[thelist] <s>Spam</s> Marketing Email Return

[Jack Timmons]

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 10:33 AM, Luther, Ron <Ron.Luther at hp.com> wrote:
> Hi Jack!  (Ooops.  Hope no FAA types are loitering around.)

I once asked an Indian friend of mine to greet me in an air port like
that. Nobody would know the difference, right?

Then, we decided having a fruitful life <tinhat>without the various
government arms only watching us because that's what they do to
everyone anyway</tinhat> was a far better idea.


> Yeah, the 'did sales go up?' is always a good one - but it's _usually_ very VERY hard to isolate the impact of one mass mailing (or even a series of them) on sales ... because the impact of those efforts are generally 'confounded' with impacts from many other marketing efforts - some from your company, some from your partners, and some from your competitors / alternatives.

With extended drawl on the "A", aaaaactually since there's only been
two sales this month, it's almost safe to assume "the mailing'll do
it."

They're also marketing on Facebook and Twitter, (once you're done
laughing, do continue), but I'm pretty sure that's goes as far as my
lunch idea of a cup o' air.


> Primary research is how you get the answers to your questions.  I think I'd recommend an annual 'opinion' / 'citizenship' / 'ad awareness' combined Omnibus style survey of a random sample of customers and non-customers in a couple of geographies you care about:
>        'opinion' - covering a number of the 'how do you feel about companies who send out mass mailings?', 'how do you feel about companies who sell mailing lists?', 'how do you feel about companies who don't publish privacy code info' kinds of questions.
>        'citizenship' - covering the 'do you feel [my company] respects your right to privacy?', 'do you feel [my company] is trustworthy?', 'do you feel [my company] is responsible for the hole in the ozone layer?' stuff.
>        ' ad awareness' - {with aided and unaided content recall sections} prying into whether or not the customer got your message, remembered it, and remembered that actually it came from _your_ company kinds of things.

That sounds like a clear, lucid plan of attack regarding both
determining the effectiveness of our campaigns and possibly also
showing that we care if our emails offend someone enough that they
just might put their cigarette out in their eggs during their morning
email check and call us to complain next time we send one out. *gasp*

As they say. "Burn her, she's a witch!". Apply gender change as needed.


> {Total guesswork based on experience from past lives here ... done right, I'm guessing this could run you maybe $60-100k a year.  Done in-house with an intern, a carrot, and a sausage onna stick ... $6-10k might start to get you a glimmer of what would be possible.}

(Warning, the following text likely contains far too much naivety)

Once the system is in place, it shouldn't take that much per year.
Wouldn't most of that involve automation? Unfortunately, I don'y have
an intern to readily abuse, and the two people I do have working for
me I'd prefer to keep.


On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Joel D Canfield <joel at bizba6.com> wrote:
> UCE, like spam, is a misnomer. I don't mind receiving unsolicited commercial
> email. I mind receiving impersonal unanticipated irrelevant email. Only time
> I click the 'spam' button is when someone achieves that trifecta of fail.

For example, I don't mark "spam" the p3n|$ emails, since they usually
have some sort of wonderful backstory to make it through the filter.

"Let her enjoy your long hot pole!

<mashed excerpts from classical and/or unknown literature, typically
of win, no credit going the the generator>"

Those are the best.

-- 
Jack Timmons
@_Codeacula