Email, Digital Targeted Messaging & Interactive Marketing Musings, Thoughts & Links - Named A Top Email Marketing Blog by Email Marketing Reports

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

BrightWave Marketing Launches Targeted Messaging Services Practice

I am excited to announce the official launch of our Targeted Messaging Services Practice at BrightWave Marketing. While we remain 100% committed to being the top email marketing agency in the industry, we think these new offerings compliment email marketing and allow our clients to communicate with their clients and prospects via other digital messaging platforms.

So what does that mean?

Well, I think one of our great clients articulates some of the benefits very nicely:

“We have partnered with BrightWave Marketing on our digital messaging efforts and the ROI has been substantial,” said Gena Weaver, Vice President of Marketing at Ted’s Montana Grill. “After developing a customer centric email marketing program that delivers results to the bottom line, we have also worked with BrightWave Marketing to leverage Facebook’s attractive audience. BrightWave Marketing has assisted us in developing a new digital dialogue with many potential customers that we would otherwise not be able to access. We are encouraged by this and other new messaging opportunities for our brand.”

Check out our Services Page where you can read more about our core messaging services:


Email Marketing
Search Marketing – Pay Per Click Campaigns
Social Network Program Marketing
Text/SMS Messaging
Voice Broadcast Messaging

Monday, October 13, 2008

Text Messaging Pricing Shift & What if it Happened to Email?

I read this weekend that Verizon Wireless Plans to Charge Companies Sending Text Messages. While this may not seem like huge news it does change the dynamics of a not even close to mature marketing channel with huge potential. BrightWave Marketing, as part of our soon to be announced new offerings, does provide text messaging services for clients, so it is something we will be keeping a close eye on.

Companies that send out text messages will be charged a fee of 3 cents for each message by Verizon it delivers to the phones of its subscribers. This will immediately eliminate much of the marketing efforts done on this platform, due to the change in economics.

So what if Yahoo announced it was going to do the same for email marketing? Obviously, this would have a far reaching impact on the email marketing landscape.

However, one thing I would predict that would come out of such a change in the email marketing universe, if such a plan happened (and I am not suggested it will or should), would be marketers taking more care of their email programs. You would find more strategy, more analysis, better creative and other things you find in marketing programs that have higher/specific costs associated with them. That being said, just because email marketing has a perceived low delivery cost associated with it, doesn't mean it should not have the same kind of resources, planning and execution that an "expensive" marketing channel has.

Something to ponder.

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Where do you stand in the great productivity divide?

Seth Godin, is remarkable for many reasons, but I enjoy his blog for its startling simplicity and provoking questions. In this entry titled "The growing productivity divide" he asks 16 compelling questions for anyone participating in the digital world and economy.

The questions are below:

-Can you capture something you see on your screen and paste it into Word or PowerPoint?
-Do you have a blog?
-Can you open a link you get in an email message?
-Do you read more than five blogs a day?
-Do you have a signature in your outbound email?
-Do you have an RSS reader?
-Can you generate a PDF document from a Word file you're working on?
-Do you know how to build and share a simple spreadsheet using Google Docs?
-Do have a shortcut for sending mail to the six co-workers you usually write to?
-Are you able to find what you're looking for on Google most of the time?
-Do you know how to download a file from the internet?
-Do you back up your work?
-Do you keep track of contacts using a digital tool?
-Do you use anti-virus software?
-Do you fall for internet hoaxes and forward stuff to friends and then regret it?
-Have you ever bought something from a piece of spam?

It's more relevant than you think as layoffs loom for many. This is not about being technically elite but about basic skills that are/will be in demand and expected for most in the sense that "Experienced With Microsoft Office" is/was for many during the past decade.

Godin concludes "How can you imagine yourself as a highly-paid knowledge worker and not know how to do these things... If you don't, it's not hard to find someone to teach you."

For the record, I said yes to 13 of the first 14 questions and no to the last 2.

How about you?