DJ Waldow Archives - Motherhood, Marketing, and Medical Mayhem

Another Penn State Scandal? Email Marketing Problems Now
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Another Penn State Scandal? Email Marketing Problems Now

Branding, Email Marketing, General Updates, Marketing, Motherhood

Another Penn State Scandal? Email Marketing Problems Now

In the next year and a half, I’ll have TWO kids in college – yikes! And since my kids both took the SAT test, our family email inbox has been overflowing with emails from colleges that the kids may or may not be interested in attending. While I’m not thrilled, I do understand that since they didn’t opt-out when they took the test, the colleges’ emails are CAN SPAM compliant. However, there might another Penn State scandal – this time in their email marketing opt-out practices.

In April, our home email address received an email from Penn State inviting us to spend a summer day at Penn State.

Penn State Email

Thanks, but neither of my kids is interested, so I’ll just Unsubscribe. I click on the link and I’m taken to a page with the following info:

Unsubscribe Email Address

Please enter the email address you would like to unsubscribe from our events and communications lists.

WHAT??? You’re sending me another email? I know DJ Waldow says it’s ok to break the rules and send a post-unsubscribe email, but I’m not sure an email with a link to confirm my unsubscribe request is exactly what he had in mind… I’m feeling agreeable so instead of clicking the “This Is Spam” button on the original email, I insert my email address and click Submit.

I received the email confirming my unsubscribe selection:

We have received a request to have this email address removed from our events and communications mailing lists. If you wish to complete the unsubscribe process, please click the confirmation link below.

http://admissions.psu.edu/resources/unsubscribe/?confirm=XXXXXXX

Your web browser will display a confirmation notice when your email address has been removed.

Confirmation Number: XXXXXXX

Phew, I click on the link and I’m done, right?

By having to visit two separate pages, the Penn State email unsubscribe process could be considered in violation of the portion of the CAN SPAM compliance guide requirement #6 Honor opt-out requests promptly which states “You can’t…make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request.” But it’s ok, because I’m done so I won’t create another Penn State scandal by ratting them out on my blog.

Unfortunately, we’re not done yet. I then received ANOTHER email from Penn State Admissions stating:

This email address has been removed from the events and communications mailing lists of the Penn State Undergraduate Admissions Office.

Please allow 24-48 hours for the change to take effect. If at any time you wish to begin receiving email messages from our office again, please send an email to admissions@psu.edu indicating your preferences. Thank you.

Sincerely,

The Undergraduate Admissions Office at Penn State

http://admissions.psu.edu

Two emails after the original marketing message when my kids didn’t overtly subscribe to begin with, and I had to click on two links and go to two separate web pages in order to unsubscribe, but wait there’s more…did I mention I got another email from them and started the process all over again in May??? Let’s hope that’s the end of email marketing messages from Penn State coming to my email address.

Have you ever experienced anything like this? Were you mad? Did you delete the email or choose the “This Is Spam” option or contact the sender directly? Please let me know what you did and if you got any positive results in the comment section below.

Leap List: 29 People to Help Your Marketing
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Leap List: 29 People to Help Your Marketing

General Updates, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter Chats

Leap List: 29 People to Help Your Marketing

The kids getting ready to "leap" off a terrain jump in Park City

The kids getting ready to "leap" off a terrain park jump in Park City

In 2010, I posted the Olympic Dream Team for Internet Marketing – a list of people from all aspects of the Marketing world who were providing thought leadership at that time. In honor of Leap Day (February 29th), I’m revisiting that list and giving you 29 Online Marketing thought leaders. Some of these people have remained on the list because they are consistently providing compelling and insightful information. People have dropped off the list, not through their own actions, but because my focus may have changed and others became more important to my current Marketing information needs, or it could be that we have simply lost touch. There are a few new names on the list that either I should have included back in 2010 or that we’ve only become acquainted since the original online Marketing Dream Team list was created. There is no particular order to the list, I’m excited to see posts from any of them in my Twitter stream, Facebook timeline, Google+ circle, or email inbox.

Bonus: Rachel, April, Andrea and Sara Beth – the ZipSetGo team (I added the ZipSetGo team and their #TNI Twitter chat as a bonus because their focus is travel rather than marketing, but I think it’s a great example of using social media marketing for the travel industry!)

OK, I cheated a little by combining people and companies on a few of the entries, but sometimes there were just too many smart people in one company to list them all! I consistently get valuable information and insights from these people and I respect their opinions. Even though we may not always agree, they always give me something to think about. Whose Marketing insights do you look forward to reading each day? Please add them in the list below…

How Do You Know Who To Interact With On Social Media?

: The inspiration – thanks Autom Tagsa!

A comment I made during last week’s #SMchat was one of the most re-Tweeted and commented upon Tweets I’ve posted recently. My Tweet (on the left) was to point out that you can spend a lot of time on social media without seeing any benefits. Just like in real life, if you’re interacting with the wrong people, you won’t get much out of the conversation.

There’s an article in the Guardian that says Twitter is changing how we interact with the world. The way I see it, social media isn’t changing the way we interact with the world, it’s giving us a new way to network with people that we may not have had access to without Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/etc.

Heidi Cool, a #SMchat regular, wrote a post in September 2009 asking, “How are you interacting with your target audience?”, and although it’s important to interact with your target audience, it’s also important to connect with people who aren’t your target audience right now, because they could be in the future.

My friend Renee Lemley from Gray Matter Marketing came up with some great names for Twitter follow strategies like: THE UNEQUIVOCALLY UNRECIPROCATED FOLLOW STRATEGY and THE EVEN-STEVEN FOLLOW STRATEGY in her post, “Why, How and Who Do You Follow?” Which social media interaction strategy is right for you? Or do you use a different technique?

The main question in this week’s #SMchat conversation is: How do you know who to interact with on Social Media?

My short answer: Everyone!

Want to find out the longer version? (We’re limited to 140 characters because it’s a Twitter chat, but I can guarantee there will be more than 9 characters of conversation going on!) Join us on Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 1PM ET on the hashtag #SMchat for answers to the question above and these questions as well:

Julian Loren wants to know, How do you gracefully disengage when needed? Hopefully, Sherry Lowry will join us to expand on her suggestion to “build in graceful exits to agreements.”

Jeunesse Yvonne wants to know if it’s appropriate to follow your boss/manager. A Mashable survey says it’s wrong to friend your boss on Facebook in their article, “Facebook Friends With Your Boss? Right or Wrong?” I’m not sure that I agree with that, but let’s hear what you have to say!

Jeunesse Yvonne also asks should you interact with people you’d like to be employed by? I think DJ Waldow would emphatically say that’s a good idea…emphatically mainly because DJ’s enthusiastic about everything, but also because social media helped him get his job at Blue Sky Factory!

Got questions on who to interact with on social media? Even better, bring an opinion or some real-life examples of your own to our Twitter chat on Wednesday, 9/8/10 at 1P ET – we look forward to chatting with you there! Can’t make it, or have a burning question that you don’t want to forget? Leave a comment below and I’ll make sure we discuss it during the chat. I’ll also post a link to the transcript for your review.

2010 Internet Marketing Olympics Dream Team

: Podium in the stadium from Crestock Creative Photos

Well, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada ends today so I decided to try to come up with a “dream team” of Internet Marketing Olympians in several categories. The “events” are: Affiliate Marketing, Blogging, Email Marketing, Search Engine Marketing (including SEO/SEM/PPC), Social Marketing, Web Analytics, and I’ve even included an event for Vendors.

Affiliate Marketing

Geno Prussakov
Jen Goode
Melanie Seery
Missy Ward
Scott Jangro
Shawn Collins
Stephanie Lichtenstein
Trisha Lyn Fawver

Blogging

Aneta Hall
CB Whittemore
Coree Silvera
Dawn Westerberg
Debra Ellis
DJ Francis
Heather in BC
Lee Odden

Email Marketing

Blue Sky Factory – Greg Cangialosi, DJ Waldow, and Chris Penn
Chad White
Loren Baker
Michael Katz
Scott Hardigree
Stephanie Miller

Search Engine Marketing

Adam Sherk
Brent Payne
Chris Burns
David Szetela
Rand Fishkin
Wil Reynolds

Social Media

Jay Baer
Jim Kukral
Mack Collier
Mari Smith
Paul Chaney
Renee Lemley
Scott Stratten

Web Analytics

Avinash Kaushik
Coremetrics (including but not limited to: John Squire, Boaz Ronkin, Susan Barnett, and Jason Mraz)

Vendors

Hubspot – Dharmesh Shah, Mike Volpe, Rebecca Corliss, and Ellie Mirman
Ion Interactive
Lyris
Marketing Profs – Ann Handley, Shelley Ryan, and Beth Harte
More Visibility
Radian 6 – Amber Naslund and Teresa Basich
The Duffy Agency – Kevin Duffy and Sean Duffy

I know I missed a lot of people/companies/organizations that should be on my 2010 Internet Marketing Olympic Dream Team – please post a comment and let me know who they are below. Thanks!