If you’re engaged in email marketing, you already know: your company’s email marketing list is an important business asset.

A good subscriber list takes time to build. But the work doesn’t just stop there – if you go to the effort to build a subscriber list, you should also be taking the time to maintain it.

You should already have a mechanism to weed out hard-bouncing email addresses – this helps you stay on the good side of spam filters, and (as your list grows) lessens your server load. But equally as important is making sure you’re keeping the subscribers who are interested, and getting rid of those who will likely never convert. You can do this by sending out a reconfirmation email.

What is a reconfirmation email?

It’s a simple email that asks you to reconfirm that you want to keep receiving emails. As Derek Harding explains, there are two types of reconfirmation emails: opt-in (which requires subscribers to take a specific action to stay subscribed) and opt-out (which asks the subscriber to take specific action in order to unsubscribe). Naturally, opt-out is the most attractive to marketers, as it loses fewer subscribers.

My reason for writing this post was a reconfirmation email I recently received from Panic, a company that makes great software for the Mac. Here’s a screenshot (click to view the full-sized image):

This is a reconfirmation email done right. It’s simple and to the point, reminding me that they’re there and offering me the opportunity to opt-out, should I desire.

What does it really accomplish?

For Panic, it lets them re-focus their list on the subscribers who are likely to convert to sales. By cleaning their list, they can better segment it and make messages more relevant to subscribers…and as Douglas Karr points out, “smaller email lists and targeted content always outperform mass media.“ They can expect to see their email marketing success metrics improve, just by eliminating the people who aren’t interested and focusing on those who are.

(If nothing else, it also gives them some subscriber face-time to build their brand.)

For me (the subscriber), it reminds me that they’re there (& that I haven’t visited their awesome blog lately)…and it builds trust. The simple act of them sending this email assures me that they’re not the type of company that will spam me. That’s huge. It’s good customer service, internet marketing-style, and makes me want to stay on the list because I know my time won’t be wasted.

By occasionally pruning your list, you can focus your list on quality over quantity, and get a much more accurate representation of how successful your marketing efforts are. Depending on your email marketing software, you can even target the email to those who haven’t opened the last X emails you’ve sent. I’d recommend only sending it out once a year (twice at most) – but if you’re not doing occasional list maintenance like this, you should definitely consider it.

It’s the new year, after all – a great time to do some cleaning.

Kipp Chambers
Sr. Internet Marketing Specialist

Share on Facebook

It looks like Mozilla fans are stuck with version 3.5 for the time being, as Firefox recently stated they are planning on falling short of their 2009 deadline of 3.6’s release.  In addition, Firefox 4.0 which had been due in 2010 is now looking at a release date of late 2010 to even early 2011. This push back is not unusual, as scheduled delays are very commonplace in the software and hardware world.

The arrival of Google’s Chrome has specifically made browser development more stressful and crazy than usual, as the competition is literally up day and night trying to keep up with Google’s advancements. Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s VP of Engineering states ” We’ve always been more quality-driven than time-driven, but we understand timing in the market matters to our users and our competitiveness.”

There is an exciting future for Firefox on the horizon; the new big feature in its 3.6 version is incorporation of the Personas plug-in that will allow people to customize their browser’s appearance.  Other enhanced features will bring improved security and faster browser time to Firefox, along with other improvements.

Version 3.7 will bring even more development to Mozilla. This version will introduce even more changes in overall performance.  A development called “Electrolysis” will separate computing processes into individual compartments for better stability, among other benefits. Another expected addition will be more enhancements to the “Weave” a plug in that synchronizes bookmarks, passwords, plug-ins, and open tabs across different instances in Firefox.

Version 4.0 you ask? Well the list of changes this rollout will bring keeps growing. In all honestly, it’s release is too far in the distance to get into detail about. For the time being, it’s safe to say you can definitely expect significant user interface changes and a new way to replace the standard “menu” bar.

Until then, it’s still version 3.5 for Mozilla addicts.  Feel free to keep on top of Firefox’s development progress here.

SS

Share on Facebook

I know the title above sounds somewhat Blade Runner-esque…but bear with me. I’ll explain.

Today location-based online advertising revolves around services like Google AdWords, which allow you to set a target local area for your ads (so you — the Florida-based mechanic — can make sure your ad for ‘Auto Mechanics’ only appears to people searching for auto mechanics in the Tampa Bay area, but not to people in Boise, Idaho). If you’re a local business (such as an attorney or a house painter), targeting your specific location with your ads is a very smart idea.

But things on the web are always changing, and Augmented Reality is the new kid on the block.

What is Augmented Reality (AR)? Basically, it’s a class of technologies that place data from the web on top of a camera view of the physical world. So when you view your surroundings with a camera, you can see annotations to the places in your view as you move the camera around. All thanks to the GPS features of new digital cameras and camera phones.

So picture an application from Yelp.com that allows you to stand on a busy city block, turn on your phone’s camera, and see which nearby restaurant in your field of view gets the best reviews. With AR, it’s possible.

But that’s just the beginning.

Today location-based social network Brightkite announced it has partnered with Best Buy to run Augmented Reality ads in the Brightkite iPhone & Android app. In what is supposedly the first AR advertising solution in the U.S., Brightkite will display markers for nearby Best Buy locations in images from its social network.

As Marshall Kirkpatrick at RWW points out, the world of AR advertising is brand new, but the idea has a long way to go. For instance, currently the Best Buy markers appear at all times, even when users search for things completely unrelated to Best Buy. In the modern world of highly-targeted ads, this sort of irrelevant advertising won’t do.

But still, imagine the possibilities of being able to serve up a special offer to a potential customer who’s looking for your products and services – and is within sight of your business. As Augmented Reality features are added to more devices, that sort of geotargeted advertising should be just around the corner.

Kipp Chambers
Sr. Internet Marketing Specialist

Share on Facebook

Yesterday evening, the rumor mill churned to life when TechCrunch broke a monstrous story – that Google is in final negotiations to purchase Yelp.com. Today the blogosphere lit up with commentary, from tech pundits like Robert Scoble to everyday-life bloggers like LifeHacker. Of course, nothing has been confirmed yet – but even if you don’t know both companies well, the sheer number of people talking about it have to tell you something. This is huge.

For those of you who don’t know, Google’s Local Business Center allows businesses of all sizes to create and edit their listing on Google Maps. Yelp, on the other hand, is a site that focuses on user reviews of local businesses. It has a much more social tone to it, as users interact and give feedback to each other as well as hair stylists, art supply stores and other local companies. Both are important ways that potential customers can find you.

At Everon, we advise our clients to build up a presence on sites like Yelp and Google Maps – becoming established on both can lead to increased website, phone and foot traffic.

So Why is This Important?

Mike Blumenthal’s thoughts on the potential Google-Yelp acquisition give a lot of insight into why this should matter to you. Mike talks about how he uses both sites. He sees Google Maps as being more for ‘recovery’ – finding a place that you already know about, such as when you’re looking for the nearest Starbucks. Just whip out the iPhone and a few keystrokes later, you’ve got its address and directions how to get there.

Yelp, on the other hand, is more for discovery – because of the large number of user reviews, people go to it when they’re looking for, say, an auto mechanic. They decide to try one out based on reviews from people they trust.

Now, I’m not sure that I agree that Google Maps doesn’t allow for discovery – just the other day, I found a new pizza place by typing ‘Pizza Denver’ into Google. (Although I might have found a better place had I used Yelp).

Regardless, it’s tough not to see what an impact these two companies merging would have. By acquiring Yelp, Google can fill out its listings with a ton of user reviews, and further solidify itself as the online-yellow-pages-of-choice.

How Can You Take Advantage?

Your company should make sure you’re listed. You should also set up a program to encourage your customers to give you online reviews. If you build this out now, by the time anything happens with Google and Yelp, you’ll already be far ahead of your competition when someone is looking for your product.

(And if the merger is just another rumor that doesn’t happen, you’ll still be far ahead of the game.)

Kipp Chambers
Sr. Internet Marketing Specialist

Share on Facebook

Last week, Google dropped another bomb on the Search Engine Optimization world – automatic captioning in YouTube videos.

Captioning in online video is nothing new – YouTube has offered captions in their videos since 2006. But as anyone who’s ever uploaded a video can tell you, the manual-captioning process is cumbersome and time-consuming.

The new auto-captioning feature aims to change all that. Now you can simply upload your video to YouTube and allow Google’s speech-recognition technology (the same stuff Google Voice uses to transcribe your voicemails and email them to you) to do the work for you.

Why is this important?

First off, captioning obviously makes your video content accessible to those who are hearing-impaired. Since auto-captioning will ultimately aim to caption all videos on YouTube, its addition will give those who are hearing-impaired access to an incredible library of video content that many of us take for granted.

But that’s not all – auto-capping videos will have a tremendous effect on search engine optimization.

Currently, videos are very tough to optimize for search engines, because they’re not ‘machine-readable.’ To put it simply, a computer can read the code for a video, but it can’t translate that to understand exactly what the content is saying.

By automatically adding captions to your videos, however, Google, Yahoo! and other search engines can ‘read’ the video’s captions and index them as they would any other web page. Check out the video link below to see it in action:

Automatic Captions in YouTube Demo

The implications for SEO are mind-boggling. Video is already used as a part of many internet marketing efforts, but auto-captioning will make video marketing incredibly more effective. Companies looking to take advantage of this opportunity will find it much more important to produce and optimize quality video content, just as they would their website. And those that do will see great rewards in the form of increased website traffic and broader reach to potential customers.

There’s just one catch.

Auto-captioning isn’t available yet (well, not to everyone). Google is rolling it out to a few select partner channels to start, but plans to bring it to the masses in the near future (once a few more bugs are ironed out).

For the rest of us, they’ve also launched a feature called “automatic caption timing” which makes it easier to add captions manually. You simply upload a transcript of the video, and Google’s speech recognition technology will figure out when each word is spoken in the video, then use that info to add accurate captions.

(Sure, it’s not ideal…but it certainly makes adding captions easier.)

In the meantime, if you aren’t already promoting your services via online video, you should consider investing in a video camera and starting your own channel on YouTube, Vimeo, MetaCafe or any of the other video search engines. The video camera doesn’t need to be crazy-expensive – you can even start your efforts on a shoestring budget with a Flip Mino if you like.

The key is to get started now – as soon as automatic captioning is rolled out to the rest of us, those who already have substantial video content will be best-poised to take advantage of it.

Here’s some tips to get you started. Happy shooting!

Share on Facebook