Reconvert the converted
Long before (in internet years) we had real business blogs, we had e-newsletters. As primative as this now sounds, we carefully collected e-mail addresses, one by one, from our present and future customers. We filed these precious address in our data bases. We created valuable content and positioned ourselves as experts. Then, very cautiously (for fear of the dreaded “opt-out”), we sent out our message to those who had given us permission to do so. “Permission marketing” the great Godin called it.
Some of us still use it. In fact, right now I’m sitting on a list of 2,000 e-mail addresses from some of my best customers. Do I want to convert these folks?
Sure, the Horsefeathers blog is more immediate, updated more often and read without the rest of the in-box clutter. But, terms like XML, RSS and feed aggregation are sketchy to even the geekiest amoung us. How am I going to convince my customers to learn a new technology, in order to recieve my newly blogged messages on a regular basis?
Filed under: BLOGthenticity, Ben, Business Blogging, Contributors, General, How to Blog, Why Blog?
Good question. Until a fews days ago I was deeply suspicious of RSS and doubted all the hype. I still do, but I’m experimenting with FeedBurner.
Prior to my experiment, Blogger enabled users to access my sites via Atom feeds and Bloglines.
I’m so focused on writing, usability, malware, comment spammers, pseudo-blogs, online community building, credibility, I haven’t had time to stop all that, take a deep breath of clear blue sky, and peer into RSS and associated issues.
I know Lockergnome is dealing with the various problems and solutions.
Some marketers are advising us to email our best customers, clients, prospects about freshly posted blog content.
I’m pondering this idea. I’ve learned a lot about effective email composition, not mass email marketing, but personalized email communications.
Could be viable. A very brief message, with link to new post(s), that are *relevant* to the recipient, accompanied by a clear and compelling reason for recipient to bother with clicking the link and viewing your new updates.
This help at all?
Great questions, Ben. I’ll give it a try.
Depends upon how far you want to go. Do you want to supplement your email offerings, wean them from the newsletter or go cold turkey?
First, don’t use the terms. Some of the possibilities below would come to them pre-loaded. It could be done as easily as downloading and unzipping a little piece of software or visiting a site you prepare for them.
First, I’d begin sharing the link to the blog in your email newsletters with an excerpt of the post (not the whole thing).
Put up a free Feed On Feeds site to complement yours. I have two examples for you. Just have someone (again, a high school kid could do it) make a template. Here is one with frames. This would allow you to put yours there and the complementary feeds (from far, far away) to give them other ideas.
Write a post with links to, and explanations of, things like Bloglines or NewsGator. Provide links to the things they need to begin delving into RSS (maybe some static pages with instructions and links).
There are opensource RSS readers at Sourceforge.net and I bet an ingeneous high school student (for very little money) could take one with a good opensource license and ‘brand’ it for you. Put the Horsefeathers logo on it and preload your feed along with other food, beverage and lifestyle feeds that would complement your blog.
An example of that is the ‘podcast’ aggregator that was branded for the new ‘House of Wax’ movie. Just do one for the RSS text feeds. With the right license, it wouldn’t cost much at all. The license would actually be free.
I’m not kidding. A young kid could probably do it for you and the cost would be for his/her time alone.
Those are my ‘off the top of my head’ ideas.
I’m pondering how to send an “update” personal email to my colleagues, business blogger allies, mentors, friends, *without* it looking like an email marketing campaign.
My solution thus far: go to each one’s site, read a few recent posts, then craft individual email messages with a leading sentence or two refering to recent posts on their blogs, then have a “copy and paste” general message giving URLs and post titles to recent BLOGthenticity and Vaspers the Grate posts.
A blend of mass email marketing and personal email correspondence. A hybrid. Some leading marketing bloggers are recommending similar tactics.
Those first few sentences must be very targeted, and I know that might be tough if you’ve got thousands of emails to send out. My suggestion: segment your email list into A, B, C lists, based on buying behavior or other factors that qualify these recipients into value categories.
Then send generic permission marketing emails to the majority, but more targeted, personalized emails to the cream of the crop. Are there not, say 30 prime prospects who are worth the time and trouble to craft personal intro paragraphs to the general update message?
It’s been suggested that certain days are best for sending email. Fridays and Mondays are not good generally. Recipients too busy with piled up work (Monday) or too anxious to start the weekend (Friday).
I’ll post a comprehensive Power Email Writing Tips post here soon.
Great thoughts. I was preparing this long winded email explaining RSS and aggregators to our customers. This morning I trashed the campagin. You’re both right. Our guests shouldn’t be forced to wrestle these things, no matter how fascinating we think the technology may be.
Being able to deliver to our guests a signature tool, that will provide them with a very cool service, makes us heros. Not “know-it-alls” pushing an idea our customers may not be interested in.
Although the e-mail marketers are whining that “open” and “click-through” rates are declining, we see our qualified lists still growing. So, the net exposures remain strong. For the time being, we’ll leave our well established e-mail campagains in place.
Any thoughts regarding repeating identical content in both vehicles?
(1.) Put me on your email marketing mailing list, so I can evaluate what you’re doing. Put me on all the lists.
(2.) Repeat what content where? You lost me somewhere.
(3.) Can you do a post, even better, a sidebar announcement, on your site, and reinforce with the emails?
(4.) Be careful with emailing. It’s so easy to look like spam or intrusion email.
(5.) Short email message, never never long. Some people delete all messages over 13kb or whatever, since spam and virus email are often long.
(6.) Never send an attachment. Viruses are sent that way. If at all possible, put what you need to say in the body of the email message. Text attachments may be okay (.doc, .txt, .rtf) but better to get permission prior to sending any attachments.
(7.) Subject line of email is crucial. Never use all caps, or initial caps. Use upper and lower case. No exclamation points. No “free”. Never “hi”. Never “important update”. Always say something specific, a benefit, or something about the recipient that proves you know them.
…more to come.
[…] Posted on
Tuesday 12 April 2005
The other day there was an interesting little discussion about how best to turn your customers onto RSS feeds. […]