I’ve uncovered a truth about email marketing: It works! However, if you’re just joining the party you may have to adjust your marketing habits. Your focus will need to shift from quantity to quality. For example: Like it or not, the law states that you must get explicit permission prior to sending and email. Email marketers must demonstrate a certain level of agility in handling the opportunities that arise from this very interactive marketing channel.

Here are 6 best practices to consider when developing an email marketing strategy:

1. Deliverability is Key
Even if your customer has agreed to receive email from you, you may find it difficult for your email to get to their inbox. Most large ISPs now use thorough spam protection systems to filter any email it thinks may be unsolicited, before it gets into the customers’ inboxes.

To avoid being flagged as spam, and therefore go unseen by your subscribers, avoid using spam-trigger words like “sale”, “free” and “offer”, etc in both the subject line and the body of your email.

2. One-Click Unsubscribe – Make it Easy
It may sound counterintuitive, but if you want your email marketing campaign to succeed, you must have an easy way for customers to unsubscribe. If you make it difficult, you run the risk of the recipient marking your email as spam. That will make deliverability in the future even more difficult.

It’s actually mandated by law that your emails contain an unsubscribe link. The link should lead the recipient right to a page where they can immediately be removed from your list.

3. The Power of Personalization
When it makes sense for your specific email creative, we suggest taking steps to personalize them. It’s as simple as starting your email with “Hi [first_name]“. By doing this, you increase both your reading and click-thru rates. Why? By addressing them by their first name, your subscribers feel like they already have a relationship with you.

4. Subject Line in Under a Second
You have less than a second to catch your recipient’s attention with your email’s subject line. In this very short amount of time they will either choose to read, delete, or simply ignore your email. As mentioned before, you should avoid “spam words” and consider using the customer’s first name. We suggest you avoid using promotional phrases, ALL CAPS, or punctuation in your subject lines. Make sure your subject line is straightforward.

5. Above the Scroll
Whenever possible, place the more interesting content at the top of your email. Once your recipient starts reading the email, they’ll continue reading and even take action, but only if they find it interesting. Some popular email clients show a preview of an email in the inbox, even before a user opens it.

6. Don’t Over Sell
The goal of an email creative is to get buyers to take action by clicking on a button, signifying that they want to know more. It is only once they’ve clicked and are directed to your website that they can begin the buying process. Therefore, don’t overload them with product information or market data in the email. Give them just the right amount of info that, with a strong call to action, they’re intrigued enough to click.

By following these best practices, doing some of your own homework, and obeying the spam laws, you’ll be on your way to a winning email marketing campaign.

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What do you think? What else contributes to a successful email campaign?

My one month old son has just learned how to hold his head up. His mother and I are ecstatic. We’ve got a hard drive full of DV to prove it.

Being the forward thinking father, I registered (within just a week of his birth) his very own domain name:  CarsonLyall.com – Don’t go there, it’s a GoDaddy parked domain. It will probably remained parked until he masters HTML (we’re thinking about teaching him English first).

Why did I register a domain name (and gmail address) for my newborn? Two words: personal branding.

Tom Peters wrote in Fast Company in ‘07:

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

Thanks to his crazy dad, my son will have a head start on creating his own personal brand.

As we all know, employees used to work for one company all the way until retirement. Decades ago this began to change. My generation job hops. My son’s generation will see another radical shift: the era of the free agent.

He may not have one business that he calls his “job.” He’ll more likely freelance, consulting for many companies. I may be going way out on a limb, but I see value in preparing for this cultural change.

Whatever profession he enters into, he’ll have to compete with other “mini-brands”. He’ll need to stand apart from the crowd (again, this is after he learns to stand period).

This may be totally unnecessary. The Lyall last name isn’t extremely popular. He may go his whole life without another Carson Lyall popping up. But you never know. I now compete in search engine rankings with a female photographer in Canada. Hi Jordan!

In 20 years we may shift from domain names entirely (Even now, the shift from the .com TLD continues). But until then, we’ll continue to encourage him to keep his head up.

Spammers have ruined it for everyone. Legit email marketers fight an ongoing battle for the inbox. Even though our email marketing is permission-based, some ISPs block us anyway. 

A recent study as reported by MediaPost brought up some interesting stats (emphasis mine):

Successful deliverability to consumers’ inboxes varies by ISP. Gmail, Google’s email service, is the most stringent US-based ISP for permission-based marketers to reach, according to the report, as 23% of emails that marketers sent to Gmail addresses did not reach the inbox.

So what’s the solution? Do we all switch to RSS-based communication? RSS is virtually spam-free. It fits the definition of permission-based marketing to a T. Yes, it’s got its drawbacks, but nothing that a few years and a few genius engineers can’t solve. Right? It’s a topic for another time. As we all know, email’s not going anywhere.

The problem? Your email sucks! As CopyBlogger puts it: “Many people will just mark you as a spammer for the crime of being boring.”

To be honest, I’ve clicked “Mark as Spam” on a newsletter where I could have easily spent the extra few seconds to unsubscribe the proper way. Google realizes this and has just created an auto-unsubscribe feature in Gmail. But by doing so you must report it as spam.

Solution = Write Better Content.

The DMA still claims that the ROI on email still beats search and other marketing channels.

Call Gmail’s tactics extreme, but it should prompt us marketers to create a better email. Let’s be smarter about this. Let’s do our own R&D.

Keep reading this blog as we discuss how to improve email deliverability and learn to further expand our reach online.

In preparation for baby, I’m cleaning out our second bedroom. I’m getting rid of a bunch of books I’ll probably never read again. I sure have had some peculiar interests. Here’s a random sample:

• Sports Style Guide & Reference Manual
• Tim Sweeny’s Guide to Releasing Independent Records
• Beyond Roots: In Search of Blacks in the Bible
• The Clock of the Long Now: The Ideas Behind the World’s Slowest Computer
• The Tao of Sales
• Podcasting Hacks
• Y2K: It’s Already Too Late
• Hunger, Hunches, & Hustle: An Englishman’s 40 Years of Selling Experiences and Misadventures in California Real Estate

This is a list of my favorite albums this year. I’m not trying to claim these as the “absolute best” albums, it comes down to personal preference. These are albums I had a change to pick up in the last 12 months. If you have any recommendations for me, email me at jordan.lyall [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks and enjoy!

1. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes Fleet Foxes released their first full-length album last Summer. They call their music “baroque harmonic pop jams” and have been compared to The Beach Boys. Beautiful, beautiful music. @atubbs says “Opening the Fleet Foxes CD reminds me what buying a record must have been like.” Amazon | Listen to “White Winter Hymnal”

2. MGMT - Oracular Spectacular MGMT (pronounced “management”) can be categorized as “Indie Electro Pop.” The album is catchy and danceable, though I wouldn’t have minded if the last few tracks were left off. @spencerante calls it “Flaming Lips meets Daft Punk.” Amazon | Listen to “Time to Pretend”

3. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend Vampire Weekend’s debut album of the same name is packed with melodious modern grooves. Very fun. @blahbleorg enjoys their “Great afro beats and pop hooks.”
Amazon | Listen to “Oxford Comma”

4. Santogold - Santogold Santi White (a.k.a Santogold) says her intentions with this her first solo album were to “help break down boundaries and genre classifications.” She succeeds with these infectious, foot-stomping tracks. @current_music calls it “a new kind of funky music.” Amazon | Listen to “Lights Out”

5. She & Him - Volume One She & Himis what you get when you mix indie rocker M. Ward and “that chick from Elf” (Zooey Deschanel). Simple melodies and one amazing voice. Side note: Deschanel is now engaged to Death Cab’s Ben Gibbard. Talk about some talented offspring. To @frickness the album “sounds like: Sufjan Stevens, the Everly Brothers, [and] even the intro to Spongebob” Amazon | Listen to “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?”

6. The Cool Kids - Bake Sale The second EP for the Chicago-based rap duo is what I would call “infectiously obnoxious.” Hip-hop is fun again. @jchristie regards Bake Sale as a “fun, bass-heavy retro CD.”
Amazon | Listen to “Bassment Party”

7. Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster This debut album from Welsh indie rockers Los Campesinos is a sugar rush of guitar-heavy pop punk. Another fun, energetic album. @davidalln relates there’s “nothing like waking up to Los Campesinos!’s You! Me! Dancing!” Amazon | Listen to “Death to Los Campesinos!”

8. Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs Though Death Cab’s sixth studio album didn’t quite live up to some of their previous albums, it proved that they can still turn out quality indie-blues. @movingsideways says it’s “a great ‘riding alone on a train after a long holiday’ album.” Amazon | Listen to “I Will Possess Your Heart”

9. Beck - Modern Guilt Beck is back! Produced by Danger Mouse, Modern Guilt, the 10th album from Beck, unveils some of his retro styles. @therichbrooks “found it boring on first listen, but finding more layers after additional listens. Amazon | Listen to “Gamma Ray”

10. The Ting Tings - We Started Nothing Yet another debut album made the list. You may have heard this English pop duo on a commercial slinging iPods. Rolling Stone calls it “peppy New Wave.” @wende opines: “people either love them or hate them. Clearly, I’m in the former.” Amazon | Listen to “Great DJ”

These are just some things that have worked for us. They may not work for everybody. This is  not to say we do things perfectly, we still sometimes fail when it comes to finances.

Here’s a list of things I recommend doing:

1. Create an emergency fund. Save up 3 months worth of living expenses. Save it in a high interest bearing account (see below). It’s not easy, but this money should only be used in emergency situations. Not when things go on sale, not when it’s time for vacation – emergency – if you lose your job, if you’re hit with unexpected medical bills, etc. You may not ever use this cash, but you’d be amazed at the peace of mind it brings (and the interest it earns).
2. Don’t use credit cards. With one exception (see below), credit cards should be off limits. If you have to buy something with a credit card (and stretch payments months into the future) you can’t afford it. Buy everything with cash. If it’s worth buying, it’s worth saving up for.
3. Get a “Cash Back” credit card and pay off every month. We use Blue from American Express. It gives you cash back on certain purchases. Up to 2% on groceries and gas. We use it for 85% of what we buy, even some bills. Once a year we get a credit to our account for a few hundred bucks. Free money, people!
4. Get a High-Interest Savings account. Interest rates for savings accounts have come down a bit in the last year or two, but they still blow your bank’s standard savings account out of the water. We use ING Direct. Though competitive, their interest rate is not the highest you’ll find, but their website is great. You can also create separate accounts and label them for specific purchases. (Let me know if you want to create an account with ING. I’ll send you a referral code and we both can earn extra cash.)
5. Track your spending. This is a no brainer. You can’t control something you don’t track. This should be step one. Even if you don’t yet start budgeting, just by simply tracking every dollar spent will you start to subconsciously start to be a bit more frugal. Same thing goes with calorie intake. Even without dieting, by simply writing down every bit of food you eat, you’ll soon find yourself controlling what you eat. Managing money and watching what you eat are very similar.
6. Use an online money management tool like Yodlee or Mint. Many sites are popping up that allow you to pull together all of your financial accounts. We use Yodlee MoneyCenter. I log in and see an overall snapshot of our financial situation. One site shows me the balance of the many accounts I own, my upcoming bills, recent transactions, and much more.

Bonus

Budget. We’ve found YNAB (You Need A Budget) quite useful for budgeting and tracking our spending. We’re far from perfect in this area, we’ve started and stopped many times, but we still see this as valuable. It’s a piece of software and a fresh take on budgeting. Check it out.

Just started using Soocial, the new hassle-free contact manager.

Here’s my current contact sync setup:

Outlook (Work) <–-> Plaxo <–-> Mac (Home) <–-> Soocial <–-> Gmail <–-> NuevaSync (Free Exchange Server) <–-> iPhone

A bit excessive, no?

Soocial could eventually replace Plaxo and NuevaSync once they figure out how to sync with Outlook or iPhone (over the air).

Hassle Free from Soocial on Vimeo.