Archive for January, 2010
Simpler Emails Better
Posted by: | CommentsBy Allen Jezouit, VP Business Development
I’ve stumbled across several articles recently by industry experts all circling around the same topic … simpler emails are better.
While it is tempting to design amazing emails loaded with graphics and all kinds of bells and whistles, abundant evidence appears to suggest that your efforts would be best utilized elsewhere.
- First and foremost, emails need to make it to the inbox. Deliver-ability is your number one concern. Large graphics files or attachments can stop your beautiful creation short of the inbox.
- Next, you want your emails to be opened. Writing a catchy subject line is important – but there is a balance. Too catchy, and even your loyal customers/readers will think you are spamming them. Consumers are becoming sensitive to subject lines loaded with “FREE” or “LIMITED TIME OFFER” or similar phrases.
- How does the email look without images? It should still get the message across.
- Do you have a call to action with a link or links? If not, why send the email?
- Don’t forget the opt-out/unsubscribe links!
Google shut out by Facebook’s iron information curtain
Posted by: | CommentsPosted on iMediaConnection.com
by Rich Cherecwich
on January 29, 2010
Expectations were high for Google’s new Social Search, which lets consumers search the content their friends produce on social media websites. But privacy restrictions at Facebook mean that Google’s tool isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and other social search tools are suffering as well.
Social Search, which searches content published on Twitter, Blogger, Flickr, and Picasa, only has access to Facebook’s public profile pages, which have very little information on them, according to a PCWorld report. Social Search only combs through public social media content, and since much of the information on Facebook pages is accessible only by signing in to Facebook, Google can’t include it.
Losing out on relevant data from Facebook — which has 350 million members worldwide — makes Social Search far less appealing, but Google isn’t the only search engine suffering from Facebook’s walled garden. Bing announced back in October that it would include Facebook status updates in its real-time search results, but it hasn’t happened yet because Facebook members can’t make those updates public.
The issue that search engines are dealing with is different from Facebook’s ongoing internal privacy policy. The social network is pushing its members to share their information with “everyone on the internet,” but it’s a misleading term. Sharing with everyone on Facebook means anyone on the social network has access to your information, but they must be logged in to see it.
Facebook currently has no plans to let its members make their profile information open to the entire internet, according to the report.
