Chris Penn is one of the smartest people on the planet.

If you’ve ever interacted with him at all - in any capacity - you’ll quickly realize that he operates at a much higher level then the average person. His mind is a machine. He’s always on the move and always thinking. I first met Chris a few weeks ago at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston. (Disclosure: Chris is a Blue Sky Factory client and partner.) Prior to our face to face meeting, I had a few exchanges with Chris over email, Twitter, and the phone. However, meeting him in person was an entirely new experience. Read a few of Chris’s posts on his blog to get a sense of what I’m talking about.

Chris Is A Data Junkie

Chris can talk about email marketing with the best of them. He can carry on an engaging conversation about Twitter. He can blog about Samurai Swords. But what I think gets Chris jazzed the most is data. He loves analytics. He loves numbers. Chris is truly a data junkie. Check out our latest installment of Blue Sky Factory TV with Chris Penn as he chats with Greg Cangialosi and discusses ways to utilize the social web. (Chris also talks a bit about data.)

Click To Play

Can’t see the video, try this.

Questions? Feedback?

Do you have any questions for Chris? Please post your thoughts below and we’ll be sure to pass them along. Also, as mentioned last week (Steve Garfield Unleashed), we’d love to hear what you think about the new, improved Blue Sky Factory TV. So, what do you think?

Photo credit: me

DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory

____________

It’s November. How about saving a few trees this month. Send more email.

Find out more about how Blue Sky Factory can help you be a little more green.

That being said, we are planning on doing some “shakin’ & bakin’ during tomorrow’s webinar (Thursday, November 5th, 2009, 1 PM ET).  If you are a regular to the Blue Sky Factory blog, you know that we try not to promote our own stuff too much, but Joanna and I are just really pumped for this co-hosted webinar … our first as the Lawson-Matthew/Waldow duo.

We’re hoping you can take 45 minutes out of your day tomorrow to join us.  If you need some pre-webinar motivation, check out this short video.

Can’t see the video, try this.

So don’t wait, sign up now.

Photo Credit: IMDB.com

DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory

Email is hot. Email marketing is the shiny new tool. Collecting email addresses is “in.” Most companies are using old school subscription cards to gather as many email addresses as they can. Life is good.

Fast forward to 2009. Much has changed. Email marketing is no longer hot. The new shiny tools are Twitter (and Google Wave?). Everyone on the planet is collecting email addresses as it’s no longer novel. However, many companies are still using the old school email collection methods from a decade ago.

So What Gives?

Who cares, right? If companies want to go old school and collect email addresses, let them! At least they are doing it. Also, pen and paper is not dead (email is though, according to the WSJ) - it’s not like there’s a better option in the middle of a restaurant. I mean, not everyone has a smart phone where they could easily subscribe with the push/tap of a few keys.

But wait. Maybe that last statement is not true.

A few weeks ago, Jay Baer and I walked around the Chicago Hyatt lobby bar the night before the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer to answer that very question. You may be surprised by the results.

Can’t see the video? Try here.

The Results, The Opportunity

The Results: So 18 out of 19 people we asked told us they owned phones where they could receive email. We realize that our Hyatt lobby bar survey was not really that formal. The results are not necessarily indicative of the American population. However, I’d venture to guess that at a business hotel similar to the Hyatt, these numbers are closer to reality.

The Opportunity: As Jay Baer states at the end of the video, the Hyatt is missing an opportunity. In a business hotel, “your email subscription should be via text message … not via fill-out-your-name.”

Why are companies stuck in 1999? Why are they not taking advantage of mobile devices? The answer is unclear. The technology exists.

What Are You Doing?

How are you collecting email addresses at your company? Better first question should be are you collecting email addresses at all? If you’re not, that’s a good first step. If you currently are asking people to fill out forms with a pen, think about the opportunity to make it less labor-intensive and less prone to human error. Think about the option to allow customers to subscribe to your email campaigns via text.

It’s nearly 2010. Time to join the 21st century.

Photo credit: Ann Handley (*BSF partner)

DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory

———————————-

Speaking of joining the 21st century….why not get started now? Sign up for this week’s webinar “Shake & Bake Your Email Campaigns Into 2010” co-hosted by me and Joanna Lawson-Matthew on Thursday, November 5 at 1 PM (ET).

Sign up (now).

Your friends at Blue Sky Factory want to help you get prepared for next year.  It’s important to plan early and be thorough in order to benefit from all that email has to offer.

Here are 3 ways to take advantage of us this time of year:

1.  Get 50% off your 2010 strategy plan

Get 50% off your 2010 strategy plan! We’ll work with you to design your 2010 email program based on your company’s goals and objectives.  This offer expires November 18, so take advantage now!  (If you’re not currently a Blue Sky Factory client, sign up before November 18 and we’ll apply this offer to you too!)

2.  Let us help you “shake & bake” your email campaigns 

Join us this Thursday, November 5 for our “Shake & Bake Your Email Campaigns Into 2010″ webinar!  Senior Account Manager Joanna Lawson-Matthew and Director of Community DJ Waldow will get you thinking about ways to make the most of your email campaigns next year, including:

• Using what did and did not work in 2009 to your advantage
• Planning your strategy from January through December
• Making the most of holidays throughout the year
• Getting to know your ESP and the ISPs

3. Win a custom holiday template

And last - but certainly not least - did you know we’re offering a free custom holiday template to one lucky email marketer?  Whether you’re promoting holiday specials or simply spreading cheer, go out with a bang in 2009!  Enter to win now.  We bet you’d be pretty excited to win.  Watch the video below to see the reactions of last year’s winners.

If you don’t want to press your luck, we’re also offering 40% off a custom holiday template.

What are you waiting for?  We want your 2010 email campaigns to be successful, so contact us today!

Amy Garland
Marketing Manager, Blue Sky Factory

p.s. Thanks to http://www.2010calendar.org/ for the image above.

The Evolution of Halloween…in a Nutshell

Over 2,000 years ago, Samhain, All Hallows Eve, or the Day of the Dead, better known today as Halloween, established its roots in history and has remained one of our most popular holidays to date in the US.  With its origins in old Celtic culture in Ireland and Northern Europe, Mexico, and Egypt, to the evolution of what we now know today in pop culture, Halloween embraces the imagination, the magnitude in the belief of magic, the illusions of the supernatural, and the excitement leading up to and on October 31st.  BUT, then again, doesn’t email marketing?

We live in a time where trick-or-treating, costume wearing, decorations, scary movies, pumpkin carving, parties, fall festivals, farms, cider, pies, and haunted attractions have become a huge part of the Halloween we see today.  Over the years, Halloween has morphed into the status quo of pop culture as we know it, and while it remains a dominant holiday in our calendars, it will continue to grow and evolve for many years to come.

Like Halloween, email marketing shares some of those traits.  Let’s take a look at which ones.

Three Reasons Why Halloween is Similar to Email Marketing

1. IT’S SCARY! Yes it’s true, Halloween AND email marketing can do a number on our brains.  Trying to figure out email marketing in its entirety by yourself is like entering into a haunted house alone or watching a scary movie by yourself.  Email marketing has a lot of pieces to the puzzle.  It’s not a hard puzzle, but in order to grab the bull by the horns, you have to know where to start, how to maintain, and how to improve.  That’s where pulling in a professional can help.
2. Evolution and Imagination. Halloween is an open platform for people to be as creative as possible.  Halloween has evolved into a holiday that all can take part in; there is something for everyone when Halloween season comes around.  Email marketing has evolved over the years to be the driving force for business communication.  There are now more features and services to test, create, and deploy one’s email campaigns.  Email marketers have to, no I take that back, they MUST be creative and imaginative.  Email marketing is a skill that constantly needs refining in order to keep subscribers engaged, aware, and excited for more.  The keys to Halloween and email marketing lie behind the imagination, the willingness to take a chance, to be different then the rest of the pack and to embrace change.
3. Call-to-Actions. Bottom line, Halloween and email marketing take advantage of strong call-to-actions.  Every year Halloween brings about strong call-to-actions surrounding the date of October 31st.  We are called to attend parties, asked to trick-or-treat around neighborhoods in groups, invited to pumpkin farms and festivals, asked to dress in costume to compete for prizes - but isn’t that what makes Halloween fun and exciting?  Email marketing uses those same principles.  Email marketers need strong call-to-actions in order to make their content fun, exciting, and most importantly, it makes their campaigns successful.

Is Halloween REALLY Like Email Marketing?

Well, let’s think about it like this: whether you’re a Rob Zombie movie-watching, candy-loving, pumpkin-carving Halloween-basher, or you’re a Web 2.0 loving, deliverability-believing, email marketing guru, REMEMBER, you are practically the same.  Well, almost.  Both enter into a world that may be scary at first, but through acute imaginations, a willingness to embrace change, and the use of strong call-to-actions, you can create the recipes for a great Halloween and strategic email marketing campaigns.

No Time to Waste!

On that note, can you believe it’s already Halloween!? No time to waste people. Now is the time to start planning for 2010.

Join DJ Waldow and Joanna Lawson-Matthew as they look towards next year in the “Shake & Bake Your Email Campaigns Into 2010” webinar: November 5 at 1 PM (ET).

Sign up - right now!

Care to Share?

Have your own Halloween-related email marketing stories you want to share?  Please comment or give us a shout and let us know!  In the meantime, have a spooktacular day!

Nikki Schiavone
Sales Associate, Blue Sky Factory

There are many aspects of an email marketing campaign.  From building a list to analyzing campaign results, email marketers have a lot to keep track of.  I recently posted a basic list of 5 things all email marketers need to know, but was asked to do a similar list with information that’s, well, a little less basic.  (And while you’re here, save some trees.  Just click on the image to the right.)

Ask and you shall receive.  Here goes:

1. Just because they didn’t open it, doesn’t mean they didn’t see it.

In order to see images in Gmail (and many other email clients), you have to enable them.  However, this is not the case in Outlook and a few other desktop clients.  In Outlook, for instance, the Preview Pane allows us to automatically view an email without actually opening it.  Recipients can even click through that email without opening it.  So just because recipients don’t actually click to open your email doesn’t mean they didn’t see it.  Keep this in mind when reporting on your campaign as it may skew your reports a little.  (*This is also important for when sending a follow up email to all who have not clicked or opened the email.  Make sure your segmentation is “Did not open” OR “Did not click”!)  The Email Experience Council’s Measurement Accuracy Roundtable has developed a new metric, Render Rate, to face the lack of industry standards for email metrics.  They want YOUR feedback, so view more information here (or here), and participate in the discussion.

2.    Domain keys … what?

What’s the point in spending your time on your campaigns if your emails aren’t delivered?  Most email marketers are just that – marketers.  I know that I don’t have a technical bone in my body, and before I started working at Blue Sky Factory I had no clue what domain keys were.  Basically, domain keys help you communicate to the ISPs that the email you’re sending is, in fact, from you.  Domain keys require that your email has an electronic signature (this is something your email marketing application should take care of).  Rather than just looking at the Friendly From Address when determining whether to send the email, the ISP takes the signature contained in the email and pulls another special entry from your DNS.  To quote our director of technology, Ken Pfeiffer, “some mathematical hocus pocus is performed and the ISP can tell if this message is from a legitimate source”.  If you have questions, talk to your ESP to find out if you have domain keys set up.  (Note that this only applies to those with a dedicated IP.)

3.    HTML, text …. which is it?

I can’t vouch for other email marketing applications, but I know Publicaster.  When sending an email that is straight copy - perhaps a follow up note from a conference - you can enter the info into the default creative editor, which is for HMTL emails.  But if your email is straight copy/text, you don’t need to set up the text version, right?  Wrong.  Someone whose email client or mobile device won’t allow them to see HMTL emails still won’t be able to read this email, unless it’s set up as a text version as well.  Practice safe emailing, people: always set up a text version.

4. Unsubscribe vs. Opt-out

What’s the difference?  Unsubscribe means that the subscriber is removing his or herself from the specific list they’re on (which caused them to receive the email they are unsubscribing from).  Opt-out means they are removing themselves from every list they are on from that source.  So if someone opts-out after receiving our 52 Email Marketing Tips email, they are also opting-out of Factory Direct, our webinar emails, and more.  While this may seem basic, many don’t know the difference.

And last, but certainly not least…

5. Tell it to your subscribers “straight up”

Did you ever think you’d be taking advice from Paula Abdul, especially when it comes to email marketing?  She asked for it “straight up”, and that’s exactly how you need to give it to subscribers.  Did you know that misleading subject lines are against the law?  Who would’ve thought -  against the law?  Well they are, so while you don’t have to summarize the email, just don’t lie – or mislead – your subscribers in any way.  You can be clever, funny - whatever you want to be – just not misleading.

So there you have it.  5 MORE things all email marketers need to know – the intermediate version.  Keep reading, researching, and learning.  There are tons of resources out there at your fingertips.  Have I missed any topics?  Are there any you’d like me to cover in my next post?

Amy Garland
Marketing Manager, Blue Sky Factory
____________

Oh, and one more thing all email marketers should know: email marketing is good for the environment!  Find out more about how Blue Sky Factory can help you be a little more green.

Try something new.
Don’t be afraid to fail.
Learn from your mistakes.
Tweak.  Modify.  Adjust.  Improve.  Relaunch.

Yeah. I know the above was pulled directly from what I wrote earlier this week (Blue Sky Factory TV: Lessons Learned). I feel like it was worth repeating. Adding to that, I’d like to include the following:

Follow up on your promises.

In this week’s post, I shared that we are in the “Tweak.  Modify.  Adjust.  Improve.  Relaunch.” stage. I said that we’ve attended some great events, brought along our new gear, and “interviewed some of the sharpest minds in the industry.” I closed with a “stay tuned” for an interview with Steve Garfield. I’m now following up on that promise. Here we go.

Steve Garfield

I actually first met Steve in Boston a few weeks ago at the Inbound Marketing Summit. He’ll explain during the video, but he was actually one of the guys who helped make all of this possible. (Steve - along with Jim Storer, Skip Bensley, Rebecca Corliss, and Chris Penn - made sure the new gear was operational.) I could go on and on about Steve, but why listen to me when you can hear directly from Steve?

In the video above (or here) Steve Garfield of SteveGarfield.com discusses video, his new book (Get Seen), and more with Blue Sky Factory CEO Greg Cangialosi at the Inbound Marketing Summit (Boston, October 2009).

What’s Next

More promises. We’ve already interviewed the following: Chris Penn, C.C. Chapman, Chris Brogan, Justin Levy, Jason Keath, Wayne Sutton, Jay Baer, Beth Harte, Stephanie Miller, Amber Naslund, and Ann Handley. Be on the lookout for those interviews (and more!) right here on this blog … and on the intertubes.

Not all of the interviews are email marketing specific; however, all are conversations with sharp people…individuals who understand online marketing, “get” the social web. We hope you enjoy consuming them as much as we loved producing.

Your Thoughts

Please continue to help us make BSF TV the best it can be … for you. We’re always trying to improve. So tell us - what do you think? Share your thoughts on the following:

• Audio/Video (aka, “the gear”)
• Live vs. Taped (in office vs. on the road)
• Other

Like? Love? Hate? Talk to us!

DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory

(Shameless plug below)

———————————-

You know what’s going down next week, right?

Join me and Joanna Lawson-Matthew as we look towards next year in the “Shake & Bake Your Email Campaigns Into 2010” webinar: November 5 at 1 PM (ET).

Sign up. Right now!

This past week, my fellow BSF’ers, Greg Cangialosi and DJ Waldow, and I attended the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer in Chicago for the four above reasons, as described by DJ in a previous blog post.  During the two-day event, lots of knowledge about email, search and social media was shared, and many valuable connections were made.

One of the best things about the event itself was the Mixologists.  This group was comprised of four industry thought leaders:  Jay Baer from Convince & Convert, Michael Brito from Intel, Beth Harte from MarketingProfs and Stephanie Miller from Return Path.  Together, the Mixologists attended each of the event’s seminars in four different tracks: Marketing Must Knows, Integrated Marketing Programs, Engaging with Customers and Peer to Peer.  At the end of the two days, they presented their 33 top digital marketing tips with the rest of the event attendees, as well as the best quotes of the event.  I thought this list was well worth sharing with our readers.  So read on, and let us know your thoughts!

Also, read more from one of the Mixologists himself, Jay Baer of Convince & Convert, and check out his “Mixologist Report” slideshow here.

Marketing Must Knows

1. Build credibility before you sell via social media.
2. Allow open (but governed) access for employees to Twitter and blogging.
3. Broadcast emails are not effective. Create relevancy and be helpful.
4. Use your Facebook fan page to promote key content of your email newsletter.
5. Join the right conversations at the right time.
6. Think about your Web site’s “front page” as a collection of pages, not one home page.
7. Improve search spending ROI by using down-funnel data.
8. Invest in social media. It’s not free.

Integrating Marketing Programs

9. Test the unusual.
10. Clean up your landing pages.
11. Keep your troops informed.
12. Insert retweet buttons into PDF files.
13. Remove gates in front of your content.
14. Use your brand community for market research.
15. Engage in online communities as a person first, as a marketer second.
16. Use Google keyword tool to learn how customers describe your products/services.
17. Optimize all your content for search.

Engaging with Customers

18. Build relationships with fire starters.
19. Build community first, monetize later.
20. Offer value on Twitter, don’t self promote.
21. Have passion and jump on every possible situation you can on the social Web.
22. Build relationships with customers to create a memorable brand experience.
23. Set goals, measure, and iterate.
24. Social media guidelines for your company should be short and succinct.
25. Be organized internally to effectively manage social media externally.

Peer to Peer

26. Blog about how your products/services fit into your customer’s lives.
27. Humanize your blog.
28. Get your legal counsel talking to other companies that have successfully implemented social media.
29. Have conversations with senior management to determine their appetite for social media.
30. Provide your community something that is personally beneficial to them.
31. Let your members decide how they want to use “their” community.
32. In online video, be mindful of people’s time, attention, and surroundings.
33. Use trackable links to measure success.

Most Quotable Quotes

“Content doesn’t win. Optimized content wins” – Li Evans, Serengeti Communications
“People don’t expect your company to be perfect. They expect you to provide solutions” – Debra Ellis, Wilson & Ellis Consulting
“Don’t train. Simplify” – Dr. BJ Fogg, Stanford University
“Measurement is like laundry. It piles up the longer you wait to do it” – Amber Naslund, Radian 6
“Your customers are listening in social media. And so are search engines” – Li Evans, Serengeti Communications
“Many crummy trials beats the big thinking” – Dr. BJ Fogg, Stanford University
“The art of Twitter is in the retweet. You must be interesting” – Peter Shankman, Help A Reporter Out (HARO)
“Tactics without a strategy is worse than doing nothing at all” – Li Evans, Serengeti Communications

And if I could just add in one of my favorites:
“Enewsletter content must connect with readers & positively affect their life” – Greg Cangialosi, Blue Sky Factory

All-in-all, a great event!  Thanks to MarketingProfs for bringing all of us digital marketers (both experienced and newbies) together to learn from each other in such a fun, intimate setting.

Joanna Lawson-Matthew
Senior Account Manager, Blue Sky Factory

———————————-

Did you love the above tips and plan to use some in your marketing plan for 2010?  Let us help you to further map out your 2010 e-marketing plan.  Attend our “Shake & Bake Your Email Campaigns Into 2010” webinar, presented by DJ Waldow and myself on November 5 at 1 PM (ET).  Sign up today!

These are all things that Blue Sky Factory does on a regular basis.  We believe it helps to not only make work fun, interesting, and ever-changing, but it’s also something that adds to our continued success.

Try Something New:  Blue Sky Factory TV

Blue Sky Factory TV (BSF TV) soft-launched in Baltimore on March 19th, 2009.  Greg Cangialosi (BSF CEO) set up a camera and began live streaming. The content was great and the interview was valuable, but we immediately saw room for improvement.  As you can see from the first episode, while the content and conversation was wonderful, the audio/video/logistics had room for improvement.  Since that first attempt back in March, we’ve aired 23 other episodes.  Along the way we tried many things and learned a bunch.  A few “highlights”:

• Length:  60 minutes to 30 minutes
• Equipment:  MacBook iSight (webcam) to flip cam to HD webcam with Dr. Steve’s tripod
• Set:  Greg’s office to BSF main room to BSF conference room to Jeremy Hanks’ office in Salt Lake City
• Guests:  In-studio guests to “live from a conference” to on-phone co-hosts
• Hosts:  Greg to Doug to DJ to co-hosted
• Format:  Interviews to segments with interview to “in the news” conversations

Don’t Be Afraid To Fail

While we don’t believe in any way that BSF TV was a failure, it hasn’t quite turned out how we hoped.  Our Thursday at 4 PM ET weekly, live format became a big time commitment each and every week.  From booking guests to pre-production to live interviews to post-production, we were spending hours upon hours of time each week for a 30-minute show.  We averaged around 30 or 40 viewers per show, had some great conversations, contests, and interviews, but didn’t seem to ever move the needle.

However, we kept plugging along.  We talked about BSF TV every week and discussed ways we could improve.  Everyone agreed that we needed change.  Every week we tried something a bit new.  Yet, it wasn’t until we decided to put BSF TV on hold after the September 3, 2009 episode (#24), that significant reflection took place.

Learn From Your Mistakes

So what did we learn?  The list is long, but we all agreed that the #1 priority was if we wanted to be taken seriously, we needed to step up the production value.  This meant investing some $$ in new gear.  We spoke with several people in the industry who do video production for a living.  In the end, we took the recommendations of Kevin Wells (Emergent Pictures) and purchased the following new equipment:

• Canon VIXIA HV40 High Definition Camcorder
• Beachtek DXA-2S - Dual XLR Universal Microphone Adapter for Camcorders
• Manfrotto by Bogen Imaging BO190XB701HD Aluminum Pro Tripod System
• Sennheiser Evolution G2 100 Series - UHF Lavalier System (Pair)

Tweak.  Modify.  Adjust.  Improve.  Relaunch.

We are currently in this stage.  Over the next few weeks (months?), we’ll be attending events and interviewing smart people for BSF TV.  On October 7th and 8th, we sponsored, attended, presented and had a booth presence at the Boston Inbound Marketing Summit.  From October 15-17th, we did the same (minus the presentation) at Blogworld & New Media Expo.  Just last week, we were in Chicago for the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer. At all three events we brought along our new gear and interviewed some of the sharpest minds in the industry, including Chris Penn, Steve Garfield, C.C. Chapman, Chris Brogan, Justin Levy, Jason Keath, Wayne Sutton, Jay Baer, Beth Harte, Stephanie Miller, Amber Naslund, Ann Handley, and more!

Be on the lookout for these “BSF TV” conversations on this blog, YouTube, blip.tv, and other video sites.

This is the unofficial next iteration of BSF TV. We have plans, hopes and goals for the next stage. Stay tuned later this week for a interview with Steve Garfield.

As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, feedback, etc.

DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory

You’re in luck!  My client, Cloud 9 Living, uses auto response campaigns for this reason, and they’ve got it down pat!  It’s easy to do.  Check out what it takes to make this happen.

The Scoop

As soon as a visitor on Cloud 9 Living’s website takes the time to submit their name and email address to sign up for the Cloud 9 Living email communications, they become a “prospect”.  This is where the nurturing begins.  Cloud 9 Living has 11 different email creatives that automatically get sent to their prospects.  The creative that is sent is dependent on when the prospect was submitted to the database.

How They Got It Going

In summary, these are the steps they took to set this up:

Step 1: Created an opt-in form on their website.

Step 2: Linked the opt-in forms to their email account with an API, so that new opt-ins update automatically and in real-time in their email database (prospect list).

Step 3: Set up segmentations that all stream from the “prospect list” with their desired touch point intervals.  The intervals that they chose for contacting prospects after they’ve opted-in are: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 11, 16, 21, 23, 30, and 35 days after completing their opt-in forms.

Step 4: Set up all of the different email creatives for each send - in their case, 11 different email creatives.

Step 5: Set and activated all 11 of the auto response campaigns in their email service provider’s (ESP) platform.  Of course, as a client of mine, this was through a super simple one-page campaign scheduler in Publicaster.

Step 6: Do absolutely nothing! No further work is required once this is all set up.  Merely monitor the reporting as desired and watch more prospects convert to clients!

So the smarties at Cloud 9 Living did this process all on their own, because they’re that on top of things… But if this program seems like something you would be interested in setting up, and you’re still a little confused, your account manager would welcome your questions with open arms!

Why It Works

There are a lot of reasons - beside the basic set up they have in place - that make Cloud 9 Living’s email nurturing program so successful.

1. Their opt-in form is compliant.  That sounds silly, but there isn’t a large percentage of compliant opt-in forms out there.  Check out this recent blog post on opt-in forms to find out what makes one compliant.
2. The content in their email creatives rocks!  It starts with a simple welcome and thanks the subscriber for signing up, progresses to introducing their social site pages, and with each communication, progresses further into awesome company capabilities.  Also, their creatives all have clear, visible, hard-to-miss calls-to-action coupled with personalization in the salutation and in the signature.
3. Their timing intervals aren’t overkill.  They heavy-load in the beginning to make sure all of their lines of communication are available to the prospect, but then they simply touch back with them twice every two weeks for a few months.

There’s Always Room For Improvement

How awesome would it be if they also had other auto responders set up for prospects who actually clicked through these nurturing emails?  The follow ups could include personalized content as well, which would really help them narrow in on those prospects that are super close to converting.

Your Turn

Now that you have just read this whole breakdown, hopefully you’re thinking, “Okay, this Elena chick has a great point, I need to get on this ASAP.”  (I hope I’m not hearing crickets out there…)  Well if you’re already a Blue Sky Factory client, then go get started!  If you need any help along the way, your dedicated account manager will help you out without a doubt.  Not on the BSF client list yet?  Well what are you waiting for?!  You can set up one of these in a jiff through our Publicaster platform.  Never even heard of Publicaster?  It’s okay, it happens.  Just drop us a line, and one of our stellar sales associates would be happy to give you a demo.

Until next time!

Elena Hekimian
Account Manager, Blue Sky Factory