Advocacy Inc. Responds to Video E-mail Skepticism
I got a note from Maggie Duncan, Advocacy, Inc.’s assistant director of client relations, in regards to a post I made the other day. Basically, I questioned the impact of a video e-mail sent using Advocacy’s system on behalf of Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman of California that linked to an interview of the candidate on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.”
I stated, “I get how this might make Sherman seem more hip to some voters, but to me it’s just another example of political campaigns missing the point by thinking that goofy viral=votes. I don’t think anybody’s proved that yet, and I’d be surprised to see this sort of thing ever making a difference in terms of getting people to the polls or swaying votes.”
Maggie wrote to me today in response and approved of me posting her message:
I saw your blog posting this week about the Brad Sherman for Congress video. Our point in sending out the video was as an example of successful video email, a tactic we’re going to see more and more campaigns and elected officials using in the upcoming election season. From video newsletters to press releases and clips of (serious) political speeches, the impact of video email has shown itself to be immense. I included Rep. Sherman’s campaign email to demonstrate how easy it is to embed a video image into the body of an email–thus making it much easier for people see it. With the technology our management system offers clients, recipients do not have to download video players onto their computers, and we’re seeing very high click-through rates as a result.
The subject of the video is, of course, up to the campaign or official itself–I can’t speak for the Sherman campaign on their strategy of sending out the Colbert Report interview through our system, except to say that it could be a good–albeit unique—way of getting their name out to thousands of young, plugged-in California voters.
….again, I think the really interesting aspect of all this isn’t necessarily what works or what doesn’t, but rather how fast and how successfully our capabilities are changing.
Another note: Though the e-mail is referred to one featuring “embedded video,” it’s not in actuality. According to Maggie, “most email clients aren’t allowing streaming videos to be embedded in email bodies anymore–too many security concerns. So while the picture and link are embedded, the video itself is not. Many of our clients have the image pop open a new window that is hosted on our server, so it doesn’t take the recipient to an outside website (like the Colbert Report site) but rather to a new, smaller window that pops up right on top of the image in the email and starts playing the video.”
RSS Means Change Your E-Mail Opt-In Model
The double confirmed opt-in e-mail subscription model has always been the highest industry standard. ClickZ’s always been mighty proud to be the only publisher in our niche using it, too.
It’s important to stay double-confirmed, but I see a change on the horizon the most ethical e-mails (ourselves included) are going to have to address sooner or later. And sooner is better, right?
After requesting a subscription on the Web site, a subscriber must first reply to an confirmation e-mail from the sender. This ensures the person didn’t sign up by mistake, or were subscribed by someone else. In the case of ad-supported publications like ours, it proves our readers really want to receive our newsletters.
Now, thanks to the miracle of RSS, a bunch of early adopters (myself included) are migrating their e-mail subscriptions to their RSS readers.
Example: One of the most popular RSS services is Web-based Bloglines. It enables users to create a unique e-mail address for each subscription (e.g. username.27531127@bloglines.com). This helps keep your inbox clear and is a pretty good way to nail mailers who start spamming you or selling their lists to third parties, too.
Yet under this system, I’m unable to subscribe to ClickZ and other publications as my Bloglines address is receive-only. I can’t confirm a subscription via e-mail under the subscriber address.
So we’re going to look into modifying our double confirmed opt-in model — without compromising its integrity. Perhaps we should give new subscribers the option of “reply to this e-mail” or “click this link to confirm your subscription.”
Any other newsletter publishers out there grappling with this issue yet? My bet is you will be in six months to a year. What changes are your making to your own double opt-in systems?
We’d love to hear input on this issue. I’m moderating a panel on RSS at AdTech SF next month and this is a topic sure to come up.
Written by blogger on March 31st, 2006 with no comments.
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Big shake up looming for Web analytics space
Totally impressed with (1) Coremetrics’ $31M series D funding (company has raised $62M to date), which nicely prolongs a series of other impressive moves in the WA space - (2) WebSideStory’s Visual Sciences acquisition for $57M, (3) Omniture’s $40M round last year, and their plans to go public this year, (4) Google offering Urchin for […]
Peter Kim offering $78M for Facebook
Peter Kim (Forrester Research) makes a few interesting calculations challenging their recent $2B valuation claim.
Marketing’s New Black
What’s black and white and read all over? The answer to this limerick used to be a newspaper. Today it’s the Blackberry. New York is a big newspaper town. We have four majors, two freebies plus of course two…
RSS Marketing Roundup 03.23.06
Time once again for a roundup of what’s going on in the fast moving world of RSS, the Internet content delivery standard that is becoming the increasingly attractive alternative to email publishing and even web browsing. But first . . . The Importance of Email In my ongoing examination of the adoption of RSS feeds for content delivery […]
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Star Wars Wiki
And now for a little Friday Fun. Wookieepedia is a cool wiki that’s all about Star Wars. It’s got all sorts of geeky news and little known facts about the Star Wars universe. For example did you…
The Power of Attention
One of the greatest generators of success that we all possess is our attention. That s because what we put our attention on grows stronger. Attention is like the sun; it illuminates and stimulates. Also like the sun, attention is not…
Taking My Company Public: When Love Met Greed
I was living out the dream of entrepreneurs everywhere taking my company public. During the day, preened investment bankers fawned over me. And at night, visions of sugar plums in green shoes danced in my head, as I price-earnings…
The World’s Greatest Banker
Gary burst into my office terror-stricken. We’re out of money! he croaked. Already? I gasped. Didn’t you just arrange an extended credit line last month? We maxed it out, he said How is that possible? I protested. I thought it…
Love and Money: Thanks to our sponsors
Thanks to Moviebeam, MS MEDC, Brick, EchoStar, Kensington, American Apparel, HSBC and Dyson for their support this week! Find out more about advertising with Lifehacker.
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DIY paper planner
Carthage: Hannibal’s Journal: Personal: Rolling my own paper-based time management system I like this simple homemade paper planner — especially the free form lined approach for the pages. What I recently decided to do is make my own day planner, print it up on my laser-jet, and then take it somewhere to have it spiral […]
Levy: The frazzled attention of the always on
Levy: Digital Distractions Bad for the Workplace - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com Steven Levy on continuous partial attention and “The Attention Economy” at ORA’s Emerging Technology Conference. But there’s a problem in the workplace when the interruptions intrude on tasks that require real concentration or quiet reflection. And there’s an even bigger problem when […]
The Scoblemeter
What’s on Robert Scoble’s radar? The Dashboard Spy knows. Technorati Tags: Robert Scoble…
Inbox Zero: Where filters will and won t help
This post is part of the Inbox Zero series. Filters and scripts can greatly minimize the manual processing you do each day as well as way cut down on unnecessary interruptions. The trouble comes when you’re filtering so much stuff (especially via “sender” and “subject” filters) that you end up scattering useful and timely updates into a jillion different places out of view. This can be that rarest of beasts where you’ve actually automated too much. Instead, focus on creating filters and scripts for any noisy, frequent, and non-urgent items which can be dealt with all at a pass and later. Depending on what you consider noise, this could probably include:
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Comcast/NBC VOD: $0.99, Ads Included
Lest one think that paying $0.99 for a TV program exempts a viewer from getting advertising, Comcast’s new VOD deal with NBC Universal will include spots, the company told me. This is the deal that involves on-demand access to “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”, “The Office”, “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien”, among other shows. (UPDATE: NBC network prime time shows are $0.99; Cable and late night shows are free.)
Will they be new, more targeted spots that use the data available about set-top-box users (or daypart data, or that type of thing)? Nope. Not yet. They’ll just be standard national spots, and they’ll apparently be skippable via fast-forwarding technology. Ah, the opportunities missed. I seem to recall a while back that Comcast (maybe in talks with TiVo) was discussing ways to insert fresher spots more suitable to the person (and the day, and the time of day) into on-demand programming. Guess that’ll be down the road.
My colleague, Rebecca Lieb, also notes the implications for net neutrality in this type of agreement. As folks like Comcast increasingly see the benefit of using their pipes for on-demand programming, there’s the potential for them to favor partners (a la NBC Universal) over non-partners, when it comes to speedy delivery of programming. Not a good thing.
MMA Creates Mobile Video Committee
The Mobile Marketing Association has set up a committee to address standards, production guidelines and best practices for pre- and post-roll mobile video advertising.
Co-chairing the group are Cyriac Roeding, VP of wireless for CBS Digital Media, and Jack Hallahan, VP of advertising for MobiTV. Other committee members come from Fox Mobile Entertainment, Sprint Nextel, The Weather Channel, Verizon Wireless and Zingy.
Kinkless GTD .83: Enhances Quicksilver and iCal integration, much more
Kinkless GTD 0.83 [Relative Motion] | Kinkless The wait is over, kids. Ethan Schoonover has just released his .83 version of Kinkless GTD, and, brother, does it ever bring it. (For an intro to what kGTD is, start here, then go here and of course, here.) So, first great thing: the syncing problems people (including me) were […]
Spam-Fighting Hardware for Consumers
It’s disheartening to think there’s a market out there for Spam Cube, a $150 appliance consumers install between their broadband modem and computer to block spam. David Pogue reviews it in today’s “New York Times.”
Enterprises have been using anti-spam hardware solutions for some time now. Pity to think that in the wake of CAN-SPAM and mighty efforts on the part of ISPs to fight the scourge, the spam keeps coming in volumes that impel regular people to fork over this kind of money for these types of solutions.
Moreover, Pogue got plenty of false positives, and the gizmo failed to flag his phishing messages.
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CAN-SPAM: Loin-Girding 101
The most basic way to understand how changes to your Web site affect your conversion rates.
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Don’t Let Your Customers See Your Corporate Underpants
Maintaining the look/feel accross your various online efforts promotes customer confidence and improves conversion
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Losing Faith In Television?
It seems that advertisers do not trust television commercials alone to do the job anymore.
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