http://www.melon.com.au/index.php/melon_blog/ en dain@melon.com.au Copyright 2011 2011-07-14T11:42:18+00:00 http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/youve_been_blacklisted_the_importance_of_keeping_your_data_clean/ http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/youve_been_blacklisted_the_importance_of_keeping_your_data_clean/#When:10:42:18Z For the average marketer, creating and sending bulk email campaigns is seen more as a chore than an exciting adventure through the world of communication. Depending on who you talk to, sending bulk emails can be tricky, time-consuming, stressful, anxiety-inducing and down-right scary. (If you’ve ever completed an email campaign, given yourself a pat on the back and then found a glaring and potentially job-ending mistake you’ll understand these feelings.) It is this trepidation that most marketers approach email marketing with which ends up compounding the problem. It’s a difficult enough process to craft, build and test an email without worrying about additional factors - such as how clean is the list you’re sending it to? But worry you should. And with good reason. Perhaps “worry” is the wrong word here. What you should do is “embrace” your email marketing list data. Really understand it. Why? To put it as bluntly as possible, it’s your legal obligation. Every country has it’s own rules governing email. We all hate spammers and these rules are there to qualify legitimate email correspondence. So here’s important link number one - The Spam Act of 2003: http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2011C00080 Not following these rules can have some pretty severe consequences such as fines or imprisonment, but the most common of which culminates in ending up on a blacklist. Click through to read more…What is a blacklist? “A Blacklist is a database of known internet addresses (or IP’s) used by persons or companies sending spam. Various ISP’s and bandwidth providers subscribe to these blacklist databases in order to filter out spam sent across their network or to their subscribers.” http://www.spam-blockers.com/SPAM-blacklists.htm#what-is-a-blacklist So, obviously this is bad. “But I don’t send spam”, you say. Well, no, but bear in mind that these blacklists are mostly automated - robots - so it only takes one mistake for you to end up on one. How does this happen? The most common method used to capture spammers is through “honeypot” email addresses. These are email addresses set up specifically by anti-spam services to capture unsolicited emails. These honeypot addresses sit dormant and do not ever subscribe to lists, so if your data has been gathered legitimately you should have nothing to worry about. If you have acquired your list through a third party however - be very cautious. Basically you want to be 100% satisfied that the addresses are genuine. The consequences aren’t worth it otherwise. Advice: The best way to grow your list is organically through a sign-up form on your site, or via a competition (with clear information that they are being added to a mailing list). Whilst incorporating a double-opt-in method (confirmation email) is not compulsory in Australia, it IS highly recommended best-practice. What do I do if I end up on a blacklist? In the words of The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Don’t Panic. Well, maybe just a little. Melon Media actively monitors all of the main blacklists and should one of our clients end up on one we work quickly to have it removed. This involves providing message headers, full HTML code and company details and usually takes 48 hours. We have a range of IP addresses set up for sending so if one is blacklisted it will not impact your sends. For those wanting to really take charge of their data melonMail also has dedicated IP addresses that can be assigned to your company alone - giving you complete control over your sender profile and list status. To enquire about a fixed IP please contact us here. Of course prevention is better than cure so a few minutes a week keeping your list up to date is imperative. List management Here are a five simple steps you can (and should) take to keep your list data up-to-date. Confirm permission: Before you even add people to your list - make sure you have permission to send things to them, either from a check-box on the sign-up form or through an implied business relationship (sketchy, but legal). Best practise is to have a double-opt in method (confirmation email with a link) so that there is no doubt that the recipient is valid. Let them leave: It is mandatory to have a working unsubscribe link in your email. If somebody wants to leave, let them and don’t email them again. Continuing to do so can get you reported. Age: Check that none of the addresses in your list have been out of correspondence for more than two years. If you haven’t sent them an email in over two years, deactivate and archive the addresses. Third parties: If your list has data from a third party (an external provider) - ensure the validity of the address and that they have opted-in to receive messages from you. Manage bounces: After conducting a send you will most likely receive some bounced emails. If it is a permanent bounce type (ie: No such address), then you should purge them from your list. Deactivate the address or, even better, unsubscribe it to prevent future mailings. Continuously sending to bounced addresses can affect your sender score. That’s it. As long as you keep your data up to date and manage your lists properly then the whole process of sending bulk emails will become less of a chore and more, dare I say it, fun! Happy mailing. —-Have you experienced the pain of being blacklisted first-hand? Do you have some choice words for those that don’t manage their lists correctly?. Do you just have something to say? Comment below 2011-07-14T10:42:18+00:00 http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/did_you_know_how_to_re-size_images/ http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/did_you_know_how_to_re-size_images/#When:10:19:48Z When it comes to creating content for the web or emails, an image can really help to illustrate a point or provide context for an article.  Because they are such common elements, many people think it is a simple process to use images in your email broadcasts: Find the image you want Upload it into melonMail Insert it and you’re ready to go! Unfortunately, doing this and skipping some simple image quality processes can have detrimental effects on your email - which may even cause it to not be delivered at all. So what do you need to know? The most important two aspects of proper images in email marketing relate to the images size. It’s data size and physical size. Image data size relates to how many kilobytes (kb), or megabytes (mb) if it’s really big, make up the image. As a simple rule, if the image is over 100kb it’s probably too big. Now data image size is mostly influenced by the physical size of the image - how wide and how long the image is in pixels. To keep things in perspective the average email width is 600 pixels wide so you want to keep that in mind when preparing your files for the EDM. You can view these image properties by right-clicking on the image icon and selecting properties, or just hovering over the image icon if you use Windows Vista or 7. What to do if your image is too big. Don’t upload it and fix it later! That’s a rookie mistake. Yes it’s possible to re-size images within the melonMail system but there are three very good reasons why you shouldn’t. Re-sizing the image in the system makes it physically smaller but keeps the data size the same. This is bad news if your image is over 100kb as too many large images can in some cases prevent your email from displaying properly or even being delivered. Some older email clients revert the image to it’s original size! So if you have put an image in and re-sized it to display at 200 pixels wide, some clients will push the image back to its full height and width which will obviously break how your email displays. The quality of the image is severely reduced. The system image resizer simply scales the image down and approximates the pixels - it doesn’t re-sample the image. The end result? Look at this photo of Dain. It looks like it was pulled from an 80’s arcade machine. For some purposes this is fine but if you want to maintain a high level of quality then check out the information below. The best thing to do is re-size your images correctly before uploading them as assets to the system.  There is a free web-based tool to do this which can be found here: http://www.webresizer.com/resizer/ This gives you plenty of options to easily re-size your photo, crop it, add borders, rounded corners and more.  When you’re happy with the optimised image you save it back to your desktop and are then ready to use it within melonMail. Look at the two images below: Can you tell the difference? No? That’s the point! The image on the left is 62% smaller in file size than the original version but looks exactly the same. 2011-07-14T10:19:48+00:00 http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/google_creates_their_best_logo_yet_-_with_no_flash_in_sight/ http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/google_creates_their_best_logo_yet_-_with_no_flash_in_sight/#When:23:03:08Z I was completely blown away by Google's logo today, so much so that it was difficult to believe it was done without use of Adobe's Flash animation tool. But no, no Flash insight. The Martha Graham animation was done using some very advanced techniques - coupled with some very old techniques. Because it will only be up for a day, here is a link to a video capture of the logo: http://www.popherald.com/martha-graham-google-doodle/6981 Beautifully implemented, the logo was created using the old-fashioned one-frame-at-a-time technique - similar to a flip book or 1980's-animated cartoon - and then ingeniously coded into picture (or sprite) snippets and animated using the new HTML5 canvas technique. You can see the full image here: http://www.google.com.au/logos/2011/graham11-hp-sprite.png Phew! A lot of work went into this, but the effect has got the internet talking. Google has outdone itself again. 2011-05-10T23:03:08+00:00 http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/facebook_profiles_vs_pages/ http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/facebook_profiles_vs_pages/#When:03:12:00Z As a digital marketer it is very easy to become convinced that when software gets updated (as it invariably does), the latest iteration automatically supersedes all previous knowledge and installments and must be used immediately. Newer is better, right? This perception of mine was challenged yesterday when I received a ‘Friend’ request through Facebook for a business profile. My immediate reaction was to wonder why this business was setting up their Facebook presence as a person, rather than as a ‘Page’. Pages are so much easier to market, you get a wealth of extra opportunities to network and advertise and the openess of a page allows you to be so much easier to find. Knowing the owner personally, I sent off a quick message outlining my thoughts and offering him to help with managing his Facebook presence “properly”. His response made me look at things an entirely different way. “Easy: People are much more likely to accept a friend request than a page request. I personally almost never accept page requests. Also I don’t think pages can intrude on status feed the way an updating of my status can.” This man was marketing himself by being more difficult to contact - and in doing so creating a more personal experience for his customers. He was creating friends, not fans. And in less than a week he’s up to 141 of them. Whilst I still feel that he is limiting his potential reach, there’s a lot to be said about using technology to suit your purposes, rather than changing your purpose to suit the technology. What are your thoughts? If you want to ‘friend’ the Buckingham Quintet you can do so here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002149063009 General Online Marketing Articles and Tips 2011-03-10T03:12:00+00:00 http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/kevin_garber_internet_trends_and_opportunities_audio/ http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/kevin_garber_internet_trends_and_opportunities_audio/#When:02:41:01Z Kevin’s talk from the recent Melon breakfast event. Audio begins at 1.10 minutes in.     2011-03-08T02:41:01+00:00 http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/email_testing/ http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/email_testing/#When:23:42:00Z Learn how to test your emails, buy credits and download the results. 2011-02-28T23:42:00+00:00 http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/conditional_content/ http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/conditional_content/#When:23:37:00Z Conditional Content is here, watch this tutorial to learn how to use it for your emails. 2011-02-28T23:37:00+00:00 http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/global_spam_email_levels_suddenly_fall/ http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/global_spam_email_levels_suddenly_fall/#When:21:56:01Z Between August 2010 and the first week of 2011, the total amount of spam email being sent around the world fell sharply. Not just fell, but plummeted. On average there are around 200 BILLION spam emails sent each day. In December there was just 50 billion. Great news, but will it last? Below article originally published at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12126880—- GLOBAL SPAM EMAIL LEVELS SUDDENLY FALL The amount of junk e-mail being sent across the globe has seen a dramatic fall in recent months. The volume of spam has dropped steadily since August, but the Christmas period saw a precipitous decline. Click here to read more… One security firm detected around 200 billion spam messages being sent each day in August, but just 50 billion in December. While the reasons for the decline are not fully understood, spam watchers warn the lull may not last. Around the Christmas holidays, three of the largest spam producers curtailed their activity, Paul Wood, a senior analyst at Symantec Hosted Services told BBC News. “But it’s hard to say why,” he added. Inactive botnets The vast majority of spam is sent by networks of infected computers known as botnets. One of these botnets, known as Rustock, was at its peak responsible for between 47% to 48% of all spam sent globally, said Mr Wood. In December, Rustock was responsible for just 0.5% of global spam, he said. At the same time, two other prominent spamming botnets, Lethic and Xarvester, also went quiet. There have been huge drops in spam levels before, said Mr Wood. “Usually they have been associated with the botnets being disrupted. As far as we can tell Rustock is still intact,” he added. That means those controlling Rustock could have continued churning out masses of spam, but for whatever reason, have chosen not to. Chasing profit One possible explanation is that the spammers are simply regrouping ahead of a new campaign. Spammers are driven entirely by profit, said Carl Leonard, a researcher at security firm Websense. Some of the world’s most active spammers have stopped sending junk e-mail “So if a campaign is not getting the returns they want, they can stop, regroup and try something else,” he said. Anti-spam campaigns have enjoyed recent success in making life difficult for spammers, said Mr Wood. In late September 2010, a collective known as Spamit announced it was closing because of “numerous negative events” and increased attention. That has certainly contributed to the current decline in spam volumes, said Vincent Hanna, an investigator at anti-spam group Spamhaus. “This was a significant operation, with assets all over the world. It’s decision to stop operating - or at least lay low for a while - has made it more difficult for [other] spammers,” he said. That helps explain the longer-term drop, but the reason for the reduction in December in not yet understood, he added. There have, however, been signs that spammers are turning to alternative methods to e-mail for distributing their messages - such as Facebook and Twitter, said Mr Leonard. In December, Twitter accounts were hijacked to distribute diet pill spam after a list of possible passwords was published online. Even so, it is still too early to say the current lull in activity will last, said Mr Leonard. “For years there have been predictions that e-mail spam is set to decline,” said Mr Leonard. “But for as long the spammers can generate profit from their activities, it’s not going away.” Mr Wood said new spammers usually pop up to replace inactive ones. “We’ve yet to see any evidence that spam has become a bad business to be in,” he added. 2011-01-09T21:56:01+00:00 http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/case_study_gloria_jeans_facebook_application/ http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/case_study_gloria_jeans_facebook_application/#When:00:00:00Z Client: Gloria Jean’s Coffee International Aim: To promote Gloria Jean’s Coffee, drive traffic and fans to the Gloria Jean’s Facebook page and promote engagement by getting people to create a virtual Christmas card, integrated with Facebook, offer the user a free “buy one get one free” drink voucher for a Gloria Jean’s coffee. Timeframe: 6 weeks Software used: FBML, Flash, Javascript, PHP Challenges: • Lack of documentation on Facebook Markup Language (FBML) • Developing on Facebook platform • Profile authorization/authentication • Unique coupon generation, different coupons based on geological location • Optimising graphics while keeping file size down —- Gloria Jean’s Coffee approached Melon Media to help with their 2010 Christmas Card campaign. The aim was to create an interactive Christmas card builder which also integrated with Facebook, giving the ability to send cards to your Facebook friends. This online promotion ran in tandem with in-store and product branding. The optimal outcome was to raise awareness of and increase visitors to the Gloria Jean’s Coffee Facebook page Whilst the card builder itself was seen as a fun-to-use application, there was also the added incentive for the user to receive a Buy One Get One Free coffee voucher for each card created and sent as well. The initial brief was very light, outlining only a general preferred outcome, and Melon was free to interpret and advise on technologies required, user interface, user experience and additional features. Beginning with a rough artwork, Melon began researching the Facebook Markup Language (FBML) and application rules and guidelines, while concurrently building the framework for the application. Once Melon received the final artwork we had our Flash developer build the card-creation aspect. We went through several iterations – polishing and optimising until we were happy with the final result. Users could choose from a range of graphical elements and add them to the canvas, move, rotate and scale these elements, add text and even select Facebook profile pictures to completely customise their card. During this process our internal developers created the application page within Facebook and had successfully tested the friend selector, image selector and PDF download aspect. There were two versions of the PDF coupon – one for Australasia and one for the rest of the world. By using the Facebook API to get users locations and doing an additional call to their IP address we could present the correct voucher at the end of the experience. The final product (available here: http://www.facebook.com/gloriajeanscoffees?v=app_164375793589198) was seamless and fun to use. Users were prompted to send the card to a friend on Facebook by selecting them from a list, which would then post the card on the friend’s wall. The sender was then given a PDF voucher that they could print or show on their smart phone at any Gloria Jean’s Coffee shop to receive a free coffee with any coffee purchase. Outcome: Feedback has been extremely positive. The card went live on Thursday the 9th of December and to date there have been 5,144 cards sent. The majority of users are females in the 18-24 age bracket (37%) followed by females in the 25-34 age bracket (30%). The application itself has been shared 922 times. The card will continue to run until the 26th December, or until 10,000 vouchers have been generated. If you would like to see what Melon Media can do for your business using Facebook integration please call us on +61 2 9232 3722 or email us at help@melon.com.au. Or you can Like us on Facebook here:   Melon Media News 2010-12-22T00:00:00+00:00 http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/three_email_insights_to_boost_your_statistics/ http://www.melon.com.au/melon_blog/article/three_email_insights_to_boost_your_statistics/#When:22:37:00Z What makes a good email? With a relentless flood of marketing emails pouring into my newsletter inbox each day, it is all too easy for the less-than-standout (read: boring & poorly designed) emails to be evaporated away by my delete key. I have become very quick and merciless at this. My time is my own to spend - and babble doesn’t get a cent. So when a well-designed/thought-out/interest-grabbing email causes me to hesitate before turning it to trash I take notice. Congratulations, you’ve just passed step one - getting your readers attention. If you’ve presented the email properly I’ll be tempted enough to load images and click through your links. So the question to be asked is this: “What makes an email ‘good’?” Here we look at three major influencing factors… - They open it. Simple, no? No. Getting the elusive reader to actually open your email is hurdle number one. Too many times will an email be purged from its inbox existence due to its failure to capture your attention as an item of real interest. The most obvious element to tackle here are the message details: subject line and sender - as these are the first things they see. It needs to make the recipient WANT to open the newsletter - and there are any number of reasons where this will miss the mark. Too long. Too short. Too many exclamations!!!!!!!! Too irrelevant. A subject line needs to explain what the email is, who it’s from and what is in it for the reader - which is no easy task. For example; the subject line, “Company Y’s June Newsletter”, will likely not gather as many interested readers as, “The latest innovations from Company Y”, or, “Company Y has five amazing things you need to know.” It also needs to be relevant to the recipient. If I’m subscribed to receive skiing holiday emails, I don’t necessarily want to be sent information on surfing safaris. This ties in with the quality of your database and the amount of information you have on your contacts. Good information in = good information out. However, there is more to increasing an email open rate than just having a stellar subject line. - They read it. Getting the recipient to open your message is a good start. Now don’t abuse them and lose them. A sure-fire way of losing readership is create an expectation and then not deliver, so hopefully your content matches the subject matter you have pulled them in with.  If you have a large list - segment it so you’re sending the right content to the right recipients. If you fail to do this you will end up with more unsubscribers than you can poke a stick at (don’t actually poke a stick at them… they won’t like it). Remember, a successful electronic mail campaign is NOT about pushing your own message out to the world. It should be to give the reader something interesting or useful to THEM. This destroys trust. - They whitelist it. A tantamount and often neglected part of the equation is the trust that your recipient has in you, your brand and your message. If a recipient trusts that you are sending them something relevant, they are likely to open the email and at least skim it, even if the subject line bombs. How do you build trust? That’s really very simple. Reliability. Be reliable. Let me present a simple equation: If Billy sends an email once a week for three weeks and then not again for two months, followed by four emails in 24 hours, how many unsubscribers will he get? Exactly. (Even more if the content is irrelevant or if the wind is blowing East and it’s a Sunday). This may sound monotonous but keep things the same. Structure, design, content style, frequency and even the time of day that you send. This will build a one-directional rapport with your subscribers as they know what to expect, and even anticipate, from your emails. And if your reader gets what they expect then they’re happy, you’re happy and your boss is happy. So there you have it, emails as easy as 1 - 2 - 3. 2010-12-09T22:37:00+00:00