It’s the first command made on a world crisis. Cut on what it’s not considered priority. I’m not saying that’s the only company sector that is hurt, but is one of the top of the list on the investment backward.

Actually, even the promised budgets of the year are reviewed and “cut” in about 30 to 80% in some cases.

But it’s the correct or smart decision in this times of crisis? This is the million dollar question that has caused several buzz on newspapers, magazines, blogs and other expression mediums around the globe. I understand the situation that the general management are feeling right now and they must think on a medium/long term for the company’s survival. They have to bet on what really brings value to their company and cut where they have not return prevision. But cutting on marketing and advertising is openly manifesting that they don’t believe on these communication mediums or on the sector management team, or both. That means that they have not succeeded on demonstrate that X communication or leads has reverted in Y sales. In this case, yeah, go ahead and cut the budget now! But cut clean. Reform the entire department and on the mean time, invest on the other profitable sectors.

The major problem reflects when it doesn’t exist a real proof of that operability of lack of return, but we still do it anyway because it’s the “normal” or the “common” thing to do. That’s a red stamp on the forehead of whom takes that kind of attitude. Foolish and may affect the company, or in some cases, bring it down.  Analyse the data and check if they really are bringing value to your product, brand or service. If this is true, then you should keep or even raise that budget because it will produce more income to that difficult period that it’s near.

Pulling the plug on marketing and advertising of any company is the same thing as removing the neons and claims of an establishment doors and expect people still realize that you have a store that sells straw hats with a memory chip embedded.
Demand results, but keep doing everything to bring clients to contact with your products. Or else, a big and very dark tunnel comes up ahead and the boogie man will come for you.

The North American elections ended with the expected victory of the democrat Barack Obama!

The North American elections is to North Americans obviously. But is it just that? The experts comments on this matters refer that the domain and relevance of the United States on the foreign politics is severely affected after this years of Bush’s administration. But there’s no doubt that they’re still a influential world icon. For good or evil. See the world crisis with the epicentre on the so called Land of Freedom.

We all expect that with this election, the politics change to the better. That the credibility be restored at the United States, because that will affect our future in serenity and progress.

So, my sincere votes of good fortune on this really North American revolution.

This is a very controversial point. And it’s controversial because it doesn’t have a straight answer. Just to get an idea, place a search on Google on the following question: “What’s the best day to send and e-mail campaign?”.

Now prepare yourself to get several opinions. I’m going to insert here some of my results.
Starting with a marketing icon from several years: ClickZ. According with this article which is considered a little “old”, published in this world reference about the best practices, some values and metrics point out that B2B e-mail campaigns works well on weekly basis and Monday is the best day pointed to do it. This way, we can follow it until the end of the week. Since 33% would like to receive on a Monday and 36% on a Tuesday. And B2C objective campaigns should focus on Wednesdays (26%) and Fridays (31%) prefering those days to receive it.

This data are dated of 2006, but in a way it can still be considered active on the preferences so to speak. But these are the preferences poll results, not the reality. It’s like asking to a bunch of people if they watch a TV program like Big Brother, something that they deny on public, but then we know the show ratings. Same happens here.

But let’s go to more recent data dated March 2008. It’s another poll, but this one is based on several entities that really SEND e-mail marketing campaigns.
Here, 41,1% of the users has chosen Tuesday, but it still not certain yet. Because Fridays and Saturdays achieved the worst scores on the professional preferences. Also suggest that nothing of this should be taken in consideration when it comes to season hollidays or festiv seasons which, in some way, damage the “normal” trends of the rest of the year.

Following this idea, I place this question and the filosofic or theoric answer. If all send the e-mails on the same days, like tuesdays, wednesdays and thursdays, then why we do not try to send on the less “saturated” days? If we pay attention to the comment placed on the last poll article and it’s very well written, there’s a tendency to use the remaining days as the ideals for not falling on the same “cake” of those that fill our mailboxes with messages provenient from various sources.

But, now, we must a statement that in Portugal, as in Latin America, most people access Internet through company connections where they work or public access points with more frequency. We should just pay attention to the time when most of them open their e-mails. In Spain, by the way, with the great raise of the bandwidth and with no limit traffic, they have a more prolific use of the access and other habits as well.

In short, as always, there’s no straight answer. Also because the databases are different and with unic characteristics. But accordingly with the last sent campaigns, the data are unavoidable in making clear that Mondays after 11:00h in the morning, Tuesdays and Thursdays are the ideal days to send it. Now, in case you wish to choose, there’s only one way, as mentioned in one of these links: test, test, test…

I’ve been receiving this question from clients and business partners. Therefore, I think it is time to make a small market analysis, the values and trends of the medium.

YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE: This values are not relative to the Canalmail company as I’m the Portuguese Country Manager. They’re the results of a global analysis made on the Iberia Peninsula and Latin American markets.
Also, be advised that the comments and opinions here stated does not reflect in any way, the Canalmail’s ideals or statements. It’s just my personal opinions and thoughts.

Medium Effectiveness

Let’s get it right. Due to the same annual period, the opening ratings have been decreasing dramatically. But doesn’t mean that exists a lost of effectiveness or a medium saturation. On the contrary. The ROI (Return of Investment) has increased considerably, on the 22% value.

So, why the opening metrics have been decreasing from 20% to 30% ?
Here’s a simple answer: Because the tracking methods are faluable and they don’t represent the real values.
Motive: The e-mail reading systems have been adopting the blocking image download by default. If the e-mail campaigns opening are trackable only by small images of 1 pixel then it’s not accounted when they’re not downloadable.

In that case, not being accounted, how can I measure my campaign effectiveness by e-mail marketing?
Basic Answer: Because there’s other ways with secure data which are, until today, impossible to stop tracking. For instance, the campaign Click Through Rate (CTR), the Forward Rate (Sending to friends, in this case not measuring all of the friends but just the one time that he did it) and the Reply Rate. Not to mention the campaign’s Fullfilment Rate, this one being measured by client side.

Increasing my ROI

What can I do to increase my ROI?
Alternative: Knowing of this system’s image download restrictions, it’s convenient to use this circunstances at their favour. With this, you don’t have to go back to the “pre-historical” way of sending simple text messages. Even, because it’s not appealing. But it’s most profitable if you use the half-way method, using the appealing graphical message combined with the HTML text in way that can be integrated in the global creativity. A good example of what I’m saying can be found here: How to ellaborate and effective e-mail marketing tips. If we consider the massive increase of the mobile e-mail devices usage, it’s even more imperative to ellaborate something optimized to be seen in all platforms.

Can I send massive e-mail Campaigns?
Tricky Question: First, we need to understand what we mean by mass deployment. Tradicionally, the idea associated to this expression is that it is sent indiscreminately and sometimes also as SPAM. Well, the advertising e-mail sent to people which didn’t asked for it is considerated a very serious and offensive technique and it is punishable with fines and court orders. Yet, the Portuguese and European Laws are, in general, very low profile and assumes that if it is given the opportunity to someone ask to be removed from the list, then it’s all ok. Serious mistake! We must ask the person’s permission BEFORE sending an ad campaign.  Fortunatelly, the Spanish Law is one of the best in the world on this matters.
Our friends in Latin America, where doesn’t exist a mutual consence, each Country wrights their own laws, therefore all becomes a joke and the Spammers Paradise. Fortunatelly, is starting to raise some important efforts to rule this practices. A friend and business partner in Brasil, the medium celebrity Walter Junior, CEO of Virid Ltd, has been one of the personalities which more efforts has provided in ruling and support the creation of restricted laws to protect the brasilian market from this overdone practices.

But going back to the question focus, the mass deployment can also be structured, making way to be sent to thousands of subscribers (this ones has giving their authenticated permission) at the same time, but every message can be personalized and segmented. Most of the times, it’s not convenient to send in massive way, unless the communication is, in fact, general. If we are making direct marketing, then why shouldn’t we adapt the communication to each subscriber or specific targets? You can elaborate a more lighter message to a younger audience and one more formal to an more adult target. The results speak for themselves.

Standards

So, there’s a standard to be used as guideline?
Smiley Answer: Of course. You can find a good example right here: E-mail Marketing Standard Creativities.

I hope this way could be of help to enlighten some points, even if some consider basic. But they are, as always, essential to increase success to your campaigns.

In the future, I’ll publish here more advices to improve your fullfilment ratios.

Nothing better, in this time of turbulence and know how it works, IN FACT, the stock markets and investment funds in the entire world.

Are we outpaced at 35 or 40 years, on a Digital World?

I ask this, because I’ve seen several friends of mine, being fired from their jobs, to be replaced by younger executives. All because there’s an idea that to a company to be successful it needs to be “equipped” with younger people with special skills and knowledge on regular areas like marketing, product management, but also extreme comfortability with the online activity.

The point is as explained bellow. An administrator of an international company told me that he deals with this in all of the countries that they have businesses: “If they’ve placed a CV of senior executive with vast experience on marketing and with proven skills, but with no knowledge over how to apply those skills on the online world, and then you have another CV with a promise youngster with poor experience, but with a lot of college knowledge and it can use well all of the online facilities, what do you choose?”

Honestly… I rather choose both of them!

It’s right from December 9th to 10th in Paris, the better Web Event of Europe to get place in 2008.

Without afraid of being exaggerated, this is the real characteristic of the event that brings hundreds of people from more than 40 Countries. With baby steps, the French Capital is becoming the Online World Mecca. Much because of the work of one of the founders, Loic Le Meur, CEO of the Seesmic Project that has giving is valuable contribution and endless energy to this international event that has become a “must see” of the year.

After previous years with some of the “heavy weights” of the online world speeches, such as Niklas Zennström (founder of projects like Kazaa, Skype and Linkedin), Evan Williams (founder of Twitter), Dan Rose (facebook), this year is expected to be more greater and with more stars of the Online World.

The E-mail Standards Project it’s a reference on this market of E-mail Marketing. In such a medium that every e-mail client, a web mail or a desktop client such as Outlook or Lotus Notes, have severe differences on the way it shows the received messages.

In some of them, it’s the background images that doesn’t work, others it’s the notorious CSS that the web designers love to use, but in general just apply on web pages. It’s a fact that sending an e-mail, has much more details that influence the results than we could imagine. This is the reason why it’s essential to have a standard to all systems.

I consider, in this case, that this project it’s extremely valuable and gives some precious hints to whom is working on an massive e-mail creativity.

The political French site Rue89 has joined to the video commenting trend, has this blog, in case you’ve noticed, using Seesmic’s Technology.

It’s a laudable initiative. Sometimes, the only way to demonstrate true courage and truthfulness regarding those who use the internet with the purpose of offending and make destructive criticisms based on the pretence anonymity.

I’ll be watching and see how the system is accepted.

According to a recent study performed by Frost & Sullivan, the mobile e-mail will support something like 6,6 billion Euros at 2012 in Europe.

In that study, the European market already moved 1,86 billion Euros at 2007, nevertheless, the same study points out that the lack of a technology standard that “reads” and shows the messages can diminish that performance.

In fact, even on webmail systems there are discrepancies and each system exposes the same e-mail on different ways. You just need to compare and open the same e-mail on an Outlook or Mozilla and then open it on a Webmail like Hotmail. To prevent the incompatibilities at the very maximum I suggest to use the plain and simple HTML coding following the standard and the best practices. Be careful with the message code.