Get 2-3 Times Higher Response Rates to House List Emailings

From Marketing Profs.com

Excerpt:

"Savvy marketing professionals understand that sales and marketing must work together to move prospects through the sales pipeline. This is especially important in the complex sale, with long decision making cycles and multiple buyers that need to be influenced. The good news is that Web content drives people through and shortens the sales cycle for any product or service—especially complex ones that have many steps and take months or even years to complete."

More...

From Marketing Vox today:

"Volkswagen has produced 120 online short films for its new Passat campaign - the largest number in a single branded entertainment undertaking, which is also the final effort for VW by Havas's Arnold Worldwide of Boston, having lost the account to Crispin Porter & Bogusky of Miami - reports AdAge. The blitz is VW's biggest online launch.

Each short, just 15 seconds long, is being shown on the VW site (www.vw.com/passat) and demonstrates a single feature of the redesigned 2006 Passat, with the feature itself being revealed only in the final seconds.

To highlight the side curtain airbags, for example, the film is of a man wearing a large Afro wig who isn't bothered by a baseball's breaking through his window and hitting his head.

The first 25 shorts went live earlier this month; the second 25 will launch next week. VW will add a viral option to allow visitors to forward the films to friends.

VW has an online ad buy through late November on portals and lifestyle and third-party auto sites to drive consumers to the films on vw.com. The URL is also listed in all offline Passat ads."

This article was written today, again from ClickZ. It focuses on email campaigns - the first and last email you send someone. (When someone subscribes and when someone may want to unsubscribe.) The exit strategies are what I found most interesting.

Of course I do wonder how many people track and monitor their email lists and implement these strategies.

Excerpt:

"Last week, my amazing co-columnist Jeanne Jennings wrote about retention e-mail marketing tactics gone bad. In her column, she questions whether continuing to send e-mail that gets absolutely no response is an example of persistence or of arrogance. She points out this type of effort has serious implications; it could be the future cause of spam complaints.

For me, Jeanne's column was perfectly timed. When it published, I was at a high-tech business-to-business (B2B) workshop speaking about e-mail marketing best practices. On my list of the top five strategic elements to drive successful e-mail, my number one item is all about designing entrance and exit strategies.

Many people forget e-mail isn't brand new to recipients. This sounds like a strange statement to make, but think about it. How many times do you receive e-mail messages from a company for a few months, and each starts out as if they were the first e-mail the company ever sent to you?

And how many times have you not opened, read, or clicked on an e-mail for months, yet the messages keep coming to your inbox?"

More...

Here's a short article from Marketing Vox on October 25, 2005.

(Blogs are indeed time consuming - reading and writing them! But they can be fun, useful and so easy!)

"A best-guess extrapolation of blog-related surveys and data suggests that work time spent reading and posting to blogs this year will consume 2.2 percent of U.S. labor force hours, and work time spent on blogs unrelated to work will take up 1.65 percent of those hours, reports AdAge (via MediaBuyerPlanner).

About one in four people in the labor force visits blogs and on average spends 3.5 hours during the work week engaging with them.

"And, because blog readers tend to be the most engaged readers of online content, it seems for now as though they are not siphoning blog time from time spent reading their favorite new sites, but are rather reading blogs in addition to existing online behavior.

While it's difficult to measure how much blog time actually relates to work, AdAge's analysis estimates that just 25 percent of blog visits directly connect to the job."

Recently I have noticed that word-of-mouth marketing has been receiving a fair amount of attention in the media.

Word-of-mouth seems like a pretty obvious idea to me. Someone has a good experience and they tell their friends. The same idea works if they have a bad experience. So wouldn't it make sense to put effort into this?

Here's an article that I read in the Womnibus Weekly this week. (Womnibus is WOMMA's weekly newsletter - Word of Marketing Association.)

Excerpt:

"THE INTERNET PROVIDES SO MANY ways for users to spread information in ways never before possible. E-mail, for example, can easily extend the reach of someone's brand by a factor of 10, 100, 1,000 or over 10,000. The Internet also serves as a vast digital repository of such information -- accessible at any time, from anywhere and by anyone. Millions of opinions about your company's brand are only a click away on search engines, blogs, product ratings sites, podcasts and other digital platforms. The immediacy of the Internet is giving way to more word-of-mouth marketing and viral campaigns. Below are eMarketer's top ten reasons for the explosive growth of word-of mouth marketing, and why we feel it will continue to be a major factor in consumers' and companies' lives."

More...

This is another ClickZ article and one that I feel is very important. In it the author gives an example of a bad customer service.

He also includes a few examples of how you can make a sale, inparticular a first sale, memorable (positive) for your customer and encourage future sales.

It's the little things that count!

I'd love to hear what some of you have done - what personal touch you've added, OR an expereince you had when you bought something (service/product - on or offline).

Excerpt:

"What does your company do after the cash register rings? Do you view a sale as the start of the relationship, or the end? Do you exert as much effort to keep customers as you do to acquire them?

Sometimes, the most effective marketing and selling efforts take place after the first transaction.

The customer you just rang up is a walking, talking ad. If she's pleased, she can have her family and friends on board and ready to buy from you in minutes. If she's unhappy, she can spread a seed of discontent just as quickly.

She also holds purse strings and is looking for an excuse to buy from you again. Ignore her at your peril."

More...

This article comes from ClickZ on October 26, 2005. In it they talk about the importance of an email headers and how often they are overlooked.

Excerpt:

"As e-mail marketers, we spend a majority of our time creating e-mail bodies. However, the most important part of a message may be something outside the creative process: the e-mail header, those generally hidden lines of code at the top of each message.

Now that the e-mail industry is using authentication, reputation, and accreditation, the e-mail header plays a critical role in an ISP's decision to block or deliver a message. Most of us, though, let our IT departments or e-mail service providers (ESPs) worry about the header.

With our basic walkthrough, you can interpret what the header tells you about message delivery. We'll also provide a couple reasons fiddling with some list software settings can actually hurt deliverability."

More...