IKEA Newsletter

Today I signed up for IKEA's customer newsletter...as an 120-year old person. Seriously! That's the earliest birth year (1895)  that was offered on their sign-up page. It's hard to imagine a 120-year old putting together anything from IKEA. It was the lengthiest, multi-page sign-up I have seen from a consumer catalog company.

IKEA newsletter sign-up, birth year start

IKEA newsletter sign-up, birth year end

It could be that when the e-newsletter sign-up page was first produced, back at the dawn of the commercial internet, 1895 was a possible year for a date of birth. But then, there is also a top range part of the birth year and for IKEA, it's 1997 (or you'd be turning 18 in 2015). It begs the question.. why not just have birth month and birth day like most consumer companies? Why would you target a specific demographic like 18-120 yrs old. 

I'll have to see if I can change my birth month from December to something earlier in the year like July to see if they have a birth year-specific marketing campaign. It would be really surprising to get a "happy 121st birthday!" note from IKEA as a result of this albeit flawed email newsletter sign-up form.

Thinking Out Loud

As I am thinking about where leads should nest, either initially in an email marketing platform or loaded directly into a company's CRM, I wonder about the best possible customer interaction for what we want recipients of our marketing messaging to do or respond in a favorable fashion.

In a situation where all leads are being entered into CRM regardless of the source, from a 3rd party list (bad idea), a hosted webinar, a tradeshow, or due to a non-transactional web conversion, often times the communication strategy is mixed for who is really a prospect (no expressed interest in your products or services) and who really is a lead (more than just contact information, but also a potential sales opportunity).

In either case, prospect or lead, neither party is really ready to buy from you after a few touches or website impressions. And, calling to qualify leads and prospects into a warmer lead may not be the best approach.

As a marketer, I'd say, sure.. let's load everything into our email marketing platform. If and when a prospect converts in a favorable way, e.g., multiple downloads of e-books or whitepapers, participation in the company's webinars or product demos, then the messaging tactics need to change. And then, you could push that prospect into being a lead.. and subsequently into a CRM where salespeople can call on it or nurture the process with more emails or calls.

How is this process in your company?

Microsoft SmartScreen Filtering: False Positives

I have recently run across two scenarios where Microsoft's SmartScreen service for Outlook mail has flagged single-opt-in subscription content as spam. It's annoying because one of those subscriptions is from Microsoft's Virtual Academy; which also has a glaring email autoresponder issue that I'll address in another post.

Imagine if you could: a giant inbox funnel with a mesh strainer on top of it called SmartScreen. The difference is that with Outlook.com (formerly live.com, hotmail.com, etc), it captures 110% of all incoming mail. Even the legit emails get caught in this spam trap.

What is SmartScreen? It's an Internet Explorer safety feature, really intended to be a phishing filter security feature. This is weird because I'm experiencing its affects using Chrome so I suppose Microsoft has separated its function from IE and made it app-centric instead.

What's the cure for businesses with legit email?

One possibility is to report the false positive to Symantec through this link. Another, is to contact Microsoft, but that like asking Google customer service to reset your free Gmail account password (which, if you signed up with verification service before you had mobile phone service, it just might be a problem for users trying to reset their password through automation tools. Just how many people have tied a landline w/o caller ID to Google's text verification password reset?).

Basically, you're nearly stuck.

But, what you should have been doing all along..

• Have an unsubscribe or preferences link
• Have your company name and postal address listed in the email's footer
• Double opt-in for promotional content, if your ESP has that capability
• Have legit unique content that's relevant to the receiver; even when they sign up for your services. Receipt nor open of an auto-generated welcome email does not constitute an acceptance of newsletter subscription; especially not in Canada

Contact Curation

Once a year I glean through my entire roster contacts on LinkedIn and push people off the island. It's not a long list and I do like to stay in contact with people. Perhaps this is due to the marketer in me. Usually it's people who have done one of the following things:

• Not made a post, comment, or share by social media, email, phone or mail
• Recruiters who have not done the above
• Connections I have never met in real life who do the above

The exception to this are those I've added to my LinkedIn roster because they have a skill or expertise I want to know more about (e.g., I met this Caucasian guy who is fluent in Mandarin whose role is to mitigate between domestic US and foreign subsidiaries.. that is very, very cool), I want to meet them some day, or their company makes something awesome and meeting their CEO or founders would make a great memory; or I met them in person and they would make a fantastic connection.

It's hard to tell who you can connect to based on LinkedIn settings. I don't mind writing referrals for people who are connected to me to their 2nd degree contacts. I do mind getting pinged by invite hoarders. People whose claim to fame on LinkedIn is 5000+ contacts on LinkedIn. I think you're just setting yourself up for a lot of spam if you do that. Just how many people connections do you need to become a rain maker? Would these connections want to refer business to you?

Having never made a LinkedIn article post, it bugs me that my profile has 500+ followers, most of whom I'm not even connected to on a 1st degree basis. I'm not sure how LinkedIn came up with this feature. Maybe you automatically follow someone if you comment on their shared links or posts.

Supercharge Your List Growth

When I'm at social or networking events, one of the most commonly asked questions I get from small business owners and nonprofit groups is how to grow their membership or customer list. Even having the option to sign up for a newsletter or special offers on one's website can provide enough incentive to get prospective customers to sign up. 

Here are a few tips:

More is better.  As in adding more opt-in forms to your site. What you are aiming for with any mailing list is quality, not quantity. Many times I've seen the newsletter sign-up link below the fold (if you have to page-down to see content, it's below the fold) or buried under layers of content, like hidden where a company's press releases are. You want this web contact form to be found easily and not just by search engines, but by prospective customers.

Include mobile as an option. Should your customers check their email from web-capable phones, tablets, or other mobile devices, you may also want to add a SMS option to the newsletter sign-up form and optimize its accompanying landing pages for mobile. 
Examples: OfficeMax, Bed Bath & Beyond

Attract like honey. Give your subscribers a perk for signing up, thanking them for opting in. Types of perks vary by organizational type. For example:

• Schools or PTAs: a discount card to be used at a local business
• Retail: discount next purchase (online or in-store), free small item, free points on loyalty card program, early preview on upcoming sale items
• Nonprofit Assn: inclusiveness messaging (news and events just for members)
• B2B: actionable insight from industry news/trends

Oracle Topliners Opt-in Override

The wording on this one is certainly something to note, or at least comment on. It reads as though I was opted in without having actually subscribed to the list. Oracle, on the whole, does not market to marketers all that well. The content certainly wasn't all that compelling, and the newsletter format is weak. I can't decide if this is being driven by Eloqua or Oracle.

Oracle Topliners email newsletter, 2015-01-29

Long ago, I did join an Eloqua community user group called Topliners. It's morphed into this years later. Eloqua pitches a better marketing automation solution than the one it just executed on behalf of Oracle. It begs the question.. why wait three years before sending an user newsletter?

5 Things Learned at Vancouver's Economic Breakfast

This year's event at the Vancouver Hilton attracted 500 businesses, politicians, and other movers and shakers that work in and around the Clark County region. The keynote speaker was Ken Fisher of Fisher Investments, whose dry wit humor either met a really tough crowd or it was too Californian for the Pacific Northwest. After hearing his speech, I wondered if I sounded like that to PNWers when I relocated from California to Washington.

Get there early, at least a half hour before breakfast starts. You can mingle and network with other early risers before settling down on a table for breakfast.

Bring your "A" game in social networking to this event, because social + networking has nothing to do with posting a status online. As a commercial real estate agent said to me at the event, it's all about schmoozing.

Dress to impress, like you would if you were going for a job interview. The event has panel sessions after the breakfast. This your chance to ask industry insiders about their take on what's happening in the city or county -and- make an impression. You never know what opportunities may arise from meeting each panel of speakers.

Sit with some rain makers. You may not know who they are or what companies they work for. Heck, half the attendees look like they could be retired. You are better off sitting with old geezers (men and women) for their wealth of knowledge, than with younger, snappy dressed people.. unless you are trying to pick someone up as a dating prospect. Vancouver's economic breakfast audience is made up of four distinct types: older generation (50+ yrs old), local government officials and their staffers, CEOs and entrepreneurs, and students. Ok, there are really five groups but the fifth doesn't want you at their table (these people have purchased a table just for their company and/or friends; it's very clique-ish). It makes for interesting table discussions during breakfast. Because of the noise of the banquet hall, you are limited to intimate conversations of people sitting on either side of you. The first time I attended, I sat at a city official table before reading the sign on the table. That was awkward.

The breakfast is a venue for making connections happen. Be that guy (or gal) who knows a guy (or gal) that knows a guy (or gal). Everyone brings something to this event. And, everyone has the potential of becoming more than just that guy (or gal) you met or sat with at breakfast.