How to effectively market with email

In my last post, I covered the difference between advertising, marketing, and sales.  Now, it's time to see how they apply to email.  

Email is the new direct mail.  The format has changed, but the rules haven't.  

If you have a sexy product that people need, or will need after they see it, you can probably get away with mailing out a catalog.  A catalog serves as both advertising, to let you know a product exists, and sales, giving you a price and a number asking you to place the order.

Unfortunately, we can't all have sexy viral products like Chia Pets and Pet Rocks.  For us, the most effective way to use email is for Marketing.  

Email is a direct connection to another human being.  To prove how personal it is, write an email to a friend in ALL CAPS AND SEE HOW LONG THEY THINK YOU ARE PISSED AT THEM.

When you send someone an email, it's like knocking on their front door.  If they open it, you can't just tell them who you are and run away (Advertising).  Also, you can't jump straight into a sales pitch.  It's a one in a million shot they need your product, let alone are willing to listen to you.  You have to engage the person (Marketing).  

If you are sending advertising and/or sales emails to your email subscribers, "We have a new product! Buy Now!" you are probably getting the cold shoulder.  If on the other hand you offer them something of value, "Join us at our next event.  Subscribers get in Free!" you can keep them engaged and create an opportunity to show them your new products or ask for the sale.

Pro-Tip: This works for "cold" emails too.

Email is a personal domain.  No body wants to be interrupted to serve someone else's needs.  I'm much more likely to visit your website if there's something in it for me.  Once I've engaged you on your turf, I won't feel like your sales pitch is an invasion.

What's your email campaign look like?

Advertising, Marketing, and Sales

Whenever a topic is sufficiently complex and there is debate about where the boundaries lie, I prefer to substitute my own "simple" explanation.  The difference, use, and goals of Advertising, Marketing, and Sales is one such topic.

Few people know enough about all three disciplines to try to segregate them (unless your next stop is wikipedia :)  Some believe that one encompasses another or both within the larger umbrella.  But one thing is for sure, they are like atoms (hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon) that when combined create molecules (water, carbon dioxide, peroxide, etc.) that bring money into your business.

I propose the simple definitions:

• Advertising - Increases Awareness
• Marketing - Increases Engagement
• Sales - Increases Revenue

Obviously, the borders of these three things are not black and white.  You can advertise your Guarantee in your marketing and sales material, and you have to sell you marketing to get people to bite.  But the goal is to over simplify.

If you look at my definitions again, you will see that they closely follow the traditional sales cycle: Awareness = Discovery, Engagement = Evaluation, Sales = Purchase.

I over simplify these so that it is easy to see where your company is lacking.  If you have a great product, like the Chia Pet, that you are sure people would buy if they just knew you existed - you are low on advertising.  If you have to resort to cold calls to make sales, you are probably low on Marketing.  And if your site is blowing up but your conversion rate is sub par, you're missing the final piece of the puzzle, sales.

What's your company missing?

Protecting your content on the web

Content is King, or so most marketers say.  It is for good reason that marketers have such high regard for quality content.  The normal sales cycle begins with discovery.  You can't buy something if you don't know it exists.  And thus, most content marketing strategies are aimed at increasing engagement with your potential customers during the discovery phase.

High quality content is informative, captivating, and begs to be shared.  This increases inbound links, visitors, and ultimately sales.  So, content is not only king, it is also gold.  But there's one problem.  High quality content isn't easy to make.

The web is an infinitely large place with far more content than any person could consume.  This leads some companies to believe that stealing content is easier than making it, and hard to catch.  

I once knew of a company that was scraping content (stealing content by means of a computer script) from various websites and reselling it to their customers.  This business model netted over $20MM each month.  (M is the roman numeral for 1000, so 1000 x 1000 = 1,000,000)  

If you are creating original high quality content, you may be feeding companies that make money from stolen content, or worse, your competitors may be using it to drive their sales.

I believe in a free and open world where knowledge is shared, but I also believe credit should be given where due.  The best way to protect your content isn't to lock it up and force people to look at it in a maximum security environment.  The best way to protect your content and grow from it is to share it and get credit.

For images and video, this means putting your logo on them.  If someone is siphoning bandwidth by serving the image from your servers, you can limit access to images or serve up a different image that brings people back to your site.

For ebooks and blogs, it means adding links back to your site and referencing your company and other content.  It also means taking advantage of microdata to let indexing bots like search engines know you are the original author.

You'll never be able to stop all the die hard forgers who go to great lengths to recreate your original work.  But, the further your content spreads, the more people it will touch, even if it is stolen.  If you give those readers a clear path back to you, getting your content stolen is almost a strategy.

Understanding digital security

Over the years, many people have asked me about digital security.  How often should I change my passwords?  What all do I need to protect my website and server from malicious attacks?  Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all solution to digital security, but it does help to understand how it works.

Just like "water resistant" doesn't mean your watch can't be damaged by water, having security doesn't prevent attackers from gaining access to your system.

If you have ever purchased a commercial grade safe, you know that they are rated based on the number of minutes it takes someone to crack them.  TL-15 means that it will take at least 15 minutes to crack the safe using normal tools.  When purchasing a commercial safe, you want to buy a rating that is higher than your security team's average response time.  

Similar to physical safes, digital security, including passwords and firewalls, all have a time rating.  An 8 character password can be cracked with brute force in just a few hours with a decent computer.  The goal of digital security then, isn't to prevent attacks, it is to identify them before they are successful.

For the websites I work on, I use a couple of simple methods to deter devious activity.  First, I limit the number of invalid attempts for certain fields and the number of overall page views within a given time frame.  This prevents large amounts of data from being scraped and increases the amount of time it takes to test 200,000,000 possible password combinations.  

The second part is to have automated monitoring of these activities.  Knowing someone is combing through 100+ pages on your site every minute, gives you options.  You can limit their access or discontinue it all together.

Highly sophisticated attacks will always be an issue, but unless you are a bank or government entity, you probably don't need to worry.  Most attackers are lazy.  If you put up a decent fight and prevent them from stealing the farm, they will end up moving on to the next, easier target.

What do you do to keep your files secure?

The importance of winning

Whether you're a professional sports team or a B2B company, winning is important.  It's not just about being recognized, getting an award, or even being the best at something.  It's about association.  People not only prefer to be associated with positive qualities, such as winning, they will actively seek out the opportunity to do so.  

I was born and raised in Kansas.  I don't consider that to be a bad thing by any means, but there are only a few occasions when I feel proud of my childhood state.  One of those times is during March Madness, the NCAA tournament.  Normally this is because KU is expected to go far, but this year Wichita State University was the team to go to the final four.  

Although my parents were married in Wichita, it's the air capital of the world, the birth place of Pizza Hut, and it is the biggest city in Kansas (Kansas City is mainly located in Missouri, but that's another story), I have almost no love for the city.  The strange thing is that when I overheard two guys discussing the Wichita State basketball program, I almost blurted out, "I grew up in Kansas."

When the home town team is on a losing streak, most people distance themselves from the action with comments like, "They can't seem to get it together."  But, when the team is winning, everyone basks in the glory and takes ownership.  "They" and "The team" quickly changes to "We" and "Our team."  There is also a coincidental phenomenon relating to the number of people who buy and wear team paraphernalia after a major win.

Winning and being the front runner, whether by an inch or a mile, is something we can all be proud of.  For sports teams, this means more donations.  For businesses, it means more sales.

What are your clients proud of?

Focusing on Business Utility

Most web gurus (SEO, CRO, PPC, etc.) care a lot about the data.  They work tirelessly to increase visitors, click through rates, time on page, and form submissions.  The best ones focus on the customer's bottom line. They use the data to increase revenue and profit while lowering advertising and marketing costs.  I focus on delivering business utility.

I can't argue that it is extremely important to deliver bottom line results, but not everything is measured in money.  Brand image, thought leadership, and customer service are all things that cost money and don't necessarily help your bottom line, but that doesn't mean they aren't good for business and the company.  In economics, satisfaction is measured in utility, so I call the measurement of these activities business utility.

When putting together a web strategy or evaluating where you allocate your resources on the web, it's important to look at how much revenue your social accounts generate, but it's also important to know how much business utility they provide.  It's hard to put a price on a friend.

A CMS is like Mongolian BBQ

I have long dreamed of building the perfect CMS (content management system).  I built my first webpage in the mid 90's, before many people even had personal computers let alone the internet.  From the beginning, I knew there had to be a way to let people make the edits and changes they wanted to make without wasting my time.

In my history of building for the internet, I have created a small handful of very capable content management systems.  These days, there are plenty of mainstream options to choose from as well.  But, the thing I came to learn is that a CMS is like Mongolian BBQ.  

For those who are unfamiliar with Mongolian BBQ, it is like a salad bar that has almost anything you could possibly think to put in a stir fry.  You pay for a bowl that you proceed to stuff with meat and vegetables and hand to a cook who will fry it up on a giant iron griddle.

If you know how to make the items work together (the chicken, pork, beef, veggies, sauces, spices, etc.) you can make a delicious plate of food that you can't find on any menu.  For most people, myself included, if you're just piling on items that look good, you'll most likely end up with a plate of decent food (if you're lucky) or outright garbage.  

Just because a CMS lets you build and edit webpages without having to code, doesn't mean or even imply that you will end up with a decent website.  You wouldn't buy a scalpel and scrubs and expect you can take out your cousin's appendix.  Owning the tools doesn't necessarily make you capable.

I think there are some great CMSs out there, and I think they could all be better, but I am no longer upset when a client asks me to update something, even if they have the ability to do so via the CMS.