In my last post I discussed some ways that you can use email marketing to build up positive feelings so that people will look forward to receiving your messages and feel relieved when they arrive. Rewards, even small rewards, play a huge role in shaping our motivation and determining the types of actions we will take in the future.

However, as important as positive reinforcements are for successful marketing, they are only a part of what it takes to motivate people to take action. And this is doubly true when you are trying to market your products or build your brand during a slow economy. When fragile markets and shrinking budgets are making people more and more hesitant to invest their resources, you have to develop an understanding of their hesitation.

People hesitate because they are afraid of making the wrong decision. They are afraid of wasting their time, their money, and their manpower, and they are ultimately afraid of failing. There are two ways that you can work with this fear: by defusing it, or by turning it to your advantage.

Email marketing offers an ideal platform for defusing fear, because it allows you to portray your company as a solid and reliable performer. You can emphasize your commitment by developing a regular schedule of mailing that go out just like clockwork. Over a long period of time, you become as familiar and comfortable as an old pair of sneakers. People come to feel at ease relying on you because they find that you stay with them in good times and in bad times.

Of course, not everyone has the luxury of being old faithful. But there are plenty of ways that you implicitly and explicity build the perception of reliability into your mailings. If you’ve been around a long time, you can celebrate the anniversaries of important dates in your company’s history. But if you haven’t, you can build the sense of reliability into the very fabric of your company by sending out company timelines that stretch out years into the future.

Above all, you want to position yourself as someone who can help with the problems that your potential clients are inevitably experiencing. And the best way to do that is to talk knowledgeably about those problems. Try building your newsletter around the idea that you are in the business of solving the problems that your clients experience.  Then your actual product or service is reframed–it is just another way that you’ve come up with to help people overcome the problems that you seem to know so much about. There’s something very comforting about that.

In my next post, I’ll explore the flipside of this equation: ways that you can turn your clients’ fears to your advantage, by placing the emphasis on what will happen if they fail to fully utilize your products and services.

Our minds construct narratives in order to interpret experience in a meaningful way.  If you ask three people to describe the details surrounding an event they shared together you are likely to get three very different stories.  Let’s assume that everyone is being truthful and presenting events faithfully to the best of their recollection.   You’ll find that each narration contains different and sometimes conflicting details about what really occurred. What’s more is that each person will be convinced that their representation of reality best describes what really happened.  Yet the details found in each story suggest otherwise.   Its not possible to accept all three stories as an accurate depiction of reality because they are conflicting accounts.  The truth lies somewhere in the middle.  Eyewitness accounts are never considered reliable because our minds fabricate stories that give events in our life meaning.   False memories are created in order to fill in the blanks for the details that we can not remember.  Stories are a way for our minds to put data that is collected through our senses into a context that is both useful and based on our previous experiences.  That is why storytelling has always been an essential part of what it means to be human.

Even before the written word we used speech to tell stories in order to communicate and pass along history.   As oral traditions developed the stories that were told would evolve as they were passed from speaker to speaker until what began as a factual depiction of an event, as told by the original storyteller, took on mythological proportions.  These myths relied on dramatic exaggerations and were conveyed using  language that was steeped in symbolism and meaning.  The stories that evolved as a result bared little resemblance to the factual accounts they were based on.   The world’s first print culture grew out of East Asia, in China and in Korea, where woodblock printing created the world’s first print society.  The Gutenberg printing press would later revolutionize the written word in a way that is comparable to the way the Internet has today.  What’s changed today is the medium for telling stories and not the need people have for stories to be told to them.   These stories are necessary in order to provide life with meaning.  Think about the movies, books, and TV series that attract an audience.   They have characters that people can relate to and the audience cares about them enough to want to follow along through their experiences.  When it comes time for people to create their own stories out of their personal realities they can turn to the experiences found in these stories to add richness to their lives.  How do you attract people to your website?   How do you get people to care about what you tell them in your newsletter?  Its easy.  You tell them a story.

You can easily purchase a template for your website that makes it look professional.    Likewise you can also purchase email templates that will assure that all of your newsletters look professional.  However, just like in any superficial relationship, the novelty will wear thin and it won’t be long until you lose their attention for good.   That’s because it’s the content that you are using that allows you to tell your story to your audience.    A good product or a worthwhile service is useless if no one ever knows about it.   The way you interact with your customers becomes a part of the information that is collected and later recounted in the form of a story.  This story gets told when someone talks about what you are doing to other people.   The more you relate with your customers the longer they become engaged.  The longer you can count on your story lasting with them.   Have you ever watched a movie or read a book that was so good that you never wanted it to end?   Every moment offered you something new that you could relate to in your own life and you began living vicariously through the characters in the story.

Focusing on benefits,  or how a feature is useful, is a part of telling a story that your customer wants to hear.  A list of features is not compelling but talking about why those features are useful is.  A list of people that use your product is not as interesting as the names of the people that use it.   Even better than a list of names are testimonials and case studies that tell a story about you coming from another customer.  If you send out a bunch of mailings to a ton of people and its not obvious why you are sending them then you are telling a bad story to your customers.   It’s a story about how you are wasting their time.  The newsletters that you send should have a purpose that is obvious to your subscribers.  How do you run your business?  Are you simply trying to reach as many people as you can in the hope that someone will buy into what you are selling? If that is the only story you are telling your customers then you are telling a bad story because you are treating them like a number.  People care about other people and not numbers.  Or, on the other hand, do you demonstrate integrity by creating worthwhile products or services that are useful to people?  If you take that approach and you are able to effectively communicate it to your customers then you will win over more people.  The story your customers will tell other people will be about how you provided them with something that was useful and worthwhile.  Your subscriber lists will increase in quality and you will convert more of your list into actual sales.

Narratives are a natural part of how the mind interprets experiences.   Providing content that is compelling to your audience builds relationships and allows them to connect with you.  You are always telling a story with everything you do. Even if you are not consciously trying to tell a story you are.  If you are not paying attention to the content that you are using then the message you are sending is just a very bad one.  Taking control over your message gives you the opportunity to make yourself interesting. What kind of story do you want your customers to tell about you?

In order to control the future you must control the past.  While you cannot rewrite the past in order to take over the future you can use it to predict it.  The past allows you to learn more about your subscribers so that you can then target your email marketing approach toward them.  When it comes to understanding your customers there is no better predictor of future behavior than the past.   Purchasing behavior is a response to an object of interest.  If behavior is recent then its more likely to happen again.  Perhaps that object of interest is a song you recently heard when you were around an acquaintance.  You really like the song when it’s played but you do not know who its from.  You spend the entire next day trying to remember who the song was from.  You would purchase if you only knew.  You completely forget about the experience the next day.   As an object loses its recency interest fades over time.

However,  if a positive impression is initially formed it can lead to purchasing behavior later.   This is why its important to work on forming good impressions with everyone you meet.  You had a positive impression of your acquaintance because they had something to offer you in the form of good music.  This did not translate in a purchasing decision the first time around but let’s see what happens when you run into the same acquaintance again.  By the time you run into them you are no longer interested in finding out who played the song you liked.  You do however trust their opinion so you can say they have established credibility.  When you are around them this time you hear a different song that you are impressed with.   This time you get your acquaintance’s number in case you forget the name of the song when you go out to purchase it tomorrow.   You become friends with your acquaintance and the more time you spend with them the more likely you are to go out and purchase music.  Interest peaks when exposure is recent.  Your subscribers are more likely to purchase from you in the period immediately following a mailing.   The longer they do not respond to a mailing the less likely they are going to.  You have a window of interest but after that they will forget about you completely.  One way of measuring purchasing behavior is by measuring when the purchase was made.  Before you met this person you were not exposed to music so recency was low.   Now that you are friends recency has increased.

The frequency with which an action occurs in the past can be used to measure interest.  You are now purchasing more and more music with greater frequency as a result of your friend.  The frequency of your product purchases is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend with your friend.  One other way of thinking about frequency is how it relates to exposure.  Have you ever played a song that you really liked over and over again until you got sick of it?  If you’re frequently exposed to a song then it sticks in your head and this is a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you think of the song.   The fact that you’re voluntarily playing the song over and over again means you are interested in it.

Notice what is happening here.  When your friend was merely an acquaintance they did not force their music taste on you.  They gave you a good experience by exposing you to what they considered good music.  They established trust with you.  When you later ran into them they were able to repeat the positive experience.  Credibility began forming and this led to a purchase decision. As your relationship progressed your acquaintance became a friend.  You begin basing your purchasing decisions on their judgment.   You do this because they demonstrated reliability.  Which led to an increase in frequency of purchases.

A good newsletter does the same thing.   It exposes subscribers to something that’s worth having.  The newsletters you send should be of interest to your subscribers.   If you are able to demonstrate how your newsletter is of interest you will establish trust.  From there you establish credibility by repeating the positive experience without being too aggressive.   Your subscriber is an acquaintance that is just getting to know you.  When you are able to demonstrate reliability to your subscriber they will begin relying on your judgment when forming the basis of their decisions.

Now an emerging need for treating different customers differently is apparent.  You’re not treating some customers better than others.  You are treating them like people and using their past behavior to govern your future behavior toward them.  Which of your customers recently purchased from you?   How many times did they do it.  How much did they spend on individual purchases?   You are asking yourself questions in order to learn which of your subscribers are your best customers so that you can target your marketing approach to them.   In the process you are attempting to turn acquaintances into friends by showing respect for the relationship.  A healthy relationship grows because it is mutually beneficial to both parties.

Now let’s consider monetary value and what it means to be a best customer.  Some of my favorite albums of all time have been concept albums such as Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born, The Decemberists’ The Crane Wife, Radiohead’s OK Computer, and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.  The beauty of a concept album is that you are not listening to it just for one song.  You have to purchase the entire album to appreciate the concept!  Every song is made fuller and richer by the songs that surround them.  They also have a powerful emotional component. Perhaps you’ve heard a song that you really like that led you to purchase an entire album.  Once you purchased the album that led you to purchase other albums from the band until you owned their entire music catalog. You then tried to turn your friends into fans of the music so that you wouldn’t have to enjoy it alone.  If you have then you would be that band’s best customer.  You would be one of the true fans that the band relies on to make a living.  Once you have a best customer you can market to them differently because they have demonstrated through their purchasing behavior that the relationship demands it.

You would market to a best customer for a band such as Pink Floyd differently than you would for a weaker customer.  A best customer may be interested in owning all of their albums in CD quality,  having all the original vinyl copies as well as digitally remastered CDs, box sets, concert recordings, T-shirts and posters, DVD footage of live concerts as well as documentaries, Nick Mason’s Personal History of Pink Floyd, and solo albums from the band members. Marketing all of these products would be of great interest to a devoted fan of Pink Floyd but would be of lesser interest to a fan who simply wants to have MP3 albums of their most seminal work.  Here you could use a newsletter to turn a casual fan into a best customer by giving them insider information on the band in order to strengthen the relationship that fan feels toward the band.  Meanwhile,  you could keep the devoted happy by offering them exclusive opportunities for material that would only be of interest to the band’s most ardent supporters.  One purpose for the newsletter would be to track live performances from surviving band members.   A best customer would not let money be an obstacle for going to see a live performances from David Gilmour or Roger Waters.  You could offer these subscribers the first chance to purchase the best seats available.  At the same time you could keep all your subscribers happy by offering all of them an opportunity to win free tickets.  The best part of having a best customer is the word of mouth advertising they provide.  A Floyd head will try to turn their friends into fans as well.   Perhaps some of these friends may later turn into best customers.

The marketing approach of your newsletter should address the needs of all your subscribers separately.   You are going to earn most of your revenue from your best customers.  So your challenge is to turn good customers into best customers and weak customers into good customers.

A sender’s reputation can follow not only an IP address but a brand and a sending domain.   A holistic approach is necessary when considering a sender’s reputation as no one factor alone determines what that reputation is.  Reputation can be broadly defined as the opinion of a community toward an object.  Knowing what the community looks for when determining a reputation will allow you to maximize your delivery rates.

Spamtraps

We first eluded to spamtraps when we discussed Paid Subscriber Lists. A spamtrap is an email address that appears to be valid but is in fact used by ISPs to catch spammers. You will sometimes hear these referred to as “honey pots.”  Spammers use harvesting programs which scan millions of web pages looking for email addresses.  These email addresses may come from old email addresses which are recycled by ISPs in order to catch commercial emailers that use old, rented, or paid subscriber lists.  Some sites bury email addresses in their source code so that they are picked up by harvesting programs.  The company where the email originated is then alerted to any incoming emails that go to that address at which time they contact your web host and file a spam complaint.  Spam traps are bad news.   Its been reported that your delivery rate can drop as many as 20 points drop with one spam trap hit.   Spamtraps are one of many factors that ISPs look at when calculating your sender reputation.   Not only is your delirability affected but they can result in temporary or long term blocks.

Good list maintenance is necessary for avoiding spam traps.   Here are some things you will need to avoid:

• Poor List Sources -  This includes avoiding paid subscriber lists as mentioned previously
• List Poisoning – Using confirmation Opt-In mailings will reduce the chances that you will receive invalid email addresses
• List Aging -  Because spam traps are often used by recycling old email addresses use bounce management to remove any old email addresses and also remove any inactive addresses from your list.

Sender Authentication

This is used to prevent domain forgery and spoofing and provides a framework for helping ISPs to distinguish between legitimate email senders and spammers.  ISPs Identifying and verifying a claimed domain name has been authenticated or authorized for sending from a MTA makes it possible to treat suspected forgeries with suspician,  reject known forgeries, and block email addresses from known spamming domains.

• Sender Policy Framework (SPF) – a record that allows you to determine which computers can send emails on behalf of your domain.  Adding an SPF record to your domain name’s TXT entry, while not required, can help improve email delivery rates by reducing the chance that the emails you send will be seen as spam.  It can also help prevent others from sending spam and using your domain name.  This is used by Bellsouth, AOL, Gmail, and MSN/Hotmail.
• Sender ID – is very similar to SPF record except this extends the verification process to include the purported responsible address included in the header.  Used by MSN/Hotmail
• Domain Keys – an authentication standard that is designed to verify the DNS domain of email sender and the message integrity.  All outgoing emails are digitally signed with a private encryption key to match a public key that is published in the sender’s DNS record.   Used by Gmail, Yahoo, SBCGlobal, British Telecom, Rogers Cable, Rocket Mail, etc.
• DKIM – an enhanced authentication standard that allows a person to verify that a message comes from the domain that it claims that it came from.

Getting Technical

Your system admin should be able to assist you with ensuring that the following technical configurations are in line as they can improve or harm your sender reputation.

• IP Address – because email originates from this address you need to establish a low history of spam complaints, spamtrap hits, and low bounce rates in order to have a positive reputation that will affect your long term deliverability.   If you wish to qualify for whitelists, feedback loops, and reputation services, your IP address must have low spam complaints, unsubscription management, and proper setup for the domain associated with it.
• Sending Domain or Subdomain – Domain registration and domain age are two factors for establishing a positive reputation.  Newly registered domains are regarded with suspicion as spammers often hop from domain to domain.  If a sending domain has a bad online reputation it will result in low deliverability rates.
• RFC Compliance – these are information documents used as governing standards for internet traffic.   RFC 2821: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and RFC 282: Internet Message Formatare relate to email reputation.
• Reverse DNS – used to identify the domain name associated with an IP address.  The IP address is the only data that can not be forged and not having this enabled is in violation of RFC standards and a requirement for many ISPs.  If this is not enabled or is configured improperly you must immediately contact your server admin.
• Bounce Management – An email address is considered dead and should be removed from your list if it bounces 3 consecutive times or if the time between the most recent consecutive delivery rejection is in excess of 15 days.

Where to Go From Here

The final way to improve your deliverability is to get certified or accredited by a reputable organization.   There are three different types of ways to get yourself certified!  The first gets your emails automatically whitelisted or delivered to ISPs and companies that are working with the relevent program.  Another audits your email practices so that you can display a seal of approval next to your sign up form.   Another allows you to display an icon next to your email in your inbox that indicates that your email passed a quality test.  We will focus on whitelisting programs here:

• Goodmail Systems -  ISPs supporting this program ensure delivery with a “certified” icon attached.  This accreditation is supported by Yahoo and AOL.
• Sender Score Certified – Acceptance in this program puts you on the whitelist that includes 240 email address as well as MSN/Hotmail and Roadrunner.
• Habeas – requires business processes and email practices.   Their safelist is support by many email receivers including AOL, Earthlink, Google, and MSN
• SuretyMail – While not technically a whitelist a large number of ISPs, spam filters, and mail servers take this accreditation into account when making delivery decisions.  Senders with this accreditation will see improved delivery.

If you are concerned about whether you have already been blacklisted you can go here.

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.

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.

It seems counterintuitive that you should want to offer your customers a money-back guarantee. After all, the customer’s money is really what you came for. Once you’ve got it, and you’ve delivered your product, it makes sense that the transaction should be finished, right?

But this idea makes customers nervous. What if they buy the product only to find out that they can’t make it work for them the way they had hoped? What if they misunderstood the promotional literature and come to find that a critical feature is missing? What if they just plain change their mind? We’ve all experienced these worries when making a purchase, and your customers are no different. Your job is to put their minds at ease. Because nervous people don’t buy. They put it on hold and then forget to get back to it. It happens. You can probably think of plenty of times when you did this yourself.

Enter the money back guarantee. If you know you can get your money back, you worry less. You feel less pressured. You have some breathing room. So you go for it. As a business owner, you’ve told your customer that you are willing to shoulder the burden of their potential buyer’s remorse.

This is actually a win-win situation, because if you know that you’ve represented your product accurately, and that it is of a high quality, you can already predict that the vast majority of people who buy from you will not ask for their money back. You have the advantage in the situation: you already know that your customer needs what you are offering. As long as you are actually delivering what you promise, the only people who will ever take you up on the offer are the ones who simply misunderstood. And, frankly, you want them to return the product to you for a refund. Otherwise you’ll have a dissatisfied customer out their talking about all the things your product can’t do. This build up a perceived deficit in what may otherwise be a great product. The moral of the story is that you only ever want happy customers who will tell people nice things about you.

Offering a money back guarantee not only alleviates your customer’s anxiety about purchasing, it also conveys confidence. If you’re willing to give them 30 or even 60 days like we do with our own web software, just to make up their minds about whether the product is worth it, they know you mean business. If you’re selling crap, this strategy is not going to work for you. But when you’ve worked hard to produce a product that meets your clients’ needs, the sales you will gain by using this strategy will vastly outweigh the refunds you end up paying out.

Any long time user of ActiveCampaign Help Desk Software can relate to how it feels when you have a ticket with 20 or 100+ posts. Finding relevant or important posts in the history of that single ticket can be a pain. Sure we have the ticket split options, expanding options, etc… but we still thought there was a better way. That is why we implemented starred posts.

Next to each ticket post you will know see a gray star. Click on the star and it will instantly turn yellow. This helps identify the post as being important. Now whenever you go back to that ticket you will see the important posts and whenever you look at the past tickets by user or by email you will see a star by tickets that have any post starred.

Here are some screens of the new feature. To obtain this new feature upgrade to 2.65.1.

We are currently looking for highly motivated & talented PHP / MySQL software programmers to join our team.

Our work includes: Working in collaboration with other developers to meet our product cycle updates. Introducing new features into existing software and improving the code base and techniques currently being used. Taking part in new product development. From planning to development to deployment. Re-writing older “legacy” code that is out of date. Taking on challenging new ideas and methods required for upcoming products. Integrating web and desktop applications. Assisting in direct software support on existing software products.

This is a full-time position. We offer competitive salary along with extreme scalability based on skill set and motivation. Benefits include: 100% Company Paid Medical & Dental Insurance, Retirement Options With Company Matching, Paid Holidays, Vacation Time, Flexible Working Hours, Casual Work Atmosphere.

To apply, email employment@activecampaign.com with your cover letter, resume, and salary history.

We’ve published the first minor revision of SwiftTraction’s short, production history. It has several bug fixes, and a new feature suggested by one of our users: you can now set a specific date when you add time entries in Hours mode. (Previously, the “date” would always have been the day that you made the time entry.) Thanks to all of our users; we hope you like the new release!