headoftraining.com
OK so despite what the “gurus” tell me about working 70+ hours a week without a break, I had a few days off last week, answering only urgent emails. (How to filter out non urgent emails is another post).
When I go back, and got to the real INBOX, a few unpleasant surprises awaited me.
(As an aside, an investigation is ongoing as to how several “Mailchimp” branded emails made it past my email security.)
Now I have nothing against mailchimp and it is a fine service (and I no email or marketing pro either) it just so happens that they were the branded ISP I found in my inbox.
BUT
My very good friend Lisa Blacker has a theory that by giving people tools and technologies for free, allowing them to do their own thing for free is very dangerous.
Not for cloud based services you understand, they cost almost nothing to run and so they really don’t care about your business.
Dangerous for the sender and their business.
It’s about content stupid
As my disclaimer said, I am no email pro but I do know that basics that messages should contain some sort of useful information and/or a basic call to action for the reader to do something at the end.
Because it’s “free” (and by the way NOT opt in – so I never consented to receive any of these messages) and “instant” – people can “get going” by sending any old drivel out to any email addresses they have lying around their hard drive.
Something along the lines of
“Hey – I now have a newsletter so I can tell you all sorts of cool stuff – like umm .. I am not sure yet but hey – it’s gonna be great because there are all sorts of cool funky graphics on the site… And it’s free… so it must be good”
So what to do?
Well, remember when skype was first coming in and people added you “can we have a test conversation?”
“woo hoo this really works, cool”
That’s how I feel
So – (and this is one of the reasons why we wrote the marketing basics course to get users to see beyond snazzy tools and I think Lisa is spot on in her thinking that tools like mailchimp aren’t going to go away. So better off educating business owners in the “how to” of marketing so they can do it themselves – because they sure as heck are going to…
Conclusion?
Cloud apps are the “point and click” for the 21st Century where Word 95/97 made a whole load of wordperfect typists redundant in the 20th. They both look good and snazzyand both designed to make it easy to do a skilled task.
No chimps were harmed in the making of this post, you should never send email to people who you don’t have an existing business relationship with, other free mailing services exist and using any mailing service is 1000 times better than sending every email you got using outlook.
Have a banana…
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Do you introduce you kids to swearing?
I think that's partially true. Yes, words are just a collection of le
Do you introduce you kids to swearing?
Believe it or not I did an English degree. One of my tutors on our 1s
Do you introduce you kids to swearing?
I prefer to swear at them. On the basis that it's best to hear it f
Helen StothardTwitter: helenstothard
I can assure you that MailChimp is not set up to allow this. You can manually import people to your lists, which is possible if you have their email address, but MailChimp say you have to have the recipients permission to do this.
If you unsubscribe from the list and the sender has a high volume of unsubscribes because their mail was unsolicited then their account will be blocked.
I am afraid it is like many systems, it’s great for those who abide by the rules, but there will be always those who think they can circumvent them, or simply fail to grasp the importance of getting people to opt in.
At the end of the day what value is there in sending your newsletter, regardless of quality of content, to someone who doesn’t want it!
Maxxy
ha ha “no chimps were harmed” .. just thought I would pop by and share that I found that funny!
jonathan
@Helen – Yes that’s what I thought – that manually importing things into any mail list provider clicks a TOS button saying something like “I have permission to email these people” – I know aweber stopped the importing thingy a while back.
You are right in your thinking that the old garbage in – garbage out philosphy applies
@Max – What do you mean I like being told what to do?
Maxine Hayter
As I have said in the past, I am no tech super-geek; but I am always amazed at the number of so-called “experts” who send me newsletters when I have neither opted-in or even heard of their company (and in some cases their industry!)
One I received the other day went along the lines of “I’m very good at what I do, but I’m not that busy at the moment; if you could send something my way, it would make me feel better”.
I thought the idea of a news letter was to provide…erm…. NEWS. I was going to reply that job applications should be sent to recruitment companies, but wondered whether my acknowledgement of receipt would be taken as an agreement to receive further “letters”.
Unsolicited mail is junk- in the same way I don’t take cold calls where they don’t know my name, read post addressed to “the Occupier” or respond to leaflets, I don’t read e-shots unless I have subcribed previously;
and I apply the same tactic when I send out our newsletter (by post, on paper!)
Now, where’s that monkey……..?
jonathan
Monkey? Go get it Maxine