While all ISPs score a sender’s reputation by giving different weight to various factors you can be assured that all major ISPs are using some type of equation to determine your reputation.   How they calculate your sender reputation score determines whether your mailing is received in the inbox, the junk mail folder, or even delivered at all.

Email Filters

Its important to familiarize yourself with the following individual filtering methods.  In the past ISPs would block emails based solely on one of these filters but as weaknesses in this approach became inherent they can no longer rely on any one method.  Each of the following filtering methods play a role in your ISPs’ delivery decision:

• Content Filtering – Uses the email subject line and the body content to come up with a spam count score.  One of the most popular spam filtering packages is SpamAssassin which is used in EmailCheck.
• List Quality Filtering – A lot of spam lists particularly paid subscriber lists contain a lot of bogus email which results in high bounce rates.   ISPs use this to detect which lists contain bounces that exceed a certain quantity and then disallow all emails from this IP address or sending domain.
• Volume Filtering – Because spammers send bulk emails without regard to accuracy or volume this checks the number of simultaneous connections that are opened (known as threads) at any one time with your ISP.  The server may then reject all messages based on the number of open connections.  1-2-All Email Marketing uses a single thread sending method.
• IP Address Filtering – When an IP address is added to this filtering list the process is known as “blacklisting.”   Once blacklisted all emails from a particular IP address are disallowed.
• Domain and URL Filtering – Checks the email domain used to send a mailing as well as any URLs included in the message.

Legal Compliance

You need to be aware of regional laws aimed at curbing spam.   In order to ensure that your mailings are permission based it is good policy to ensure that an opt-in mechanism is in place before you begin email marketing.

Can Spam Act

• ensure that all mailings contain a functional unsubscribe mechanism
• all unsubscribe requests must be honored within 10 days
• commercial mailings must include the physical location of the sender
• criminal charges for fraudulent sender or deceptive subject lines

European Union E-Privacy Directive

Canada PIPEDA

Australia Spam Act of 2003

Whitelisting and Feedback Loops

Some ISPs provide whitelisting and compaint feedback loops as methods for improving deliverability.  Those that do typically require senders to have explicit opt in permissions for subscribers.

• Whitelists -The opposite of a blacklist where the ISP receives requests from legitimate companies to be added to a list of pre-authorized e-mail addresses from which mailings can be delivered regardless of spam filters
• Feedback Loops – A reporting mechanism whereby an ISP provides the sender with data including unsubscribes and spam complaints.

Spam Complaints

Most people have seen a “Report Spam” button on their email client.   When this is clicked on a spam complaint is logged at the ISP level or it is also relayed back to the sender if they are a part of a feedback loop.  If you receive too many spam complaints then you will damage your sender reputation.   A good way to reduce your spam complaints is to ensure that all of your subscribers are opt-in.

Spam complaints do not track the reason why recipients make a spam complaint.   It is possible that even if subscribers opt-in to your list they may forget they are subscribed or no longer find your mailing relevant.  If you receive a high number of spam complaints on a list where your subscribers have opt-in to then this is usually a good indicator that your mailings are either irrelevant or sent to frequently.

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Marketing 101 is familiar with the 4 P’s of Mixed Marketing.  Marketing decisions being made using a recipe was posited by James Culliton in 1948.  ‘Marketing-Mix’ was coined by Neil Borton in 1953.  Move ahead to 1960 where E Jerome McCarthy first proposes the 4 P classification system and it later finds its current mainstream acceptance in Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing in 1967.

Considered the traditional elements of marketing the 4 Ps are:

• Product -  Goods or services.
• Price-  What the customer pays for your product.
• Placement – The distribution channel for the product
• Promotion -  All Communications such as advertising with the customer

Collectively these ingredients represent a company centric worldview where the company establishes the terms upon which the client is acted on.   This was establishment thinking at a time when products were mass produced, prices set on profitability,  distribution limited to one way channels, and clients targeted by one way promotions.   Promoting products required having mass appeal and often grabbed people’s attention in ways that were disruptive.  People were interrupted from programs on television with commercials. They listened to commercials on the radio because that was the only place to go for new music.

Its been estimated that there are 162 million web sites and 1.4 billion users on the web and this has fundamentally shifted the marketplace.  Along with the changing times have come changing attitudes.  Mixing ingredients and spoon feeding your clients with whatever you are selling is no longer a realistic approach to marketing. People receive information at a dizzying pace these days.  Technology has allowed the spread of ideas to flow to audiences faster than can be assimilated.  People have competing messages coming from all directions whether they come from blogs, user reviews, commenting, and forums.   They also have more options for tuning you out.  DVR,  On Demand, Podcasts, YouTube, and downloads are ways for people to tune in to what they want when they want it.

In order to compete with all these options marketers must win over the hearts and minds of their clients.  A client oriented culture is necessary in order to reach today’s audiences.  A new model of marketing that focuses on interactivity, building relationships, and keeping clients actively engaged is emerging as marketing’s new forward thinking. This new thinking acknowledges that audiences are more resistant to marketing speak and tend to be less impressionable to traditional forms of advertising.   In order to keep audience’s interest marketers must respond with more interactive forms of communication.

Newspapers are currently facing a yearly profit loss with a decline in circulation and an accompanying decline in dollars from advertising.  The Chicago Tribune recently declared bankruptcy and the economic picture for the New York Times is looking bleak.  Its been reported that they have a $400 million debt payment due in five months and a negative current net worth.

Yet it isn’t as if people have suddenly quit following the news.  Thanks to YouTube,  rssfeeds, and the popularity of blogs people have more options when it comes to where they want to get their news from.   Traditional media has been forced to adapt as a result.  Their focus has shifted toward giving people what they want and when they want it.  Streaming video, slide shows, rssfeeds, forums, and blogs are now standards on mainstream news sites.   This approach has lessened the bleeding.    Even as their newspapers continue to decrease in circulation The New York Times has emerged as one of the top ranked web sites.   The online domain nytimes.com attracts 180 million site visitors annually. The challenge now for newspapers is in inventing a model around this that can draw in more revenue.  Revenues from online advertising has given newspapers some hope but this still hasn’t been able to replace the profits they lost from print advertising.

Marketing is currently an evolving field in which the old rules no longer apply and fresh thinking is currently in demand.  Moving forward requires getting people’s attention by giving them what they want and when they want it.

Many people interested in email marketing, especially those new to it, want to know how many subscribers they can send to through their list at one time.  The thinking here is that email marketing is a sheer numbers game that can be mastered by being handed a large list of prospective leads.  The more emails you can muscle out at one time the greater the chance you have of maximizing your returns. In doing so they succumb to a “cold calling” mentality.  They do this despite the fact that cold calling as a model offers the lowest possible return of all prospecting methods.  What happens is that you annoy the very people you are trying to reach to the extent that your message loses all relevancy to them.  You actually do the opposite of what you set out to accomplish.   You minimize the returns you can expect from your leads and in the process dilute the message you are trying to deliver by sending the same message to too large of a pool. You can also damage your sender reputation and so reduce your email deliverability.

This happens because expectations in such an approach are based on the faulty assumption that if you feed enough people with the same message you cost effectively reach more people that will buy into what you are selling.  The failure of this approach is due to the fact that the right questions aren’t asked in the beginning and there is no strategy mapped out for reaching the audience that is being marketed to.   It’s a brain dead approach to marketing with a clear lack of imagination.  They fail to ask themselves how the message they are attempting to deliver is being received by their subscribers.  Not everyone is going to respond to the same message.    People are too different to respond the way you want them to if you send them the same generic message.

One report showed that the number of read open and click through rates are 2.5 times higher for mailings sent to fewer than 100 subscribers than emails sent to 100,000 subscribers or more.  Effective email marketers send out to lists of subscribers that are segmented and targeted to specific demographics. The email design and email copywriting techniques are targeted specifically at the people the message is being sent to.  As a result their mailings are far more effective.

Ideally you would be able to craft a message that is specific to each and every person that you are trying to reach.   Your ideal subscriber list would consist of an army of one.  In such a scenario you could expect high read open and click through rates.   However,  such an approach is far too impractical to be seriously considered.

You can however increase the relevancy of your mailing by segmenting your list and sending them out to targeted groups of subscribers.  Segmenting lists involve separating lists into demographics that are based on similar needs or interests.  A 2006 study by Jupiter Research found that engaging audiences with more relevant communication can increase net profits by an average of 18 times.

You can begin segmenting your list by creating additional subscriber fields in your subscription forms and sending out targeted mailings to specific groups based on those fields.    List segmentation is an expansive subject which we will explore in greater depth in future articles.

The focus in email marketing has turned away from list building and toward relationship building.   Email marketers learn more information about their subscribers so they can segment their lists into groups that they can reasonably expect to respond similarly.    They then send out targeted mailings to smaller but more specific lists of subscribers.  As a result they can expect higher open and click through rates.

Email Marketing can be an effective tool for recruiting when used correctly.   The number one rule is to only send mailings to people that opt-in to your list.   This means if you are recruiting job seekers then you should only send mailings to prospective applicants who choose to be contacted by employers.   If you are recruiting students for a college then you will want to only send mailings to students that provided their email address to a representative for future contact.  You delegitimize your institution by sending unsolicited emails which hurts your recruitment and can be damaging to your credibility.

The real advantage to using email marketing lies in sending cost- effective, targeted mailings.   Targeting your mailings to specific demographics is especially important when using email marketing for recruiting.  Your subscription forms for prospective recruits should include subscriber fields so that you can filter your mailing and send targeted newsletters to your subscribers.     A subscription form targeting a job seeker may include all or some of the following:  career field or industry, level of experience, zip code, and education.  A form that you would use for recruiting college students may include some or all of the following: GPA, major, school, college level, and zip code.   There may very well be overlap here especially for career oriented educational institutions that attract a number of adults looking to switch industries or receive job related training.

A word of caution when using email marketing for recruiting younger college bound students as they tend to be tech savvy and can be more resistant to marketing speak and tend to be less impressionable to traditional forms of advertising.   Email Marketing should not be used as a replacement for regular snail mail.   Rather, it should be presented as an alternate method of providing information to prospective applicants.   A recent national survey of high school juniors found that 64% of respondents preferred to receive college information through the mail rather than email.  College bound students these days are much more interactive and less respondent to static forms of marketing communication and language.  They respond more favorably to interactive forms of communication such as instant messaging, blogs, podcasts, personal emails, and text messaging.   If you do use email marketing then take advantage of personalization tags and sending filters so that your mailings are targeted to the demographic that you are reaching.

A trap that many recruitment companies and job boards using email marketing fall into is that they try to cram too much information or irrelevant content about different jobs in order to alert a reader’s attention.    This will confuse and annoy your readers and your mailing will be treated as junk mail.   Subscribers want to know how your email will benefit them so you should make the focus of your mailing clear and easy to understand.  Focus on a single job, recruiting company or package and the design of your newsletter should follow the company image you are using to present the job or job board to the job seeker.   This is again a good reason to ensure that your signup forms include lots of fields, provided they do not overwhelm the job seeker, so that you can use sending filters to send out targeted mailings.

You can also increase your response rate by improving your email design and email copywriting techniques.

Effective email marketing writing is persuasive to your subscribers, enhances your image and credibility, and adds clarity to the message in your newsletter. Even the most eye popping email design graphics and layouts will lose their appeal if subscribers are presented with email copywriting that is shoddy or substandard. In the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin bellows the following advice to his hapless sales team; “A-B-C. A-Always, B – Be, C-Closing! Always be closing!! A-I-D-A. Attention, interest, decision, action.” AIDA is an acronym used in marketing that is short for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.  This can be applied to email marketing as well.

Attention – Grab your subscriber’s attention with an engaging subject line so they open your mailing. This is your invitation to your subscriber to hear what you have to say. Once your newsletter is opened you can also get your subscriber’s attention with the appearance of the newsletter as well as the headlines and lead sentences. You may want to think of this as your pick up line or your “hook”.

Interest - If you are meeting someone for the first time and all you do is talk about yourself then you shouldn’t be surprised if that person gets up and walks away. This could be the point where your subscriber quits reading your newsletter or they opt out of your list altogether. However, if you include a person in your conversation then they are going to want to stick around. Focus on advantages and benefits as they relate to the substance of your communication.

Desire – Strong interest yields to desire. Use the power of persuasion in your conversation now that you have your subscriber’s interest. The better you can relate to someone in your conversation, the more they will want to hear. Use the body of your newsletter to convince your subscriber that you have what they want and they will feel a need for what you are offering. You are writing to build up motivation for your subscriber for what you are offering with your newsletter.

Action – Your newsletter should have a purpose and your writing should lead your subscriber to a clear call to action. You’ve now convinced your listener that you have what they want. Make it easy for them to do something about it! This action could be clicking on a link, purchasing a product, or even replying to your newsletter. You should structure your mailing in a way that is likely to generate a direct response from your reader.

Now, a word about subject lines or what we have noted as your all important hook. While you want to make this interesting enough for your subscriber to have a reason for opening your mailing you are going to want to exhibit caution. Think of the subject lines that you see in your spam box. You are going to want to be weary of using dollar signs, too much punctuation, or appearing needy as these are often techniques used by spammers. The subject line is important because you do not want to ruin the integrity of your list by being seen as spam. If you google top 10 spam subject lines you will get a good idea of what you want to stay away from.

A good rule of thumb is to keep your subject lines consistent and familiar to your subscribers. You can start with the same words so that your recipients recognize you. For example, “ActiveCampaign Newsletter: Name of the Newsletter” as a lot of email clients will cut off the end of the subject line. Try to keep the length of your subject line below 50 characters. Some internal testing may come in handy to see the maximum number of characters you can use before the subject line is cropped. You need not worry about this too much as you want to use as many characters as is necessary to get your subject across. The trick to writing a good subject line is to appeal to your subscriber’s interest which should be some combination of your target audience and relating the purpose of the newsletter to their needs.

There are many stylistic ways of holding your subscribers interest. Be succinct in your writing. This means giving your subscriber relevant information in as few words as possible. The more succinct your writing is the more weight your words will carry.

Include the most important parts of your newsletter in the beginning. Subscribers will read the introduction first before they decide whether the rest is worth their time. Many subscribers are going to scan through rather than read everything you write in your newsletter so arrange your text accordingly. This may include using dashes and bullet points as well as blocks of text rather than chunky paragraphs. You would write a newsletter differently than you would write a term paper or a thesis.

You can also engage your subscriber’s interest by using the active voice in your writing. This conveys a powerful message because when the verb of a sentence uses the active voice, the subject is doing the acting. When you use the passive voice the subject is being acted upon which can make your writing sound weak.

Keep your newsletter personal. Make your subscriber feel as though you are talking directly to them. One obvious way to do this is through using personalization tags such as the subscriber’s name.

Write to your audience. You can find out more about your subscribers demographic by using a tool such as A/B split to find out what your subscribers respond to. You do not have to be overly formal as in traditional business or marketing writing. It is perfectly alright to be irreverent at times so long as you are not overly casual and risk setting the wrong tone for your audience. It is important to know who your subscribers are before setting a tone for your audience. Remember you can set up separate mailings that target specific market and customize each campaign accordingly.

You’ll need to take in a few more technical suggestions into considerations with your newsletter. It’s best to avoid URLs altogether in your links. If you do use URLs in your mailing make sure that is reduced in length and that it fits on a single line. If you must use two lines for your URL then tell the subscriber how to piece the composite URL in their window. Also along those same lines, be sure to wrap all text at 68 characters per line. Although all email clients vary, all email applications will correctly display text at 68 characters or less per line. Also many email readers will only read ASCII characters. Be sure to avoid the use of “smart quotes.” Use a text editor and not a word processor when composing your messages.

Email Marketing plays an increasingly prominent role in running a 21st century Political campaign. In the 2008 US Presidential Election, which has generated worldwide interest, both candidates relied on email marketing to generate web site traffic, enlist volunteers for running a ground game, collect financial contributions from small donors, and to motivate their base to get out and vote. Whatever your political affiliation happens to be, or wherever in the world you happen to be, you can expect email marketing to play a prominent role in political campaigns from here on out.

In this article we’ll talk about what you need to do to run an effective political campaign by using email marketing. Email Marketing is a form of mass communication which is a discipline which is not altogether different from public speaking. Everyone can send an email to someone they know and write to that person in a way they will be understood. If you send the same message to a whole group of people you may get a different reaction from everyone you send it to. This is the tricky part of email marketing and a good politician will act as a good public speaker in their email marketing correspondence. This means they will carefully research their audience’s needs and carefully craft their words in order to make everyone in their audience feel like they are speaking directly to them. Once you have a message that resonates with your audience you will want practice good message discipline. A candidate is a type of brand which must be carefully controlled and their every word must be monitored. If a candidate goes off message then they give their opponent an opportunity to expose a weakness in their language in a way that would not be possible in carefully scripted language. In politics, often times what you say and do matters more than what you mean or what your intentions were.

You’re going to want to keep a consistent FROM address in your emails. You’ll use a different “From” name in your campaigns. Sometimes your From Name will be from the candidate themselves and other times it will be from the campaign manager or any number of key figures from your campaign. Keeping the From address consistent so that it is something like info@yourcandidate.com will keep consistency in your supporters email clients and will help avoid your message from being placed in junk mail folders.

The types of emails you send should be short text based messages that are clear, focused calls to action. These contain low-commitment calls to donate small dollar amounts or volunteer.  You can easily provide substance for these emails by posting links to ads or campaign videos, spin negative coverage by appealing directly to your supporters, report on gaffes by your opponent, provide information on meet ups and rallies, impassion your base by calling attention to negative attacks, and to otherwise focus your message in a way that will excite your supporters. Mainstream media isn’t powerful because people lack options on where to get news. The power of the media comes from its ability to write compelling stories that attract an audience. You will want to keep this in mind when using email marketing to tell your candidate’s story.

Ensure that your mailings are permission based. Your mailings will lose all effectiveness the moment they are regarded as spam by your subscribers. Your sender reputation will suffer and your email deliverability will drop. Candidates work relentlessly to build subscriber lists and they are very well aware of metrics such as open rates and link tracking. You will also want to use personalization tags such as your subscriber’s name to help keep things personal. If your mailing is anticipated, personal, and relevant to your subscriber then it will always outperform spam.

In order to use your subscriber list as an effective base for running a political campaign it’s important to define what that base consists of. A base is a tribe of people that have shared interests and vision. Every candidate has certain strengths with a particular base. Building a new base in politics as in marketing is very risky and expensive. Email marketing is an inexpensive way of building and maintaining a base. However, your success will ultimately hinge on building a base that you can then turn out to vote. This will still come down to your vision and how you are able to connect that vision with core constituencies of your electorate.

The Mambo foundation is a volunteer, non-profit organization charged with the governance of the Mambo open source content management system.  Mambo is free software released under the GNU/General Public license and like all such projects, dealing with emails and organizational issues takes valuable time away from software development.   They use Help Desk to manage both time and resources more effectively.

Mambo developers must work in collaboration from many different locations which makes email key to their communication.   “Email is the key communication tool. The Mambo development team and the members of the Board of the Mambo Foundation are geographically distributed and work in a virtual, online environment.  All email that is not addressed to individuals is managed through the help desk.”  Directing email traffic through a central ticketing system allows multiple members to work together on the same issue if it is not specifically addressed to a particular individual.

Mambo foundation uses the knowledgebase in ActiveCampaign’s Help Desk Software to provide a central location for corporate documents that require routine turn over.  “For the management of Board affairs Help Desk has proven to be an ideal solution.  Previously, corporate documents were kept by officers of the Foundation and handed over to new officers following our annual elections of the Board. This meant that record keeping relied on the diligence of the individuals who handled those documents. Help Desk is used as a central repository and archive. By keeping all documents in the knowledgebase and keeping emails we now have accurate corporate records that are available to future Board members. This gives us confidence that we can not only meet our statutory obligations but also that institutional knowledge is retained for the future – two things that are extremely important and sometimes difficult to achieve in a volunteer environment.”     This improves efficiency and allows accountability that would otherwise be difficult to maintain.

“Volunteer, free software projects tend to have a reasonably high turnover in personnel. People work when they can, in their spare time, and often find it hard to commit their time in advance. By having a central document repository and by handling all email through the ticketing system it does not matter who is around and when. People can come into new roles and read what has happened previously and people can take leave for a few months while knowing that others can step in and take over handling of the enquiries.

“In the past, individuals took responsibility for one or more email accounts. There was no way the rest of the team could be certain that emails were being responded to in a timely manner and no way the team or Board could be certain it was receiving all information. By collecting all emails within the help desk the groups collectively have access to each email and the responses. This has made us more accountable and has improved our responsiveness to enquiries.

“Prior to installing Help Desk we also had issues due to the distributed, virtual team environment we work in. Team and Board members are located all over the world and not everyone has reliable internet connections. Some countries have high fees for bandwidth. This resulted in some Board members being reluctant to take on responsibility for handling email enquiries due to costs – especially as a lot of the email is spam. By using the helpdesk nobody needs to worry about the costs because email goes into the ticket system and is not downloaded to individual’s computers. If someone’s internet connection is down for awhile this is not a problem – responding is a collective responsibility and no longer a burden put on individuals.

“The Mambo Foundation has used SupportTrio for nine months now. The improvements in our responsiveness and productivity have been significant. Best of all, we now have more time to devote to developing the software.”

SupportTrio provides a central framework to allow Mambo Foundation address the challenge of working in an environment that requires the collaboration of volunteers working in different locations.  It also provides a means for maintaining efficiency and accountability in an environment that necessitates a high turnover rate.

Click here for more information about ActiveCampaign Help Desk Software.

It’s an accepted wisdom that maintaining an e-mail list and sending out regular e-mail updates is a good idea for your business. But let’s think about why this should be.

Of course, it’s a good idea to have an open channel of communication with your clients, because it keeps them from forgetting about you. A professional newsletter can also increase recipients’ perception that you are familiar and established, and so makes it easier for them to buy from you. But in the end, like everything else in business, it comes down to the payoff. What is the final objective of your email campaign? Better yet, what is the objective of the very next e-mail you’re going to send out?

If the objective is to win a sale, then you’ll already be very clear on this. But often, maintaining a mailing list involves sending out a number of messages with less decisive agendas. You can improve your e-mail marketing campaigns immensely by doing three simple things:

1. Set a goal for every message you send out.

What would you like for this particular newsletter to accomplish for your business? Do you want to inspire your recipients to click through to your web site? Are you hoping to get them to forward your newsletter to their friends so you can grow your membership? Do you want them to fill out a survey? Do you simply want them to trust you more?

2. Think of a couple of different ways you might accomplish this.

If you’re trying to get your message recipients to trust you, then your job is very easy. All you have to do is give them information that is both authoritative and immediately useful to them, and ask for nothing in return. Of course, you’ll have to have this type of information first, so this type of goal is excellent if you are an authority on the topping of your newsletter.

If you’re aiming to induce a specific action, your strategy will be similarly rational: in most cases, you’ll just ask them to do what you want them to do. That isn’t really as simple as it seems, of course. Is it better to ask at the beginning of a message or at the end? In the middle? Should you give them a whole paragraph to pitch the action or just set it aside in a colored box apart from your content? These variables will be different for every newsletter based on the preferences of your demographic and the nature of the information you’re sending out. How do you determine which is best for your purposes?

3. Test them against each other.

Just set up your A/B Split test in our Email Marketing software and send out your mailing. Then pay attention to the results and note them for future mailings. See how easy that was? Now you know something about your client base that you never knew before–you’ve learned a little something about how to induce them to perform a specific action. In your next newsletters, you can keep right on putting that technique to work, or (and here’s the real secret) keep testing. Do a split test every single time you send out a message, and your email copywriting style will just keep getting better and better. It’s just a little more work, and the results can scale exponentially. Use the insights of all of your previous tests to design each of your next tests, so that your knowledge of your customers snowballs into… dare I say… absolute power. Or, at the very least, you can get more people to forward your messages to their friends

Don’t think small with these insights either. Everything you learn about getting someone to click through to your site is also an insight that can potentially be used to win a sale. Knowledge is money.

A while ago I told you about the new art installation in front of our building. I wasn’t really sure what it was supposed to be at that time or where it had come from or who was responsible. Of course, like any good citizen I relished the triumph of aesthetics in my corner of the city.

On Friday the Tribune carried a story about the sculpture, which is called the “Communication X9″ by an Israeli artist named Yaacov Agam. Yaacov is hopping mad.

It seems the sculpture was originally placed in another part of the downtown area, in an outdoor park that also features massive sculptures by Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall. Chicago loves a great big sculpture, what else can I tell you? Unfortunately, after a couple decades the paint on Agam’s sculpture started fading and peeling, so the city took it down for restoration.

This is where the trouble begins. The firm hired to perform the restoration–for $300,000!–was supposed to consult with Agam throughout the process in order to make sure that the restoration was true to his original work. The firm says they did, the artist says they didn’t. And now Agam is calling the restored sculpture “an unauthorized copy” of his original work and is suing everybody.

The idea behind the piece is that the subtle changes in color would create the perception of motion for onlookers. I never saw the original, so I can’t say how well it worked, but I don’t think I’ve noticed any perception of motion while gazing at the new and improved model.

On Thursday I described how to successfully offer web-based support that your customers will love. But what if you’re the customer? Is there anything you can do to minimise your time investment and maximize your gains? As a matter of fact, there are a number of things you can do to ensure that you receive the best support that the company you’re working with has to offer.

• Be very descriptive.

Assume that your problem is unique, and offer up any and every piece of information you can think of that might help the help desk team solve your problem in one go. Chances are, the support team doesn’t actually want to give you any kind of runaround, or to keep your issue pending for days on end while they await further information from you.

I can’t tell you how many people have submitted frenzied tickets to our own support center begging for fast help getting their software back online, only to leave out any information about how we could actually access the software, or even what specific error they were seeing. You want quick help, and the support team you’re dealing with wants to give it to you; your job is to make sure they can do that for you.

• Keep it relevant.

If you need fast help getting your widgets working, this may not be the ideal time to explain how the widgets fit into your business model. Support staff are twitchy and tend to have ADHD–try not to distract them

• Take a moment to review the situation before you submit.

It can be very difficult to keep a cool head when you have an urgent issue that needs attention. But before you submit, take an extra few minutes to examine the problem, re-read your own support request, and make sure that you’ve included a clear, complete description of the problem and exactly what you have done to try and fix it.

Most web software support systems will knock you back to the end of the queue if you submit a second request, so the extra time you take before submitting could save you a great deal of waiting time later on. Also, when you’re feeling frustrated, it’s really just too easy to lose your head and forget about basic things. Ask yourself: Have I fully described the problem? Have I mentioned everything that happened in the time leading up to the problem? Have I provided everything that is needed to investigate the problem? Have I described everything I’ve done since the problem first occurred?

• Make sure the ticket gets submitted.

Some online support systems have extra steps before the ticket is submitted; make sure there are no more buttons to click or windows to scroll through. Most systems will tell you directly that your ticket has been submitted and even give you a ticket number. Most will also send you a confirmation e-mail.

• Make sure you know how you’ll be answered.

If you’re expecting an answer by e-mail, make sure you got a confirmation e-mail. It may also be a good idea to go ahead and whitelist the support address just to be sure. If you didn’t get an e-mail, check the company’s support web site. In our support area, like most, there is a page where you can view your open tickets to see their status and any replies.

Most of these tips come down to the very same things I talked about when explaining how to succeed in providing support. They’re based on the same principles you can use to succeed in just about any kind of communication: try to consider the other person’s perspective. Think about what they need, what they want, and what you can do to understand them. Your communication will always be more effective when you have a level view of the field and all the people involved. You’ll get more done, and will make people feel motivated to help you.