Melon Corporate Blog

NOT hating the hired {DIGITAL} help - 8 questions you should ask

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Feb 13, 2009

Melon Media started out as a specialist email marketing agency but has evolved into full service digital agency.

As we assist an increasing number of organisations with their websites and general online marketing one consistent surprising theme has emerged: the ongoing poor experience clients have with their suppliers assisting them with their websites.

“My freelancer disappeared to India for 3 months and we have no way of contacting him - can you assist with these urgent updates?”

“We have been unhappy with the service our web development company has provided to us, but they want to charge us an exorbitant amount of money to provide our data to us in a form that we can use in another content management system.”

“My web development company are smart people but getting them to do anything the way that I want it is such a struggle.”

The above are a sample of real life comments from clients that have asked us for assistance after struggling with other suppliers.
 
I thought it would be useful to put together some questions that you should ask your prospective web development/web design company/freelancer.

Read More (2 comments)

Optus Cops $110 000 Fine for SPAM

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Feb 05, 2009

In January 2009 Optus - one of Australia’s largest telecommunication companies - was fined $110,000 for sending 20,000 electronic messages to its customers in contravention of the Spam Act 2003. This fine is the second biggest penalty imposed for a single breach of Australia’s anti-spam laws.

OptusZoo Entertainment Services sent SMS messages to its customer’s mobile phones and used the sender identification “966”. Optus assumed recipients would make the connection between “966” on a mobile phone keypad, and the word "ZOO" which can also be spelt out using the three numbers. However the Australian Communications and Media Authority disagreed and the fine was imposed.
  Marketing is obviously a key factor to creating a brand and increasing customer awareness of a business or product. However it is important that business don’t break any laws when using the details of their customers or potential customers to market their business or product. Customer details such as name, address and contact details should be handled carefully to avoid prosecution under the Spam Act 2003.

Read More (1 comments)

Forbes.com’s Four Email Marketing Blunders ... in One Campaign

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Jan 06, 2009

HTML emails are a notoriously inconsistent technology and without proper quality control can be prone to errors. Every html email campaign is made up of several intricate elements where even a one character mistake can result in a significant error such as a broken link.

An email arrived in our inbox on Thursday 11 December 2008 which provided us with a good case study as to how easy it is to make a multitude of errors in an email campaign - even if you are a very large established company like Forbes Publishing.

Forbes distributed an email campaign that advertised a competition whereby entrants could win a skiing holiday and a diamond pendant. This was a decent prize considering there was no purchase necessary to enter and all one had to do was register to be entered into the draw - a simple process in theory.

The email however contained several errors that made it difficult to work out what the campaign was about and how to get to the destination competition entry page.

Read More (0 comments)

Reflections on Silicon Valley and TechCrunch50 2008

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Dec 18, 2008

I was honored to be invited by my favourite Australian entrepreneur magazine Australian Anthill to write an article about my reflections on Silicon Valley.
Whilst I was taken aback by the remarkable entrepreneur ecosystem in San Francisco and Silicon Valley I did wonder a little if the fundamentals of business were not being treated with the respect they deserve.

>>> Link to PDF version (3 pages including cover of magazine, 5MB)
>>> Link to standard web version of full article

The article was also published in Australian Anthill’s email newsletter and the article scored the honour of the subject line of "Silicon Valley is a graveyard". 
  Click here (jpg) to see a screen shot of the article as seen in the email newsletter.

Read More (0 comments)

Project Palantir - Facebook visualisation shows users communicating with each other around the world

Dain Saxon (Digital Producer) - Nov 28, 2008

It’s easy to forget how much the internet has revolutionised global communication in the past decade - until you see it with your own eyes.  Credit: news.com.au

Read More (2 comments)

The Battle of The Email Bulge -  4 Inbox Overload Killers

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Nov 28, 2008

by Kevin Garber, General Manager
Recently a friend boldly declared “I LOVE receiving SPAM emails!”.
Realising that she was serious I was curious as to why she would make this declaration.
She went on to explain that as the manager of a community organisation with about 100 volunteers, hundreds of members, and a large distinguished board of directors she receives literally hundreds of emails every day, each email often requiring a response.
  She elaborated that when working through her inbox when she comes across a SPAM email - it means that there is one less email for her to action - a small win in the battle against email fatigue.
  I went on to explain to her how at Melon Media we have reduced the amount of email sent and received internally in our organisation by between 60%-80% over the last few months.
  But more on that later…
  Email remains the locus of the online experience - it is usually the first thing we check when we get online and the last thing we action when we go offline.
  Email is highly effective for newsletters, one-to-one, one-to-many and the occasional many-to-many communications.
  Emails can easily be filed, filtered, indexed and it is relatively easy to scan read a large volume of emails. 
  Due to these advantages we can process far more emails during a work day then we can physical letters, phone calls, or face to face discussions.
  So whilst email remains a powerful business tool (having founded and manage a specialist email marketing agency - I remain a fan of emails!) the efficacy of email begins to break down under certain situations.
  These situations include when:

1. the number of emails requiring a response gets too large - email overload leads to inaction.
   
2. many-to-many email communication is used excessively and without thought; together with general abuse of the reply-all feature. The result is complicating the workflow/task that all the communication is attempting to address.
   

Email is not the appropriate tool to manage team workflow.
As the Melon Media team has grown and the amount of projects we manage has increased we investigated more efficient ways to manage internal tasks and projects.
The result has been the implementation of a range of internal tools that totally redefines the way that we communicate internally. 
A main aim of this project was to significantly reduce internal work related email.
The following is a list of our new workflow toolset, description of how we use it and how it relates to email use:
1) Skype
Main use: realtime text chat and asynchronous messages Allows the Melon team to have real time 1-1 or many-to-many text conversations. Allows the Melon team to leave short messages or links for each other regardless of whether the recipient is online or not.
Email inbox killer: previously the team would regularly send emails to each other with one link, or a quick comment, or a phone message.  The instant chat service allows for text communication that is also perfect for the short textual message.
Result: Reduced frequency of emails with links, phone messages, and questions as well as reduced “conversational” emails with “conversations” happening real time or asynchronous as text on Skype.
Click below to read the next four!

Read More (1 comments)

Interview with Paul Ryan - Editor of Australian Anthill Magazine - Email Newsletter Experiences

Fiona King (Graphic Designer) - Nov 27, 2008

  Kevin Garber - General Manager of Melon Media and Founder of spellr.us speaks with Paul Ryan, the editor of Australian Anthill Magazine - a leading Australian magazine for entrepreneurs.

Summary of discussion points with time markers - you can drag the audio pointer to the desired time.   Total time 28 minutes.

1.35 - Intro to Australian Anthill and evolution of their online presence - their website something more than just a “dump” of their print content.       2.45 - Discussion about Australian Anthill email content targeting.       3:30 - Email the most successful way of communicating with their readership.       4:25 - Balancing targeting database segments with having the right content. Profile of online readers is different to profile of offline readers.       5:55 - Defining the “personality of the brand”.       6:00 - Being too focused on the metrics.       6:50 - The “tyranny of the click” and the seductive nature of controversial content. 8:15 (* highly relevant segment for email marketers) - Practical advice and experience for times and days to implement your email newsletter campaigns. When is the best time to send out your email newsletters?       14:20 - The importance of compelling content for online marketing.       15:30 (* highly relevant segment for email marketers) - The future of email and email newsletters.       17:49 - The evolution of the email inbox and email filters.       20:00 - The importance of learning to manage a large amount of online content.       20:30 - Inbox zero and email bankruptcy.       23:00 - Crowdsourcing online and filtering through large amounts of content.       25:00 - Brief chat about Twitter.

Links discussed in the interview.
>> Twitter
>> Australian Anthill Online
>>  Kevin Garber informal presentation at BarCamp4 Sydney

Read More (0 comments)

A case for audio and video in online content

Fiona King (Graphic Designer) - Nov 26, 2008

I recently went to a talk where different learning styles were discussed and the studies done by Hermann Ebbinghaus really struck a cord with me.

Apparently we only retain in our memory;

- 10% of what we read
- 20% of what we hear
- 30% of what we see
- 50% of what we see & hear

Read More (0 comments)

Say HELLO properly and have less GOODBYES

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Oct 30, 2008

On our blog and in our newsletter articles we often explore issues relating to email newsletter content, subject lines, email’s role in the broader marketing mix and so on.

In this article I want to discuss several often ignored but powerful elements of the email newsletter process.
1.      The welcome sign-up email
2.      The sign-up thank you page

Read More (0 comments)

Melon Media goes to Google - part two

Dain Saxon (Digital Producer) - Oct 30, 2008

Part two of Kevin’s interview with Google Product Manager Sharath Bulusu - discussion touches on Google Algorithm, Google culture, discussion of cloud computing, Google Gears, Chrome.

Read More (0 comments)