Usually, I put the ‘What you can learn’ part of these posts at the end of the email. However, this is such a bad job of email marketing that I’m going to kick off with it instead.

If you’re sending your very first email on behalf of your brand — or even if you haven’t sent one in a while — bring your A game, not a half-hearted attempted just because you can.

On one of my personal blogs, I installed Feedjit, a cool lil’ widget that allow you to see who’s visiting your site and from where. It’s interesting stuff and with a few clicks and pastes, I had this deal running. I never think about it…it’s just there and requires no attention from me.

This was several years ago. Suddenly today, the company decided to send an email – the first I can remember getting from them. In the first paragraph, they allude to the fact they recently launched a daily newsletter. (Well, it might be weekly, which they referenced in the copy. Huh?)

Without any editing, this is their introduction to my images-on inbox: Continue reading

Josh Nason is the Inbound Marketing Director for SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him at @joshnason and @sendlabs.

Even 17 months after writing this, I’m still in email marketing love with Dunkin’ Donuts approach to our business. Here’s my original post from March 2008. The principles still apply today…even if I cannot find the email signup on their home page.

I’ve written about Dunkin’ Donuts’ email marketing campaigns before, which fit awesomely (is that a word?) into their entire advertising effort. I simply love this brand and as a native New Englander, I’m amazed at how this franchise that just served coffee and donuts 10 years ago in slightly dingy shops is now a fast-food mega-power.

It’s incredible what a little guile, money and some luck will do. Continue reading

Josh Nason is the Inbound Marketing Director for SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him at @joshnason and @sendlabs.

With so many moving parts in our lives, the reminder email is a soothing thing.

Whether it’s an email to remind you about a doctor’s appointment, a party via Evite or a domain registration expiration notice, the email reminder is a welcome friend to my inbox any day of the week…as long as it’s not late and I miss my Jazzercise class.

I had bought some magazine subscriptions for Christmas from Amazon and happened to get this reminder — and sales push — the other day: Continue reading

Josh Nason is the Inbound Marketing Director for SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him at @joshnason and @sendlabs.

I feel like MTV just abandoned me at some point like an old friend that decided they wanted to get a new haircut, new clothes and hang out with younger people. I don’t even know you anymore.

In any case, I got on their list somehow (I assume through the VH1 newsletter I’m signed up for) and received the following email the other day that stood out for all the wrong reasons. Continue reading

Josh Nason is the Inbound Marketing Director for SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him at @joshnason and @sendlabs.

This again?

That was the first thought I had when reading that ice cream giant Ben & Jerry’s had decided to “drop” their email marketing program in favor of going nearly 100% social media, aka the media-fueled nemesis of email marketing.

I’m going to preface this post by explaining the following thoughts are completely skewed toward the email marketing side of the discussion. In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s kinda the business I’m in.

But as someone that was in traditional marketing for the better part of seven years before coming over to SendLabs, there are some fundamentals I feel that Ben & Jerry’s are completely ignoring.

Email and Social Media can get along. Believe it.

Note I said ‘media-fueled nemesis’ above. That’s because the mentality that social media is somehow going to end email marketing is fueled by this online faction that is hell-bent on hoping they can say “I told you so” if it was ever to happen.

By the way, this is the same group that is saying B & J is “dropping” their email. They are actually reducing down to a yearly email, not eliminating completely. “Drop” sounds sexier and helps push the agenda more, I guess.

As good SendLabs friend and email marketing vet Luke Newton said to me once on the topic of the death of email, “You can’t sign up for any social media network without having a valid email address.”  The inbox and use of email isn’t going away. It’s just not. So if the main mechanism and landing place for this communication medium is going to be around for a while, why would email marketing die?

Having said that (Larry David fans anyone?), the email marketing industry loves social media. LOVES IT! Our company uses Twitter every day and also maintains a Facebook page. Our competitors, comparators, friends, critics, etc. all do the same thing. Why does there need to be one or the other? In an age of the end of traditional media and advertising, it’s about a new marketing mix that includes it all.

Which brings me to why the Ben & Jerry’s approach is lazy.

Not everyone is using social media

Gasp! Eek! Passing Out!

I’ve been blessed with a great group of friends and colleagues that I interact with constantly via phone, text, email and social media. I’m 32 years old, but am friends with those of all ages. What I’ve noticed – shocking to some, I’m sure – is that while Facebook is still hot among my friends, Twitter is still not. I’d say less than 10% of my friends have Twitter accounts and less than that can be considered active.

Are you still with me? Did I pop your social media bubble?

The vast minority of people I know just aren’t engaged with Twitter, nor have any reason they want to be. Even on Facebook, they like connecting with people but are a bit wary of the marketing element. They range from VPs of credit unions to lawyers to IT to everything in between. The two things they all have though?

An email address. An inbox.

The Big Ben & Jerry’s Flavored Blunder

According to the articles I’ve read, B & J’s marketing team surveyed their users and based on those results, it was determined their users would rather engage with social media instead. I’ve never been subscribed to their list(s), but clearly they weren’t using email to effectively communicate or add any value to their recipients.

At last check, I can’t target a specific group of my users on Twitter or Facebook within a zip code and send them a message. I can’t say ‘Send this only to people who say they like X flavor or Y flavor’. Instead as a B & J social user, I’m subjected to all of it. What if there’s a store opening up down the street from me? Am I supposed to know through chance or just hope it remains in my feed until I see it?

But with email marketing, I can send a message to specific opt-in users (provided I have the data) about new stores opening up in their area without bothering everyone else. If users indicated they just want to hear about charitable causes, I can send them just charitable emails. See what I’m getting at? With social, you blast everyone with the same messaging, there’s no filter and you have to hope it stays on their feed for long enough for the user to see it.

At last check, the company had three Twitter feeds. Does a user have to follow all three to be engaged? Isn’t that a bit much?

I can send an email to someone right now and it’s right there in the place they use the most: the inbox. If I’ve done things the right way, the recipient will welcome the email and not view it as an interruption. This leads me to the final takeaway here.

The Lazy Comment

It’s clear that Ben & Jerry’s simply took the easy way out. They didn’t want to invest any effort or time into email marketing to begin with and thus saw it as an expense, rather than an asset. With Facebook or Twitter, they have to simply paste a link or write 140 characters and “interact”.

Meanwhile, they have very light metrics on who is viewing their messaging, when they are viewing it and if their message is moving the meter or not. They have no targeting available to them, but if looking at numbers of followers, fans and likes is all they need to judge how things are going, more power to them.

By abandoning their email marketing program, they’ve said to those people who have just an email address or don’t want to engage via social media that they are not worth their time and effort. That’s a sad statement and one that is very short-sighted in today’s marketing world.

By using email and social media together, marketers have more power than ever before to target, interact and convert users into full-blown customers and loyalists. Abandoning one or the other sure feels like a bowl of ice cream left outside on a hot summer day to me.

But maybe I’m melted in my thinking. What do you think? Comment below and let’s discuss.

Josh Nason is the Inbound Marketing Director for SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him at @joshnason and @sendlabs.

This is how it’s supposed to work, people.

The Engagement

This morning, I got my weekly email from Spin Magazine (seen below), mixed with the usual assortment of information and news on bands somewhat off the Top 40 beaten path. What drew me in specifically was a link to a download of a Passion Pit cover of “Tonight, Tonight” by the Smashing Pumpkins, also mentioned in the subject line.

(If you’re keeping track at home, I saw something in the subject line that engaged me and a link in the email that I clicked. Score for email!)

The Next Step

I found myself on Spin’s site where I learned that I could stream the song there or download for free as part of a group of upcoming bands contributing to the Levi’s Pioneer Sessions. So free downloads from bands that fit the Spin demographic? Sold! I clicked through and was on the Levi’s microsite, seen here.

Please Welcome Back…Email Marketing!

I saw there were several songs to download and all I needed to do was simply click a link, enter in some quick hit first-time registration information (email, first/last, zip and country) and hit Submit. Within seconds, I got the following in my inbox.

Yep, another email. It fit the site design perfectly and was a great companion to close out the process. The email itself is laden with best practices in terms of text-to-image ratio, subject line, design and more. Part of me feels like I’m dreaming here. Could it really be this easy and simple? Someone actually got it right?

It definitely was. No snags, no snafus and hours later, I’m blogging about it for several reasons – all of which are valuable takeaways for your next email marketing plan of attack:

They used email as the point of delivery. By doing so, they required you to…wait for it…supply your email address and brief demographic information. They are building their database, something that is obviously important in any business but especially with understanding music consumption. For those that claim email is dead, note they didn’t link in social media at any part of the process. Just saying….

They didn’t ask too much information. Some time ago, I penned a blog for Marketing Profs on TMI, aka too much informationitis (premium account needed). Levi’s got it just right, only asking for basic info. What the heck would they need the rest of it for anyway? Well done.

Each download email is unique. There wasn’t a generic ‘Click here to download’ link in a bland text-only email. Instead, each song download requested was delivered with each artist represented in the email. If I only wanted to download the Nas single, I’d get a Nas email. I love the fact they look just like the site as well. A lot of marketers don’t bridge the gap from web-to-email and I’m not sure why that is.

From the initial Spin Magazine email this morning through the download process through Levi’s, email marketing was front and center in the drive to action and the ultimate execution of that action.

Like I said, this is how it’s supposed to work.

Josh Nason is the Inbound Marketing Director for SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him at @joshnason and @sendlabs.

We’re seeing this more and more and really liking it. I bet you it’s helping them reduce unsubscribe rates.

The idea is the impulse to unsubscribe might come from an overwhelmed inbox, or a sense that a particular brand is sending too much email. So why not give the subscriber a chance to choose their frequency (slow the stream down or pick the occasions)? What do you think?

Brett Houle is Co-Founder/CEO of SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him up at Twitter: @heybrett and @sendlabs.

Sometimes I get emails that I really, really like, but don’t have a concrete reason why. This email I got from AT&T last week falls into that category.

Anyone that has an iPhone knows the running jokes about coverage and that the phone is great for everything but making calls. Poor AT&T gets the brunt of the complaints, but it hasn’t stopped them from pushing forward and letting people know where coverage is expanded.

Instead of using a broad message like, “Coverage is expanding every day!”, they are using geographic targeting to deploy messaging to those people that matter…like me! Usually I get the national emails they send out, so this was a refreshing change of pace.

I got this email (click it to enlarge) that gave information on the New England region and where coverage was expanded with specific towns. It was a quick read, but I found it interesting. Perhaps it’s because a mega-company was speaking in direct terms about progress that affects me, but I really like the approach and the layout.

I could have done without the top half as it was a lot of blah-blah marketing messaging, but the bottom half was awesome. (It is a mega-company after all, so I supposed not having some fluff in there was too much to ask.)

The approach of using your demographic information to speak directly to your customers is so underutilized today. When’s the last time you’ve looked at your data to really figure what you can do? Got 32% of your database in a certain area? Speak to them and you’ll create a fan like AT&T did with me.

That is, until my next bill comes or I’m at one bar of service in my own apartment.

Josh Nason is the Inbound Marketing Director for SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him at @joshnason and @sendlabs.

Recently, I became a subscriber for Entertainment Weekly and as any good marketer should do, they asked for my email address when I created an online subscriber profile.

This was several weeks ago, but the other day I got the email that you see here: a simple informative piece explaining how I get the opportunity to see advance screenings as a subscriber. Great! But that’s also where things got a bit, well, classic?

If you’ll notice the movie poster used in the email seen here, it’s Rush Hour 3. In the copy, Rush Hour 3, Shrek The Third and Dreamgirls are referenced as those films that subscribers got to see before they were released to the masses.

As I write this, it’s March 2010. Rush Hour 3 came out in August 2007. Shrek The Third? May 2007. Dreamgirls was released in December 2006! I don’t know about you, but I can name a few movies that have been released since 2007.

Essentially, this is an abandoned autoresponder/trigger- something set up years ago but has been left on the side of the road like an old car.

So now I’m wondering if this program still exists. Are they even aware these are going out and if so, are they totally fine with dated references in their emails? I would assume they wouldn’t be, but I’m not sure. (I can’t wait to have the inside track on Star Trek, which came out a year or so ago.)

Think about your autoresponders and triggers. Do they have time-sensitive information in there? If so, how often do you update that information and what’s your system of checks and balances to ensure you don’t forget?

Josh Nason is the Inbound Marketing Director for SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him at @joshnason and @sendlabs.

I’m rolling my eyes once again when I think of the silliness of all those web 2.0/3.0 zealots and “gurus” who quickly discounted the email channel for the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and more.

You’d think email was the anti-christ! I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with naive social media  folks who also rolled their eyes when I’d talk about email marketing’s bright future. Blasphemy, they declared. And yet here we are, a few years into the social media revolution and all the shiny examples, the great ones – Twitter, Facebook, Gowalla, and more, are all being smart marketers.

No doubt, Biz Stone could have tweeted his first edition of the new Twitter Email Newsletter (launched Tuesday) 140 characters at a time, but Biz is a smart dude. He knows that even his own creation has limitations, and that his audience receives information through various channels. Remember when they started sending you email notifications of new followers? Of course you do.

And as many are now saying (and which I believe), email is and continues to be the glue that holds it all together. Companies like Nutshell Mail (Manage your Social Networks through Email) deliver a daily recap of your social media sphere to your inbox a few times a day (sign up for it…it’s really cool). My friend and colleague Brady Sadler wrote a great post on Gowalla’s use of email marketing to create a personal bond with its users. The list goes on and on.

Google Wave? Whoa. Not sure where that stands, but my hunch is nerdy early adopters took hold but not in a way that will mean lights out for Gmail. No way. Not ever.

Email is the common thread – the baseline communication vehicle.  We wake to it every day. Companies like Goodmail are innovating with video in the inbox and the future for rich presentation inside of email is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. I’d love to see companies like Brightcove get involved if possible. Most recently, Gmail announced you can now run YouTube videos inside an email sent to your Gmail. And even Outlook 2010 is going social, combining various social communications streams into one platform.

Innovations from smart college kids like Inbox 2 are addressing the fact that we have more streams of data coming at us now than ever before and this presents opportunity. I’m not sure about you, but I’m starting to crave a single platform. Exact Target just purchased CoTweet.  HubSpot and its brilliant packaging of Inbound Marketing understands that email marketing is the glue. It’s the number one tactic of theirs that converts the most number of prospects into customers.  Awesome! Where am I going with all of this?

Email is the current of the internet. Always has been, and as far as I can see at this point, it always will be for a long time. Just ask Mark Cuban.

Let’s not rock on, email marketers. Let’s rock on, marketers!

Brett Houle is Co-Founder of SendLabs (@SendLabs), a New England-based email marketing software and services company with customers across the street and all over the world. He’s also a casual twit. Hit him up @heybrett.

Brett Houle is Co-Founder/CEO of SendLabs, a New England-based email marketing software company with great customers across the street and around the globe. Follow him up at Twitter: @heybrett and @sendlabs.