Want to use email to drive site traffic?

I'll be speaking this Thursday, July 17, at the next Meet-up event for the Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs group.

Here are the details:

Event title: Using Email Marketing to Drive Traffic to your Website
Day: Thursday, July 17
Location: Georgia Tech ATDC, 75 5th Street, NW, Hodges Room, 3rd floor Atlanta, GA 30308
Time: 6: 45 p.m.

You can register for the event, by clicking here.  I'll be wearing my I Send Your Email hat and talking about what to keep in mind when thinking of launching an email marketing program.

I hope to see you there!

Palm doesn't want to get lost in the shuffle

I have received two emails in two days from Palm touting their Centro smartphone. With today's launch of the new iPhone, I guess Palm is trying to do its best to keep their product in the collective consciousness of telephone shoppers.

It's a nice idea, but I think it's a reach for Palm to think the Centro could be a replacement for an iPhone.

And today's message (at right) is pretty weak in my opinion. The call-to-action ("learn more") is buried and the font size touting the new color is awfully small. The new color feature is touted in the subject line - Palm(R) Centro(TM) smartphone now in Electric Blue on AT&T - but I think it should be written as prominently as the "Palm(R) Centro(TM) smartphone" headline above it.

OK, end of rant. But I will end by giving Palm credit for adding features to its phone and having a compelling reason to send today's blast. I just hope they set their expectations accordingly.

Well, now you know

I've been a member of Facebook for over a year. This morning I logged-in to Facebook and was confronted with this at the top of my home page: What gives? Why am I just not being asked that question? Makes me wonder how I been identified in others' feeds all this time...

Quantifying the clutter

When I created this blog, I had information such as this in mind:

“As consumers, we see over 3,156 images a day. We’re just not conscious of them,” says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst of the consumer research firm NPD Group. “Our subconscious records maybe 150, and only 30 or so reach our conscious behavior. If I have a celebrity as part of that message, I just accelerated the potential for my product to reach the conscious of the consumer.”

That quote is found in a NY Times article about the power of celebrity and how some brands can enhance their message's relevancy by using celebrities to hawk their products.

It illustrates the competition marketers have for consumers' attention and the importance of using smart methods to cut through the clutter.  But "smart" doesn't always have to mean using a celebrity.  It just happened to have helped in the cases cited in that article.

Technorati Tags: Marketing clutter

What's new?

I  have been gone from this blog for too long, but I haven't forgotten about it in the meantime.  I've been sidetracked by a few projects and am planning to turn by attention back to this beloved blog.

When I do, I am predicting that the majority of my posts will be related to email marketing.  I've begun an email marketing consultancy and would like to keep my posts focused on that area of marketing, rather than just marketing stuff in general. Time has helped me learn that I need to focus on one aspect rather than try to be a generalist.  I have gravitated to email marketing in the course of my freelance work - it's what I enjoy most - so that will be the easiest thing for me to blog about.

Lately I've been working on my consultancy's web site.  For now the .biz version is functioning (www.isendyouremail.biz) but I am working on the .com version and am looking forward to sharing that with everyone soon.

I've also been added to the MailChimp roster of experts (found here) and have enjoyed getting to know them and their excellent service.

On Tues., June 24 I'll be speaking to the Atlanta Online Merchants Meetup group on the topic of email marketing.  Thanks in advance to Eric Winter for this opportunity.  The event is at 6 p.m. at the Peachtree Branch of the Atlanta Public library if you'd like to attend.  Click on the meetup link above to register.