I wanted to throw this out to the crowd to see if anyone is seeing similar stats – both on my work and personal sites I see MS Explorer falling below 50% of all traffic. Very close to 50 on my B2B site, but occasionally low 40’s on my blog/podcast stuff. Firefox continues to gain ground as well as a bunch of lesser known ones.
Is there anybody out there with Explorer still over 70% as it was a year ago?
It’s been quite the week. Why is it that the 4 day ones always seem worse? Lots of cool stuff going on with a new project with David Scott. I’ve also entered The Webbys again just for kicks, so I had to spend tonight tightening down the last of the new fixtures over on TheMShow.com.
Have a good weekend, I’m off to a secret party tomorrow that doesn’t really exist, but requires pajamas.
Today I finally got around to examining test results of my HTML vs. Text email experiment.
For anyone that missed the earlier post – there are two basic “flavors” of email – HTML, the same language that web pages are made up from (which displays pictures and includes links), and just straight text. If you’re old like me you’ll think of this as what the paper that came out of a typewriter looks like (link for the children). In the dark ages at the dawn of time (1996), all you could do was text. Then email programs added html support and email got a lot more exciting.
Then the PPC crowd showed up (pills, porn, casinos) and emails got a little ugly, and people realized that when your email program shows you a graphic, it’s being pulled from a server and you are leaving a footprint (the sender can tell that you opened it). This is why in the latest version of Outlook and other mail programs may have you go through an extra step to see the graphics for senders that the program doesn’t recognize.
For text email the basic rule was “Put the important links at the top.” For every line you have to scroll, another reader gives up and very few make it to the bottom of the message. HTML changed that. You could have an image call attention to a link and it could outperform others.
Enter 2007, things are changing. Many people are using devices like blackberries that prefer text only email. Many email clients and spam defenders block HTML. Many of the Vertical Publications I advertise with have switched back to text email. And so the challenge was thrown – should our HTML email switch to text?
I hoped that HTML would win because the tracking data is valuable to me – who opened and who converted. Text can only tell you about conversions. My list was split – 75% sent the control (HTML) and the other 25% text. I also had a second list I was testing for additional data that was sent the HTML list.
The Result: HTML Victorious! Both messages performed well on the first links but improved layout in HTML is the critical factor. By using two columns we draw attention to attention to the lead stories in both columns. The lead story in the second column outperformed the same story down at position 4 in the text message by 7X. This begs the question – ok, so you get more bites from HTML, but did more text messages get through? The fact is, without graphics to track, I don’t know. But I do know this – at best my deliverability is 90% (number sent – bounces and unsubs I got). At worst it would only be as good as the open rate for the HTML message – 20% (otherwise there’d be no need to test). Even if text sends perfectly (90%), that’s only a 4x improvement over HTML, not enough to offset the 7x benefit of the layout. Layout beats deliverability, HTML wins.
Your results may vary.
Or more importantly the people in Seattle that added that functionality to Amazon. It was a regular Christmas, me sitting around doing a lot of reading and plenty of visitors up here at the farm.
Of course the burning question that has not changed since I was 6 years old – “Tell us about the loot!”. Amazon has made the holiday a lot more satisfying. I got my nephews stuff that they were psyched to get, as opposed to being the weird old uncle getting them an ugly sweater or whatever. The lovely Carin got me a rare german Rick Astley disc (sorry, I’m a child of the 80’s), the type of thing that would be impossible to find in a pre-Amazon era.
I never got around to recording an M Show, probably tomorrow, not a lot worth chatting about on the Marketing front – except that Land’s End has been pummeling me with email, you’ve got to love a vendor with the guts to send me a reminder about holiday shopping on Christmas day.
I hope your holiday has gone well and you are enjoying your time off.
So I thought I was pretty clever earlier this week with my Rule of 2 (don’t waste your time with social networks that you only hear about once), then Chris Penn, of The Financial Aid Podcast weighed in with a brilliant comment – who gives a damn about the 2 minutes it takes to register, join every network out there to lock down your namespace (protect your brand in Marketese), and he’s absolutely right. He also pointed me towards some other crazy crap Google is trying.
The thing is, this is not the first time he’s dealt me a brainbuster. He’s doing crazy stuff all the time over on MySpace and he’s always experimenting. He’s also good at scripting, and I’m not, so that makes me jealous.
You may ask “Why only an Honorary Ronin”? Chris is actually a ninja, so calling him a Ronin would be an affront. I’ll let him correct my limited understanding if necessary, but the Ninja work for the emperor, sort of like Navy Seals (but you never see them and if there was a movie about them with Charlie Sheen in it, everyone involved in the film would end up assassinated). The Ronin is often without a master, usually because they have been disgraced – basically mercenaries.
In other words it’s sort of like how Colin Powell would be Sir Colin if not for that altercation we had with the kingdom back in the late 1700’s.
I also salute him for working at this place that, for some unknown reason, he’s the only one there that’s not a supermodel (actually I just checked Flickr and for some reason there were some other guys at the holiday party this year, maybe they took some heat for discrimination or something).
So Chris, this sangria’s for you.
About a month ago I noticed that with the exception of a “dummies” book there were very few print resources out there on the big SF so I decided to turn to the blogosphere. I stumbled across SalesforceWatch.com and found a post that they were looking for usability testers for the next release of Salesforce for the Treo.
Because I was an alternate I never got an NDA, but I’m not going to yap and betray Melissa, who gave me the guided tour. The one thing that I liked the most is already in the existing version – the ability to see the latest Opportunities that have Closed as Wins. It’s a cool system but I really need to upgrade my Treo 600 to take advantage of it. In other SF news I still have not been able to get the Google AdWords/Salesforce integration to work. My server only likes forms that use “Submit” and I need to use a different term if I want the SF snippet to work. More experimenting this week to see if I can get that to work. I’m also doing a bunch of hygiene with Ringlead and that’s working well.
I sent off an email campaign yesterday and finally got around to testing a full-color HTML message vs a plain text one. I’m an old enough fart to remember how open and click-throughs exploded when images were added to email so this could be the coming of the full circle. Trying to get a plain text email out proved to be quite a challenge, there’s no way in ConstantContact to just click “Text Only” (but I thought of a workaround for that, of course 1 day after moving hell and earth to get it out via an Outlook mail merge, which is another horror story of it’s own adding to my December from hell).
So in the spirit of the Rocky Balboa release today, I’m wondering if there are any opinions out there on who will be triumphant, the champion or the challenger?
As a follow-up to my post on “Just calling to check in” I was checking my voicemail and a message started up with the classic p0rn theme playing (you know the one, a little slap bass and guitar scratch – bowmp, ba-bowmp, wacka-wacka). After a few seconds a woman’s voice came on trying to sell me something, I can’t even remember what the hell it was.
It just struck me as odd that this virtual voice was “talking” to my voicemail. Just as weird as the lovely Carin talking back to our GPS as we drive around Boston. We hear a human voice and the device IS alive. If I could find a way to automatically delete any voicemail that’s machine to machine that would be it, I’d be in my beach house on Nantucket.
About a year ago I attended a session on how to sell on the phone by Jeff Hoffman of Basho Strategies. He brought up a point that’s become a pet peeve of mine – people calling just to check in. Any time I get a call from somebody trying to sell me something, they’re “just calling to check in”. I immediately noticed I do it all the time. Whenever I’d call someone to bug them about something, or try to sell them something, I was really calling just to check in.
I’ve given up answering my phone, everybody gets to leave voicemail and then I can sort through them every hour or as necessary. As soon as I hear “Hey, it’s X and I’m just calling to check in…” I hit the delete key and move on. I’ve picked up at least an hour a week. I’m wondering if there’s a future in phone sales at all, or has my heart just turned to stone? Is it wrong for me to make change when I throw a $5 in the homeless guy’s cup over at the off-ramp to the Pike on Storrow Drive?
I was a the local Burger King this week feeding my junk food addiction with one of my favorites – the Burger King Chicken sandwich – basically the chicken equivalent of a hotdog, rolled in batter and deep fried. Add a toasted bun, mayo and lettuce and I’m ready for the defib to zap my rapidly hardening arteries.
BK has a great campaign going now where if you buy a value meal you can get an XBox game for $3.99. The games run on both the new Xbox 360 and the original Xbox. Always a sucker for a novel campaign, and a card carrying gamer I had to try one out. I immediately had to laugh as I asked for a copy of “Big Bumpin“. Am I just being too Beavis and Butthead or does this seem outright blatant:
The lit marquis on the game cover says “Big Bumpin'” and you’ve got the king, known for slinging the meat, and his huge (game) cock right there with him. I haven’t actually had time to try it out myself but the reviews on the gamers sites I hit now and then say that this is the best of the three and not bad, especially at the price. So if you hear that 70’s scratch guitar theme later these week, you know I’ll be busy in round of Big Bumpin’ with the King and will deliver my verdict.