marketing

The HTML TEXT email compromise

I previously touched upon the dilemma facing email marketers when it comes time to decide whether to send their marketing emails as an HTML email or a TEXT email.  As a solution, many marketers have embraced the idea of asking the recipient which they prefer.  The marketing team usually poses this question at the same time they are soliciting a registration (name, email address, etc) from their website visitors.  And since space on the online registration form is often scarce,  the question is often posted in a barely intelligible way–looking as if a cat briefly danced across the keyboard instead of an actual question:  “HTML? TXT?”

Here’s the problem: Many people either don’t understand that question, or don’t know the answer to it.  Sure, for all of us reading blogs and getting our news from RSS feeds, the idea that someone might not know the answer to this might strike us as silly.  But at Outskirts Press, we can track without fail a statistical fact – the more questions we ask on a registration form, the lower our conversion rate is. Add a “hard” question into the mix, or one that requires the person to make a “choice” and the conversions plummet.  People know their names and email addresses, but beyond that, marketers have to weigh the advantages of knowing more information about the user against the disadvantage of a decreasing conversion ratio.

People simply don’t like being asked questions they don’t know the answers to. Additionally, many people still have an uncertainly about computers that leads them to the conclusion that offering no answer is better than offering an incorrect one.  So guess what the path of least resistance is for a potential new client who doesn’t know the answer?  They leave your website without registering and go somewhere else.

Another solution some marketers embrace is sending a text email which contains nothing more than a link to a website where the “real” content resides in all its glorious HTML beauty.   The email may try to contain a benefit statement or some other brief incentive to motivate the recipient to click on the link, but rarely is enough effort put forth into the email — no surprise — because all the effort has been put into the HTML webpage being linked to.   The problem is, this solution lacks the content of text emails and lacks the beauty of HTML emails.   In other words, ironically, the solution intended to work for everyone works for no one.

There isn’t a 100% effective solution, but there is solution that embraces a compromise and as a result, makes it the best overall tactic to address this email marketing problem, in my opinion. What is it? I’ll talk about that next…

marketing

HTML or TEXT based email?

This is one of the most oft-discussed topics among online marketers — which is “better” for email marketing?  Sending emails in normal text format or “sprucing” it up with HTML and images?

There are pros and cons to each choice.  Text emails are “boring” and run the risk of being ignored just because they look like too much work to read.   But they have a higher deliverability success rate and you can always be sure that your recipient is seeing your email exactly as you have designed it — since no design is necessary.  The only true hurdle with text-based email is keeping various monitor resolutions in mind when composing emails with “hard returns” to be sure that sentences either wrap automatically, or do not “split” mid-line.

HTML emails often rely on images to make a drastic, impressive first impression.  And when it works, it works well. HTML emails are just more “fun” to receive and read, for lack of a better word.  Here’s the downside, and it’s a biggie — many email users–I would wager the majority–don’t receive emails with images, even if they have HTML compliant email clients.   This is because for some reason, all major email clients, including Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, and others, load with email images turned “off.”  They say this is a security precaution.    The path of least resistance, therefore, is to leave images turned “off” which is what most people do, even if they are aware it is a “switch” they can toggle themselves in their settings.    Have you ever seen an HTML email that is 100% images with your images-setting turned “off?”  I’ll bet many of you have.  The email looks broken.   How much consideration did you take before deleting it? Probably none at all.

This is the dilemma for an email marketer.  How do you harness the benefit of HTML emails without accepting their disadvantages?  There are a number of options and I’ll discuss those in the near future…

marketing

Email marketing value

Speaking of email marketing, one of the main considerations is “value.”   While everyone likes a “bargain” it is equally important to include actual information in your email correspondence, and not just promotions.   In order to make the information valuable to the recipient, it has to be as specific to the reader as possible.

This means, you need to know enough about the recipient as possible so that you can tailor messages to them that they will find relevant.

And here you arrive upon the first Catch-22 of email marketing.    You must know enough about them without invading their privacy and without asking them too many personal questions.  Easier said than done, right?  Invading privacy is a no-no and asking too many questions will cause them to answer none.

Most “professional” websites learn something about their users in a variety of ways. Some do it with the users knowledge and some do it without.  Most websites, in fact, do both. Some non-personal but technical information may be collected by websites you visit in order for the developers to improve their user’s experience by knowing what platforms are most predominant, what browsers their users use, and what monitor resolutions their users use. 

Some of the more unscrupulous websites out there may even extract your contact information (your email address) without your consent.   If you are designing a website for your business or as a published author, you should compose a “Privacy Policy” that indicates the information you acquire from your visitors.   For example, at Outskirts Press, when individuals register on our site, we ask them for the answers to a small number of questions. This is as up-front as you can get.  Authors who divulge this information know they are providing us with personal information willingly. Our job, therefore, is to respect that information and provide the author with valuable information in exchange for their information. And we’ll talk more about that in a future post…

branding, ceo, partnerships

Outskirts Press Sponsors Colorado Humanities Colorado Book Awards

My last two posts have mentioned our recent “Best Book” winner, Irv Sternberg, and this post is no exception.  The December promotion in which we sought one amazing manuscript to publish for free provided a wonderful opportunity to reward a talented author.  And Mr. Sternberg provides a nice segue of sorts to this posting’s topic – which is about the Colorado Humanities and their annual Colorado Book Awards.  You see, Irv’s prior book, Neptune’s Chariot, was a Colorado Book Awards finalist last year.

Tomorrow, the Colorado Book Awards are being awarded at the Doerr-Hosier Center in Aspen on June 25th, the last day of the week-long Aspen Literary Festival.   Outskirts Press is a premiere sponsor of the Colorado Center for the Book and its Colorado Book Awards and I will be on-hand at the event to assist with the distribution of the awards.  For a full list of the finalists, please visit the Colorado Humanities website here. Congratulations to them all!

marketing, publicity

Getting emails through spam filters

At Outskirts Press we contact our authors quite often via email.  Many authors thank us for the motivational and inspirational emails we send when they are still writing their books.  Once authors begin publishing with us, we keep them up to date on their progress throughout the process via email.  And once our authors have published, Diamond and Pearl packages include 2 years of marketing follow-up via the Marketing C.O.A.C.H.

So, you could say that successful email communication is a cornerstone of our business.  And we’re not alone.  Email marketing is one of the most successful (from an ROI point of view) promotional tactics a business can adopt.  And nowadays, more companies are using email as a standard element of their customer service procedures as well.

But sending a “successful” email is not without its hurdles.  Frankly, I don’t even understand all the complications, but recently we did experience an interesting example of Yahoo’s spam algorithm that I would like to share.  This involved our recent email newsletter congratulating Irv Sternberg for his most recent book, The Persian Project, being recognized as our “Best Book” award winner.

The first paragraph of that email originally said this, and this is version that appeared on our blog and on our website:

“In December 2009, Outskirts Press announced a monthly promotion in which we were seeking the best manuscript to publish for the author without cost. Once published, the best book would receive a refund equal to 110% of the publishing fee. That’s right! Free publication and an “advance” of sorts, just like a traditional publishing contract (only with us, our authors still kept all their rights).

A lot of manuscripts were submitted and a lot of books were published. We reviewed the published books among all those December manuscripts and have decided upon what we feel is the best all-around publication.”

Those two paragraphs prevented the email newsletter from making it through Yahoo’s spam filter. In order to “get through” Yahoo’s spam filter, the content had to be changed to:

“In December 2009, Outskirts Press sought the best manuscript to publish for the one talented author without cost.  Once published, the author of the best book would receive a refund equal to his publishing package price, plus a bit extra.  That’s right! Outskirts Press picked up the publishing cost and paid an “advance” of sorts, just like a traditional publishing contract (only with us, our authors still kept all their rights).

A lot of manuscripts were submitted and a lot of books were published. We reviewed the published books among all those December manuscripts and have decided upon what we feel is the best.”

Notice the subtle differences:

  • Yahoo’s spam filter wouldn’t allow us to “announce a monthly promotion” so instead we “sought the best manuscript.”
  • The author couldn’t “receive a refund equal to 110% of the publishing fee” and instead he received “a refund equal to his publishing package price, plus a bit extra.”
  • Strangely, we couldn’t call it the “best all-around publication” and could only refer to it as “the best.”

In a later section of the same newsletter, we referred to Mr. Sternberg as a “consummate professional, the best selling author of four award-winning novels, and a tenacious marketer.”  However, in order to get through the spam filter, we had to change that summary to: “consummate professional and a tenacious marketer.”

Are there conclusions to draw from this? Certainly.  Yahoo’s algorithm frowns upon verbiage used commonly in spam, such as phrases like “best selling” and “monthly promotion” and almost any number that is followed by a percentage sign (%).

Another consideration of email marketing is the daunting task of delivering an HTML formatted email with images to an email population in which the majority–most unknowingly–have image downloading turned “off.”  But that’s a topic for another time…

marketing, search engine optimization

Email marketing

Regardless of whether you are an author or a business owner, you should be comfortable with email marketing.  Its low cost combined with its performance makes for an appealing ROI (return on investment). In fact, the only marketing endeavor we have better success with at Outskirts Press is SEM (search engine marketing), or in other words, PPC (pay-per-click) marketing.

Email marketing is an ongoing effort, and one we spend a lot of time and energy on.  There are millions of articles on the Internet about how to do it right and how to do it wrong, so I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of CAN-SPAM regulations, opt-out best practices, opt-in mailing lists, or any of those things.

Instead,  over the next few postings, I’ll summarize some of the things we have learned — mostly through trial and error — over the past 8 years, that have helped us refine our current email marketing efforts.

branding, marketing, self publishing

Best Book announced

Waaaaay back in December, we ran a promotion looking for the best book submitted to us for publication in that month.   The idea behind the promotion was to imitate a traditional publishing submission and publishing process  — that is, to identify one single manuscript from among all the submissions we received and “accept it” for free publication and grant it an “advance” of sorts.    I wrote about this in a previous blog posting in March.

Two days ago we announced the best book and the talented author  in our most recent newsletter:  The Persian Project, by Mark Irving.

Mark Irving is the pen name for Irv Sternberg, who has published two previous books with Outskirts Press, both of them regional bestsellers.  And for those of you who fear I might be “letting the cat out of the bag” by revealing the author’s nom de plume, you can relax;  Mr. Sternberg is open about his double-identity.

Congratulations, Irv!

Now we’re putting the finishing touches on a larger and more exciting “Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year” recognition program for 2010. We will hopefully announce it in July.  The good news is that (unlike last year) this program will apply to all the Diamond or Pearl books we have published or will publish in 2010, not just those that come in after–or as a result of–this announcement.

ceo

What is different about Version 4?

The fundamental difference between Version 4 of Outskirts Press and every version preceding it, is that we are now offering our writing and marketing services/products to all writers on an a la carte basis, regardless of where they publish their books.  After all, we have the broadest scope of marketing services and products… why not offer those services and products to authors who, through no fault of their own, published their book with an alternate publisher and then discovered only after the book was published that their publisher doesn’t offer any marketing support to speak of.   Already some of our current authors, who published their first books elsewhere before discovering Outskirts Press, are anxious to finally be able to apply the same marketing support to their first books that they have been able to apply to their OP books.

Yes, this means with Version 4, we are going to help authors sell more books even if they published with our competitors.  And since some of those competitors actually take up to 80% of the author’s profits, they can thank us later. 

We’re also going to help traditionally published authors market their books, shortly after those authors come to the disillusioning realization that not all conventional publishers invest the same amount of marketing dollars on all their authors equally.

By the same token, Version 4 will offer pre-publication writing services to help writers start, finish, and edit their manuscripts, even if those same writers, for some reason or another, elect to publish elsewhere.  Of course, authors choosing to publish with Outskirts Press will receive discounts on many services (sometimes in excess of 40% off), so that’s one reason to continue to publish with Outskirts Press. Another is a matter of convenience; keeping everything under “one roof” makes an author’s life easier.   There are many other reasons, of course, like the fact that our authors keep 100% of their profits, 100% of their rights, and 100% of the control of their book.

Next I’ll expand upon the Version 4 offerings in a little more detail.

ceo, marketing, self publishing

Self Publishing Version 4

My recent posts have briefly touched upon the new website Outskirts Press launched over Memorial Day weekend, which we are lovingly referring to as  Version 4.  Is this the 4th “version” of the site we’ve had? No; we’ve had more than that.

Version 4 comes from a convoluted history of enhancement-naming conventions.   When I was single-handedly programming the first few versions of the Outskirts Press website in CGI and Perl (way back in 2002, 2003 and 2004), it went through a number of different “looks.”   As the number of books we published exploded from 51 in 2004 to 220 in 2005, it started to become apparent that the site I had programmed was not sufficient for all the books we were publishing. In other words, it was bending under the quantity and demands we were putting on it.

So, the IT department was taxed with rebuilding the site from the ground up. This involved a migration of the programming and data to SQL.  They started calling that first SQL version of the website SQL 1.  Very little changed aesthetically with that first migration. It was a daunting enough task simply migrating all the author records and data into the SQL databases.

Once the foundation was in place to handle our growth, and once SQL 1 was working, we immediately began working on some aesthetic improvements that leveraged the new, faster advantages resulting from the SQL databases.  These improvements became known internally as SQL 2.

Last year we launched SQL 3, which was a combination of some database improvements and aesthetic improvements, mostly involving the internal Author’s Center portions of our website. In other words, we were using resources to improve the experience for our core group of customers.

Even before SQL 3 was launched, I was already working (at least in my mind) on the next leap forward for our website and our company. This fundamental change was known as SQL 4 by our IT team, but since “SQL” has very little resonance outside of the IT world, we decided from a marketing & branding perspective to call it “Version 4” instead, more akin to software releases and operating systems.

So that’s the genesis of the name. With the next posts we’ll talk about the fundamental differences and improvements with Version 4 of the new and improved Outskirts Press, along with some hiccups along the way.

ceo

CEO Interviewed by Student Literary Award Winner

The 2010 Student Literary Awards were announced and presented at the Denver Public Library on April 29th. Winning students in both the Letters About Literature and River of Words contests were recognized by the Colorado Humanities in front of a full crowd of teachers, parents, and supporters.

During the event, Cassie Lipscomb, the 2nd place winner in Category IV of the River of Words Poetry contest, asked to interview me for a school project…

Cassie: Is it necessary to go do further schooling to make my writing better? What kind of schools does it take?

Brent: No one will frown on you for having a higher education. Not only does going to college make your writing better, but it makes your life better, although perhaps not for the reasons you may think. College isn’t about attending a lot of English and Latin classes and/or getting your MBA in creative writing. College is about having an experience and being surrounded by intelligence 24/7. You can learn as much sitting in the student union participating in a lively discussion with other classmates as you can in a 500-person auditorium listening to a professor.  You will literally become smarter through osmosis while attending college, and that’s before you even step into the classroom – and yes, the classes will help you become smarter still.   After all, writing fiction involves your ability to create an experience for the reader while writing non-fiction involves your ability to effectively impart knowledge.  Regardless of what kind of writing you prefer, college will help you improve your craft. What kind of college becomes secondary. It’s not what the school brings to you; it’s what you bring to the school.

Cassie: What do you like about your job? What do you dislike about the job?

Brent: I’ve always said I’m a writer first and a CEO second, but nowadays I spend the majority of my time on the latter instead of the former. I love helping writers. Nothing is more gratifying than getting a jubilant email from a newly published author, or seeing a photograph of a writer holding their book with tears of joy in their eyes. It is very fulfilling and I love it.    Things I dislike about the job are the same things that apply to nearly every job – the daily and sometimes minutiae-riddled “grind” of producing something. Whether you are writing a book or running a company or buried in a cubicle somewhere, production takes effort and discipline.  It helps if what you produce is something you love.  Since you’re going to be spending so much time doing something, you had better love it, right?

Cassie: What does a regular day of work consist of?

Brent: I spend a lot of time managing departments and projects via email.  But… that’s not quite right. You can’t really manage departments or projects. You can only manage the people involved with the departments or the projects. So I manage people, but the ultimate goal is to aim departments in a certain direction and aim projects to fulfill a certain benefit for our authors.   So email takes up quite a lot of my day. And the phone, although I find the phone somewhat inefficient, unless it’s a conference call. As for writing, it is my personal goal to write and publish a new book each year. I didn’t pull that off in 2009, so I must in 2010. I do not carve out a specific time each day to write anymore.  With an awesome 5-year old in the picture, I just haven’t got the time. You’ve probably heard it before and you’ll probably hear it again, and it gets repeated so often because it is so true: A writer writes.  You can’t be a writer if you don’t write. And writing a book requires a lot of writing, and a lot of discipline.

Cassie: Is this what you thought the job would be like?

Brent: I never had any preconceived notions about what it would be like to run a publishing company, or what it would be like to be a writer, but I am enjoying the ride so far.

Cassie: Where do you get your ideas to write?

Brent: When I was younger, my mind was constantly alive with ideas for novels and short stories, and I wrote a lot of both.  As I’ve grown older, my writing has turned to non-fiction and is related to what I do for a living. That is probably out of necessity more than heartfelt desire.  Writing a book takes so much time, I feel it needs to accomplish multiple goals to be worthwhile.  As sad as it makes me to admit it, I’m not sure fiction can accomplish multiple goals. At least, my fiction can’t.

Cassie: How do you get over writer’s block?

Brent: I don’t write unless I’m feeling it.  I don’t try to force anything. Which means I don’t get over writer’s block. Every once in a while, it just goes away. That isn’t a very inspirational answer, but it’s an honest one. It’s also the reason my book production is so erratic.  Fortunately, I have the flexibility to write that way.  Other writers on ‘deadlines’ might have quite a different answer, and probably a better one.

Cassie: How do you choose between publishers?

Brent: Interestingly, this is the subject of one of my books. There are five paths toward publication that you can pursue.  Conglomerate traditional publication, small press traditional publication, full-service self-publishing services, D-I-Y (do it yourself) self-publishing websites, and fully-independent self-publication.   They all have pros and cons. The path you should take depends upon your talent, your patience, your goals, your desire, your pocket book, and your time.  The good news is, and it seems to be an epiphany for many writers when they realize this, that you can take multiple paths. 
 
Cassie: Is there a lot of competition to deal with these days?

Brent: I assume you are referring to competition with other writers, but regardless of what this question refers to, the answer is “Yes.”  There is always a lot of competition for everything.  The trick is to not view competitors as ‘the enemy’ but rather as opportunities to learn and excel.