A call out to all Spammers. Do you think that basic rules of marketing do not apply to you? Well take note today, and start segmenting your lists. First step, is to think about language. If you could increase open rates by a meager .01% by targeting your messages in the right language, it could make a big impact on your bottom line.

Once we get past that step, we can think towards what your recipients might be interested in, not just the first thing that comes to your mind. You are sending 90% of all email volume, so take the unique opportunity to bring value to our inbox.

Posted by: Andy at 3:45 PM  |  Permalink

I was over at Wieden+Kennedy this afternoon watching Son Volt at the lunchbox concert series that our friends put on over at Disjecta
This post is not about that series (which is pretty cool by the way), but about "convergence."

So I was standing by the elevator (not because of laziness, but because I didn't know where the stairs were), and a poster about convergence caught my eye. Apparently there was a visitor from MIT in town, giving a convergence talk. That would have been cool to attend, but more importantly was the way that W+K internally promoted the talk, with a collection of posters seeding ideas, concepts, definitions, etc. It really got me thinking, and I came away with this:

Conver(se)gence, where expressions trump impressions.



Posted by: Andy at 2:33 PM  |  Permalink

MTV recently coined their audience as living a 30 hour day. In an on demand world, people simultaneously surf the net, chat, watch TV, listen to music, talk on cell, check email, download movies, etc. All in all, offering 30 hours of media consumption in little snippets of time.

Resident eROIdian AJ Mounsey has a solution to bump that up to 40 hours day! If he achieves this, his relative lifespan ups to 128. Way to go AJ! You better start saving for retirement...

Posted by: Andy at 4:35 PM  |  Permalink

So I have no idea when Google updated its personalized home page, but there some new features that caught my attention. It was one of the first RSS readers I ever used, until switching to pageflakes. So yea, they now have tabs and all that you would expect, BUT the coolest of all is the "theme" that will change depending on the time of day relative to your location. Oh so simple. Oh so engaging.

Posted by: Andy at 4:30 PM  |  Permalink

So I was relatively excited. ESPN was streaming live NCAA basketball through their site, UNTIL March 15th... when the tourney started.

As a guy without cable, I was all in when I found out CBS was broadcasting games through their site. I did not mind one bit that I had to fill out a long form (for lead capture standards), and I even ponied up some of my legit information, eager to see how they will segment my data and directly target advertising at me.

Much to my dismay, they used my data to BLOCK CONTENT....

Are they protecting a market? Wouldn't they get the advertising revenue either way? When the Blazer games are not sold out in PDX, Paul Allen does the same thing, and refuses to put the games on TV. I guess I cannot blame him, but from a marketing perspective, this must alienate your audience.

I wanted my data back, but couldn't figure out how to do that. So, like any rational person, I registered with an account and put in a Japanese address... It didn't work either. They must be looking at IP. Regardless, now they have two profiles, and I still can't watch the games I want. The ole bait and switcharoonie. Something is not right. Posted by: Andy at 10:22 AM  |  Permalink

So I attended a great panel this AM on Social Networking. The panel consisted of Classmates.com, Intel, My Spaces (Microsoft), and a social networking consultant.

Bullets I took away:
1. Social Networking is a Live Being
2. You want to make it easy for people to "go" vs the traditional stickiness
3. Combine Social networks and create a multi-destination with multi-channel communication (people use chat, cell, email, profiles all at the same time)
4. Communities need to be nurtured/fed to thrive.
5. Communities should have a clear "reason for being"
6. Your audience will notice if you are contributing and involved.

An example mentioned of a Social network spawned from nothing: nptech.info/
It started as a tag around Non-Profit resources, which led to web aggregation of tagged content, which led to weekly email/blog summary updates.

We are already seeing a move from mass to niche networks, but a question I have: Are we approaching "social saturation?" How many more can we handle? Will tech. leveraging OpenID allow us to embrace and manage ever more social media? It wasn't mentioned this AM... Posted by: Andy at 1:51 PM  |  Permalink