September 19, 2010

Email is NOT Dead: My First Net Tuesday Meetup

Photo credit: Net Tuesday Vancouver MeetUp Page

Last Tuesday, I went to my first Net Tuesday meetup. I was interested with the meetup for two reasons: first, because part of my role at my co-op job is to send out bi-weekly newsletters, I thought that the meetup’s content would be relevant . Secondly, I was so impressed with Net Squared Camp, and so I knew that Net Tuesday might be a good thing.

The September meetup did not disappoint. I got many nuggets, some of which I’m hoping to bring into my current role at SFU Volunteer Services.

Some of the best tips I got include the following:

Email is not dead yet. Shanon Daud, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ communication director and one of the three panelists at the event, pointed out that for some of the people belonging to CCPA’s target audience do not use Facebook or Twitter. For these individuals, email is the preferred/main/only way of communication. Shannon also pointed out that email is still more direct and reliable than many social media, and that the tool is great for creating and maintaining long term relationships.

Test, test, and test some more. Duncan Owen, who is involved with the David Suzuki Foundation, emphasized the importance of testing. Some segmentation might work well. For instance, one group might get a newsletter with the same content but with a different subject line as another group.In fact, this advice stood out to me:
Sometimes best practice isn’t best practice for you.What works for one organization may not work for another (because of the different target audiences, the size of the mail list, etc.) and so some testing becomes imperative.

You can learn more about A-B testing in an email campaign here.
Keep it simple. This is the main tip from Ben Johnson, who is involved with the Union Gospel Mission. He advocates for simple content – i.e. keep it short and concise. Note that this doesn’t necessarily negate point #2. All the panelists, in fact, agreed that too much segmentation of a mail list may be counterproductive. (They also pointed out that it takes too much time to segment lists, and doing so might cost more than its benefits.) Finding that balance between simplicity and testing is key. For some audiences, segmentation may not work at all; for instance, in the case of CCPA, Shannon said that readers are usually interested with a breadth of topics; thus, no segmentation at all is done on that list.

There were other notable tidbits from the meetup, including a lively discussion about —- surprise! — measurement and analytics. Some names were thrown out there such as Emma, Campaign Monitor, and Vertical Response. I use MailChimp at work and I must say that the tool is easy to use and provides some great reports.

I’m sure I’ve missed something here, but if you’d like full notes, go to the Net Tuesday September webpage. Also, if you’re interested with this meetup, go to its official site or like it on Facebook.

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Category: Email Marketing, Meetups

Tags: Email marketing, Events, Social Media, Vancouver.

http://www.myemma.com Jim Hitch

I like they way you’ve simplified these three big themes, Kevin. That first one’s particularly timely, I think. It’s because of stories like this I’m a firm believer that email and social are both valuable tools to have handy, and sometimes one or the other (or a careful mix) makes the most sense based on your audience or the big goal you’re trying to achieve.

Also, thanks for mentioning Emma in the post! I loved my short time in Vancouver and would love to check out your meetup group if I’m lucky enough to make my way back.
http://www.kcclaveria.com Kelvin Claveria

Jim, that will be incredible if you could check out our meetup in the future! One of the panelists (I believe it was Shannon from CCPA) had great things to say about Emma. I definitely agree that a careful mix of social and email (and even offline tools) is ideal, depending on your target audience.