Before I start digging into the goodies Postbox provides, I have to get my grievances out of the way…

For starters, a sound notification is absent when a new email has been received. I looked into this and my preferences are set to play a sound when something arrives, but my ear buds remains mute. Also, the only time the little red icon thingy appears in the dock is when an email is delivered only to my inbox folder.  If an email is directed into one of my many meticulously organized subfolders, there’s no visual notification.  This is annoying.  Postbox also seems to check the server less frequently than Apple Mail. On top of all of this, my email from Apple Mail failed to import and Postbox crashed on three separate occasions.  I don’t blame this entirely on Postbox, though.  I believe this was an isolated incident as I’ve had issues with my email in the past and my colleagues Dean and Patrick, who have also been using Postbox, experienced no problems.

So outside of these minor annoyances, Postbox is a KILLER mail app.

The most powerful feature is undoubtedly it’s search function. On top of searching for someone’s name or a specific subject line, you can also search for a specific file attachment. There’s also a menu consisting of attachment, images, links and contact tabs.  Click on either and a new tab will appear with all emails that fit it’s respective criteria.  You can also enter broad date-related queries such as “before July 2009”—not too shabby.

I asked Patrick to give me his thoughts on Postbox’s search functions:

Postbox is awesome because it harnesses the major power of Gmail: search. By indexing your email and using some very flexible searching algorithms it returns more results than any other email client I’ve used.

Message threading is a feature that almost made me smack my head and scream out “why didn’t anyone think of this before!?“  It keeps every related conversation organized by date within it’s own self-contained thread.

Postbox incorporates social media tie-ins unlike any other mail platform. It allows for posting and fetching information to and from Facebook and Twitter.

I haven’t used the topics feature yet.  But it’s more or less a way to tag your emails based on the content within.  I don’t have much use for it, but I can see how someone would have a use for it.

Composing an email is super easy and allows for attaching files or dropping links / images into an email with ease. All you have to do is click on one of the icons to the right of the composition window. If you click on the link icon, all of the links within any of the emails on your machine will be displayed. Drag & drop the ones you want to use. This goes for attachments, images, contacts, et cetera.

If you’re running an older and slower version of OS X, Postbox may not be ideal as it eats up memory.  210MB compared to Apple Mail’s 32MB. Postbox is based on Thunderbird’s powerful and robust framework and is free to download.  It’s not mutually exclusive either, as it’s available for both Windows and Mac.

From an email marketer’s point of view, this should eventually be added to your list of test clients. Since it’s based on Mozilla technology, you can pretty much guarantee that it is very forgiving in terms of rendering, so don’t beat yourself up over not testing on it immediately.

Has anyone else used Postbox? With all things considered, I think it’s a spectacular email app but I’m curious to see what everyone else thinks.

We don’t lose sleep over taking ourselves too seriously, but we work hard to provide you with provocative, intelligent and reliably good content; stuff fit for the thinking man in everyone.

Be it be ripped from the headlines or the current buzz in pop-culture, we take one interesting news topic each day and put our spin on it. You’ll get the basics boiled down into quickly digestible bits including quotes, facts and cool stats and numbers on the subject.

One e-mail a day.  Whether you laugh, learn something or nod in appreciation, The Toilet Paper will be there for you when you need it most.

I received a confirmation email after signing up and they really knocked it out of the park. It included witty copy (“Thanks for rolling with us”), a contest to win an iPod and all of the standard best practice elements such as a whitelist request, privacy policy link and a physical address.

Their emails are organized and laid out intelligently. They reflect a similar daily email that I praised about before, Very Short List. Each has a main focus with six related areas of interest: number, quote, word, fact, list and the bottom line. I really can’t do their emails justice in trying to explain how awesome they are. They include something absent from a lot of emails I receive these days: personality. Check the email sent out today and see for yourself…

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For anyone who has designed and coded an email in the past three years knows how big a pain in the butt Outlook 2007 is to work with.  There has been an outcry from day one about it’s drawbacks, as it has done nothing to push the flexibility and growth of email forward.  It’s done quite the opposite, I’m afraid. For starters, it doesn’t allow background images and it has crap support for CSS. See Campaign Monitor’s example here:

Microsoft wants to continue their reign of mediocrity, and I for one, have had ENOUGH.

If you go to fixoutlook.org you can use your Twitter account to send a clear message to Microsoft:

“Wow! @msofficeus is breaking HTML email by using Word to display emails in Outlook 2010. See http://fixoutlook.org and RT”

The site displays every Twitter user who has included “fixoutlook.org” in a tweet. As of 9AM this morning, there have been over 10,000 tweets.  This is an incredibly effective way to help our pleas resonate. It puts face to the name for the petition, which I’m not sure has been done before. Hopefully, this will force Microsoft developers to second guess their decision… Hopefully it will make a difference.

So let’s show the fatcats at MS what the mob mentality can accomplish.  Let our voices be heard!

If you don’t already have Static FBML on your Facebook fan page, you need to add it here.  With this app added, you can create an “email list” tab to your page.

Once you add the app, click on “edit page” below your main graphic.


Next, select FBML from your list of apps (click on the pencil, then edit). 


You can edit the tab title in the “box title” field. In the FBML section, paste your form code in. If you have any HTML knowledge, you can edit the form to accurately reflect the rest of the page’s look and feel. Click save changes.

If you or one of your colleagues are having issues with the rendering of the email sign up form, click “add another FBML box”. This should nip it in the butt.

And there you have it. Check it out for yourself!

Thanks for the inspiration, returnonsubscriber! (link)

From doing this for the past 3 years or so, the one thing I’ve grown to despise more than anything is lazy, uninspired and un-engaging email marketing.  These “stale” emails are a waste of inbox space, don’t serve a purpose in the long run and offer nothing new to their subscribers.  It’s sending email merely for the sake of sending email.  Take this newsletter from Sony Pictures, for example.

*yawn*

Gold face on the left v. Blue head on the right.  Oh… I’m excited now!

And yes, I’m aware of Year One since we were inundated with ads during the NBA finals… but could you at least try to inject some personality into this? There’s simply nothing to this email.  It’s tired and calls for a much-needed makeover. Much like it’s social media counterparts, email needs to be a conversation (to a certain extent), which this completely lacks.  Even the call to action about their Twitter account manages to stifle any excitement or speak from a personal point-of-view.

Final summation? Opportunity lost.

Sorry to be so complain-y as of late, I think with this post I’m subconsciously taking out my frustrations for the Magic’s loss last night.  None the less, my issues with email evoke a desire to call out the BS.  Hopefully some people may get an idea of what works in executing email the RIGHT way opposed to treating it as some mindless afterthought.

The majority of the competitors had decent email programs. Most had a painless sign up process, engaging emails and all were CAN-SPAM compliant. I also found that they—collectively—know when to scale back their sends when a subscriber isn’t responding or when they’re inactive.

This morning, I was checking my “B2C Emails” folder and I noticed that for some reason or another my SEGA emails were going to my personal account. For the sake of consistency (and unhealthy OCD patterns), I needed to change this to my work email address.  Upon logging back in, I did so… and it was rather painless.

Shortly thereafter, I received another email from SEGA… this time asking me to re-opt-in.

The copy reads:

“To activate your account and join the SEGA PASS community
click the confirmation link below:“

What? Why? My account is already active! To SEGA this means that since I updated my address, I need to re-double-opt-in… or triple-opt-in, as it were. It seems like this is either a matter of list integrity or a redundancy issue they didn’t test for. I think a quick and easy fix to this confusion would be a change in copy… Maybe something along the lines of:

“Thanks for updating your profile. Confirm your change below:“

What do you think? Am I wrong to be annoyed by this? Or am I just being overly critical?

See the Urban Outfitters email below:

Regardless when I went to go opt out I was pleasantly surprised in their opt out process.  Upon clicking the opt out link, I was presented with options including the option to stay on Plow & Hearth’s list if they reduce the number of emails they sent to me.  Although it was a nice attempt, since this was my first email from them and I knew I wasn’t interested from the beginning, decreasing the amount they mailed to me wasn’t going to weigh in on my decision to opt out.  So I clicked the unsubscribe link and was taken to the confirmation page saying I had been unsubscribed.  However this page also had additional data points the brand was collecting which included questions inquiring on why I had opted out. 

I responded with not remembering signing up for Plow & Hearth emails but also liked that their was an optional box that I could fill in, in case none of the options were relevant to my opting out.  After submitting my answer, I was taken to one last page which again confirmed I had unsubscribed but also included a nice little message from Plow & Hearth and a call to action to shop for gifts or to shop the outlet.  Although it was only a two click unsubscribe process, the opt out process in total took me through 4 clicks but they were all clicks that I did not mind.  All in all, Im left with a postiive brand image of Plow & Hearth and am now more familiar with their brand.  I may not opt back into their newsletter but I may consider checking out their product offerings in the future. 

a) inspire and become a means of communication between the brand and its audience
b) cross-promote the other
c) involve a certain level of testing
d) be precise, personal and avoid “marketing” speak

Just like Email, any form of Social Media is necessary for promoting your brand, but they’re also best utilized when they’re used as a means to communicate to your audience.  And this isn’t a one-way street we’re talking about here… this is a two way street.  This is a conversation. Never over-use “marketing speech”, this is slowly becoming has become old-fashioned. Nobody speaks “marketing language” in real life (and if you do only speak in marketing buzz words, you need to DISCONNECT).

Part of your conversation can include the cross-promotion of the other. Mention your email list (and all of the unique offers they’re missing out on) through your Twitter account.  Embed buttons within your email to promote your Facebook and Twitter accounts. If everything is cyclical and blends into one another seamlessly, you’re on the right track to effective and consistent messaging.  Your followers and friends will undoubtedly respond with your support.

Test test test. You test for your emails and the lists / subscribers your emails go to. Why wouldn’t you take the same approach to your followers on Twitter?  Get a feel for YOUR audience.  Don’t let your campaigns live and breath by industry standards and benchmarks. Each and every list, group, sect or database is different and responds differently to different things.  Always keep this in mind and take every opportunity as a learning experience.

Email has a subject line, Twitter has its body. One has a suggested maximum length, the other has a mandatory max, respectively. Keep it short & sweet.  There’s no room for stale marketing jargon. If you keep your audience in mind as if they were your friends, all will be well in your world.

An Idea sums the consumers perspective perfectly: “Talk with me like a friend and I’ll advocate for you all day long“.

Skechers sent out an email over the weekend with two calls to action - dads and grads.  I’ve seen emails in the past where the brand tries to squeeze multiple calls to action in the email and it becomes irrelevant and over saturated with information.  Skechers email was clean, to the point and nicely done.  Here’s why the two in one email worked. 

• The call to action was clear in regards to who the email was intended for and it helped that it rhymed “Dads and Grads” making it easy to remember

• Skechers advertised their product in a fun way by categorizing types of dads and grads with different types of shoes such as pairing the ‘hard working dad’ with hiking boots and durable shoes

• Although the top half of the email was focused on dads and therefore mens shoes only, Skechers was able to incorporate female shoes once they got to the grad section hitting both primary target audiences

• Skechers was also able to provide a variety of different shoes depending on the lifestyle therefore being able to show the reader a wide selection of their products

Although the email was well executed the one thing I thought was missing was a promotion or incentive to buy.  Such as buy a pair for your grad, get 1/2 off on dad.  In today’s troubled economy, consumers are looking for deals.  According to Media Post’s Center for Media Research 40% of consumers use coupons more now than a year ago so give them something that entices them to buy two pairs of shoes outside of free standard shipping.