All of the major Internet service providers are moving swiftly toward subscriber-level deliverability based on individual engagement. This means that whether or not you have opened or clicked on an email from a company in the past will directly impact whether you will receive that email in your inbox or spam folder in the future.
The argument for personalization, testing, and other relevancy-boosting email considerations has always been that the post-delivery metrics like click-through and conversion rate would improve (and they do). But now, if your emails aren’t interesting and engaging to members of your audience, the subscribers you worked so hard to get will just stop receiving your messages. Poof! You’re off the radar and forgotten faster than the freak voted off Project Runway in week one.
This should scare you. And it should free up some budget and willpower for rigorous testing (especially subject line and time of day), and hard core dynamic content. Maybe even the use of analytics to create emails derived from your subscribers’ Web site behavior.
What Facebook and Email Stole from Google’s Playbook | Email Marketing Advice | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert
OSOtip: Why is there a PublicIndividual.Com?
Happy holidays from the Skunkworks Operation here behind the mastermind at Public Individual.
I wouldn’t tell you to visit PublicIndividual.com and follow through on the information there if I didn’t have my own objectives. Would you be surprised if I told you that I made PublicIndividual.com for you? I did, it’s there to enable you to control your own online presence more easily, and to understand how you can become your own brand, online. With 2009, I’ll be updating the front page again, to more accurately reflect what I think most appropriate for the new year’s online social optimization.
Every four months or so, the internet’s landscape rapidly alters. Social functioning moves out of beta, or collapses due to lack of venture capital, or a new hot application hits the net, or google creates searchwiki, or in some other way the internet’s paradigm is altered. Let’s call this the theory of temporary relevance – every site you find functional will cease to function – Plan on this. If you do not own the server space, don’t rely on that interstitial space as an integral part of your long term plans.
Reflecting this belief, PublicIndividual.com will continue to evolve throughout 2009 and the videos now presented will be updated as will the spreadsheets and recommended sites. Listen to today’s OSOtip, and be sure to bookmark this site – we update frequently.
#5: Can I show you…
where the traditional story went out the window in favor of non-linear hushed sequencing?
BONUS: Avinash Kaushik explains how you can gain important insights into visitor intent by analyzing how your visitors use your site search capability.
OSOtip: Social Media Optimization
This is a big tip! It doesn’t even fit into this one micropod! Be sure to check back tomorrow for the second half of this tip for SMO. Can I tell you how a saturation strategy begins..?