 Ryan
Allis founder of IntelliContact describes how to use email marketing
in combination with blogs and RSS feeds in an
easy way to improve communication results. Email
marketing was once seen as a marketer’s
panacea. Today, email marketing has inherent challenges
with spam, deliverability, and reader retention.
A new communication channel is developing called
RSS that provides some advantages to email marketing. IntelliContact
makes it easy to create, send, and track email
newsletters, surveys, blogs, and RSS feeds.
Interview
Recorded: September 8, 2006
Segment 1; Segment
2; Segment
3; Segment 4
We
invite your comments, questions, feedback and
suggestions
What is Multi-Channel Emarketing? |
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Multichannel Email Marketing is about getting messages through to your recipient via channels that actually get the message read. |
The Five Step Process of Permission Emarketing |
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There is a simple, five-step process for putting a permission-based emarketing campaign in place. Ryan Allis discusses the process. |
Surveys & Autoresponders |
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Description |
The Future of Emarketing |
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Where will emarketing be in 2012? |
Summary:
Multichannel eMarketing Using eMail, RSS Feeds
& Blogs
All marketers want to get their message “read”,
but how can they achieve this? On September 8th
2006, Cindy Turrietta and Todd Sarouhan interviewed
Ryan Allis of Intellicontact about multi channel
eMarketing and getting messages through to recipients
via several channels such as email, blogs and
RSS feeds. Ryan is a brilliant young entrepreneur
(he was named one of the top 25 entrepreneurs
under 25 by BusinessWeek in 2005) and in this
interview he explained to viewers what multi channel
emarketing really is and what RSS feeds and blogs
are. He emphasized the importance of using surveys
and auto responders to increase conversion rates
and shared a very simple five-step process for
putting a permission-based emarketing campaign
in place.
What is Multi-Channel eMarketing?
Ryan Allis is the CEO of Broadwick Corp and in
this interview he talked about “Intellicontact”,
a product launched by his company which enables
marketers to send out just one message through
three different channels i.e. RSS feeds, blogs
and e-mail. This method of marketing gives importance
to the communication method preferred by the customers
and allows them to pull out the message as they
choose, whether from a blog, an RSS feed or an
e-mail.
Intellicontact originally started off as an email
marketing platform and the ability to carry out
surveys was added to the application. The latest
addition to the application has been to enable
messages to be sent out as RSS feeds or blogs.
Marketers can also use this application to create
and track email newsletters, surveys, blogs and
RSS feeds.
Since many Internet users are still unaware of
what RSS really is, Ryan explained that RSS stands
for “Really Simple Syndication,” a
technology that powers blogs among other things.
RSS is simply a standard way of formatting code
that makes material very easy to syndicate across
the internet.
A blog is a styled RSS feed. It actually has
a visual representation of what that the feed
is. Ryan informed listeners that the current standard
being used is XML 2.0 and most feed readers and
blogs use this technology.
The Five Step Process of Permission eMarketing
In the second segment of this show, Ryan went
on to explain the five-step process for putting
a permission-based emarketing campaign in place.
He began by explaining what permission based email
marketing is. Using this form of marketing, in
order to send an email communication to someone
who is on your list, you have to first obtain
that person’s permission. This is done by
informing people that if they want to receive
messages from you, they must first sign up, or
give permission.
According to Ryan, the 5 steps of permission
E-marketing are as follows:
- Selecting the software: The process begins
with the user selecting what tools they are
going to use. Ryan advised listeners that they
should find a tool that is easy to use (e.g.
a yahoo group to communicate with people ),
allows you to import a list of contacts, add
a sign up for your web site and create a newsletter
using some form of WYSIWYG environment so you
that you don’t need to know the HTML.
- Type and frequency of communication: The second
step is to decide on the type and the frequency
of the communication you are going to be sending.
The recommendation was sending a monthly newsletter.
Ryan informed listeners that with Intellicontact
it literally takes one hour of work to schedule
a whole year of email newsletters. The schedule
function is used to do this monthly and the
user can add updates just before sending the
newsletter.
Surveys and Autoresponders
In the third segment Ryan went on to explain
the third, fourth and fifth steps of permission
eMarketing.
- Make sure you add a sign-up form to your website
because many users sign up for accounts. Interestingly,
30% of people don’t put a sign-up form
on their webpage or their website. Ryan advised
marketers to include a link in the e-mail they
send out that instructs users where to go to
sign up. This is necessary because many email
clients don’t support forms in email.
- Pick the email template that you want to use:
Intellicontact provides 300 templates to choose
from. The user can preview them and then just
click and the one they like or create their
own custom template.
- Develop high quality relevant content for
the message and send it out to the list, review
the statistics and tweak the messaging to improve
your open rates. You can also test your subject
lines and test different days of the week to
improve your campaign.
The Future of eMarketing
According to Ryan, the web is finally ready to
grow up because so many people use broadband now
and three times more people are using the internet
now as compared to figures in 2000. A lot of smart
investors and management teams are running Web
2.0 companies today.
Ryan foresees a merging of Web 2.0 and eMarketing.
Tagging will be used to tag a communication based
on the search terms that represent it and enable
marketers to have a public community archive of
that newsletter. This will allow people to find
RSS feeds and blogs and do research on the web
using this community published information.
Ryan feels that the next step in this evolution
would be to be able to integrate with text messaging
and have communication within the text messaging
world. This would involve some sort of an opt
in system which would allow people to choose to
receive your text message. As a result, marketers
will be able to send out their communication as
a text message as well as an email, newsletters,
blog and RSS feed. To a large extent, this facility
would be used by event promoters or businessmen
who want to increase traffic to their bar, restaurant
or club.
At the end of the show, Ryan encouraged listeners
to visit intellicontact.com and his blog (www.Ryan
Allis.com) where several informative articles
on web 2.0, technology, young entrepreneurship,
and venture capital are displayed.
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