There are plenty of excellent references out there for best practices in email marketing.  I’m going to take a different view and look at one example I received that is a “worst practice” in email marketing.

I’m an alumnus of the University of Florida.  I have also been a member of their Gators Boosters for over 20 years as part of my football season package.  I am a rabid fan, but their recent email to me sent me over the edge given the amount of money I send to Gainesville each year.

Here is a screenshot of the email in its entirety.

If you already know what I am going to say then don’t bother reading further, but if you’re interested in all of the rules that have been broken in one email newsletters read on.

1. And the biggest one:  There is no content!  This is the entire email.  It’s an image that must be downloaded.  The only text is the “Visit…” at the bottom.  If you have no Internet access, have images disabled or are on a mobile device this email is useless.
2. There is no personalization.  They know my name.  It’s Mark.  It’s on the check I send them every year.  Likewise there is no signature for them.  Who is speaking to me?  Are the director?  The football coach?  The president of the university?  If you don’t tell me, then I don’t care.  Which means I don’t care about this email spam to me.
3. Your subject is empty of content as well.  You tell me nothing about what is in this issue’s newsletter.
4. The primary image (not content of course) in this email is not time-sensitive.  It can be used over and over again with each new issue.  I’m sure that makes your life really easy, but it adds no value to me.  Each email I receive looks the same.  With no compelling imagery, time-sensitive content, why should I expect anything valuable to be in this newsletter?
5. The links in the email (the image itself and the “Visit” link) take me to the Boosters website.  Not to a web-based version of the newsletter.  On that website is some horrible listing of past issues ordered nonsensically by random numbers.
6. The link to download the newsletter downloads a 1.7MB PDF!  What?  1.7MB?  Why are you downloading a large file like that without warning me?
7. The email was sent from the ufl.edu domain, but the images are coming from the gatorzone.com domain.  Possible flag to email spam programs.
8. For those email clients that do not have images turned on (think mobile devices) they will see a large empty box where the image belongs and the word “header”, the name of the image on the gatorzone.com website – header.jpg.  That is because the alt tag was not inserted.  A missed opportunity to convey the contents of the image to those without access to it.
9. The size of the downloaded image was 34KB.  I was able to reduce it by 50% with no noticeable loss in quality.  That’s significant to readers who are scanning their emails.  The image shows up faster therefore grabbing their attention before they get frustrated, delete it and move on.
10. What is going on with the break in the drop shadow on the left and right sides?  I have a suspicion what’s going on, but is no one looking at these with a branding eye before they are sent out?  Or is some marketing intern responsible for this highly visible customer-facing communication? 
11. There is no tacking of the links in this email.  The sender has no way to know whether I’ve opened the email, clicked on a link and read it more than once.  This is not a relationship.  They are just broadcast what is important to them.
12. The kicker: It is not CAN-SPAM compliant.  There is no unsubscribing capability, no street address, no reference to which email address it was sent to nor why I am receiving it.

You have broken nearly every rule or law, Gator Boosters Inc., when it comes to email newsletters.

Seriously Gainesville, the recipients are your boosters.  The ones who pay all of the bills.  They expect higher quality.  And guess what?  It is not that much more expensive to achieve that goal!

Recently I purchased two digital products that did not meet my satisfaction. The way each company handled the situation brought to light how complicated business can be when your product has zero production costs.

Digital assets follow the rule: the first instance costs thousands/millions to create. The cost of creating the 2nd and subsequent instances is effectively zero. So how do you protect that asset if there is no way to return the product with certainty it was not used, duplicated or sold?

Experience #1

Last month I bought an audiobook from iTunes: Trust Agents. It’s a great book, highly recommended and well worth the read. I knew that before I bought it and I still believe it. However the audio version needs a lot of work. The two authors, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, actually narrated the audiobook. I’m not sure why some people want to do that. And if they do there should be some gatekeeper auditioning the authors as narrators. One of the two authors would consistently drop the volume of each sentence towards the end so that the last word was whispered. I listen to 3-4 audiobooks a month on my drive to/from work. It was in my Top 3 “A Pain To Listen To”. I stopped listening after chapter 3.

Having spent $20 for the audiobook I was a little upset. Years ago I would have chalked it up as a loss and just fumed. But not in today’s world. I decided an email to iTunes would only take 2 minutes of my life. So I explained my dissatisfaction and sent it away. After an immediate auto-reply I received an email from John within 4 hours.

Dear Mark,

I’m sorry to learn that this item did not meet the standard of quality you have come to expect from the iTunes Store.

I have reversed the charge for “Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust”. In three to five business days, a credit of $20.95 should be posted to a combination of the credit card that appears on the receipt for that purchase and your store credit.

I have also submitted this item for investigation. Apple takes the quality of the items offered on the iTunes Store seriously and will investigate the issue with this item, but I can’t say when or if the issue will be resolved. Please try again in a few weeks.

Thank you for your understanding. I hope that you continue to enjoy using the iTunes Store.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this issue, please feel free to reply to this email and I will do my best to assist you.

Sincerely,
John
iTunes Store Customer Support

Of course the credit was applied within 24 hours not 3-5 business days. This was handled so professionally I felt guilty for even asking for the refund.

Experience #2

Next up was a Joomla-WordPress integration tool from CorePHP. I had been pining away for this tool to use here on this site to integrate this blog (WordPress) into the look-and-feel of the website (Joomla). When I finally forked over the $80 I realized (or so I thought) that it was meant for another purpose. It would not work for me. I was bummed. Certain I could not use the tool I emailed their support team explaining what I really needed and asking for a refund given my misunderstanding. Yes, you would think that since it was not an impulse buy that I wouldn’t have made this mistake. And you’d be right, read on.

No auto-reply to my email was received, but I did receive a less than satisfying response from CorePHP within an hour:

Mark,

‘corePHP’ does not offer a cash refund or any exchanges once they have been downloaded. Unlike physical goods, electronically distributed software and software licenses can be easily duplicated. Accordingly, it is our policy that once we have distributed a release version to a customer, the sale is final and the software can not be returned for a refund or credit. Please refer to our Return policy as stated on our site: http://www.xxxxxx.com/subscription-plans.html#TOS

The WordPress is a product that sets inside of the Joomla, so the Joomla site is still in it’s normal state. The demo site shows how the site works. If you have any issues that you wish the developer to assist you with feel free to ask, and they can help you.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Kindest Regards,
–
********
‘corePHP’

Here’s my problem with this response.

1. He didn’t address the true cause of my refund request. I actually explained what I thought it would do and that it didn’t meet my needs. Had he tried to solve that problem he would have shown me that the product actually does do what I need it to do. I had pulled the refund trigger too quickly. Of course I didn’t find this out until I was told I had no recourse for refunding my money. It was then I that I spent the time to look at the tool more closely and realize it does do what I need.
2. Having a policy that penalizes the legitimate refund requests to protect the company against the scammers is wrong. You should not build your business model protecting yourself against all forms of attack. Just the most likely ones, which this is not. Any scammer who wants this product is going to find it for free or pay $80 and share it liberally. Their policy does not stop that, but it does penalize me unnecessarily.

I don’t have a problem with CorePHP. I’ve intentionally not linked to their site because I’m not interested in bashing them. I only use them as an example. They have a good product that I am still working on deploying. My issue was with the blanket “no” response that was obviously a canned response since the sale could have been saved and this post never have been written.

Results

In the end I have consumed both of the products that I asked for refund. The book was eventually bought in hardcover because I really did want to read it. And the tool is slowly being deployed on this website.

I don’t envy companies that sell a digital product. However I do believe that the online world again mirrors the offline world when it comes to customer satisfaction. You must do what’s right for the customer. My loyalty to iTunes only grew from my experience. CorePHP will need to do a little more to earn that level of loyalty.

Last Thursday morning I went to an intimate vendor presentation attended by me and two other companies.  I was there early enough to enjoy the bagels and drinks and meet the other two women attending and exchange business cards with them.  At the time they both appeared as new people in my life.

During the presentation I looked more closely at one woman and she started to look familiar to me.  So I looked at her business card and her name was familiar to me this time.  So I tuned out for the next 5 minutes to go on an obsession binge of mine.  Whipping out my Blackberry Storm I pulled up my LinkedIn account to see if we shared a connection.

Oh Crap!

We were connected on LinkedIn!  We didn’t share a common acquaintance.  We were first degree connections.  How could I not know her?

I am not one of the people obsessed with growing my LinkedIn database with random invite requests.  Every invite request I’ve sent out or accepted has been the result of an actual in-person meeting or a 1-to-1 email exchange.  A type of interaction where I would not be ashamed to ask for a LinkedIn connection.

So what was broken here?  Some of my guesses:

1. My memory: That’s not an unlikely reason for me not recognizing her.  I’m not the best at remembering people.  But here’s the kicker on that one.  I found her in my Outlook Contacts.  Not the main one we all keep up-to-date, but rather Outlook’s “Collected Contacts” database that gets created on the fly from all of your emails sent or received.  A quick look at the date it was created found April of 2009.  Less than a year ago!  Again, what is going wrong with my memory that I have had a interaction with someone less than a year ago not not know from where?
2. Two of my worlds have collided: Maybe I met her socially and decided to link with her.  It’s rare that I do that, but I do think differently socially than I do professionally so maybe that’s why I don’t remember her.  I also meet a lot more people outside of work than I do at work so I could then blame it again on #1 above, my memory.
3. I don’t know here well enough to be LinkedIn: I’m beginning to think that must be the answer.  Given the email exchange (which I could not find) I guess I went out there any linked in to her.  Not proud of that.  That is not what I want to be known for or to use LinkedIn for.  It devalues it and the relationships I have with those already on LinkedIn.

So what’s the moral here?

First I’m going to reach out to that woman and have an email exchange so that I can justify having her in my list of connections.  But more important than that I’m going to be more diligent in growing and cataloging my relationships in the various social networks.

Twitter is a different beast and serves a different role regarding followers and the implied relationship we have with them.  Facebook is yet another that has grown from a high school reunion into a “your life as a cocktail party“.  But if LinkedIn is truly “your resume” as quoted by Brent Britton then you really need to know everyone there.

And finally if you’re reading this and we’re connected on LinkedIn when we shouldn’t be, feel free to un-link me.  I’ll send a request when I deserve it.

SES New York is next month and the prep work has begun.  As one of the top search conferences it will have all of the obligatory hype, announcements and key takeaways.  As in years past it will be chocked full of new ideas and technologies.

But this year will be different for me.  This year I want to be a part of the conversations happening at the conference.  Be a part of the dialogue between sessions in the hallways.  I want to meet those people that are as passionate as I am about this space.  I don’t want to just be an attendee.

With that in mind I’ve begun the work to find out who is headed out there and begin the introductions and conversations before the first day.  That will allow the relationships to grow there and during the months that follow.

If this matches your goal, let’s connect.  I’m not drinking alone at the bar this year.

Oh yeah, if you have any insider information on how to get the most of out of SES-NYC, please let me know.  I’ll buy you a beer.

Do you place your main phone number on your website?  It makes sense if you want your prospects and customers to easily find your phone number, right?

But does that inhibit you from finding out how many people called your phone number for the first time?  That should be important to you if you’re tracking the sources of your leads.  Perhaps you want to track which keyword search term the user made that lead to your phone call.  Wouldn’t it be invaluable to know in advance when you pick up a call that the caller found your number on your website?

I am passionate about this type of tracking and attribution.  And fortunately there are companies out there that let you handle all of this at a extremely reasonable price.  I did my research and found quite a few great firms doing this.  The one that I ended deploying for my company and my clients is IfByPhone.  Props to Steve Scott at Tampa SEO Training Academy for turning me on to them.

Don’t put your track-able phone number on you homepage or your contact us page.  Put your main number on those pages.  For those visitors who know who you are and are only looking for you phone number they should not be counted towards your new leads counts.  Place the track-able phone numbers on the lead-generating pages within your site.

You may find another firm out there that provides a better, less expensive or more applicable service to you.  Everyone has different needs.  But IfByPhone has such great features they are the perfect case study into why you should use such a tool in your online marketing arsenal, regardless of the vendor.

Are you doing the following?

• Can you track how many calls are from your website with a unique track-able phone number? —   This is a must!
• Do you push those events into your Google Analytics so you can compare “form fills” against phone leads from your website?– Once you do, you’ll never live without it.
• Do you have a “Click To Call” option on your website?– Not for everyone, but for those that can use it, it’s a great lead-stealer from your competition.
  
• When you pick up your phone does the system “whisper” to you that the caller found your number on the website?–  This is a huge leg up in the conversation.
• If you have multiple locations you cannot live without this cheap store locator feature. — You could pay thousands of dollars for a custom solution like this!

These are the features that I was in search of and use extensively today.   I can’t stress their importance to a business from a car detailer working on the road to a regional business looking to dive into the source of their business.

Last word on : if you want to talk more about it, then let’s connect.  I can give you some useful implementation advice as well as help you with some discounts pre-enrollment.

Do you give enough importance to your street address on your website as you do to your phone number?

If you were to look around at most law firm’s websites you would be hard-pressed to find their address on the homepage.  Rather it is usually buried on their contact page.  As much as you may think your physical address is not as relevant as your email address or phone number on your website, it actually plays a large part in announcing to the search engines where your business is located.

Last year Google announced their formal support of microformats (RDFa) and recommendations on how to deploy them.  With that as an introduction you can now better understand the idea of placing your street address not only on your homepage, but also make sure it is formatted corrector so that Google and the other search engines honor it.  You can create your hCard with no HTML knowledge at microformats.org.  Here’s an example of the resulting HTML and what it would look like on the website.

<div id=”hcard-Mark-Regan”>
<span>Mark Regan</span>
<a href=”mailto:mark@markcregan.com”>mark@markcregan.com</a>
<div><div>12157 W. Linebaugh Avenue Suite 158</div>
<span>Tampa</span>, <span>FL</span>, <span>33626</span>
<span>United States</span>
</div></div>

Forward those two links to you webmaster now asking him to promote your street address to your home page. You can still leave it on the contact page, of course.

Now I’m not saying your legal website will rank higher because of this addition.  I have not seen it, nor have I heard of anyone out in the wild claiming so.  However if you implement best practices for your law firm consistently you may be ahead of the game if the search engines decide to add this as one of their levers.

Last month The Florida Supreme Court ruled that lawyers’ websites “must comply with all Bar advertising regulations, except the requirement that they be submitted to the Bar for review.” according to The Florida Bar News. It became effective earlier this month, January 1, 2010.

That means lawyer Web sites may not:

• Make statements that characterize the quality of legal services being offered
• Provide information regarding past results
• Include testimonials.

In the world of marketing your legal practice these tactics are invaluable.  Every other industry uses them daily and with good success.  Fortunately all of us legal marketers play by the same rules.  So while we want to use them at least others are not as well.

If you practice your business outside of legal, be very happy you are not regulated by such oversight. Much like the medical field, the courts are very conservative when consumer protection is considered. Whether you like it or not, you need to be aware of the rules like this in your state. Ignorance is not a good strategy.

Know what you can and cannot do when it comes to online marketing your legal practice.

I have always been bothered by vanity phone numbers.  Maybe it’s the slow process of translating letters to numbers.  Maybe it’s that once I had a cell phone which had no letters on the keypad making vanity phone numbers useless.

My guess is that it really is those phone numbers that have more than 7 letters/digits in them.  This imprecision just bothers me.  It makes me wonder if people dial the 8th, 9th and 10th digit needlessly.  Anything beyond 10 digits (not including area code/800) grates on me for a different reason.  That is just missing the whole point of a vanity phone number.

Well this morning I found peace.  Air Rescue has found a way to use more than 7 digits without bothering me.  Take a look at this photo I took as well as their website.   They have treated the extra letters (I-T) differently in this car’s paint job and that to me is approaching perfection.  They have realized that some of us don’t like the extra digits and put our minds at rest that they are not needed.

For any small business wanting to display their vanity phone number, take note.  It is details like this in the execution of your marketing that make a difference.

Thank you Air Rescue!

Ever wonder what my company, Flat World Media,  does?  You’re not alone.  Most of my friends and family don’t understand it, either.  So Kathy and I will be hosting a happy hour on 1/27 at The Rack in South Tampa to mingle and evangelize.

Very casual.  No sales.

You don’t even need to talk to us if you don’t want to.  But if you’re interested in learning more about online marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing, web analytics and everything else, then come on down.  We’d love to have you.

Tuesday January 27, 2009
The Rack
1809 W. Platt St.
Tampa, FL 33606

Can it really be true that an event as big as Gasparilla has such a weak site?  Yes it looks great with all of that Flash, but as a brochure it’s weak.  And as far as lead generation it is less than weak.  And of course no web analytics to prove its worth.