Are your e-mail subscribers human beings?

This sounds like a stupid question. But way too many e-mail marketers treat their subscribers as an anonymous mass of people to bombard with “e-mail blasts.”

This unfortunate term in e-mail marketing, “blast,” just refuses to go away. It calls to mind one-size-fits-all messaging, sent without regard for what your subscribers want. It suggests you want to send every subscriber an impersonal message about something that’s important to you, not something important to him. That’s an organization-focused approach to marketing, where the message is about you and not about the recipient.

And ultimately, blasting away will lead your subscribers to tune you out. You’ll just churn and burn through your list.

But there’s a better way. It’s harder and more complicated, but in the end it’s more rewarding.

Put yourself in your subscriber’s shoes. Think about what he wants and what interests him, and attempt to establish a relationship by asking his opinion and sending him relevant, personalized messages. Consider why he subscribed in the first place: because you offer something valuable to him.

So stop talking about sending “blasts.”

What do you think? Is “blast” a harmless shorthand or does it reflect a counterproductive mindset?

Here’s a cool story about how using social media for customer service created a happy customer and generated positive earned media for Samsung Canada. The company treated Shane Bennett as an individual and reaped the rewards. I wouldn’t be surprised if this earned Samsung a customer for life and a lot of public goodwill.

This follows the playbook Dave Kerpen outlines in Likeable Social Media, which argues that this sort of public customer service is exactly how to use social media. Kerpen’s book is a must-read for those looking to take their social media programs to the next level.

Daniel Burstein posts a video from my talk at the 2012 Optimization Summit.

Here’s Burstein’s summary on the Marketing Experiments blog:

• Put yourself in your customer’s shoes
• Try testing unbranded microsites that tap into your customers’ motivations and are focused on engaging your audience before you send them to your conversion goal (Can help with viral marketing)
• Challenge best practices with testing

What best practices do you think need challenging?

Kyle Wiens explains why he won’t hire people who use poor grammar:

Applicants who don’t think writing is important are likely to think lots of other (important) things also aren’t important. And I guarantee that even if other companies aren’t issuing grammar tests, they pay attention to sloppy mistakes on résumés. After all, sloppy is as sloppy does.

Do you agree?

Should you follow “best practices” when designing your online fundraising campaigns?

Not according to a presentation I gave yesterday with Tim Kachuriak at the Marketing Sherpa Optimization Summit in Denver.

Our presentation explained how we optimized The Heritage Foundation’s online fundraising pages by directly questioning longstanding online fundraising best practices.

In fact, as MECLABS president Flint McGlaughlin said at the summit, “best practices on the internet are typically pooled ignorance.”

Tim and I posed a direct challenge to online fundraising best practices:

• We boosted average donation without adding incentives or premiums. Instead, we simply asked for larger gifts.
• We improved e-mail click-throughs by not asking for a donation in our fundraising emails.
• We increased online revenue by adding a second, separate call to action on our donation page.
• We added more e-mail signups by engaging users in a conversation and not asking them to sign up on the homepage.
• We debunked a key branding myth by running an effective, unbranded fundraising microsite.
• We demonstrated that ** placing the call to action below the fold **can increase conversions.

Here is our slide deck.

We closed our presentation with this video showing how not to create a culture of optimization.

What best practices have you found to be faulty?