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In addition to XploreNet’s E3 Code of Conduct, which stands for Email Ethics & Etiquette and covers the five critical elements to effective email marketing campaigns—1) opt-in only, 2) frequency sensitivity, 3) unsubscribe ability, 4) tone and 5) relevance—we offer the following ten writing tips for authoring effective email marketing messages:
Avoid the use of large fonts
It is often tempting to use larger fonts for emphasis. However, some spam filters will interpret large font as spam. Therefore, to keep the filters from thinking your email is spam, limit your largest font size to 16 or 18 pt font for headlines and 10 or 12 pt font for general messaging. Create emphasis with your word selection or the use of bold and italics.
Avoid the use of serif fonts
Serif fonts, such as Times Roman or Garamond, tend to be more difficult for a recipient to read, while san serif fonts, such as Arial, or Helvetica are typically easier. As a test of this theory, next time you are surfing the web, take note of how many websites out there use serif fonts. I think you will note that it’s not many. It’s not just a coincidence.
Avoid using all caps
Text that is written in all caps can be difficult to read. Often, we think that typing something in caps will provide greater emphasis or pop off the screen more. Instead of using all caps, create the same emphasis with your word selection or use of bold and italics.
Keep the use of bold or italics to a minimum
Although above we mention using bold and italics in lieu of large font or all caps, use them sparingly. They are useful for emphasizing a point or getting text to pop off the screen within a larger body of text, but be careful how much you use each one.
Avoid using cliché words or spam target words
As a general rule, if you’re thinking about using a promotional word, ask yourself, “If I received this email, would this word turn me off?” This should keep you safe but if not, some examples of words to avoid are: Free, Special Offer, Order Now, Click Here – words that you have likely seen in many of the spam emails that get through your own spam filter.
Avoid fluff words, industry jargon or industry acronyms
Avoid fluffy descriptive words that may just take up space. If the word isn’t necessary, don’t use it. Also, depending on your targeted recipient, be careful when using industry jargon or acronyms. Don’t use an acronym if your average recipient isn’t going to know what it means. If that’s the case, make sure you spell out the acronym the first time you use it.
Avoid complex words and language
Who the targeted recipients are should dictate the complexity with which you write. When in doubt, given that almost 50% of the adult population in the U.S. has a “Below-Basic” or “Basic” reading level, you should probably avoid complex words or syntax. A good rule of thumb is to write like a newspaper—newspapers generally write stories at a 6th to 8th grade reading level.
Keep subject lines short but intriguing
Remember, your subject line is like a headline that you would see on a billboard while driving down the road. You may only get a second of your recipient’s attention. In that second, you need to pique their interest. Ultimately you want their brain to read the subject line at an almost subconscious level and subsequently be intrigued enough to open it and read more.
Keep paragraphs short
Shorter paragraphs are less threatening to a recipient and may likely prompt higher read-rates. Additionally, shorter paragraphs are more likely to appear within preview panes of email applications such as Microsoft Outlook. Shorter paragraphs are also easier for recipients to read or scan. If your subject line (see above) is intriguing enough and they open your email, they will then scan the body of the email and if they like what they see, they’ll read more closely. Thus, make it easy for them to do this.
Leverage links and blogs
As a means to keeping content brief, emails intriguing and paragraphs short (and avoiding lengthy text that scrolls on forever) utilize links to your website or a blog. For instance, include a couple sentence summary or a teaser paragraph about a topic within an email with a link to read more. Then have the link go to your website or a blog where the entire passage can be found.
For years electronic and technology manufacturers alike have been predicting and claiming that technologies such as computers, TVs, stereos, phones, personal daily assistants (PDAs), etc. will continue to converge into one device. Thus, one day we will theoretically watch TV, check email, surf the web, answer the phone, listen to music and shop from the same device within our home.
While various companies have arguably introduced converging products—with debatable success (i.e. the MP3 phones, Interactive or Computer TVs—that allow for checking email or surfing the Internet), none have really had the sticking power or have garnered the predicted market share. Why?
Are we as consumers just too finicky? Do we ultimately want to own multiple devices? Does the thought of one device that does everything disinterest us because we don’t want to be bored with the same gadget day in and day out? Subconsciously, do we not want the convenience that one converged device might offer?
Is it impossible in today’s technological age for one device to everything well? Will a camera phone ever have the picture quality of a digital camera? For example, will sideline photographers at a pro sports game someday just snap shots with their camera phones?
While the technology lends well to leverage convergence, do our lives not? In order for each device to be most effective, do they not have conflicting requirements? For instance, in order for your mobile phone to become your phone, PDA, MP3 and computer all-in-one, what would it optimally look like? You likely want it small to be your phone, but big enough to type on to replace your computer. It needs to be light-weight and compact in order to listen to music while you exercise, but big enough that you won’t easily loose it as your PDA.
What’s your take? Join the conversation and tell us if we’ll ever see an all-in-one device, or is convergence just a pipe dream?
Excerpt from Webplicity - The Critical Guide to Successful Web Strategies by Bill Young
The City of Denver is currently finishing the construction of a new convention center and convention hotel. The construction has taken place over the last year. Each day people see new levels completed, new equipment put in place, and different personnel with different roles. By understanding how a large building is constructed, you’ll have a better feel for how a complex Web project is built.
Architecture & Navigation
You may be asking yourself how erecting a building relates to a Web project. The answer may be more than you realize. The key is your project’s architecture and navigation. Instead of pouring concrete, moving heavy objects in place, putting up walls, and installing electrical and mechanical systems, you’re implementing a blue print for success on the Web. It is amazing how architects create blue prints that show construction superintendents and foremen all the right parts, to fit at all the right times, in all the right places. There is a remarkable synergy between buildings and Web sites, and the same elements and processes between architecture and Web development. You can garner some great “tricks of the trade” from the architectural design process that can be applied to building a new Web project.
The challenge with most Web sites is that the developer(s) did not look at the site as an architect would look at a building. In fact, many sites would be condemned if they were buildings. If you could provide all the information on one page, navigation wouldn’t matter. The modern Web makes this almost impossible, so you need a quality navigational structure. Sites and tools that require you to click four, five, and six times into the site or have to click back six levels to get to the main page have completely missed the target. If you had a building that required you to figure out how to get to the fifth floor with no signs or elevators, your visitors would be in trouble. Many sites do this to the user and this hurts business.
The Difference Between Architecture & Navigation
In order to build a great site or Web project with simple navigation, you must understand all the areas we’ve covered in Phases 1 and 2, as well as understanding the difference between architecture and navigation. The two work hand in hand, but they are unique. Navigation on the Web is defined as the user moving from one page to another within the site; architecture is defined as the design of those pages (both static and dynamic) and the connection between them, to incorporate the navigation system. A good way to think of this difference involves that architecture is the arrangement and make-up of the content, while navigation involves the devices that move the user from one page to another.
Users Perception of Navigation
The user’s ability to navigate should be as straightforward and simple as possible. Keep in mind that users will not memorize your navigational structure. “At IBM and at Sun, we studied how people read on the Web. What we discovered is they don’t! They scan,” says Jakob Nielsen, a distinguished former Sun Microsystems engineer. The user is scanning the pages for key words, phrases, and headings. In fact, place as much detail as possible on each page because cross-referencing Web pages too difficult. Finally make it simple for the user to follow your information in a process – step A, step B, step C, etc.
Some navigation structures are involved, pushing users to certain sections of the site. The problem is that users won’t take the time to learn the logic of your navigation. Users want the right information to lead to the right call to action, right now. If the navigation is understated, the user will get lost; if the navigation is overwhelming they’ll simply leave (close the browser).
You must create the navigation with a logical process in mind because a high percentage of the visitors to your site will be repeat visitors. Once they’ve been to your site several times they’ll know where to find what they need. However, the navigation should be very obvious to the new visitor, as well. Simple navigation enables the new visitor to find what they need quickly.
Educating the User
No matter how visitors get to your site or Web application, chances are they are going to be unfamiliar with it. If they get to the site via a search engine then the process gets even more difficult. They may be dumped into a section other than that of your main page even a back page, that is not regularly. Therefore, it is important to make sure that main menu and key links are very apparent.
Here are some strategies to help your visitors navigate through your site when they come from a search engine.
Craft a clear message about the purpose of the site
Usability is your key
Define useful and simple navigation
Include critical information that the user expects
Develop beneficial content
Great Navigation
Great navigation is about simplicity and common sense. How do you create an environment that facilitates users to navigate your Web project correctly? One important element of navigation is called top-level navigation, and consists of the main page of the application or main page of the site. In addition, pay close attention to the main navigation structure or main menu choices. As most people know, this is either the menu across the top or down the left hand side of the page. Now, what makes sense to the user (review back to usability for more details)?
Architecture and navigation work hand in hand on the Web, assisting the user to get what they want. That is the real measure of successful architecture and navigation. Did the user find what he was searching for? Simple navigation works and typically costs less to build and maintain.
Social Media Has Turned Customer Service Inside-out for All to See
By Matthew Creamer
Published: Advertising Age - June 11, 2007
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Back in the summer of 2005, Dell ignored Jeff Jarvis' complaints about a lemon laptop at its own peril. The blogger's "Dell Hell" rants teed up a mainstream story starring the PC manufacturer as an arrogant giant that became a case study in how one man's website could shred a corporate reputation.
Influential blogger Jeff Jarvis was once ignored by Dell when he complained about his laptop. Now the mammoth computer company has a forum for customers like Jarvis to air grievances and share product ideas.
Now Dell, working to shrug off that image and right recent business declines, might be on to a different kind of web-based watershed. In mid-February, it launched IdeaStorm, a place for customers to submit suggestions about its products that's become the repository for more than 5,500 recommendations and 24,000 comments. The community has already inspired 21 initiatives, much to the delight of observers such as Mr. Jarvis. Even he has softened a bit toward Dell.
Behold the present and future of customer service, a business function best understood as a one of those survival games where someone is dropped off in the middle of a forest sans map or compass and told to find his way home. As practiced by many companies, it now puts the average consumer through a dark wood of computerized directories, callbacks that never come and barely comprehensible customer reps with no real authority or information.
Faster conduit
That game is nearing an end due to a simple fact of the digital era: The back-and-forth between companies and consumers, once contained in frustrated phone calls and letter-writing, is now being played out in public. The growth of consumer-generated media -- not just YouTube videos but the millions and millions of bits of product feedback floating in the web ether -- means that the little-used suggestion box nailed to the boss' door (long a symbol of corporate inertia) has been digitized and turned inside-out for the world to see.
"The customer-service function is extending into realm of social media, said Max Kalehoff, VP-marketing at Nielsen Buzzmetrics. "It's customer service becoming the new-media department, getting as close to the core of those experiences that prompt positive or negative media for brands."
More and more companies are seeing the benefits of what Sam Decker, a former Dell executive and VP-marketing and products at Bazaarvoice, calls "social commerce." For instance, recently rebranded Delta, part of an industry with notoriously low customer satisfaction, has created a website, Change.Delta.com, that hosts suggestions from consumers -- "Bigger blankets, please" -- as well as polls about features and offerings.
Companies in consumer tech, including Dell, HP and Toshiba and nine other industries have tapped Mr. Decker's firm to manage product reviews on their e-commerce sites. Mr. Decker said clients are often initially looking to use reviews to drive sales conversions, but "there's an evolution."
"It's like breathing customer oxygen into your company," he said. "It's operationalizing the customer voice. Sales and customer-service training can be based on what customers are saying. Product and brand managers, copywriters, online and e-mail marketers can all use it. The challenge is: How far can you take it to change your marketing strategy?"
Walking media channels
That, of course, means the strict boundaries between consumer affairs, PR, marketing and product development become about as useful as a Commodore 64. "The interplay [between these functions] just gets tighter and tighter as more and more people and companies realize that they themselves are walking media channels, able to freely produce and disseminate content on a whim," said Gur Tsabar, VP-new media strategies at PR firm Ketchum.
Realizing this, Dell made sure its social-media initiatives cut across disciplines and business units. Michael Dell, whose inspiration for IdeaStorm came from a similar site at Salesforce.com's, and other senior managers get the top ideas sent to them. IT, corporate communications, e-commerce and corporate marketing group are just some of the functions involved in it.
"You can't do digital media from one group with one point of view on the world," said Bob Pearson, VP-corporate group communications at Dell. "It just doesn't work. In fact, that's too marketing-oriented. There's a big difference between pushing your story out vs. becoming relevant in customers' conversations."
Mr. Pearson said that the community aspect of IdeaStorm, which allows users to vote ideas up or down and post comments, gives the company depth of insight into its customers' priorities and allows it to listen for a long period of time. "With the average focus group, you go in for an hour or two, give them some sandwiches and leave. We may be listening to conversation going on over two months. It's a totally different game."
Ubuntu triumphs
Right after IdeaStorm's launch, the ever-vocal Linux community got active, demanding the open-source operating system be pre-installed on Dell computers. After conducting a detailed survey answered by more than 100,000 people, Dell selected notebooks and desktops equipped with the Linux-based Ubuntu. Last week, Dell kicked off an effort to create the most eco-friendly PC, and guess where it's soliciting ideas for how to go about it?
IdeaStorm is part of an effort "to make sure the customer is walking the hallways at Dell," in Mr. Pearson's words. It also includes blogging, through its Direct2Dell site, getting involved in online conversations about the company, and dealing with the complaints of angry customers who make that dissatisfaction clear on blogs, chat rooms, bulletin boards and the like.
Asked what impact this had on the Dell's image, Mr. Pearson has a radically transparent response: "That's a question for the community."
An unscientific survey of the blogosphere shows this work has made some difference, even if Dell, recently unseated as the No.1 PC-manufacturer by Hewlett-Packard, still has its work cut out for it. One party it's moved the needle with is Mr. Jarvis, who in April wrote a cautiously-optimistic 1,800-word Buzzmachine post based on a recent visit to Dell's campus.
"This isn't just crowdsourcing," he wrote. "This is crowdmanaging. Companies still fear this. But, hell, if even Dell can lean back and let its customers begin to take charge, anyone can."
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