• Use your transactional emails, like your “Forgot your Password” email, wisely. These are the most read emails, so pretty them up with branded HTML, and feel free to add something interesting, like a link to an upcoming webinar or a special offer, to them. Just be sure the transactional part is the main focus of the email in order to comply with CAN-SPAM.

• Always use snippet text (also called a pre-header) at the top of your emails that states your call to action and entices your subscriber to read more. You don’t want the first thing they see in their email preview or mobile browser to be your view in browser link – boring!

• Dare to make your unsubscribe link large and prominent. This could significantly cut down on your “emotionally unsubscribed” group and your complaint rate.

• Need some creative inspiration? Check out this site.

• According to a Return Path study, 46% of all email sent is illegitimate (think spam), 33% is unknown, and only 20% is legitimate email. Of that 20%, only 0.63% is commercial email. That’s some big, bad competition!

• Know the difference between cadence and frequency. Cadence means sending more relevant emails when your subscriber is in the market.

• You must earn subscriber permission every time you send an email by providing relevant, interesting content. With each email you send, you help to further build that relationship.

• Include the Share With Your Network social media links on every email campaign you send to further increase your email reach. Instead of placing these links in the footer of your email, like most do, test putting it at the top of your email or next to your main call-to-action to prompt more uses. Learn more about Share With Your Network (SWYN) here: http://www.blueskyfactory.com/swyn.aspx

Again, I highly recommend this event, and am already looking forward to next year’s!

• The new rule of thumb is “Email Plus”. Email is the backbone for 1:1 communication. Email is social. Social needs email. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc don’t exist without email. Email is not dead – in fact, social media is driving more email!
• Globally, there are 330 million opt-in subscribers of email. Whew!
• According to Forrester Research, those who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than non-readers of email.
• Cool idea: post a video of someone using your product on YouTube, and link to this video in your email campaign. To encourage sharing of this email, make it fun or educational. One example of this for food product marketers is to tape an amateur cooking show where a recipe is made using your product. This could lead to a whole series of cooking videos showcasing the multiple uses for your product.
• Don’t be afraid to ask clients/customers to supply content for your blog. They have some great stories to tell!
• SMS is growing to be the next big thing. Start collecting those opt-in mobile numbers now so you are ahead of the game. (Check out Blue Sky Factory’s SMS capability!)
• According to “Email Marketing: An Hour a Day” by Jeanniey Mullen and David Daniels, the value of an email address is $180/year.
• 28% of an office worker’s day is spent dealing with email and other messages. Make sure your email campaign stands out from the crowd!
• Getting an opt-in is like dating. Don’t move too fast or you’ll scare them off. Start with collecting just an email address, and ask for more information later. If you nurture the relationship properly, you’ll have plenty of time to learn more about them.
• If you do collect more information about your subscribers, use it! Don’t ask for additional information unless you plan to use it to make your email campaigns more targeted and relevant.

All-in-all, a great conference, and one that I highly recommend you attend. This year’s “Regional Whistle Stop Tour” is now over, but if they come to your town next year be sure to check them out! Visit www.onlinemarketingsummit.com for more information, and stay tuned for more gems (coming soon).

eduWeb Conference, July 20-22
The Doubletree Hotel Chicago - Chicago, IL
Blue Sky Factory is exhibiting at this event. Stop by and say hi to us in booth #3!

Seasonal Savories and Social Media Seminar, July 23
Kent Manor Inn and Restaurant - Stevensville, MD
COO Doug Broujos is speaking on the topic of email marketing and social media at the Maryland Tourism Council’s summer seminar.

First things first, Millennials love Facebook. Almost every person I talked to uses Facebook as their primary social networking site and confessed to checking it at least three or four times a day. Surprisingly, even though they are crazy about Facebook, many of my peers have rarely or never used Twitter. A lot of Millennials don’t see the point of Twitter and are afraid that it would take up too much of their time (this from people who check Facebook 15 times a day). I wouldn’t give up Twitter efforts just yet though, Twitter’s adoption pattern has trended slightly older than other online social media, and remember that Facebook began as a social network strictly on college campuses. Twitter just needs a little time to catch on with this group.

Now for the BIG question, do social networking sites make Millennials less likely to check email? The answer: absolutely not! Millennials reported that they check email just as often as they check their Facebook pages. They place a great deal of importance on email since they use it to stay in touch with their parents and to keep up to date with school and work. Many Millennials are also willing to post emails to their social networking sites, especially if they know it is something their friends are interested in.

Check out the video below to see the full interviews, and be sure to catch Blue Sky Factory’s August issue of Factory Direct to find out more about Millennials’ social media trends and how to effectively connect with them!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I opened the show with the latest Blue Sky Factory video from the Inbound Marketing Summit. Nikki Schiavone talked with industry experts from HubSpot, Radian6, and Hoovers while in Dallas, and asked them about inbound marketing. Watch the video to find out what they had to say. (The video isn’t on the recorded version of the show - just on our YouTube channel.)

We introduced a new segment, “Marketing Rock Star of the Week”, on this episode. This week’s rock star is a well-known personality and Blue Sky Factory client, Gary Vaynerchuk, director of operations at Wine Library. Gary has most recently been seen on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Gary deserves a shout out for truly knowing how to market Wine Library and for rocking it out with Jimmy Fallon last week. Check out the segment here.

This week’s special guest was Joey Liner, executive vice president of sales at DoublePositive Marketing Group, Inc. DoublePositive provides sales professionals with live, qualified, and interested consumers, along with the customer’s data, all in real time. Joey and I talked about the benefits of using a service like DoublePositive’s, how it works with email marketing to be more effective, and different upcoming conferences in the marketing industry.

Melanie Sims, Blue Sky Factory’s support manager, joined me at the end of the show announce the new Publicaster Learning Center! The learning center is an interactive resource for the Publicaster community, including help guides, an FAQ section, discussion boards, and other email marketing resources. Blue Sky Factory clients can sign up here.

Tune in for this week’s episode. In honor of the holiday we’re having the Red, White & Blue Sky Pie Eating Contest! You don’t want to miss this. Tune in here.

In the new learning center you will find detailed instructions on everything from adding a “from address” to setting up automated A/B split tests. But the site is much more than just a fully searchable help guide. It also includes information about upcoming events, other Blue Sky Factory resources, and even open-forum discussion boards. All Publicaster users are able to become a member of the learning center community. We encourage you to share your own Publicaster tips and success stories, as well as ask questions and learn from other users.

Key learning center features include:

• Help Guides: Instructions on how to use every feature and function of Publicaster 7
• FAQ: Nearly every question you could think to ask about Publicaster, complete with detailed answers
• Discussion Boards: An open forum to ask for advice from or share tips and tricks with a community of other Publicaster users.

So, become a member of the Publicaster community, explore the learning center, and before you know it you’ll be an expert user!

So why do the organizers of the Inbound Marketing Summit put industry leaders like Tim Hayden, Blake Cahill, Greg Matthews, Paula Berg, Aaron Strout, Tim Marklein and Greg Cangialosi in one room to talk about inbound marketing? A simple agenda and great folks with great minds is a recipe for an incredible conference. In a nutshell, Dallas brought the thinkers, doers and communicators together to talk about how to listen, monitor, evaluate, adapt and market your business.

As an email marketer surrounded by my peers, it was refreshing to hear and see others investing their time in unique yet practical marketing strategies with the use of email marketing, social media, and discovering the power of their community. Want to know what inbound marketing is? Check out what Mike, Amber, Tim and Giovanni have to say!

1. SSL support added to our API
2. Global Export
3. Recurring Scheduled Sends

SSL support added to our API
The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a commonly-used protocol for managing the security of a message transmission on the Internet. The Publicaster 7 API receives hundreds of requests every day, and each of these requests represent some form of being queried or updated over the Internet. The majority of this information is transmitted in plain text as part of the HTTP Request, and is therefore subject to compromise if those requests are hijacked by a 3rd party. Enabling SSL support for all of our API methods ensures that when information is sent or retrieved from our API, it is done in a safe and secure manner. In many cases, enabling API calls to use SSL is as simple as changing the API method calls to use https:// instead of just http://. For more information about SSL and how it works, click here.

Global Export
Many customers have asked us for the ability to allow exports of global subscriber data. A typical example of where this would be used is an account with many mailing lists where the list manager wants to see all of the hard bounced users from every list. Previously this would require that the list owner click on every list, create a filter to only see hard bounced subscribers, then export this list. We recently introduced a global export feature that allows you to export certain subscriber information globally, i.e. across all lists. The information available for export is: Opt-Out, Hard Bounce, Soft Bounce, and Complaint Opt-Outs. To export this information, click on the Global Export button found in the List Manager. Because each of your mailing lists may contain different customized fields, Global Export can only export subscriber email addresses that fit the criteria specified.

Recurring Scheduled Sends
The Auto Response Campaign (ARC) tool is a great feature that allows you to send emails to subscribers on an automated basis, such as a welcome email after someone joins a list. When this feature was originally developed we added in a safety feature to prevent someone from repeatedly emailing the same message to everyone in their mailing list over and over. However, after soliciting feedback from our customers, many people thought this was a great idea but would also like to be able to send to the same customer repeatedly without having to setup a new ARC each day/week/month. To accommodate this request, we added an option to the ARC tool to enable resending to the entire list each time. This option defaults to “No”, but if set to “Yes”, Publicaster 7 will remove the restriction that checks to see if this ARC already emailed a subscriber in the past.

These are just a couple of the new things that we’ve added to Publicaster 7 in recent weeks, and we continue to add updates frequently. I look forward to sharing more information about additional changes and features we have made to Publicaster 7 in the coming weeks and months. Please keep the feedback coming!

We’re listening.

We were asked to run a program aimed at helping the entrepreneurs gain insight into growing a web services company in the US, with a focus on email marketing, social media and partnerships. All of the entrepreneurs in our group have launched companies in the broad areas of social networking and software. They’re all young, smart and energized! The two-hour workshop could have lasted four hours or more and they still would have kept the questions coming. Some have just launched their concept and are seeking early funding, while others have secured some early funding and are quickly building out their teams and go-to-market strategies. Check out their bios and company profiles here.

It was very interesting to learn about some of the similarities and differences between our two cultures. They live in the same internet-crazed world that we do, benefiting tremendously from email marketing and the growing social networks. Yet their business culture is much more laid-back, and polite personality types and an almost inherent shyness drive a different marketing style. It’s definitely not a lack of confidence or intellect, as these are sharp, driven entrepreneurs. But their comfort level with self-promotion or outward expression of expertise doesn’t come as naturally to them as it does to Americans. Fascinating to observe and learn!

Much like in the US, they see the potential for social networking tools to help their business, and while they have yet to weave them into the fabric of their companies, I think they left with some good ideas on where to begin. We discussed the importance of just getting started, focusing on engagement and creating fresh and interesting content to help build awareness and interest. They loved the insights we provided on email marketing as the glue and foundation for their online marketing/sales efforts.

Before they leave on June 26th, we’ll join them one more time tonight for Transatlantic Pitching Session, where they’ll join local entrepreneurs from TechStars and be given an opportunity to hone their pitching skills before a live group of friends, colleagues and potential investors. Hats off to swissnex Director Pascal Marmier and Project Manager Thomas Buehler for running a terrific program!