Email marketing: clever or clutter?

 I'm forever receiving emails from third party sites and companies, mainly because I took the decision to forward emails on from my old email account I used when I was 14 (I know, rookie mistake) and have now conveniently forgotten the password to that account. Although, I've been super efficient with endlessly scrolling to the bottom of these unnecessary emails and unsubscribing throughout the years - though there's just some I can't bring myself to stop. Is it down to their marketing tactics, or is it more down to the fact I'm a sucker for shopping?

Here's a snapshot of my recent emails, just to give you an idea of all the E-Newsletters and house-list campaigns I wish I hadn't signed up for:

As you can see, there's nothing too life changing, nothing that's so important I can't share with the internet and fellow bloggers. However, all these marketing emails have something in common, the use of my name. Kind of confusing from an outside perspective, I forget whether I use Charlotte or Lotte for most of the signing ups, but nevertheless, they're all personalised and apparently tailored for me.

Vouchercloud is a well known site/app that collates a huge number of discounts from various retailers and companies, and makes them accessible to those who are signed up. I have to admit, I heard about it from a friend and decided to download the app, little did I know that entering my email address would lead to me waking up every morning to about 4 different emails from them. I've since deleted the app, as I barely used it - what student has money to spend in The White Company with a measly 20% off? Or even better, 10% off hotels, but I must be sleeping rough when I arrive in St. Tropez. As you can gather, not really beneficial for myself.

When first opening the email, it appears as the first image, and of course 'TOP OFFERS' is the biggest stand out. As you hover over any of the large pictures (minimal text just to keep it non-stressful for shoppers), HTML links appear, which as you can imagine, when clicked take you directly to the site. At some point, I will have clicked around the app looking at different offers, so I guess I'm partially responsible for what offers appear for me. I recently read a blog called '10 Reasons Why Email Marketing Still Works', which sets out the reasons why businesses still use email marketing. It does essentially allow them to monitor their target demographic, upon what links are opened or who has actually opened the initial email, and continues that professional 'grown up' aspect.

Whilst I usually delete these kind of emails without even thinking, there's always at least one vouchercloud email still lurking in my inbox. So I guess I'm drawn into it too, I'm not sure whether it's down to personalisation, or the (lack of) eye-catching offers to why I continue to open and have a browse through, I'm more certain it's down to boredom or procrastination. Maybe it's time to unsubscribe..

Take a look at the blog I mentioned earlier, it's an interesting read.

http://blog.bellcom.co.uk/index.php/2013/01/10-reasons-why-email-marketing-still-works/

Google Analytics: the useful, but painful, truth.

As part of my digital marketing module, I have been introduced to the wonders of Google Analytics, a useful service that generates statistics about a website's traffic. In this case, my new blog. I'm still getting used to navigating around, and in all honesty, filtering through the data, however at first glance, it's pretty useful.

I've been doing some research myself, in order to find a filter for the data, and get to the specifics of the visitors to my blog postings. I found a useful article that some of you may also find gives a little more insight, Econsultancy have posted a few custom report suggestions that can be applicable to your analytics account. Out of interest alone, I did want to find out exactly how people were accessing my blog, I had tweeted it a couple of times, and just wanted to see if that had any sort of affect on the amount of views.

So I added 'Referring Sites' to my custom dashboards (via the Econsultancy article), and this is the result:

Deterring from the fact my blog has had a measly 6 views, and is clearly suffering in terms of popularity, it's kind of good to know that the views I have gained, are in fact, referrals from Twitter. It's painful to see that only 6 people have viewed it, and kind of worse that I noticed the bounce rate (% of single-page visits) was actually 100%. Meaning that those who clicked on my blog, immediately clicked off. Great! Also the average time spent on the page was actually 0.00 too. I'll let myself off, I'm new to the whole blogging thing, and clearly not tweeting enough.

There's still a lot more to learn, and plenty more tools to take advantage of, and despite my poor blog being neglected by the Internet trawlers - I'm definitely going to stick to it. 

Econsultancy article
http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/63372-10-useful-custom-google-analytics-reports-and-dashboards-for-publishers

Your phone company is watching

After watching Malte Spitz's video on phone companies and data retention, I felt shocked that I wasn't actually aware of the directive that was in place across the EU regarding our data. Spitz explains that in 2006 the EU commissioned the Data Retention Directive, which allowed phone/internet service companies across Europe to store data, for a minimum of 6 months, and a maximum of two years. He continues to explain that he was curious, as to what data they were actually storing, and so he enquired. Spitz requested his details from his German provider, Deutsche Telekom, who weren't so co-operative at the beginning. After filing a lawsuit, he finally receives his settlement - his data. As anyone would be, Spitz was somewhat overwhelmed, maybe because with all this information you could work out his location, travel and relations from the past six months. The data collected can determine when somebody goes to sleep, or can determine relationships between people.

To some, this is shocking, an invasion of privacy - but isn't it almost fascinating? The fact that the majority of consumers are unaware that this kind of information actually is being stored, or the fact that it's true, in this digital age, we do have to fight for our self determination. But this information is ultimately what contributes to our consumer behaviours as a nation, and would we change it now?

The thing is, this is nothing new. At the heart of marketing, there's data, a huge amount of raw data. From the perspective of a consumer, yes, it's daunting knowing that someone somewhere knows so much about you, but do you complain when TopShop recommends a handbag you'd like? Or when Amazon kindly reminds you about the books you need for Uni? Essentially, our mobile phones are what defines us, and from a marketing perspective, it's never been easier to tailor the right technique. Our mobile phones are the epitome of real life cookies, and is possibly the most current and powerful marketing tool there is.


Take a look at the video in the link below, it's extremely insightful.  

http://www.ted.com/playlists/56/making_sense_of_too_much_data.html

First Post

New blog.