Most of us have heard the coined phrase, “You are what you eat.” But what about, “You are from which you email”? One of our favorite ‘educational resources’ here at Astek, The Oatmeal, published the following on that thought:

First off, we at Astek very proudly email from the Astek domain (YAY, we’re smart!), but some of our family members do admittedly use Yahoo.  CNN Tech also published a similar graph last year along with the following statement: “Fair or not, if you send an e-mail from an AOL account, the recipient is likely to expect it to be spam, a forward of some thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory or pictures of kittens.”

Regarding the pictures of kittens, does keyboard cat count?

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Rachel Yeomans Categories: Fun, Web

As much as I’m enamored by the potential of all the new social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, it’s important to reflect on the one technology that still ties many of these others together. Email, or electronic messaging, has been around in some form for decades, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that standards began to tie together the various systems that had evolved. The 90s saw a sharp increase in usage with ISP’s like AOL getting into the game. Universities have always led the effort as well.

We take it for granted most of the time. Everyone has an email account these days, or at least everyone with an Internet connection, but we’ll talk digital divide another time. The point is that I don’t see email going away anytime soon. Even as new social media sites pop up, I still generally use my email accounts to keep track of all the updates and messages. Nothing compares to email in terms of being able to ignite a word of mouth campaign and empower someone to send direct trusted messages to their network.

In terms of generating a message that resonates with people, we can all take a cue from the Obama team, which managed to keep 13 million subscribers even after the campaign was over. It’s a delicate balance of appropriate messaging and respect for people’s cluttered inboxes and busy lives.

Is it safe? Generally, yes. But it’s important to remember that email is unencrypted and therefore anyone who intercepts it (or has access to one of the many servers your message passes through) could read your mail. There are tools that help you protect your email, but until everyone adopts a new system, we won’t be able to reliably call email “safe.” For now, it’s best just not to send anything through email that’s sensitive. If you must, create a password-protected PDF for the information and attach it to an email.

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Andy Swindler Categories: ePiphany Featured Story, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

A smart article from Business Weekly’s Technology desk highlights the fact that “unsexy newsletters” are currently appearing as front runners in the fight for online advertising dollars. The article highlights some of my favorite daily eRags, Daily Candy and Thrillist, as being particularly profitable. These popular eNewsletters deliver short, fun content, typically focused on local events/businesses, right to my email inbox each morning. (I’d also like to give a shout out here to Ideal Bite and Flavorpill.)

We can learn a lot from these successful eNewsletters when looking to craft our companies’ eNewsletters. DailyCandy founder “Dany Levy” reminds her editors that “It’s a privilege to be in someone’s e-mail box.’” and I think that is a great way to think about it. As we prepare to launch ePiphany, Astek’s monthly Newsletter, some questions I’ve been asking myself are:

• Who is my audience?
• What kind of questions have I actually been asked that I could answer using this email? What kind of issues have my clients stated they are dealing with that I could help address?
• What kind of information/services would help my readers increase the efficiency of their work, alert them to something they have never heard of before?
• What would my audience consider fun and/or entertaining?
• How do we want to position Astek as a consulting company and how can I craft my content to reflect our brand?
• How can I promote Astek products and services in a tasteful and approachable way?
• How can we set ePiphany apart from the other emails they receive while remaining professional?

Hopefully when you receive your first issue of ePiphany, the answer to these questions will be self evident.

If you are not sure if you are signed up to receive our eNewsletter and you want to make sure you are on our list, click here.

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Katie Hawkey Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

Check out Earth Class Mail, which provides a P.O. box that receives and automatically scans your mail into digital documents, deposits checks in the bank, and more. Thanks to my buddy Justin Bradshaw for pointing this out. I know he’s using it in L.A. and it looks appealing for those small (and big) business owners looking to cut down on paper, filing, and driving to the bank.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Green, Technology, Web

According to the Direct Marketing Association’s 2008 “Power of Direct” economic impact study, email marketing delivers slightly more than $45 for every dollar spent, while non-email online marketing returns nearly $20 for every dollar invested.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Marketing, Web

Who Needs Swag When You’ve Got a Video Camera?

In order to help demonstrate to our clients exactly what the heck interactive Web marketing is, we recently put together a full-on interactive campaign that combined video, a Web site, targeted personalized emails and some in-person schmoozing.  

As sponsors of CoreNet Global Chicago Chapter, we are traditionally invited to meet and greet participants at their annual golf event fundraiser.  Each year we are given a table and two chairs at a tee where we can chat up chapter members and, typically, give away some swag.  This year we left the swag at home and just brought a video camera.  

As each group of golfers came through our tee, we gathered their business cards and took a quick video of their golf swing.  After the event, we ran back to the office and built this really cool mini Web site.  Then using Emma‘s way cool personalization capabilities, we were able to send out the eBlast below with a link straight to each golfer’s swing.  

Once on the Web site, golfers could watch their swing in full speed or slow motion, accompany their swing with their choice of music, putter around and check out the other golfers in their group, or get video tips on our “pro” page.

Most importantly, anyone who was impressed with the magic that is interactive Web marketing could follow the link to Astek’s Web site and contact us about their next project.  

Using Emma’s response tracking, we were not only able to see that our email was viewed by 60% (!!!) of the people we sent it to, but we could also view a list of those who did and did not open the email.  We were then able to chat with them about it at the next meeting and send a targeted follow-up email a few weeks later.

We consider the project a great success and are already using it as a case study to show our clients that with the right tools and a little creativity, they can reach through the Web and connect with their clients in a powerful and personalized way.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Marketing, Social Media, Web

I recently received a promotional email from ProFlowers, an online flower delivery service I’ve used in the past, with the following subject:

“24 Roses for Lacey or anyone special. Save 25%”

It pulled her name randomly from my saved recipient list on their site. The rub is, Lacey and I broke up back in July. No, it didn’t bring me to tears. Not even close. But it raises an interesting question about profile-based marketing. I shouldn’t be expected to have to clear out my address book just to avoid seeing her name. No, it’s really not that bad. But still, I’d rather not have a company trying to sell me something by bringing up something I’d rather not spend a lot of time thinking about.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Marketing, Web