The F7 Blog
Figureseven, Inc. has been helping businesses maximize their offline and online marketing efforts for over a decade. This blog provides insight, tips and advice from our experts to help you achieve your marketing goals.
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You Can Teach an Old Blog New Tricks
By Jeremy Daly, President, Figureseven, Inc.
November 3, 2009 in Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Design, Web Marketing, Social Media, Branding, Marketing, Email Marketing
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Del.icio.usI came to a stark realization the other day while watching my two daughters (1 and 3) play together. My oldest was rambling on about something (probably trying to explain nuclear physics) to my 1 year old. I overheard a series of statements ending in “okay?” or “see, Jules?”, no doubt trying to confirm that her messages were properly being conveyed and received. As I listened more closely, I realized that my 3 year old’s imagination was just running wild and was filling my youngest’s head with complete and utter nonsense.
Having an older brother myself, it got me thinking about when I finally realized that everything that an older sibling tells you is not as reliable as you may think. While their intentions may be good and their message sincere, little things like “facts” and the “truth” may get lost along the way. It’s kind of like a really bad game of telephone, but because you trust the source, unlearning the information may be a bit more of a challenge.
Why Isn't My Email Marketing Working?
By Jeremy Daly, President, Figureseven, Inc.
October 29, 2009 in Email Marketing
Many companies are now taking advantage of the ease of email marketing. Most people are doing it themselves using tools like Constant Contact or Emma. So what’s the problem with that? The problem is that they typically result in poor performance and unhappy customers!
Many of these online marketing tools make putting together mass emails a snap. But from someone that has been running mass email marketing campaigns for quite some time, I can tell you that there are way too many nuances that the average person misses and these services overlook. For instance, starting with Microsoft Outlook 2007, background images in emails no longer load. So for about half of our customers, we had to redesign their email templates so that Outlook users could have a visually appealing email and not a mishmash of unreadable text. Do you know how your emails look on different email clients?
Another Observation From the Back Cubicle
By Greg Czarnowski, Principal, Figureseven, Inc.
October 6, 2009 in Web Marketing, Marketing, Email Marketing
While I rarely enjoy receiving a telemarketing call (no matter what time of day I receive them), I get even more annoyed by telemarketers who brutally mispronounce my name and then try to carry on a conversation with me like everything is fine. This is where outsourcing these services to some foreign country where English is a second language (or simply using callers for whom English is a second language) really hurts whomever is using the company to make calls on their behalf. While my name certainly isn't easy to pronounce, the treatment that it sometimes gets amazes even me. Here's a statement that should be part of every telemarketers script - if you think that you're mispronouncing a name, let the person whom you're calling know with a simple statement like "I hope that I am pronouncing your name correctly, if I'm not, please forgive me."
Brutalizing of names is also a good reason to use e-mail outreach as your means of customer contact - simply spelling a name correctly is a lot less challenging than attempting to speak it - and it avoids that inherent annoyance that will keep the recipient from hearing the message that you are trying to deliver.
