Category: Ramblings

Over the last few months, part of my daily work routine has been deleting the dozens of spam and marketing emails that I receive every night.  And, without fail, I always think, “Gee, maybe someday I should just unsubscribe from all of these lists!”  I’ll skip over the ironic, hypocritical nature of that statement being uttered by a marketer…

Nevertheless, I chose yesterday as the beginning of the end of my overloaded inbox!  As I started, I took both a marketer’s view and a recipient’s view of the unsubscribe process.  Given that I ran a recent campaign designed to get people to proactively unsubscribe, where we almost begged them to remove themselves from our list, I started to laugh at the methods at which recognizable and established publications and companies use to make the process so confusing.

Click Here to Select Your Unsubscribe Process

At the highest level, there seems to be four general methods that marketers subscribe to (hee hee) for their unsubscribe process, from easiest to most absurd:

1. The one-click method:  A link labeled “unsubscribe” that opens a webpage stating that, “You’ve been unsubscribed.”  Done!
2. The “You figure it out” method: A link labeled “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” or, the clearly designed to confuse “change your email preferences,” which then takes you to a webpage with multiple choices and unclear directions.
3. The attempt to confuse people into giving up method:  A confusing link that drives you to a webpage where you need to reenter your email address, de-select the name of the newsletter you just clicked through, and select from a confusing set of action buttons with double-negative descriptions. Oh yeah, and then click “submit.”
4. The “no method at all” method:  The favorite of the “grey market” list brokers and cheapo sales and marketing people who blast out thousands of messages that look like personal emails, hoping that someone will bite.

Having been in the software space for over a decade, an area of confusion for me is the time until the unsubscribe takes effect.  Across 30 or so unsubscribes in the past few days, I’ve seen everything from the instantaneous “you are now unsubscribed” to the ludicrous “please allow up to four weeks for this change to take effect.”  Really?  A whole month?  I can see where maybe some ’90s vintage, homegrown email system requires a manual upload of an unsubscribe list from one system to another, but a whole month?  If it takes longer than 24 hours for your unsubscribes to merge with your email marketing system, you either need to start calling the ExactTargets and Eloquas of the world, or you need to open your employer-provided MS Word ’95 and start cranking out a new resume.

Examples

Let’s take a look at a few of the unsubscribe procedures I went through over the past few days.

The Good

• LeadSloth, using Vertical Response and the “one-click” method.  In fact, Vertical Response goes so far as to include this fine print on their unsubscribe page:  iBuilder users are strictly prohibited from using UCE (spam) in their marketing efforts, and are subject to immediate termination if they do so. Wow!  (BTW, I added the link to “UCE.”)

  

• While most unsubscribe pages were bland, flat, text-only affairs with little or no branding, Adobe/Omniture provided the prettiest unsubscribe page and actually put some thought into their branding during this seemingly negative activity.  With a focus on marketing and the customer, they are doing this the right way.

The Bad

• TechTarget not only adds a bit of confusion, but questions my judgement by requiring a double answer.  Their unsub page asks, “Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from this mailing from the sender?” and forces a yes or no radio button choice, plus requires you to click “Confirm” to make it so.  Why not just have yes and no buttons?  They add a slight bit of confusion with a footer that says, “To opt out of all future mailings from this sender click here.”  This then takes you to a second page titled “opt out” that asks the same question with respect to opting out, not unsubscribing: Are you sure you want to opt-out of all future mailings from the sender? Now I know that the difference is opting out of one list vs. all of their lists, but not sure if the average person would get this at first glance.
• I’m not sure if this method is easier or more difficult than visiting a webpage, but a few of the emailers, like Toolbox.com, resorted to the old school method:  If you do not wish to receive updates from Toolbox.com, please reply to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of your reply. Simple, but requires typing…  😉
• The Association of Strategic Marketing alerts you to a potential delay, but is nice enough to give you the reason: Email is prescheduled, so it may take up to one week before you stop receiving email. They also make it crystal clear what you need to do to unsubscribe:  Be sure to click on the unsubscribe link to successfully unsubscribe. Thanks for that…
• One of the other ways pubs put the pressure on the user to unsubscribe is by making you do the work and enter your own email address on the unsub page (rather than having it pre-populate). Windows IT Pro was nice enough to give me a warning, however: To STOP receiving promotional e-mails from Windows IT Pro, please click here to opt-out. (Requires you to enter your own email address)
• Finally, TRUSTe offered this very un-trustable unsub link in their email: One-Click Unsubscribe. I clicked that link with glee, knowing in my heart that such a trustingly-named company would never lie, and that this would truly be the nirvana of unsub processes.  But then I was required to commit to a several-click process to complete their one-click unsubscribe:
  • Please enter your email address and indicate your preferences – required field, not prepopulated
  • I’d like to unsubscribe from the following (check all that apply) – required, and with four potential choices and nothing pre-populated, leaving me to wonder which one brought me here
  • I’d like to unsubscribe from ALL email communications, with a yes/no radio button but not marked as required
  • The “confirm” button

By my count, that one-click unsubscribe required a minimum of five clicks…  Based on that, no, I do not trust you, TRUSTe.

As Bruce Banner Says: “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

OK, so I’ll admit that this is a picky rant post (as are most of my posts).  But really, do marketers need to make it so difficult for people to unsubscribe from their lists?  You’ve already pissed them off to the point where they are taking time out of their busy day to proactively tell you to stop bothering them!  It is taking 10x – or more – time and effort to unsubscribe than to just delete your email or add you to their blocked/spam filter.

But, even knowing that they are miffed, you go the extra mile to frustrate them even more, hurting your brand, equating your logo with frustration, and alienating one more person.  Worse yet, you try to confuse them into staying on your list, make them work for it, and rarely give them to option to opt out of all future emails.  If I’m pissed off enough to unsubscribe, and then I get another, slightly different email from you tomorrow, what response and reaction do you think that is going to elicit?

Bottom Line

Make it easy, easy, easy for people to get off of your marketing list and out of your way.  You’ll be eliminating their frustration, eliminating wasted time by your sales reps even thinking about calling them, and reducing the chances of your domain being flagged as spam.

But that’s just my opinion.  What do you think?  Leave me a comment and share your view.

OK, so WFH isn’t even a word (it’s three:  working from home), let alone a bad word.  So why do so many employers, managers, and coworkers treat it as such?  In today’s constantly-on, mobile-enabled, Skype video-connected world, there are very few reasons why an office employee needs to actually be in the office to be productive.  Sure, there are people who need to be away from home to work due to personality, logistical, or other issues – such as those with young children at home and no space for an office.  However, it’s confusing to me that so many people think that, just because someone is working from home, they are slacking off and otherwise unproductive.

A recent manager told me that working from home wasn’t allowed under his management because “work happens in the office.”  Really?  In just a few weeks at that job, I saw that work didn’t really happen all that often in the office.  In a typical workday, the open floor plan encouraged plenty of random conversations that ranged from work to television to lunch destinations.  Add in the walk to the cafe in the lobby, a drive to a local lunch spot, and a half-dozen non-work-related conversations every day and that eight-hour workday drops down to about five, maybe less.

Contrast that with working from home, where you’re alone (ideally) and totally free from the distractions of coworkers.  A place where you can choose to engage in an email, phone, or IM conversation immediately or later, when you have time and focus.  A place where you’re free to work in total silence, or with the heavy metal music turned up to 11.  A place where you have the freedom to structure your office, your day, and your view. You get the point.

Going further, the eight-hour workday (or 10-12 in the start-up world) is actually extended by an hour or more on each end. Given a typical commute of 30-60 minutes, breakfast, getting dressed, etc., you’re looking at an additional few hours per day that are totally unproductive with respect to your employer’s point of view, but which and employee considers part of the work day.

Again, contrast that with working from home where the average commute is 15-30 seconds, breakfast is often multi-tasked with checking email and attending a conference call, snacks and lunch are just a few feet away (and close to free), and showering is, unfortunately for spouses, optional.

In fact, I’m a firm believer that those who work from home actually put in MORE hours than those who go into the office. Once you subtract the lunches, coffee stops, mindless office chit-chat, etc., from the work day, the typical office worker is probably putting in about a 60% workday.  When working from home, your line between home and work becomes blurred.  You end up working later than you expect because you don’t have the end-of-day cues of the office emptying out.  You aren’t pressed to immediately shower, groom, and dress, so tend to get wrapped up in email or early tasks before you do anything else. You tend to work through lunch, and work longer knowing that your commute home is instantaneous.

Now, I can hear you saying, “What about those WFH-ers who go to the dry cleaners at 2pm or dial into a conference call from the mall?  Really?  You’re going to forget about the 70-minute lunch you took last week – while at work – because you had to get your oil changed and grab paper towels from Target?

Notice that, in this entire rant, I never mentioned that laptops are portable, smart phones allow access to email, IM, and documents and attachments from virtually anywhere.  I’ve worked effectively the past 10+ workdays from a new apartment with no internet access, surviving by tethering to my mobile phone to grab email, make calls, and even conduct a web meeting which shared my screen for a product demo of a browser-based product and used VoIP for the voice portion! (Thank you, GoToMeeting and my Nexus One phone on AT&T!)  There is absolutely no reason why I needed to go into an office to do any of this.

Now, don’t get me wrong, a productive brainstorming session in front of a white board can be more illuminating and effective that 20 conference calls, but they don’t happen every day and they aren’t necessary every day.  In fact, the occasional video chat can alleviate that sense of alienation and increase the sense of team.  And, as the guys at 37Signals put so well, time apart actually increases the effectiveness of occasional in-person meetings.  Absence makes the brainstorming grow fonder, or something like that…

So, after all of that rant, here are my five tips for making the work-from-home experience better for your employees:

1. Don’t just support WFH, encourage it! Set the example by working from home and proving your productivity. Encourage communication and be responsive. Pick up the phone when an email response requires more than a paragraph. What not to do? I had a manager at Siebel Systems who frequently worked from home on Fridays.  On those days, we either never heard from him, or when we did, he was obviously out shopping or running errands and was just calling to “check in.”  If a question was asked that needed research, he always promised to get back to us later that day, but never did.  That manager set the example that WFH was a vacation day and our team resented it.
2. Support the necessary tools without breaking the bank. And, forget about where your employees work, but make it easy for them to do so.  Give all employees a laptop (not a desktop), a web meeting account (Yugma and Skype are both free, and Skype includes nearly ubiquitous audio/video chat, IM, and screen sharing), and access to a collaboration or project workspace like Basecamp or Google Docs. Reimburse $75 or $100 for mobile phone service so that your team isn’t worried about exceeding minutes or using the data plan.  Every tool required is available, and most can be found for free or nearly free.
3. Don’t force video calls. While the iPhone’s new FaceTime video chat is all the rage, not everyone is comfortable showing their home office (or their WFH fashion) to the entire team.  Even for those on the road, most wouldn’t choose to do a video conference from their hotel room.  Audio-only phone calls have worked just fine for the past 50 years.
4. Allow flexibility with schedules and meetings. In an office, you don’t expect people to be at their desk every second of the day, so WFH should be no different.  I frequently run into the issue that everyone expects me to be attached to my phone and laptop 100% of the time.  They assume that I don’t go out to lunch, don’t have other calls, and don’t even go to the bathroom.  My guess is that people in the office immediately assume that WFHers are not working if they don’t answer the phone on the first ring or respond to an IM within seconds.  Remember that breaks are needed regardless of work location, and that other calls or meetings or tasks pop up.  More importantly, having the luxury to ignore the constant interruptions is one of the key benefits of WFH.
5. Treat the remote colleague as you would anyone else. Expect the same output as those in the office, but give the same respect.  One of my pet peeves is when a colleague (or worse, a manager) begins a conference call with something like, “So Bob, must be nice working from home today…” You wouldn’t begin a call with a customer or prospect that way; it’s insulting to the WFHer and counter-productive for those in the office.

Bottom Line:  Working from home may not be a personal preference for everyone, but for many it’s a highly-rewarding productivity and morale booster with a huge ROI.  Encourage it, support it, and quell the dissent from the non-believers.  In the tech start-up world, the typical workday has always been 10-12 hours long, with most people answering emails and putting in a few hours in the evenings and over the weekend.  If you’re willing to accept that “extra” work, there’s no reason to deny your team a few days per week for WFH.

Let me know what you think.

UPDATE:  GigaOm’s WebWorkerDaily just had an interesting piece on the productivity gains from working at home.  The most striking stat is that 45% of at-home workers put in 2-3 more hours per day, and 25% put in 4 more hours per day!  Adding 20-50% more hours is an incredible benefit for any company.

I like to joke that, at Carnegie Mellon’s business school, every subject was boiled down to an equation, even marketing.  It’s not that far from the truth: given the marketing tools that I’m using today, it’s absolutely critical for marketers to be both creative and quantitative. There’s marketing automation, CRM, web analytics, external campaigns, social media, SEM, and the mountain of resulting data and analytics available from each of these tools.

From ROIs and CTRs to web analytics and funnel ratios, marketing leadership requires a deep level of expertise with Microsoft Excel as much or more than Word and PowerPoint.  Yes, marketers spend a lot of time writing copy, creating collateral and sales tools, and building presentations. But at every level of marketing, more and more attention is being paid to the numbers and the trends, not just the catchy tagline or the snazzy graphics.  A/B testing is becoming (or should be) a standard step in every marketing campaign, and that goes well beyond just changing colors or subject lines.  As marketing automation software makes it easier to segment lists and blast multiple versions of a campaign, interpreting the resulting data is becoming as important as creating the actual campaign copy.

I just read this great post at Chief Marketing Technologist that looks at marketing as a technology-driven discipline.  As a marketer currently pitching analytics software directly to marketing executives, this couldn’t be more on-target.  While we definitely need to be careful of over-promising the ease-of-use to those marketers who are not very quant-focused or tech-savvy, it’s the marketers who have some level of technical, analytical proficiency who are going to succeed.  Why?  Because they are going to quickly understand what’s working, what’s not, why, and what to do next – and have the data to back it up.

If you’re a marketer with only the soft/fluffy skills, your days are numbered (or at least your career advancement opportunities are severely limited).  Learn HTML or PHP.  Take an advanced Excel course.  Become a power-user of your Salesforce, Marketo, ExactTarget, Webtrends, Omniture, or other marketing software tools – especially the reporting and analytics capabilities.

Bottom line:  The faster you can get the answer to your manager’s questions with hard data (who do we target? with what? when? what worked? what didn’t? why? where is this new traffic from? how did they find us?), the better you can position yourself as the one who knows what to do next!