Yes, I'm coming out of another round of research, correlating, updating, analyzing, agonizing, ... One of the research projects NextStage has recently completed has to do with emails.There's been lots of interest in email as of late. How can you market through it, how can you do this and that, can it be used in branding, what's the real power of email campaigns? Stuff like that.
You'll be shocked, I know, to learn NextStage's research doesn't directly concern itself with any of that. Because our research doesn't deal with any of those items, it directly affects all of them. We've learned that this happens a lot; because we're not answering a question from discipline A we're not bound by their paradigms, because we're not bound by the paradigms inherent in discipline A we're free to consider a much wider venue of causes, actions and responses, because we consider a much wider venue of causes, actions and responses we discover and learn things that directly affect the paradigms inherent in discipline A.
Whoosh!
So what did we find out this time? We learned a lot about how and why people interact with emails the way they do, and what happens before, during and after they receive an email from an entity at levels 0, 1, 2 and 3.
What does that mean?
This is going to be another of Joseph's infamous blog arcs, so if you're interested, read on. I guarantee you that you'll read emails very differently than you do now by the time this blog arc is done..
What I'm about to share in this arc isn't something I would have pointed at and stated, "This means that", however, when I read the results I did agree with them.
Many people have what I call a "signature" file they attach to their emails. It usually contains contact information, company information, a disclaimer or confidentiality statement, things like that. The information will vary from person to person, of course, and the form is usually the same.
For example, the last three emails I received have signature files laid out as follows:
- From a VP in online publishing
Name
Vice President, Publishing
Company
corporate website
office: phone number
Skype ID: skype id
- From a professional web analyst
Name - Senior Web Architect
Member of the Web Analytics Association
Complete profile on LinkedIn their LinkedIn profile
mailto:their email address
their blog
- From a college administrator
Name
Coordinator of Graduate Programs
Office of Academic Affairs
their building and office number
address
City, State, Zip
their office phone
their fax number
their email address
And because I work for NextStage, you know I'm not talking about company affiliations and titles, right?
More to follow...
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
I'll be speaking at the San Francisco April '07 Emetrics Summit on Quantifying and Optimizing the Human Side of Online Marketing on May 7, 2007. Come on by and say hello.
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