One of the biggest topics in organizations today is the need and desire to grow their subscriber list.  Most companies believe that the bigger the list they have, the greater chance they have to sell more stuff.  More stuff sold + more revenue = happy companies.

Some organizations take the hard road and build their list organically and spend money and resources on properly activating and creating brand advocates in their subscriber base.  They recognize that the size of their list is not as important as the overall lifetime value of their subscriber.  These organizations often have pressure internally to grow faster by out of touch executives with unrealistic expectations on subscriber growth.  In most cases though, these companies follow the good path to growth and are prosperous in the long run.

Then, every once in awhile there are organizations that take the easy road.  They use so many different channels, spend a ton of money on third parties that promise the world who often are using the same 50 Million Opt In, Can-Spam compliant list to try and bring in as many subscribers as they can.  These organizations say they are interested in quality, but often mask that with a “yea butt” statement of “we still need to get to X million subscribers by X date”.  Activation, welcome and engagement strategies are thrown out the window and the focus becomes on getting their X subscribers to buy stuff so their investment is not wasted. 

Sit back for a minute and think of acquiring a single or 5 million new subscribers as a party that you are hosting.  You certainly would not invite anyone over to your party unless you had cleaned up your house, got the hors d'oeuvres, the drinks, music etc.   When your guests arrive, do you open the door and let them stand there or do you give the tour of where everything is so that they can enjoy themselves.  As more and more people hear about how great your party is, folks will want a piece of the action and convince you to invite their friends.  Eventually it will lead to a bunch of riff raffs wanting in which will eventually ruin it for everyone.

Before you put some super aggressive acquisition plan together, ensure that your house is in order and you are ready to greet your guests. One of my colleagues and fellow bloggers here, Matt Vernhount says is beautifully: “It’s not the size of your list, its what you do with it”

Invest time and money to the more important part of acquisition.  You and your subscribers will be glad you did.

Bounces in email marketing are inevitable, but I often wonder how many marketers in email truly watch their bounces on a regular and consistent basis.

Enter UBER email marketing geek like me. 

At Groupon where I work, our frequency is high and we send a tremendous amount of segmented email.  Some may think that managing and reacting to bounces in this type of environment seems like a daunting task.  One of the requirements that I have as professional is that I am fed a constant stream of information on all areas relating to running an email program.  I hate being caught off guard and want to know if there is a problem before anyone tells me that we have a problem.

I spoke to my ESP and told them of my requirement to be notified when we are having a bounce problem.  I specifically wanted to know if we were having any block bounce issues with my top domains so that I can be proactive in solving them.

They responded quickly and are now generating a bounce report every 3 hours (7 days a week) indicating all of my bounce rates across domains.  I scan almost every report as they come in looking for patterns or trends in the percentages and notify my ESP peeps if I see issues.

My point in all of this is that if you are the manager or director of an email program, this means you own the  whole shebang....bounces and all.  Don't rely on anyone but yourselves to manage the tough stuff like this.  Take control of your bounces, specifically those block bounces which can wreak havoc on your program if an early warning system is not in place.  Is every 3 hours overkill?  Perhaps, but in some programs it might be necessary especially if your program relies on email as its main source of revenue.

A fellow colleague and outstanding contributor of this great blog Dennis Dayman has had some posts centered around bounces and if you haven't read them, I encourage you to do so.

Long live email marketing.

What is my open rate now? What is my CTR now? What are my current engagement rates? How does it compare to last year? Are we above or below industry averages? What is our revenue now compared to last year?  The list can go on and on.  We are a society who has now been trained to finding out what is happening now and comparing it to the past.  We want the information at our fingertips and we ride the information wave as quickly and painlessly as we can.  The same goes for email programs.  Organizations want revenue now.  They want list growth immediately and they want to send as many emails now to their user base for fear that they will miss the opportunity to tell their subscribers their latest and greatest thing.

What about the future? The hardest and most rewarding thing about running an email program is not only planning for the future, but executing on it.  Its hard to plan for things 6 or 8 months out when all you are is focused on the here and now, but its essential for your survival.  If you are seeing a decrease in engagement rates and increases in your unsubscribe rates, what sorts of things are you planning for and will execute against in order better that situation?  Often what happens is that people don't anticipate major swings in their programs and start to plan and execute on ideas well past the window of opportunity.  "We don't have the bandwidth" or "We have other projects going on" are often the excuses I have heard.  Then as the hammer starts to fall, chaos ensues and fingers are pointed.

What I am trying to convey is that email strategy is all about planning 6-12 months out. Its about looking at current trends and anticipating your needs sooner as opposed to later. Prove things via a business case and be tough about what you want, especially if you get initial push back from others.  Beat the drum slowly and consistently to do things to protect your organization and enhance your subscribers experience. In addition, I am not talking about the easy stuff here either. I am talking about the hard stuff that people outside the email marketing world think is great in theory, lousy for immediacy but feel that its easy for them to implement type of things.

The future of your email program has already begun people.  What are you doing to ensure that what you know is right for the future is getting on the agenda vs. stuff that you know will always be waiting for you?

Part 1 - 9 basics and beliefs.

You need the basics to really ruin your email program and it just so happens that this is your lucky day. I have compiled a list of 9 essential beliefs or “the basics” to get you started. Dig in and let the downfall begin.

First and foremost, you need to understand that you are the king/queen of email marketing and your program is superior to all other email programs. Subscribers need to understand this and you need to communicate that on a regular and consistent basis.

Second, revenue is king in email.  Don't worry about what the subscriber wants..worry about what your company wants..which is revenue!! Forget about how your subscriber thinks about your company if you send them an email everyday....they are bound to buy something eventually.  Who cares if they opt out as you can just go out and find another subscriber who will LOVE to contribute to the bottom line.

Third, you need to realize that you send email blasts....not communications, not campaigns....but blasts. You tee up lists and blast the folks in hopes of them doing what you want them to do. Who cares if it sounds like you are going to engage in a world war against your subscribers, its just email right? Of course, since your program is the best you should have a near 100% conversion and anything less than that is unacceptable. Blasting people with emails is not really a bad thing to say..heck its not as if I am shooting them, blowing them up or spraying and praying on them right?

Fourth, take all of the best practices you learn about in blogs and white papers etc...print them out and use them as paper airplanes in the office or as starter logs for your fireplace. In fact..why read anything at all that could better your program. Who needs people telling you what to do all the time right? Why invest the time trying to better your program anyway?  Best practices are for losers because your program is the best.

Fifth, people WANT your email. In fact, they are sitting around just waiting to get your latest mail bomb. Who cares what you send them..I mean they signed up for your program and they should be grateful to get what they get. Send them a new email every day if you can which is easy right? Your superhuman and this email thing is easy.

Sixth, hire a loser to run your email bazooka program. A recent study just came out that said 3 monkeys in a lab were able to send out emails and run a program. All they did was put some pictures on a template, push the button, blasto it was sent and the revenue just came pouring in. Can't afford a loser or a monkey, grab Brad or Brenda from the mail room..heck they deal with mail all day long and email and mail sound the same. Don't have a mail room either....tell Suzy or John in the marketing department to handle email from now on. What is one more hat for them to wear right?

Seventh, get an ESP that can send email. Who cares if their UI or support sucks...just make sure that they can tee up your email shots for the cheapest price. Don't forget to chose those ESP's that love to put their logo's on the bottom of each email they send.....that won't bother you since your email program kicks butt and your subscribers won't find that annoying.

The eighth rule is the best. $99 is a heck of a price to pay for 4 million opt in names. Why grow your list organically when you can get 4 million people who have OPT IN to receive YOUR special offer.  Remember this, the bigger your list, the bigger the payoff!!  Revenue is the name of the game baby.  Don't forget to negotiate that free set of steak knives with your order.

Ninth and most importantly...let the CMO or President or someone above you tell you what and how to run your email program. Since monkeys can do this job, who better than someone who has never done or understand email tell you how to run this awesome program you have. Surely their expectations for success will be easily achievable and in fact you be asking them to challenge you within 3 months.

Remember, these are just the basics in how to ruin your email program. In future posts, I will be sure to go into more detail on some really great ways to totally mess it up.

For now..just sit back and relax..your email program is running just fine without you. In fact, take the rest of the day off and forget to QA your weekend email as I bet its perfect anyway.

***The How To Ruin Your Email Marketing Program series was inspired by a book I just finished reading entitled “How to ruin your life” by Ben Stein. Most inspirational books have a way of communicating the same theme with different words and for some crazy reason I was able to draw a lot out of of Ben's book. If you find this sort of post even remotely inspiring, let me know as I will be happy to continue.***

The title of email marketing manager is obsolete in my book. To me the word marketing is a word which reeks with the act of engaging in a monologue with the customer. Wikipedia defines marketing from the AMA as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large" The definition goes on to say that Marketing practice tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertising, distribution and selling.

Email marketing is not just about advertising or selling. Its about creating a dialogue  or engagement of the customer with your brand through the use of email. Its not about advertising to them via a monologue of you just shouting (err...blasting as some may say) at the customer with the latest deal. Email marketing does not stop at the promotional email. Its only the beginning of a journey across an entire customer lifecycle of getting them engaged and creating what would easily be a dialogue with your company.

Therefore I would like to suggest that anyone that is currently employed as an email marketing manager, that you petition your current employer for a title change to either an Email Dialogue Manager or an Email Engagement Manager. I think once you are called what you should be doing, some of you will start to act and execute more on what we SHOULD be doing.

Respect for subscribers is often absent from many email marketers' programs, as Andrew Kordek pointed out in a recent post “Respect in email.”

I concur that respect is important, but it's not enough to command that marketers respect their subscribers. Respect begins when you manage expectations at the start of the subscriber relationship.

Managing expectations means adopting a "no-surprises" policy. This means you make it clear up front how the opt-in process works. State what kind of content they signed up for and how often you'll send it. Put as much control as you can into your subscribers' hands.

Then, honor the expectations with the emails that you send. The mismatch – accidental or deliberate – between what a subscriber expects and what you actually send is what drives spam complaints, unsubscribes and disengagement.

Common Expectations

While we are all different, the following are typical things your subscribers expect from your brand and email program and where they have likely been disappointed before:

1. Privacy/Permission: You won't share their email addresses or data with other companies unless you state that up front and get their express permission to do so.

2. Brand: Your brand will be visible immediately in the inbox so subscribers can recognize it. They don’t want to have to guess what that acronym means or creative name you’ve come up for your newsletter.

3. Other communications: Unless they agreed to let you share their name with third parties or other groups within your company, they don't expect to receive email from them.

4. Content: If they signed up for a best practices/trends newsletter, they don't expect to get aggressive sales-oriented messages and could mark those as spam.

5. Frequency: Subscribers to an email called "The Weekly Digest" do not expect to suddenly start receiving the "Daily Deals" email from you. Of if you send 3-4 times during the year but then double or triple that frequency during the holidays, you will likely pay dearly in unsubscribes and spam complaints.

6. Format: Today, most people expect to receive an HTML email (even if they don't know what that means), though some prefer text for their mobile phone or other reasons. They will also expect that you give them the choice of formats or let them know the format if you don't offer options.

7. Subscription management: Savvy email consumers expect to subscribe, unsubscribe, change addresses or preferences, contact company reps or offer feedback without searching your Web site. Put all this information in an administrative area (typically in the footer) in each email.

8. Relevance and personalization: Most people are willing to share a certain amount of personal information with you, if they trust you won't abuse it and they believe they will receive value in return.

Explain why you ask for sensitive information such as a birth date, postal address or household income. If you ask for birth date, for example, I expect either a birthday email or that the emails I receive will be personalized based on my age range. (The exception being if you ask for legal reasons: alcohol, firearms, etc.)

There have been quite a few posts around  email blogs lately giving advice on things such as relevancy, testing, segmentation, preferences, content etc..... However there is one thing that I truly believe in that I have yet to read much about and that is respect.

Respect your subscribers. Respect them as consumers, as customers and as real people.

Are you respecting your subscribers by sending them an email every day pitching your company?  Think about this for a minute. Would you call up a prospect EVERY single day and pitch them over the phone. Better yet..would you do it to a friend? Would you call them up 3 days a week to sell them something?  I bet not.  Its all about respect.

Respecting your subscribers goes a lot farther than just send frequency.   You respect them in many other ways including:

Respecting their privacy.

Respecting their choice.

Respecting the fact that they once took the time to register for your email.

Respect that they are intelligent human beings who support your program.

Respect that if you give respect...you will get it in return.

We are a society in which has very little regard for respecting one another. Just the other day, I was at a red light and when it turned green, I hesitated for 5 seconds to ensure that the coast was clear (as it was a dangerous intersection) and the person behind me blew her horn and gave me the finger.  Was that really necessary?  And was it really necessary to send that email 2 times or 1 time a day during the holiday season?  Was it respectful? Is it respectful to auto opt in a subscriber via an eAppend because you can?Lastly, do you treat your customers with respect or do you and your company just see them as a number? 

Respect should be the number one goal/challenge put forth to email marketers for the remainder of 2009.  In fact it should have been in 2008 and should be number one in 2010 and beyond.

Ever wonder how your email marketing program would look if you let a team of your subscribers run it?  Think about it the next time you push that button or work your creative with folks.

Next time you walk into a meeting with executives or people wanting to send out an email, ask them "what would our subscribers do?"...then stand back and watch the blank faces. You see....no one in marketing wants to imagine a customer running the email program. Most often people don't want their customers running their marketing.....let alone a medium such as email.

What would your subscriber really do if he/she would run your program?  Why not ask?

***This post is an oldie but a goodie from my own blog***

Effective immediately.......please stop sending email if any of the following conditions exist:

1. You send email just to sell stuff and are not worried about establishing a lifetime relationship with your subscriber
2. You send out more than 3 promotional emails a week with no analytics defining your list attrition.
3. You don't welcome people into your program with a healthy, clear, concise and truly welcoming email.
4. You don't segment.
5. You can't clearly represent your value proposition.
6. You don't have frequency caps/cadence worked out.
7. Everyone in your org is calling it an email blast and deep down inside you kinda agree with them.
8. You are more worried about pushing the email out than the strategy behind the push.
9. You have used an eAppend to acquire 90% of your list.
10. You are more worried about incorporating a share to a subscribers social network feature than serving up dynamic relevant content to the subscriber based on propensity models or user behavior.
11. Short term revenue achievement is more important than long term subscriber engagement.
12. Last but not least....you spend more time reading blogs and tweets from self proclaimed industry experts (like me) about best practices and the latest trends rather than implement ANY of the suggestions from us folks.

Until next time.....

I was in a well know home furnishings store over the weekend with my wife. As we were checking out, the clerk turned to me with a nice smile and said "Would you like to sign up for our email list to receive special promotions in your inbox". In my mind I said "hell ya" being the email dude that I am.

After I said yes, she said "that's great...go ahead and fill out that sheet on the counter and we will be sure to enter you into our system." When I looked down on the counter there is was..in plain view, a sign up sheet (like the ones you had in school) with peoples names, address', birthdays, phone numbers and email address' right there for the world to see. I asked why they have a sign up sheet like this to grab my information, why they have it for everyone else to see my information on it and asked if they were concerned over my privacy as a customer. She smiled and then said "well our legal department says its ok..." as if she has said it a million times and totally felt comfortable saying so.

Folks..think about it. Just because its legal, doesn't mean its the right thing to do. Yes, grabbing my email address at the register is a great thing for companies to engage in. Asking me to put it down on a sheet with a bunch of other information is a horrible violation of my privacy and makes for an awkward customer experience. Sure..it may be legal to do and your attorneys say its fine, but in the age of privacy concerns, its the wrong thing to do.

Just because its legal, doesn't mean its the right thing to do should carry over to many aspects of your email program. If you want to do something,  spend the time and do it right. I wonder how many attorney's would fill out their information on a sheet of paper and wonder how many of you reading this would too.

I have been noticing a rash of emails lately from companies which tout a “private sale”, “email exclusive”, “family and friends” or some sort of exclusivity in their offer because you are an email subscriber. Then, only to find out I have been duped because when I go to the companies site, I notice that my “private sale” is not so private in that everyone who visits the site gets to take advantage of the private sale or the family and friends event is really for every family or every friend who happens to just land on the site.

Here is the deal. If its an email exclusive, make it an email exclusive and not open to the world. If I am a subscriber to your email, make me feel special and offer me something that not any Joe can get just by showing up. As an email subscriber, I took the time to subscribe and read your email and when I joined (hopefully when I got your welcome email) I got this little note saying that I would be receiving exclusive deals in my email.

Touting something that is exclusive when its not is like giving me a photocopy of the Mona Lisa. Give me something unique or just send me an email with your logo and link in it or soon enough, I will tune out your noise

I have been at eTail for about a day now and can tell you this sort of thing is really cool. I am presenting on transforming your email through the use of personalization tomorrow and am completely stoked to do so. I have met with quite a few vendors, some that I know quite a bit about and some that I have met for the first time. So far, no one has stood out to me and its probably because I am mainly talking to some sales folks, but I had quite a few chats with people today and wanted to recognize them here.

1. Morgan Stewart from Exact Target: I was finally able to meet and chat with Morgan for awhile today and it was way cool. I was coming down from a caffeine buzz when I saw him, but nonetheless our conversion was spirited and all over the place on a variety of different subjects. He is one smart dude and I hope that I can rap with him again in the future as I believe we share a lot in common.

2. Blue Hornet: I didn't know much about these folks when I came here, but know a little more now and am fairly impressed with what they had to say. Great convo around the customer lifecycle and pains of working in the trenches. Thanks for the thumb drive guys...I will be sure to use it.

3. Responsys: I met with their CMO and sales folks and since we are moving to them as an ESP vendor at my organization it was great to see them in action at a trade show. I discussed their latest win StubHub and Omniture and it seems like is some cool technology worth checking out. No trinkets though.

4. CheetahMail: I like the Cheetah folks. They were warm and friendly but said that they were still bummed to be losing us as a client. I am bummed too as there are great people there, but they might be stuck with me longer than they realize. Heck implementations take awhile. Oh yea..and I commented on their blog today and got some cool flair for some folks at the office.

5. Michelle Eichner from PV: It was great to put a face with a name and I so glad I spent 60 minutes with her rapping about email and her world and integrations and the like. She is one smart person and oober (yes..I know its uber) cool to talk to. I am a PV nut she represents well.

6. richrelevance: After all, I am here because of them and what we have done with their amazing product. I will talking a lot about them in tomorrows presentation. I went to dinner with the CEO and Selly is one down to earth but super smart dude. We were random in our conversation talking about technology to kids to giving back to the community and I am honored to know such a great guy.

Well. There you have it. Day 1 is done and I am heading off to bed, up early and then back to Chicago on Wednesday.

Here are the top 10 pick up lines I recently overheard at an email marketing conference:

10. Your eyes are as gorgeous as perfectly coded HTML

9. How would you like to bounceback to my room?

8.  Are you tired?  Cause you have been throttling through my mind all day!!

7. I couldn't help but notice that when our eyes met, we had a 100% click rate.

6.  I have "ESP" and it told me that we should be together tonight

5. Trust me babe....I have 100% deliverability rate and my reputation is perfect

4.  Hi there, I am into ALT TEXT, how about you?

3.  Can I opt you into my life?

2.  You wanna trigger me? What?

1. Wanna start a lifetime value together?

Please feel free to share you best email marketing pick up lines

Everything you read and hear about in today's marketplace is how bad the economy is.  People are getting laid off, revenue  and profit forecasts are dwindling and of course, marketing budgets are shrinking.   Many executives will now look at more cost effective ways to interrupt the consumer with marketing messages and one of the mediums will be email marketing.  Email marketing is looked at by many as cost effective with a potential for a high rate of return, so there will be an inevitable push by many in organizations to either start emailing or ramp up to do more email.

The other day, I was in my local coffee shop and I overheard one person was talking to another about how her boss came to her and said something about wanting to do email marketing.  He told her that he wanted her to research how they can get their customers email address so that they can start to send email to them to tell them about there products.  She was complaining that she had no idea what he was talking about since she was only in IT and she didn't know how she would find the time to figure out how to get emails and then send out emails along with doing her full time job.

Then, the other day as I was driving home I heard a radio spot on a local station from a well known ESP touting that email marketing was the next biggest thing and that companies should try their solution risk free for 30 days to see what the results are.  All I kept thinking during this spot is that the fact the email marketing is being touted as a near free, easy and out of the box thing for companies big and small to engage in.

Rather than pontificate in this post about the value of email and how companies should be engaged in doing email the only thing I can say is that I think we are staring at a glorious mountain here.  People are going to look for cheaper ways to communicate with their customers and email will be one of the ways for them to do so.  As a person that has been on the client side of email for 8 years, I am here to help and offer advice anyway I can.  When I don't know something or want to learn, I reach out to those that know more than me to be that sponge to do it right rather than cobble it together.

If you are an email professional, take a pledge with me.  Take a pledge to help those who want to get started in email and do so in some cases without the thought of financial gain.  By doing so, we can make our industry do great things and we as a community of professionals can hold our head high in knowing that we care enough about what we do to spread the gospel of good email practices.

Lets be the Jedi's of email and take as many paduan's on as we can.

I love talking with smart people in the email industry. In fact, I truly enjoy talking with folks whom I would consider to be at the forefront of email to pick there brains on things like what the inbox Is going to look like in 4 years, how they would define a “great” email program and what they see are the 3 biggest problems are in the email industry today.

To me, Morgan is one of the guys who are looked at as being a thought leader and one of the few people who can at a moments notice tell you something so incredible, it would make your head spin.

So how does Morgan define a “great” email program? He thinks that companies who “get their subscribers more engaged over time” are the real winners and I could not agree with him more. But who does this I asked? The one program that came to his mind was Food Lion, a grocer based out of North Carolina. He mentioned that they have the uncanny ability to drive customer engagement with their email, because their messages are not only relevant to each subscriber based on in-store shopping habits, but they include a number of “engagement drivers” such as games, sweepstakes and polls. Great for the subscriber, but bad for the email professional like me to check out since I need to have one of their “cards” to get signed up.

As I stated above one of the things that I like to do with thought leaders is pick their brain on what they think the inbox is going to look like 4 years from now. To me, this question is especially hard because who would have thought where we would have been at 6 or 7 years ago, but nonetheless I like asking it anyway. Morgan brought up a good point with how social media today is a “phenomenon without a plan”. Since no one has been able to figure out how to monetize it, he thinks that there will be a tremendous push to a “social inbox”. With the advent of MySpace wanting to get into email, he thinks that someone needs to figure it out and he suggested that I look at a company called “Other Inbox” to get some perspective. Additionally, mobile will play a huge part in, but with the introduction of the iPhone and the rapid introduction of “copycat” devices, he sees the technical challenges fading away (e.g., rendering), while the practical issues of how to communicate with people on the go will come to the forefront.

So what is wrong with email? I mean what are the biggest problems that are facing the email industry today? Morgan’s answer is simple and yet so relevant First, he thinks that there is a pervasive print mentality in the industry. I could not agree more with him in that email is not direct mail. Second, he believes that there is too much focus on deliverability, that while deliverability is a crucial part of email marketing, the share of voice in the email space is disproportionate to the detriment of his last point. Morgan believes that email is too siloed in most organizations because we still have trouble communicating the value of email to the C-Suite.

Most of you may know that Morgan works for what I would consider to be a top tier ESP, Exact Target. I have worked with E.T. in the past and have found their application to be extremely powerful. However, one of the things that impresses me the most about Exact Target is their ability to produce excellent educational material to the masses in this industry. I never miss a whitepaper and continue to read their blog almost daily for a great bit of insight into the email world.

However, I asked Morgan what he wished people would know about Exact Target that they didn’t already know. He had 2 things that came to mind which intrigued me. First, he talked about how ET had a very extensive relational data model which makes them nimble when it comes to integration. Second he mentioned how the ET platform is extremely adept at one to one communications specifically in the areas of SMS and voice messaging which spans well beyond the limitless capabilities that ESP’s offer in the email marketing space. To me it seems as if ET is trying to align and market their platform as a true digital communications offering, which is cool to see.

We planned for 30 minutes but ended up talking for 75 which seemed still way too short given what we were talking about. To me, it seems that email comes easy for Morgan and he has a quiet confidence about him that I really admire. Morgan not only represents Exact Target well, but truly embodies the character of someone who has been looked at as a visionary in this industry.

Now for the fun stuff…..As things go, I am a fun person by nature so I always like to throw some curves at folks when I talk to them. So here were my not-so-email related questions that I posed to Morgan. Enjoy.

Superman or Batman? <Morgan> - Superman.

Animal House of Caddyshack? <Morgan> Caddyshack (he seemed to struggle with this one)

Arizona or Pittsburgh? (this chat was pre-Super Bowl) <Morgan> - “Bud Light”

Bruce Springsteen or U2? <Morgan> - U2

Are you a pig or a hog? 

When I was in sales over 10 years ago, I had a VP who used the phrase "Pigs go to slaughter, hogs live forever". He would then follow up with the notion of you not wanting to be a pig (greedy) in what you did as a sales person. I took that quote to heart (even though I am not sure if its entirely true about the hog) Is your email marketing program a pig or a hog? 

Pigs consistently perform eAppends to unnaturally increase the size of their subscriber base 

Hogs have an aggressive but well laid out natural acquisition plan. 

Pigs send out an ill timed and irrelevant email every day to its subscriber base 

Hogs define cadence in a well thought out contact strategy either through micro segmentation or purchase and browse trends 

Pigs increase cadence when they see a spike in revenue as a result of an email campaign 

Hogs define a lifetime value of the customer. 

Pigs send out email blasts. Hogs send out email communications. 

Pigs hide the unsubscribe link in the email 

Hogs make the unsubscribe link prominent. 

Pigs make it difficult for a person to unsubscribe once they take them to a landing page. 

Hogs offer opt down and frequency choice as well as ECOA. 

Pigs send offers. 

Hogs send relevance. 

Pigs do implied opt in. 

Hogs do double opt in. 

Pigs laden their email with products and banners 

Hogs offer simplistic looks. 

Pigs want to send more emails. 

Hogs worry about reputation. 

Pigs only concern themselves with revenue. 

Hogs concern themselves with building a relationship. 

Pigs think short term. 

Hogs think long term