How to Grow Your Email List Overnight

Personally, I was very excited to read this story this morning about a major concert at Atlanta's Piedmont Park (Atlanta's Central Park). Allman Brothers and Dave Matthews. Wow, right up my alley. In fact, the Allmans Brothers got their start playing free shows over 30 years in the same park.

So what does this have to do with this blog post title? I was even more excited when I saw the catch (there is always a catch).

Ticket sales begin Thursday for those who go to the Web page of the Piedmont Park Conservancy and sign up to receive the conservancy's electronic newsletter. Viewers will get the password to purchase tickets online. These tickets will get the holders closer to the stage because they will be allowed to enter an hour before the gates are opened.

What an innovative tie-in to their email program. Sure, they will get thousands of people not interested or caring about the Piedmont Park Conservancy but they will get many interested people to build a relationship with, via email.

Some people may even say this is borderline shady since you have to opt in for their email newsletter but assuming they manage their email program in the right fashion, than I think this is a home run for them.

On the downside I noticed it was hard to find the email sign up form and no contextual links to it in the page that details the concert. I spoke with their marketing manager and she said the sign up doesn't go live until tomorrow, Thursday May 31. I think that is a mistake but love to see non-profits (or anyone, for that matter) using email in innovative ways.

Email vs IM/Text/Blogging

VC Fred Wilson has one of the best blogs around. This post
is his personal take on whether email is about to be overtaken as the web's killer app. I think for teenagers the tipping point may have already occured but the business world will not let email be overtaken by text or IM pings. An interest read as usual and if anything some insight on how to contact this well respected VC.

M & A Frenzy + FTC CAN SPAM Update (sort of)

These are heady times in the interactive world. Almost daily there seems to be a huge deal going down. What will the landscape of online advertising (and its smaller subsets like email) look like in a year? Or even 3 months?

Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey, who has more high level experience than most in the online world, offers up some thoughts on his blog. He clearly sees that this is a good time for his company to take market share (and talent) as some of the acquired companies get their new house in order.

I expect the email space to see some more of an M & A and executive shakeup in the next 6 months, partly as a result of these bigger deals. There is too much action for most companies to sit on the sidelines, especially with these valuations and multiples.

Shifting to the decidedly less sexy but equally important topic of CAN-SPAM, Jordan Cohen of Epsilon (which just got acquired, not they you would know it from their blog)
provides an update on the FTC's upcoming updates on pending CAN-SPAM changes.

Until then, we will wait to see what the changes will be. Let's hope for the best.

Email Summit Notes

I have not yet attended one of the MediaPost Email Insider Summits but I hear they are the best of all email related conferences. A heavy travel schedule prevented me from attending but I plan on doing so in the future.

Read Bill McCloskey's wrapup for the full overview but I wanted to note a major problem that all email marketing folks face and it uncovers why things are not easy or getting better on the deliverability front.

"Craig Spiezel from Microsoft, in particular, raised eyebrows of more than a few in the audience when he talked about a flower company's emails not being delivered before Mother's Day because the company used a new IP address that did not have a "reputation" associated with it: "Did we deliver those emails? We did not," he said. Spiezel went on to say that as a result, the company had a warehouse of wilting flowers."

Imagine if the USPS said we are not going to deliver your packages unless they are in USPS purchased boxes. Well, there you have a major issue that our industry needs to tackle and we can't without the big ISPs help. While it hurts email marketers it doesn't do any favors for the ISPs users either.

When Googling yourself is VERY important

A freebie WSJ article, You're a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well, about people's trials and tribulations when searching for their name.

One option for naming your baby is to test the Google searches for originality to ensure they come up on the first page. Priorities! (Secretly, I am disapointed I didn't do this for our 2 little ones)

Why not do a pre-birth Ad Words campaign with cross promotional email and direct mail birth announcements to ensure maximum exposure and ROI?

Email Bankruptcy?

Interesting NY Times article on people declaring "email bankruptcy." A good idea for some, I would imagine. You can call this email suppression of a different kind.

Microsoft to launch another email client, designers collectively hold their breath

Interesting post from CampaignMonitor Blog -stay tuned.

What are your favorite email related blogs?

Working on a iMediaConnection piece and would love to know any fresh suggestions.
Thanks.

Quote to ponder

"The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation," says Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons. "They will lose this war if they go to war. Via MediaPost

Email = 10 year's old & $10B Strong

David Baker has a very good piece today from MediaPost, Email Isn't Going Away, But It Will Change

Some of his thoughts on where email is going:

• Most of the personalization and cool dynamic content sent through email will be reserved for the highly engaged, responsive, highly valued consumer.
• Email acquisition will be done on a contingency basis (pay to perform).
• Email priority delivery will be a paid-for service.
• Email marketers will be forced to split their forces to address RSS.

I agree on most of these - how about you?

Key New Blog Alert - All Star Cast

The email industry seems to be really pulling itself together and gaining momentum. The eec has a great new blog from some major voices http://blog.emailexperience.org/ - well worth your RSS feed.

More to come later as client work and travels have kept this blog from being active of late.