Home Office Design Tips — From a Financial Advisor?

In my occasional series of crappy newsletters, here’s another, sent by a financial planner.

The only professional I want to get office design tips from is an interior designer or furniture vendor.

With financial reform and the worldwide economic meltdown on most everyone’s mind, sending a newsletter with fluff like this makes me question whether this advisor is in the loop or out to lunch. C’mon, talk to me about something you’re a credentialed expert in!

Oh, the money saving tips? Crap I could get from Reader’s Digest like take your lunch to work instead of eating out and get DVDs free at the public library instead of renting them. You must be kidding.

This is another fine example of sending something for the sake of sending something. This advisor needs an editorial calendar. Big Time.

Oh, and the last straw? She actually PAID a vendor to give her a proverbial communications black eye.

If your boilerplate requires you to disclaim giving financial advice, at least print some material that verges on the topic!

Sheesh.

Where’s the News in Your Newsletter?

My inbox is clogged with so-called newsletters from people who must have made a resolution to “communicate more” or “do more marketing” in 2010.

Most of them are, in a word, crap.

In two words, self serving.

In three words, not worth reading.

Win a lifetime gift certificate for my services

If you can find the “news” in this “newsletter” I’ll work for you for the rest of my life for free!

(Redacted) brings proven, practical solutions to business challenges with a clear focus on the bottom line. We represent (verbal diahrrea). Our Practice Areas include:

CONSULTING and TRAINING (8 bullets)

COACHING (4 bullets)

If you’ve read this far you’re one in a million.

CAREER TRANSITION (2 bullets)

SALES PERFORMANCE AND REVENUE GROWTH (5 bullets)

(Redacted) mission is to assist organizations in developing and sustaining inclusive environments where all employees can do their best work (blah blah blah).

We work with organizations (yada yada yada).

If you’ve read this far you’re one in a billion.

An advertisement lodged into a newsletter template

This is  best described as an awful ad or an internal document designed to remind the staff who they are and what they do. Releasing it to the public is a sure way to lose subscribers or gain a reputation with your service provider as a spammer.

Not sure what to write about?

Afraid you’ll run afoul of federal CAN-SPAM regs?

Anything I can do to help? 704-907-2811

Best advice: ask yourself, “Would I read this if it came from someone else?” The sender of this advertisement would surely have to answer “No.”

Sharing Deep, Sharing Wide

One of my clients called last week to say,  “I love your newsletter but I want your blog delivered to my email too.”

No need. Every blog post for the preceding month is referenced in my monthly newsletter (along with some original content). Why do I do this?  My readers have lives of their own and I need to make it easy for them to access my information (duh).

The good people at ShareThis have a little application that can be inserted into blogs and websites. It enables readers to share what they’re reading via email and social media platforms in a couple of clicks/keystrokes. This gives ShareThis a unique vantage point from which to watch sharing behavior.

And what do they know? 46% of shared information reaches its new destination via email, in spite of social networking sites in the aggregate edging email out.

Tweets and Retweets

I owe a great deal of my traffic flow to Twitter, where I actively participate in financial, economic and marketing conversations and share what I’ve written as it’s appropriate.  At least a third of my blog traffic is Twitter generated, so I was surprised to read ShareThis stats on this beloved service:

We found that Twitter is the least engaging share platform with users visiting an average of 1.66 pages when they click through to a site, while users coming in off e-mail were the most engaged, visiting 2.95 pages (emphasis mine),  and Facebook trailing closely behind 2.76 page views. Of course this varies by vertical and site, but if you think about your own habits, it makes sense. Getting an emailed link from a friend may cause you to pay more attention than the more random discovery that you get on Twitter as you consume quick opinions. We think there is tremendous potential for Twitter to increase its engagement when and if better filters are applied – the type of filters that Facebook has built in from the start.

My best recommendation, even if you devote time to build your presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites, re-distribute your messages with a regular e-newsletter. A belt & suspenders approach to being heard.

Six Shortcuts to a Knee Whack

We all love shortcuts, but sometimes they backfire.

I see professionals in financial services and the law taking shortcuts with their newsletters and  email marketing efforts all the time.  Nothing’s worse than a self-inflicted knee whack.

Be sure to scratch these six shortcuts off your list — they’ll definitely get you into trouble.

1. Add everyone from your Rolodex into your email subscriber list/ troll for email addresses online/ buy a list of email addresses

• To comply with CAN-SPAM guidelines, each person on the list must OPT IN, verbally or otherwise
• This shortcut violates the service terms of every internet service provider (ISP) think: Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail etc
• It really irritates recipients, making them likely to report you as a spammer
• ISPs and corporate email services are aggressively scrubbing unsolicited email from recipient mailboxes. The more services that block you today, the more services are likely to block you tomorrow

2. Send bulk email from your own outbox

For an average-sized email list you can send a monthly newsletter for $30-50. Here’s what you get in exchange  for your pittance:

• Handling subscribe and unsubscribe requests according to federal guidelines
• Automated management of  bounced emails and your email list
• Dealing with spam complaints made against you
• More of your messages hit the inbox instead of the spam filter.  Email services have  relationships with ISPs that you  don’t have and can’t afford to develop

3. Make it easier for readers to hit “spam” than to un-subscribe

If you’re emailing to the US, you must provide a mechanism for recipients to stop receiving your messages. Don’t hide or minimize the unsubscribe link in your email.

When someone hits “spam” or labels your email “junk” your reputation with the ISPs takes a hit (they’re watching). If you earn a reputation with one or more ISPs as a spammer, it’s almost impossible to get your messages delivered anywhere.  While results vary by the filter policy of each ISP,  the 2008 Lyris report says it’s the sender’s reputation driving 25% of messages to the SPAM folder.

Bottom line: you don’t want to talk to people who don’t want to hear from you.

4.  Load up your message with “spammy” words

With 15% of all reported spam last month was finance-oriented, ISPs are aggressively scrubbing emails with references or offers related to money, the stock market or other financial “opportunities” including investments, credit reports, real estate and loans. Here’s a partial list of words that typically trip the spam filters.

5.  Bombard your list

In a study by Merkle this year, the main reasons subscribers choose to opt out of email programs are perceived irrelevance (75%) and sending too frequently (73%).

Promotional emails were deemed the most intrusive. Solution? Make your newsletter informative, not promotional.

Merkle reported that 20% of those receiving e-newsletters thought they were worthy of reading,which means 80% thought what they received was crap. Further, people reported receiving on average,about eight newsletters each month. That’s a heap of competition for YOUR customers’ attention.

6. Send crap for the sake of sending something

I receive a monthly newsletter from an Infiniti car dealer. I look forward to it for the same reason some people watch horror flicks.One edition was devoted to movie trends and the price of popcorn while another included a series of profiles of famous explorers from the 15th  century.

Crap.

I’m not imaginative enough to tie movies and explorers to the latest model sports car; this dealer doesn’t even try!

The surest way to avoid sending crap is to devise an editorial calendar. Without one, you risk losing subscribers. Or you’ll only keep subscribers like me who want to mock you in their blogs.

For more information here’s a download of a CAN-SPAM guide and a PowerPoint with more details.

The Company you Keep

Mom’s advice still holds: you’re known by the company you keep. Since 15% of all reported spam  last month was finance-oriented, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are scrubbing emails with references or offers related to money, the stock market or other financial “opportunities” including investments, credit reports, real estate and loans.

What’s this mean for legitimate financial services emailers? You’ve got to fight harder to keep your own reputation intact. The good folks at Listrak give great advice including pruning your subscriber list and asking subscribers to re-opt-in from time to time.

Here’s the exciting news for legitimate emailers:  ISPs have added a new metric to the reputation measurement – level of subscriber interaction and engagement. ISPs can tell who opens and clicks on a message and who ignores or deletes it. More importantly, they monitor how many subscribers click “this is not spam” if the message is delivered to the junk mail folder instead of the inbox. Monitoring subscriber engagement lets the ISP know which senders are delivering relevant content that subscribers want and which ones, like spammers, are continuing to blast out message after message even if no previous action has been taken (emphasis added).

Takeaways:

• Keep email content brief. Link elsewhere for the full story
• Engage subscribers with surveys, downloads and linked graphics
• All email templates have a built-in forward feature, but it can only help to suggest specific possible recipients, for example:
  • A coworker whose spouse was recently laid off
  • A neighbor whose house has been languishing on the market
  • A relative whose adult children have moved back in

If your content isn’t engaging, it’s more likely to be trapped in a spam filter. Call me to develop a content strategy that keeps receivers engaged and sending you referrals.

End of Email?

Interesting article in WSJ about email’s younger, prettier communication sister: social media.

For those not using Twitter, Facebook and other means of connecting with the outside world, this WSJ quote explains the difference between them and ye olde email: “We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.”

The story quoted Alex Bochannek, curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA: “The whole idea of this email service isn’t really quite as significant anymore when you can have many, many different types of messages and files and when you have this all on the same type of networks.”

What’s this bode for email newsletters?

The article doesn’t make my point explicitly, but sets it up well. Email newsletters and all THOUGHTFUL communications have a place OUTSIDE social media. Said another way, to communicate thoroughly, thoughtfully and confidentially, if you can’t meet in person, start with email.

This mirrors my own experience, as a fairly active Twitter(er) who averages 30 daily updates.  For those of you not yet using Twitter, don’t take the impression that I have that much to say about myself — my tweets are usually in response to news items posted by other users or part of a conversation with my “followers” (feels a bit Jim Jones-ish calling them that, but oh well…that’s what they’re officially called).

Sure, I occasionally tweet out the odd “gonna clear my head by taking the dog for a walk” message, but the fun thing about social media is how people find you on the basis of these throwaway tweets. I now have a number of followers who send me pet food coupons and even Cesar Millan aka The Dog Whisperer follows me!

Belt & suspenders approach

Back to the topic at hand. For THOUGHTFUL, well-written communications, there is no substitute for email.  The only thing that comes close is what you syndicate through your RSS feed. However, people get busy and forget to check their readers. An occasional email poke to check the RSS feed will probably always be in order.

Here’s my belt & suspenders approach to being heard:

• My website is home base. It’s the hub of external communications
• Primary communications spokes
  • Blog and its RSS feed
  • Twitter
  • Newsletter
  • Email

1. When I post to my blog ( my website is actually a blogsite), it automatically sends a tweet with the title and a link for all the world to see. It also sends out an excerpt of the post through my RSS feed for those who’ve subscribed and to those directories like Alltop, that carry my content. Those who are linked to me via LinkedIn can see this excerpt on my profile page.  Anywhere that anyone sees an excerpt of my blog posts, they can click to read the whole thing on my blog.
2. I use Twitter to entice the Twitterverse to read my blog posts. With 140 characters per tweet, I use the url shortening service bitly to get the links down to 16 characters, then use what’s left to tease with leads like “Why Email Isn’t Dead.”
3. I also use Twitter to ask specific people to read or comment on posts, according to their inclination and expertise. I know who wants to read my posts about SPAM and who wants a financial blog writing prompt and who’s the best expert to comment on one of my posts. If I’m fortunate, some of my followers will “reTweet” what I’ve sent so their network of followers will have the opportunity to read something they would not have otherwise known existed.
4. When I get comments on the blog I Tweet that out to keep the conversation going. This helps those who’ve commented get their ideas in front of a wider audience, too. The least I can do.
5. My newsletter promises three things every month: something on whole-brain communications, a bit on brevity and updates on topics related to email marketing and newsletters. Eventually everything from the newsletter shows up in the blog. For those who don’t want to read every blog post or remind themselves to check my RSS feed in a reader, they can read my monthly newsletter and click through to anything else that might interest them in the blog. The newsletter is an efficient portal to all the information I offer.
6. I reserve email for my most formal and private correspondence. It’s also how I communicate with those not on social media.  As the WSJ article says, some things require attachments and confidentiality and email is the next-best thing to a tête-à-tête

OK, that’s my communications methodology.  What am I missing that works for you? Do tell (if you comment, I’ll tweet it out)!

Advice for those who need a ghostwriter

As a writer with some tech savvy and a general tendency to extroversion, social media works very well for me and and I’ve found a way to bind all my efforts together strategically. My experience is that those who invest the time in social media will benefit, but not everyone will want to make that investment. Fine.

If you’re a professional of any stripe, start with a custom newsletter written by yourself or a ghostwriter — not something you stick your logo on and call “customized.” No idea what to write? I offer news-driven writing prompts, if that helps.

Keep a consistent publishing schedule and maintain a searchable repository of your articles (not just prior newsletter editions, the individual articles) on your website. One of my clients does this so that we can eventually compile his newsletter articles into feature articles for professional journals. Another client’s newsletter articles go into his blog and will eventually become a book. Re-purpose your material.

My observation is that people are often reluctant to start small when they have big aspirations, but every desert is composed of tiny grains of sand. They add up.

ADDED 10-19-09

Further evidence of the power of Twitter: this morning one one of my tweeps, @derekhernquist, brought this video to my attention:

A Special Place for Spammers

I’ve been waiting for a good case study to illustrate what I’ve been saying about spam filtering over the last several months.

Last week a global provider of bulk email services had to deal with one of its rogue customers who’d gained a reputation as a spammer. While it did, a large-but-untold number of innocent and spam-compliant emailers couldn’t get their messages into customers’ inboxes.

Aha! The rubber hits the highway. Here’s how it went down:

Spamhaus Project, the international cyber crime fighting organization, placed the rogue emailer’s internet (IP) address on its blacklist of spammers. The rogue’s IP address belonged to the rogue’s email provider, which meant the millions of innocent commercial emailers also using that provider were painted with the same “spammer” brush. The Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who subscribe to Spamhaus’ blacklist wouldn’t deliver anyone’s email from that service until the matter was resolved.

Damage control overdrive with Hotmail, Yahoo! and others

The commercial email service provider had to go into damage control overdrive, suspending the rogue’s account, communicating with innocent emailer senders about the delay to their campaigns, and proving to Spamhaus that they’d taken the right precautionary and reactionary measures required. Until Spamhaus removed the address from its blacklist, ISPs like Hotmail, Yahoo! and others wouldn’t deliver any of the provider’s clients’ email.

Ouch!

This is tough to convey in words, and I acknowledge using some jargon here, so I suggest you visit Spamhaus for flowcharts that illustrate how filtering works.

Follow commercial email rules

The upshot for commercial emailers: if your email service provider advises you to use a double-opt-in subscription process or to certify that you haven’t purchased an email list, or subscribed people without their permission, comply quickly and don’t complain about the extra steps. These procedures are necessary to convince Spamhaus and the ISPs that you’re a compliant emailer, even if someone else using your service isn’t.

This also points out the reason to use a bulk email service instead of sending email campaigns from your own email account. That way, if you are accused of spamming, you’ll have a knowledgeable and experienced company go to bat for you with the international cyber services. If I may be so bold to ask, please consider using my email service.

The Spamhaus Project is a great study for international cooperation. Be sure to hit the tags to the right for more of what I’ve written on SPAM and e-newsletters.

Spamhaus: Cyber Crime Fighter

In September I had the pleasure of being a Twitter panelist on how to avoid the spam filters when emailing.  This is the third time I’ve spoken formally on the subject (if you consider tweeting “formal”).  By this third presentation, it struck me that spam is like porn, everyone thinks they know it when they see it, but few can define it in their own words.*

Looking for the most succinct explanation, I turned to the  Spamhaus Project, an international non-profit organization whose mission is to track the Internet’s spam operations, to provide dependable realtime anti-spam protection for internet networks, to work with law enforcement agencies to identify and pursue spammers worldwide, and to lobby governments for effective anti-spam legislation.

The word “spam” as applied to email means “unsolicited bulk email”

The two most important words there are UNSOLICITED and BULK.

Unsolicited means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent.

Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content.

A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk.

Unsolicited email is normal email, for example first contact inquiries, job inquiries and sales inquiries.

Bulk email is normal email, for example, subscriber newsletters, customer communications, discussion lists.

Point of clarification: The CAN-SPAM Act goes beyond the technical definition of spam; it applies to commercial email sent to recipients in the US and originated in the States. Download this CAN-SPAM Quick Guide.

*Wow your friends with your command of factoids

I’m not the first to use the phrase ” everyone thinks they know it when they see it.”  The origin is in a US Supreme Court case that helped define the legal standards for determining obscenity. Here’s a bit about the case.

In 1964, movie theater manager Nico Jacobellis was convicted of exhibiting an obscene movie, Louis Malle’s Les Amants, “The Lovers.” The ads were hyperbolic.

“When all conventions explode . . . in the most daring love story ever filmed!”

“As close to authentic amour as is possible on the screen.”

“The frankest love scenes yet seen on film.” “Contains one of the longest and most sensuous love scenes to be seen in this country.”

In the words of the Supreme Court decision: “‘The Lovers’ involves a woman bored with her life and marriage who abandons her husband and family for a young archaeologist with whom she has suddenly fallen in love. There is an explicit love scene in the last reel of the film, and the State’s objections are based almost entirely upon that scene. The film was favorably reviewed in a number of national publications, although disparaged in others, and was rated by at least two critics of national stature among the best films of the year in which it was produced.”

Although the film was shown in some 100 U.S. cities, including Columbus and Toledo, Ohio, Jacobellis was prosecuted for showing it in Cleveland Heights, a middle-class suburb of Cleveland. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court decided that Jacobellis had been wrongly convicted.

The most famous opinion in the case came from Justice Potter Stewart, who said that the only unprotected material in his opinion was “hard-core pornography.” Stewart expressed his concern that such material was impossible to define. “But I know it when I see it.”

Do Your Stats Stack?

Great tables in Epsilon’s Email Trends and Benchmarks study released this July. Great for benchmarking.

Open Rate Comparison By Industry Business Products and Services General

	Q1 09	Q1 08
Business Products & Services (General)	29.1%	22.9%
Business Publishing/Media (General)	17.8%	16.2%
Consumer Products
Packaged Goods	17.1%	16.4%
General Products	23.8%	20.8%
Pharmaceutical	26.6%	16.9%
Publishing/Media General	16.7%	15.9%
Services General	20.0%	24.7%
Services Telecom	22.9%	22.5%
Financial Services
CC/Banks	27.4%	28.9%
General Services	31.4%	25.6%
Non-Profit/Education General	24.3%	23.1%
Retail
Apparel	14.3%	12.8%
Electronics	17.6%	24.4%
General	22.9%	16.3%
Specialty	19.1%	17.3%
Travel/Hospitality Travel Services	23.3%	24.2%

Epsilon’s Conclusion: “Consumers are taking a variety of offline actions as a result of permission-based email communications...sophisticated marketers are incorporating triggers, transactions, preferences, segmentation and other advanced analytics to produce more successful campaigns.” (Emphasis mine)

My comments:

• These stats relate to permission-based email communications, which include newsletters. No studies available on newsletters by themselves
• Newsletter publishers need to learn how to incorporate triggers, preferences and segmentation.
  • For example, an accounting practice might begin offering a newsletter focused on the tax-planning needs of smaller segments of its client base.  Retailers, contractors, biotech, import/export businesses have different concerns and will be grateful for focused communications — otherwise, they’re likely to tune out. Publishers of e-newsletters can accomplish this by simply allowing people to opt-in to a different/additional publication in the sidebar of the publication they currently receive
  • Service providers don’t dismiss the idea of using a “trigger” to entice your clients to download a white paper or special report. It’s a competitive world out there and you need to continue providing value between service engagements

Please share best practices here.  I’m especially interested in what service providers are doing well with email initiatives.

Me, the Twitter Panelist

I find Twitter to be an efficient and effective way to grow professionally and personally.

My friends at Understanding Marketing facilitate a weekly discussion on marketing and PR topics of interest to small business owners on TweetGrid and asked me to be the expert on call Tuesday 9/22/09 8-9om EST.

We’ll be discussing CAN-SPAM and how to write email marketing campaigns and e-newsletters so they won’t be scraped into the “junk” or “bulk” or “spam” filters of recipient mailboxes.

Since it’s a Twitter-based discussion, anyone can chime in with questions and answers — and it’s free.

If you have anything specific to ask and can’t attend next week, leave me a comment below and I’ll get it in.  Have a study or resource on the topic you’d like to share?  Again, leave a note below.

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