Return On Subscriber - Email Marketing Blog

Even though I don’t write much copy, I love the blog Copyblogger.com. They posted a great trick when you are stumped for a blog post headline, which I think works just as well for subject lines: The Cosmo Headline Technique

Here’s their example…

Cosmo Headline, “The 22 Best Relationship Tips Ever”, becomes “My 22 Best Design Tips Ever”.

Get the picture?

Anyway, they just released the results of the Details Magazine Headline Remix.

A fun read and a great blog. Kudos.

Landing Pages, use them

Make landing pages for each offer, be dynamic, make them fun. You spent a lot of time on your email, don’t drop them off on the home page or a poorly designed ecommerce product page. The entire user experience is the key.

Us Email Marketers are always worries that our subscribers will hit the “Spam” button on their web-based email clients like Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, & Hotmail because of the close proximity to the message and laziness. Some people I know and have polled hit this instead of deleting or unsubscribing for n real reason.

The folks at Gmail blog have shed some light on their “Report Spam” button and what happens when you do this, definitely worth a read:

For all you Gmail users hitting those “Report Spam” and “Not Spam” buttons, thanks a ton! We hear from a lot of users that they love how well Gmail blocks spam, and the only reason it works is because you all report it to us. If you’re not in the habit of doing this, I hope I can convince you to start. Here are three reasons you should report spam:

One quote that caught my eye:

When our automated system sees a lot of people marking a particular email as spam, it starts blocking similar emails pretty quickly.

Getting a subscriber to authenticate you at the inbox level is just as important as ESP reputation.

Read the Full Post

I came across this on Boing Boing, posted July 29th, and thought of how many companies are going to have to make some major changes in how they do business.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a web “contract” — that is, the ridiculous “terms of service” that you agree to just by looking at a web-page — can’t be changed without notice, something that’s standard in most of these “agreements.”
This is a rare, overdue moment of sanity from the legal system about web agreements, which are universally abusive and one-sided.

“How hard is it to send out an e-mail letting people know about [any changes]?” she said.

According to the court documents, Douglas signed a contract for service with America Online. The business was then acquired by Talk America, which continued to provide telephone service to AOL’s former customers. However, Talk America changed the contract AOL had with its customers and posted those changes on its Web site without notifying the customers first.

Read article

If only this worked for fake spam email offers! I did this and it all stopped one day….all of it! Do you trust me? Or is this an elaborate spoof? Who do you trust?

How to Opt Out of Credit Card Offers

Want to stop credit card offers from showing up in your mailbox? Here are two ways to stop the offers, or at least slow them down:

1. Go to OptOutPrescreen.com or call 888-5-OPT-OUT (888-567-8688). These are the credit reporting industry’s opt-in/opt-out resources, which stops the four credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion) from selling your credit information to direct marketers. You can opt out for a five-year period or permanently. (You can always opt in again if you decide you’d like to get these offers in the future.)

2. Add your name to the Direct Marketing Association’s (DMA) Do Not Mail file. You can access this service online by going here, or you can send a letter or postcard with your name, address and signature to Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, PO Box 643, Carmel, NY 10512. Online requests carry a $5 fee, while mail requests are only the cost of postage. The DMA’s member companies check against the Do Not Mail file to take out names of people who don’t want to receive offerings by mail. Your name stays on the list for 5 years, and you can re-register at the end of that period.

Credit card companies get consumer information from other sources in addition to those mentioned above, so, while these two methods will considerably slow down credit card offers, the offers won’t necessarily stop completely.