Melon Corporate Blog
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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.
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.
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
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:
- the number of emails requiring a response gets too large - email overload leads to inaction.
- 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!
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
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
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
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.
Kevin comments on 702 Talk Radio South Africa about surprise Australia 1% rate cut.
Dain Saxon (Digital Producer) - Oct 10, 2008
Kevin comments on 702 Talk Radio South Africa about Australia’s surprise 1% rate cut - Tuesday 7 October 2008.
Kevin hosted one of the world’s first live internet related radio shows in 1996 / 1997 on 702 - there are rumours that there are tapes of the show floating around on the black market.
spellr.us finds mistakes across the globe
Dain Saxon (Digital Producer) - Oct 02, 2008
As part of our launch of spellr.us, we have set up a sister blog called 2 x mistakes a day to showcase the spelling errors that we find on other people’s sites.
But it’s not just websites that are prone to spelling mistakes!
Here’s a great video we found on YouTube:
The mistake should (hopefully) be pretty obvious!