Janine Popick on email, blogs and business
When Janine Popick founded email service provider VerticalResponse, it meant swapping places at the email marketing table.
Her background is on the sender side of things, holding senior direct marketing positions at major IT and Internet-based corporations.
But one question gnawed at her for years: where were the easy tools that let small business do email marketing too?
She decided to answer the question herself by moving from technology user to technology provider. She founded California-based VerticalResponse in 2001 and the company now provides self-service list management, email marketing and postcard marketing solutions for about 25,000 paying customers.
Both VerticalResponse and Janine's blog continue that small business focus today. So I picked her brains for some email marketing perspectives for those without huge budgets...and came away with additional insight on the business value of blogs.
Small business and email marketing
With the media often portraying email marketing as difficult, not to say dangerous, Popick acknowledges that small businesses often overestimate the likely expense and complexity.
She quotes a typical reaction she gets before presenting to an audience of prospective customers...'This is just going to be too complicated and probably too expensive for me.'
But various online self-service tools now make it relatively easy for users to set up and send an email campaign. And all for just a handful of dollars. It's a question of getting that message across. For example, Popick says once the sceptics see a product demonstration, they change their tune.
One particular sceptic "...was taken aback. Within 2 minutes -- as I showed her a template, entered some copy and inserted a jpeg -- she was like 'I can do that! That's how easy it is?' So it is easy...once you see it."
Which is not to say that there's nothing to learn. Popick says it's incumbent on services like VerticalResponse to ensure customers are informed about best practices, since small businesses are "hungry for knowledge," but have little time spare to find it.
She highlights three areas that often need attention: the permission aspect of building a list, subject lines and email design in the context of display problems like image blocking.
Images and subject lines
A particular trap is to design image-only emails. Popick notes, "In their eyes, it's the most gorgeous email...and they probably paid a web designer a lot of money for it. We're constantly saying you need a healthy mix of text and graphics, because the first thing people are going to see with your email otherwise is the unsubscribe link."
Subject lines are also a hot topic. Popick says, "Too many businesses put too much time into the creative side of things. Then at the very end they slap in a subject line and send an email out. We know...we've done it ourselves."
Her recommendations are to keep it..."short and sweet, to the point. Make it catchy and don't try to fool people."
She also stresses the importance of not wasting subject line space. If your from line triggers the necessary recognition, then don't repeat it in the subject line. Popick notes, "...the valuable space you just wasted in the first characters of your subject line is going to push the really important information right off the end."
But despite having less resources than their budget-rich corporate colleagues, Popick notes that small businesses are still very creative in coming up with powerful ways to use email.
She cites the use of email and postcards by wineries to keep in touch with their loyalty club members. So they might send an email to notify people that a wine club shipment is on its way, with a reminder to keep an eye out for it.
If that email bounces, then they send out a printed postcard inviting the customer to a website where they can update their email address and stay informed about forthcoming shipments.
The challenge of integration
That integration and synergy between communication channels is symptomatic of the changing marketing landscape. Popick says, "The customer...the recipient...is now more and more in control of how they want to be communicated with. You have to be prepared to communicate in a bunch of different ways to acquire users and to keep them."
Can that get overwhelming, given the growing range of options...like RSS, blogs, podcasts, online communities?
It's a challenge, accepts Popick, but adds, "...you've got to be prepared for it all going forward. For instance, people are slowly but surely realizing the effectiveness of a blog. RSS hasn't taken off incredibly well in the small business world, but it is taking off. You should be prepared to have a strategy where people can read your information through an RSS feed."
Though noting that email is still going to play a huge role in multichannel communication, Popick practices what she preaches. Her own email marketing blog recently won a ClickZ Marketing Excellence Award.
The benefits of blogging
The blog started as a "kind of hobby"...a way of figuring out how the whole blogging phenomenon worked. "A few people in the company were kind of laughing at me."
But the whole team soon got interested. "My creative team got into it and said look if you're going to be serious about it, you need to do it at least every two days. Are you crazy? What the hell do I have to say every two days?"
But Popick took the plunge, committing to the blog as a source of information for prospects and customers.
"I learned you need to update your blog often for it to be search engine friendly, and in order for people to want to come back and read it. If you really want to be serious about how it could affect your business, then you have to do it more regularly."
For those wondering how to fit regular blog postings into a crammed schedule, Popick says, "On the weekends, I load up four or five posts just to have in my back pocket in case nothing interesting comes up during the week. And I release them every Tuesday and Thursday. If something interesting does come up, I'll post that as well."
Does it work? Yes...
"We're getting about 3,000 to 4,000 unique visitors a month just to the blog. And it's starting to have a huge snowballing effect...people are starting to digg things and link to us. So we're getting more and more inbound links. And everytime I post, I get at least three emails asking me about the business or similar."
But participating in the new world of blogs isn't just about having your own. Popick says, "Conversely, I track anybody who's saying anything about us. So if I see someone saying something about us on a blog, I chime in."
And the personal stuff...
Best business book you ever read: "I hate business books! I would say the one I really like and keep going back to is Often Wrong, Never in Doubt: Unleash the Business Rebel Within by Donny Deutsch. People love him and people hate him. I happen to be one who likes him."
Best piece of business advice you ever got: "Buy low, sell high." I'm thinking about my Apple stock right now.
Best way to celebrate a particularly successful bit of business: "Champagne. Champagne every day really."
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