Melon Corporate Blog

The Death of Email Marketing

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Apr 21, 2008

The Death of Email Marketing…
...is a long way off.
 
The cynic in you may say “of course you have to say that, you are an email marketing company!”
 
Well yes, email marketing is our specialty and it is what many of our clients pay us to assist them with.
 
But most of our clients have been with us for years and even though we are a team of great people - I know that altruism only goes so far.
 
If our clients don’t enjoy positive results from their campaigns they would move quickly budget elsewhere.
 
Why all this talk of death and email marketing?
 
The results of a survey that was released last week got me thinking as to how email marketing is here to stay BUT at the same time requires more intent than ever achieve ongoing positive results.
 
The survey received responses from 2512 American adults age 18 and over who check and/or send email at least once a week.

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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.]

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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.

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One quick and easy way to improve your email marketing campaigns

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Apr 07, 2008

I have noticed that many of our self managed customers often leave out one element of their html email creatives that can easily improve their click through rates.

All research and previous campaign experience indicates that both web and email users just LOVE clicking on things.

They try to click on text, images, headers, footers, they just seem to have a thing for clicking!

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Search Engine Optimisation Myths #1 – “Don’t use Javascript”

James Peter (Chief Web Systems Architect) - Apr 04, 2008

This entry is the first of what will be an ongoing series I will write aimed at clearing up a lot of the confusion and “voodoo” behind Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

There is a lot of misinformation behind SEO techniques with some people thinking that SEO specialists have exclusive access to insider knowledge.

A lot of illogical or unfeasible “myths” for search engine optimisation have sprung up and have become false common knowledge.

The main issue with these myths are that you can land up paying for services based on misinformation and deny the use of useful technologies on your websites.

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Don’t squish! Resize! Images and Html Emails

Fiona King (Graphic Designer) - Apr 03, 2008

How many times have you seen an image in an html email that just looks wrong… too many times! It may look streeeeeetched ... or sqshed!

This is because people have attempted to resize an image in an html program without actually resizing the image itself (gif, jpg, or png).

Html editors are partly to blame as they allow users to do this.

So instead of the actual image size changing, what is happening is the html is representing the image of one size, as another size. Kind of like trying to squeeze a kid that has grown into his old clothes.

If the "aspect ratio" (proportion between width and height) of the new resized image at least stays the same as the original image then the image will look ok but appear either crunched or stretched.

However when people resize images in an html program often the aspect ratio changes from the original image and the image looks quite different to the original image.

Below is an example of an image squished into an aspect ratio that doesn’t match the original image.

So if you need to resize an image into a defined space that has an aspect ratio different from your original image you’ll usually need to crop the image to fit.

If you don’t have an editing program such as Photoshop a solution to resizing and cropping your images can be found within your Microsoft suite of applications.

Have a look for Microsoft Office Picture Manager within your applications.

Make sure after finishing your changes you save using a new file name to avoid copying over your original file. Mac users can resize and crop using iPhoto which comes packaged with the Mac.

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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). 

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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.

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Don’t forget about your offline email list building initiatives

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 30, 2008

I went to a 3 day festival over the Easter break.

When I left the festival at the exit gate there was a volunteer wishing everyone farewell as they left.



He also had a clipboard and a pen and asked each and every person to fill in their details if should they want to be kept in the loop about the festival via email newsletters.

It reminded me that although it is crucial to have opt in boxes and other online forms in place offline initiatives are just as important.

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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).

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