It is simply just not email, it’s a way of extending Facebook’s messages system. At the end of the day, it is just a way to communicate with your friends. Think of it as an extension of your IM. All the sms, emails, messages will be consolidated under one main conversation under from a single point of contact. Separate emails with different subjects are meaningless in Facebook Messages (though subjects sent from email clients outside Facebook are bolded in the conversation).

Point is, you can’t use Facebook Messages like email because, while it interfaces with email, it’s not email. It is more of a email lite version, where everything is simplified for the sake of consolidation. If you use your email for more in-depth conversations (as opposed to quick back-and-forth, chat-style conversations), or you like to communicate with the same person using different threads, it just won’t work.

Besides, email will always exist in your workplace, and some of the most important uses of it will be in the workplace, which does not encourage their workers to indulge in Facebook all day long. Companies like to have a record of all emails exchanges for legal and confidential reasons, so Email will always have a place in the workplace, which cannot be replaced by Facebook Messages.

Image and some text from lifehacker

Well, our worries were put to rest when the response rate was over 5%, and best of all, these individuals took time to forward the mails over a 100 times!

The secret? A very classy, clutter free email creative that strikes a cord with the high net worth individuals.

There are no screaming prices or huge red act now buttons.

It shows that subtlety works in messaging, when speaking to certain audiences.

Nice work, UBS and Starcom Hong Kong.

Imagine putting a poster on a crowded street corner with millions of people passing by it, everyone has a right to draw on the poster. There will bound to be a few of them who will be unhappy abut the poster and write something negative on it. Now multiply that by a few times, there is having a Facebook page. A Facebook page is excellent channel for brands to share with their customers and interact with them, at the same time, it presents an avenue for dereactors to vent their negative feelings and comments on it.

A good example of this is the recent Coach Facebook page, dozens of anti-fur activists flooded the Coach Facebook wall with graphic photographs of caged and skinned animals. They were likely followers of an ongoing campaign on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which is well-known for heavy shock value in an attempt to get its message across (as well as its sometime affinity for robot groundhogs), to convince Coach to dump fur products.

There is no right way to deal with this matter, remove too many negative posts and it will seem like big brother with heavy censoring and control. Leaving the posts will present a negative stain on your page. It is difficult to strike a balance in handling this matter and no matter how you handle it, it will seem bad for the image of your company. So it is important to decide on a strategic online plan for all social media channels, and to calculate the risks and gains from going social!

Read more at cnet

Yes this is a true piece of news, so it’s probably better to leave the email marketing to legit guys like us than to leave it to spammers, or DIY style. You never know what kinds of trouble it may lead you to.

Linked from canoe.ca

And now some good news from techcrunch.com.

We can all rejoice in the fact that IE’s market share is falling and IE9 is touted to work in the same manner as other browsers, which means more time for all web developers to

IE has never been a good browser to begin with, it did things in it’s own way, it’s own standards. It was slow and clunky, a Chery QQ compared to the Ferraris and Porsches of the web-browser world like Firefox and Chrome. Why would  anyone want to use this piece of crap? Just because it was included Windows and most of the general surfing public just used whatever came with Windows, however as everyone got more net-savvy, once they switched to Firefox or Chrome, no one has ever turned back, except for all those working in companies with legacy “web applications” which could only be accessed through IE.

Speaking of these legacy web applications which can only be accessed through IE, isn’t it time to upgrade them to enjoy the fruits of HTML5 and Web 2.0 standards? Companies naturally want to save money, and once a system is built. They will want it to run for decades, but with the advances of technology and all the cool social media sites around, wouldn’t it be more efficient if these sites are rebuilt from scratch? The underlying backend can remain, but the user interface can be spruced up, which waste time click from page to page when information can be presented in the same page?

It’s time for change, only the best can survive now. If IE9 really lives up to Microsoft’s promises, I wouldn’t mind posting about how IE9 is gaining market share, but till then, please use Firefox or Chrome.

Highest volume of mail opens and click throughs happen between 8 to 10 am on weekdays.

You can buy 500,000 email contacts for US$50 !!!!!!!

Many people are intrigued by the idea of obtaining a ready-made list of email addresses they can send promotional emails to. Why wait months to slowly build up your own list of email addresses when you can piggy-back (for a price) on someone else’s efforts?

While the idea seems attractive, there are many problems waiting for anyone pursuing this course of action.

The important issue is how you come to obtain that bulk list of email addresses. And here we distinguish between renting a list (list rental) and buying a list.

List rental is a recognized and broadly accepted practice in email marketing. Owners of address lists will send an email to their list on your behalf. And they charge you a fee for this service. The key point is that you never get to see the email addresses on that list. The list owner does the sending, not you. Now there are lots of ins and outs to list rental, but for now you just need to understand that — unlike with direct mail — the actual address list never falls into your hands. So you pay a rental fee every time you want to send an email to the list.

Buying a list

The alternative is to buy a physical copy of a list of email addresses. After you pay the purchase price, there are no rental fees to pay. You can send your promotional message as often as you like to the list.

Sounds promising, right?

Wrong.

With very, very few exceptions, purchasing a bulk list like this is a shortcut to email marketing hell.

The potential problems are list fatigue, list quality, permission issues, legal/ISP issues, and their consequences…

In summary

If somebody does offer to sell and send you a bulk list of email addresses, 99 times out of 100 you’re getting a spam list. That’s a list of addresses of people who have not agreed to receive messages like yours, or a list of extremely dubious quality.

At best, your messages to that list just elicit a poor response. At worst, you’re labeled a spammer, You can end up on a few nice blacklists. Would you buy a car from a guy who you have met from the corner of the street for cheap? Or a diamond ring from the fish seller for just $10? If it seems too good to be true, it’s never true, or good.

So when you see offers like 1 million addresses for $100, run as fast as your electronic legs can carry you in the opposite direction.

This next one is from the big swoosh gods at Nike.  Notice anything weird about the screenshot?  It has some nice orange and grey colors to it, but that is about it.  Remember by default every email client does NOT display images, so it is probably a good idea to include a portion of text that gives a brief summary of what your EDM is trying to convey.  At least Nike gave us a view web version unlike the Eventbrite.  Just take a look at the before and after pictures below.  Could you even tell what that email is about?  Fail.

In this case a picture doesn’t tell a thousand words if the picture can’t be seen in the first place. So remember one little rule email marketing rule:

Images should add, not dominate.

Not Knowing Everything About Your Recipients

What’s wrong with the image above? Nice image of a girl, great deals, looks perfect? Wrong. This screen-shot was taken from a Banana Republic campaign sent to one of my good MALE friends. I love the ideas of companies sending sales and specials to their customers, but this is bad targeting and list segmentation. Fail!

Sending out EDMs to people on your list blindly is never a good idea, my male friend might not mind looking at some eye-candy, but what if you sent a cute little EDM with a cartoon pig character to Muslim? That is offensive and might cause you countless headaches and hurt your branding. Sending the right campaigns to the right people is very important, you can’t just throw everything out and hope some of it sticks, so sometimes a little targeted marketing will save you a whole lot of trouble.

Image from HubSpot