August 8, 2010 – Dover, Idaho.

CoolerEmail, the world’s leading online marketing and brand management platform, is proud to sponsor the 2010 World Championship Wakeboard competition!!!  With over 50 of the planet’s most renowned wakeboarders (including Teague “one hundred and ten feet … ten too many” Mullen), live music and lots of cool refreshments, this year’s world championship of wakeboarding is one you won’t want to miss.  See you there!!!

Founded almost 10 years ago, as the new millennium dawned, CoolerEmail is entering its second decade in 2010.

Reaching that milestone is an opportune time to look back at CoolerEmail from its beginnings to now. Examining the email marketing industry as a whole, we see how it and CoolerEmail have grown and developed together in dramatic fashion over the decade. So put your nostalgia hat on and get that faraway look in your eyes as we return to 2000 and compare then and now.

Early in the development of Internet marketing, permission-based email was identified as an economical and powerful tool for direct communication. Founders Leif Youngberg and Lars Helgeson wanted to make it easy for anyone to capitalize on this new opportunity in direct marketing by offering a reliable tool to send professional-looking, permission-based communications and track responses. CoolerEmail was one of the first companies to integrate robust customer relationship management software with HTML e-mail campaign tools.

From its inception, CoolerEmail promoted best practices by emphasizing the importance of sending solicited communication only. The term spam is traced back to 1993 and actually predates the legitimate use of email marketing. By the time CoolerEmail was founded, spam was already an annoyance, but Congress was still three years away from passing the CAN-SPAM Act (new regulations later went into effect in July 2008). Thus CoolerEmail’s founders made it their mission to work diligently with ISPs to develop the industry’s highest deliverability rates while helping their clients send legitimate, opt-in email.

From those humble beginnings with just a handful of clients utilizing CoolerEmail’s robust functionality, CoolerEmail now sends millions of permission-based, trackable emails on behalf of thousands of clients each and every day. Working directly with all the major ISPs, CoolerEmail is proud to offer its clients the highest deliverability rates in the industry.

In 2000, Gallup found that only 54 percent of Americans used the Internet, and 89 percent of them used it for e-mail. Today, most Americans use the Internet, with a vast majority of them using it to send and receive email regularly.

CoolerEmail has always led the industry with innovative features and unmatched reliability. CoolerEmail’s founders believed then, as they do now, that customer service is paramount. Our Cooler Support Team is “fanatical” about support, providing live help during business hours by phone (866.4.COOLER), email or through social networking sites.

Speaking of social networking, the sites Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn didn’t even exist in 2000, but now they do, and CoolerEmail was, of course, an early adopter of all three. Social networking continues to grow in importance, as an adjunct tool for Internet and email marketers. In 2010, you’ll see more robust CoolerEmail functionality and integration for social media sites.

The team at CoolerEmail is looking forward to our second decade as the email marketing service that stands out from the rest in technology, usability and customer service. As we like to say, It’s Just Cooler!

Understanding how your recipients view your emails to effectively organize your content:

Let’s say you have a phone message to relay to your roommate.  You decide to leave a note for them- and you’re hoping they’ll get this note before they leave for work the next morning.  Where do you leave it?  It seems a simple answer: on the bathroom mirror; the refrigerator door; atop the coffee pot… etc.  If you know your roommate’s morning routine, you can leave the note anywhere their eyes will be during that routine.

If you’re especially clever, you may consider not leaving the note in the first place your roommate visits in the morning – as they may be too groggy to pay any attention.  You also might consider not leaving it in the last place, as they will be in a hurry to get out the door.  Either way, you’re not going to leave the note someplace you know your roommate will not be visiting, say, under the bed.  Why?  Because you want them to see it, of course!

This all seems common sense, right?  Well what may not be so “common sense” is applying this same concept to your email newsletters that go out to your client.  If you knew your client’s email reading routine, wouldn’t you use that knowledge to organize the information you wish them to receive?

There are countless elements that play into how your contacts receive your messages. The time of day it is sent off or received, the day of the week, the time of month, attention span of the reader, how busy their business is at the time, whether or not they had a bad day… etc.  But let’s talk about one of the most basic – the layout of the content itself.

So your contact OPENS the email – success! But are they getting all the information they want and you want them to have? They may not receive the message as you intended it to be received because you are making crucial placement mistakes.

Many studies cite an “F-Shaped” reading pattern of web content when studying eye tracking in those who read their language from left to right, top to bottom.  This shape suggests that readers usually begin at the top left corner of the page and move across the top to the right.  They then go back to the left side and read across again, but before long their movement across from left to right gets shorter, like the second limb of a capital F.  Once they lose interest in the main body of the article, they’ll move on to content placed in sidebars.

Of course there are variations on this F shape, sometimes users will read across the entire article creating more of an E shape.  I also found studies that show more of a U shape (down the left and up the right side).  However, the F-shape is by far the most popular when studying web content eye-tracking and some things are pretty much agreed upon:

Headlines get read. Make sure you’re putting the most important information, in the simplest way possible in your headlines. Though it doesn’t need to be as short and sweet as your subject line, you should continue to think about creating interest.

Keep it fairly short – remember, this is an email, not a novel.  Your contacts have other emails to read and business to do.  In most situations, your contact does not have the attention span for your email that they do for other reading material – say, the Sunday paper.

Not everything will be read. What is it they say, on average a person only retains 25% of what they are told?  So think along those lines when creating your newsletter.  Put the most important info at the top, at least in the first part of your article, and think of the rest as “extra”.

Define paragraphs or sections with “mini-headlines”.  Make the first sentence in a paragraph an introduction to the following information – engage readers and create interest.

Smaller type encourages focus. The same way that speaking softly will cause listeners to lean in and tune up their ears, smaller type forces readers to pay more attention.  Just make sure you keep it legible! (Note that some studies found that smaller text will sometimes be ignored when it is placed alongside larger text, as with sub-headlines)

Remember, just like your roommate receiving their phone message from you, your readers want the information you have for them, otherwise they wouldn’t have opted-in to your correspondence.  You just have to give it to them in a place they can easily find it.

Conduct your own research and let us know your findings!  Did you get better click-through rates when links were on the left or the right side of your newsletter?  Are your articles getting more attention that the advertisements on your site?  Are you noticing a difference when you send out more text-heavy newsletter versus the short and sweet?

Articles I used to write this entry:
“The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes” http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm
“F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content” http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html
“11 Striking Findings From an Eye Tracking Study” http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/05/20/11-striking-findings-from-an-eye-tracking-study/
“3 Hot Marketing Tips from Heat Map Analysis” http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/1499/3-Hot-Marketing-Tips-from-Heat-Map-Analysis-images.aspx

You can now look back at your grammar school days and think, “Wow – the nerds really do end up inheriting the world…”

Right?  Right.  Why? Because the nerds paid attention in class.

Were you one of those A-earners getting stuffed in lockers?  If so, you probably already know about the weekly Cooler E-Classes.  If not, I’ll fill you in:

Cooler E-Classes are live, interactive, webinar courses hosted by Betty Cooler (aka Lettie Taylor of the CoolerEmail support team).  These Cooler E-Classes are a tour through the 2.0 interface.  Lasting usually between 45 and 75 minutes – they cover:

• Importing and organizing contacts- Learn about importable file types and how to create them, where to import your contact list, how to create and manage lists and groups and all about custom user fields.

• Building an edition- With the all-new Build module, creating an edition is so easy you’ll be able to send out your newsletters more often – or in a hurry!  Betty shows you, from start to finish, how to create a newsletter edition using a system template.  You’ll learn how to insert images, links and text as well as how to customize each email sent out to it’s recipient.

• Sending a broadcast- Choose your contacts, select the edition and Send!  It’s really that easy – and Betty proves it with a look at the Send module of the 2.0 interface.  She also covers questions like, “what if one contact is on the list twice?” and “how quickly does it actually get sent out?”

• Tracking results- Dive into the Track module with a look at all of the different charts and graphs available for your tracking pleasure.  You’ll learn where to find all the information you need to have.  And how to keep track of it on a regular basis.

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Questions are welcome throughout the session – and the end of the class is completely dedicated to Q & A – so if you need a live demo on a certain feature or want to see your question answered live – ask away!

Cooler E-Classes are every Wednesday afternoon at 1:00pm Pacific Standard Time, and unlike a lot of higher education – they’re completely free!  To request an invitation, email EClasses@CoolerEmail.com

Already attended once but just can’t get enough? – You, and everyone from your team is more than welcome to join any time.

To get more proof that school is cool – email EClasses@CoolerEmail.com and ask for more info on the Cooler E-Classes.

Since the very beginning, business has been about relationships.  It has always been like that and always will be.

The most successful companies continually nurture, develop and strengthen relationships with their customers and patrons.

Whether it is a thank you note from the bank for setting up a new account (kudos to www.panhandlebank.com for setting the bar higher when it comes to customer service – thank you!) or a thoughtful invitation from a local food bank to attend an annual harvest dinner or generous coupon from a local restaurant to its loyal customers, thoughtful communication is key.

Many of our clients practice systematic communication best practices.  They welcome new clients, communicate on the status of orders and transactions in a timely fashion and go the extra mile to improve the overall customer experience.  Years ago, CoolerEmail was the first email marketing service to offer robust “date-based” email functionality enabling clients to send customize emails to clients on important days such as birthdays, anniversaries and holidays.

Yes, its pretty basic.  But it works.  It always has and it always will.  Looking for a way to grow your business and improve the quality of your customers’ experience?  Just invest a little time to learn more about your customers and communicate accordingly.

Setting up birthday emails or other automatically generated triggered emails is easy in CoolerEmail.  If you need any help getting started, just email us at support@cooleremail.com.  CoolerEmail – it really is just cooler!

Consistent with the original program, commissions (20%) will be paid on a recurring basis.  More details should be available soon so stay tuned

The Economist is holding a competition to find the most exciting, game changing media innovations that will change the way marketers think about reaching consumers.  Twelve finalists will be invited to present their innovation during the Media Convergence forum, taking place in New York City, October 20th-21st, 2009.

If you are using www.cooleremail.com in conjunction with other leading social media platforms (e.g., www.twitter.com) to better distribute your marketing campaigns, you may want to consider entering the competition.

Full details are available at: http://mediaconvergence.economist.com/blog.  Deadline for submisssion is September 8th, 2009.

How are you tying your social networks into your email marketing?

Creating a cohesive, supportive, and interlocking circle for your groups and networks is imperative if you want your marketing efforts to become a self generating and ever growing branding entity. In marketing time, money, and creativity are the biggest hurdles for businesses and organizations to tackle. In some cases these components can seem so daunting that not doing is preferable to trying and failing. Most companies understand the benefits of email marketing, consistent contact, product and service exposure, customer conversion, inexpensive marketing portal, etc. what businesses do not always understand is how to execute their email campaigns to see some of those sought after benefits.

In this post we are going to focus on Time and Creativity, because your social networks will help you in both of these areas. (they help on the budget side as well, most are free, but for now we will leave this out) Your social media communities are bursting with information and resources, by tying them into your email marketing you will bring in popular topics without even trying.

It is safe to say that if your online networks (which are predominantly made up of a good majority of those individuals that are in your database)  are interested in and talking about particular stories, your email subscribers may also want to continue or get more information on those topics. By bringing online news into your email campaigns you tap into a never ending source of relevant content. On top of that you bring exposure for your online brand assets which will help them grow and you give your readers something interesting to share with their non-online networks (it’s crazy but yes some of us still have friends, family, and associates that are not on Facebook yet).

Do you have buttons, icons, links?

Whether you are linking stories from your social media sites or not, you should always display your associations – they exist to help you grow.  You will not grow if no one knows you are on them. Every day these online communities get larger and larger, Facebook has over 250 million members, LinkedIn over 36 million users, Twitter over 10 million visits a month and they continue to grow because their users talk about them.

When you let your email subscribers know you are on these networks, they will more than likely connect with you there and that will expand your reach further into their sphere….it is a wonderful interconnected web isn’t it! When they say hi, respond to something you’ve posted, and talk about your newsletter or company your brand is thrust in front of more people. It’s a numbers game the more people that see you the more opportunities you have getting clients. All of this without much effort on your part, you told your readers you were there, you connected with them, and you provide them valuable information on a consistent basis all of this helps your community and brand grow.

Do you recap news, information, and resources shared on your networks?

Recapping information and resources from your social networks is one of the best ways to connect your online and offline communities, it gives your subscribers a way to interact and engage on a more consistent and timely basis. We love real time information, aka breaking news, if your email campaigns are going out once a week, bi-weekly, or once a month the real time component is taken out of the equation. Yo do not want to over email, inboxs are already inundated, but what you can do is take the conversation to another level. By sharing the information you and your connections post on the social networks with your email subscribers you provide content that is of interest to your network, you show your subscribers other means to connect with you and get in on the real time conversations, and most importantly you save time by repurposing content.

Do you spotlight new connections made on your social networks?

Spotlighting a new or repeat client, strategic business partner, or community or business event is a great segment to incorporate into your email marketing campaigns. Spotlights creates value for those you bring exposure to and is likely to increase exposure for you as it is shared with the network of the lucky recipient. A creative spin on this is to bring the spotlight to your online networks, start talking about those individuals, organizations, and businesses you are networking with online. Then let your online contacts know that you highlighted them in your newsletter, the result will most likely be a new subscriber that leads you to even more subscribers.

So tell us…..how are you connecting your online and email worlds?? We would love to hear about it!!