Disposable Email Addresses

I recently had a couple of users signup and download a white paper and my follow up email to the same users the very next day started bouncing from the id. The strange part was that in spite of a double opt-in registration mechanism in place, I seem to have ended up with email addresses that were valid at sign up but invalid soon after.

A little bit of googling on the domain name of the email addresses led me to
mintemail.com. They offer a nifty little service to it's users where they offer a disposable email address that's valid for 4 hours.

From a B2B marketers perspective this is a nightmare scenario as the Lead Capture campaigns could be capturing worthless contact info that expires in a few hours time.
It sure is a boon to someone who'd like to access whitepapers, surveys, case studies, podcasts...etc of a company anonymously.

Maybe it's time the email validation routine in the registration form also validates for domain names known to host disposable email addresses.

Converting your OptIn database to a social network

So you have a 20K Opt In database of contacts who are interested in what you have to offer on your site. Wouldn't it be great if you could create an environment where these contacts could network and collaborate on topics that you know they have interest in or on topics that you have to offer.

That's were you could leverage something like Ning to create a social network and send invites to your list encouraging them to join your Social Network on Ning. If you could nurture the network a little bit in the initial stages, it should grow into a self sustaining active network with a lot of users and user generated content. And this would provide you a great channel to showcase your brand, and also promote upcoming Events, products etc that you offer.

Email Marketer's Club is a great example of a niche social network on B2B Email Marketing powered by Ning.

Can you afford to make registration optional?

Couple of months ago I was buying air tickets on a travel portal, and found an interesting feature. It had a link which said, if you are in a hurry, purchase a ticket as a guest user itself. Registration was optional on that site.

I fell in love with that travel portal instantly as they gave me the customer the choice of initiating a relationship with them. I didn't have to register upfront to use their service. I bookmarked the site and made my purchase in a giffy. I did eventually register on the site on my third visit to purchase a ticket.

So what do you think, should resources such as product demos, white papers, webinars etc be hidden behind big Lead capture/Registration forms or should you just trust your customers to come back for more and initiate a dialog with you when they are ready?

3 Ways to make your Auto Responder more Personal

Here are 3 Ways to make your Auto Responder setup in your Marketing Automation System more Personal and Humane.

1)Include original message in the reply inline or as an attachment
2)Prefix your automated reply with 'Re:' and the original incoming email's subject
3)Respond after a short delay (5-10 minutes) instead of instantly.

When we normally reply to an email message, the original message is included in the reply automatically inline or as an attachment, the text 'Re:' is prefixed to the original subject and used in the subject of the email, also there is a time delay involved in reading the original email and framing a reply to it.

Making your automated system mimic a normal user could help in making your corporate email communications more Personal and Humane.

5 Ways to Leverage Search KeyWords

Search keywords tell you what the user is looking for. It could be extracted from referral urls coming from search engines, collected from the search box present on your site. These keywords could be stored in the system as part of the contacts profile information.

It could be used
1)For Search Engine Optimization of your web pages.
2)Dynamically change the page content based on these keywords
3)In the email subject to increase open rates
4)In customizing content to be sent to the user
5)Segmenting contacts based on keywords

Social Networking Potential of your Contact

Social Networking Potential (SNP) is a numeric coefficient, derived through algorithms to represent both the size of an individual's social network and their ability to influence that network.

As a marketer, you could create a potentially successful viral marketing campaign by targeting contacts with high SNP score with content that is relevant and appealing to this segment.

Here are 6 attributes on which you could assign points and score the social networking potential of your contact.
1)Is he/she an active member of social networking sites like facebook, myspace, orkut...?
2)Does he/she blog or post on websites?
3)Does he/she contribute to publications?
4)Does he/she hold any leadership positions?
5)Has he/she provided you with quality referrals in the past?
6)Is he/she a member of a group you might be interested in?