Melon Corporate Blog
Email Goes wrong - Case Study and Prevention
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Apr 17, 2008
Every so often there it is - an article in a mainstream newspaper describing how someone has created havoc by using CC instead of BCC.
Email is a powerful tool - and like all powerful tools - it can be used for good or evil - furthermore when things go wrong they can go spectacularly wrong.
[Cartoon image is from the Financial Review 17 April 2008]
The Financial Review Wednesday 16 April 2008 has a story about Kevin Rudd’s 2020 Summit and how the secretariat sent an email cc’ing recipients instead of bcc’ing them.
[ As an aside we are very impressed that Tamerlaine Beasley the principal of one of our clients Beasley Intercultural has been selected to participate in the Summit.
Tamerlaine will be involved with the ‘Australia’s Future in the World’ stream. Tamerlaine will canvass opinions regarding Australia and its future in the region and the world.
We interviewed Tamerlaine for one of our previous newsletters.]
Semi-Permanent 2008 - Inspiration for this Web and Email Designer
Fiona King (Graphic Designer) - Apr 10, 2008
I spend my time at Melon Media generating creative concepts and implementing the chosen designs for email newsletters and websites.
However I need to keep the inspiration flowing and design events allow me to step away from some of the day to day deadlines and indulge in pure creative thought.
One event I always look forward to is Semi-Permanent.
Having just spent 2 days hanging out at Darling Harbour in Sydney attending Semi-Permanent Sydney 2008 I thought I would make some comments on my experience.
Museum Calls for email archive submissions
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Apr 02, 2008
Yesterday Microsoft and The Powerhouse Museum announced that they are accepting emails into an email archive of sorts.
I am unsure if this initiative has gimmick value only or could be a wise move to take an ongoing snapshot of our modern world.
Email tends to exist somewhere between conversations (think telephone) and more formal communications (think letters).
Internet Retailing in Australia a Failure for Big Name Stores
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Apr 01, 2008
I was interested to see an article in today’s Financial Review commentng on how online sales have been disappointing for stores such as Harvey Norman and David Jones.
You can see the article here.
The fact that major Australian retailing icons can’t make a success of online marketing reflects more about the companies attitude towards online retailing than online retailing per se.
Aussies now use the internet more than TV
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 20, 2008
This week Nielsen Online released the “Nielsen Online’s 10th Australian Internet and Technology Report” (100KB pdf).
One of the important metrics that came out of the study is that for the first time Australians are using the internet more than they are watching TV.
The study found that Australians were spending around 13.7 hours per week surfing the ‘net, while average television viewing was around 13.3 hours per week.
The study also showed that the most popular online activities undertaken regularly were email (98%), banking (72%) and accessing news, sport and weather updates (72%). Growth areas in online activities in the year ahead are expected to be accommodation bookings and instant messaging, both of which are predicted to growth by around 20 percent.
Email is only predicted to grow by 0.4%.
This is probably due to the fact that email penetration is already so high combined with the fact that people are their saturaton point with respect to processing emails. Important factors for email marketing professionals to consider.
See more details of the study here (100kb pdf).
Interview with Mark Zuckerberg - founder of Facebook
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 13, 2008
Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed at the recent South by Southwest Interactive Festival.
The interviewer is annoying in her flirtatious style but it is an interesting insight into Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg was recently named the youngest self made billionaire ever by Forbes magazine - a very impressive financial achievement.
What struck me during the interview was how Facebook are still not quite sure how they are going to generate income. He tries to put a new spin on the advertising angle but it doesn’t sound all that different from keywords (contextual ads).
Excellent Alternative to YouTube
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 12, 2008
We have discovered a great 2 year old streaming video site called Viddler.
It is very similar to YouTube with one difference - people can comment on the video as the video plays.
See an example here where people have made comments on the progress bar. The feature makes a lot of sense and it would be interesting to see take up of this feature in corporate and marketing videos. I think it is one of those features that seems so obvious once you have seen it in action you wonder why it wasn’t thought of before.
BRW Digital Survey 2008
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 05, 2008
BRW Magazine has published results of their Digital Survey on page 37 of the latest edition. It is available online if you are a paid subscriber.
I have scanned in a version from the print version - you can see it here.
There is also an audio discussion of the results here.
The survey presents some interesting results including:
- 17% of companies have their own blog.
- 54% of companies currently use email marketing and 67% of these increased their spend in 2007 and 65% will lift spendng in 2008.
- 43% of companies made use of search engine optimisation services (SEO) and 40% of these increased spending in 2007 and 44% will lift spending in 2008.
Web guru coming to Australia
Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 04, 2008
Jakob Nielsen is considered by many to be the father of usability and has been around for a long time in the web world. He has been called “The guru of web page usability,” by The New York Times.
His organisation is presenting some workshops in Melbourne later this year. They will be very worthwhile for the online marketing/web professional.
More info can be found at http://www.nngroup.com/events/melbourne/agenda.html
They will be having sessions on a wide variety of web usability issues including “Email Newsletter Usability”.
I will probably be heading to one of the sessions myself so drop me a line if any of you are going and we can make contact.