Melon Corporate Blog

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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Interview With Tamerlaine Beasley

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 20, 2008

Interview with Tamerlaine Beasley from Beasley Intercultural.

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What rhymes wih Rex - powerful subject lines

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 20, 2008

What rhymes with REX...

This was the subject line in a newsletter that I received from Tricom Equities Stockbroking about a year ago. 

The email contained research regarding the Regional Express Airlines that is listed on the ASX with code REX.

The subject line was so good that I haven’t forgotten about the email over a year later!

Such can be the power of an effective subject line...

In a recent survey (same as previous link) 59% of recipients said that they determine the value of each email by the subject line.


So what makes a good subject line?


Powerful subject lines should generally be short and tap into peoples’ curious nature - they should generate a thought in the recipient along the lines of "I wonder what that is all about, tell me more".


Subject lines need to pack a proverbial punch as well as generate intrigue or have a “twist”.


With a little intent the most ordinary of subject lines can be repackaged into a powerful subject line.

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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).

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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.

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Email Marketing Resources

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 06, 2008

I review a lot of magazines, blogs, websites and newsletters - relating to online marketing and business in general.

I thought instead of providing an exhaustive list I will review a few of my favourites every so often.

3 online resources relating to email marketing that I regularly make use of include:

• MarketingSherpa : a great source of research material, trend analysis, case studies and industry updates



• Email Marketing Reports: a collection of well researched rigorous articles on email marketing - it is a breathe of fresh air to read solid articles about email marketing as opposed to the self interested "fluff" that is so common on blogs



• Clickz Email Marketing Newsletters: a choice of many focussed industry newsletters written by experts in each field

Please feel free to leave comments with some of your favourite email marketing resources.

Next week I will discuss some of my favourite magazines.

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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:

1. 17% of companies have their own blog. 


2. 54% of companies currently use email marketing and 67% of these increased their spend in 2007 and 65% will lift spendng in 2008. 


3. 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.

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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.

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