Local email marketing provider, ExactTarget, has released some fantastic research in the past month, all as part of a series they call Subscribers, Fans and Followers. So far, they’ve released four reports, which I’ll detail below. If you’re interested in getting PDFs of all of the research, check out their Subscribers, Fans and Followers page. While ExactTarget started out as an email marketing company, they’ve expanded to become much more than that. They recently purchased CoTweet, a California-based Corporate Twitter Management software company, so they’re definitely headed in the direction of a communications management company. This research fits really well with the direction ExactTarget seems to be heading and I think its great that they’re handing out this research.

Report No. 1: Digital Morning

The first report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series focuses on general user behavior. What’s the first thing online customers check in the morning? How engaged are online consumers with email, Facebook and Twitter? Digital Morning gives a great overview of those and other questions. Here are some highlights from the report:

• 58% of US online consumers check email as their first online activity of the day.
• 93% of US online consumers are SUBSCRIBERS (receive at least one permission-based email a day).
• 38% of US online consumers are FANS (have a Facebook account and are a fan of at least one company or brand).
  • 69% of US daily Facebook users are FANS.
• 5% of US online consumers are FOLLWERS (have a twitter account and follow at least one company or brand).
  • 69% of US daily Twitter users are FOLLOWERS.

Even with the huge rise of social media, permission-based email is still extremely important for marketing. But even with a smaller percentage of US online consumers using Facebook and Twitter, those consumers should not be ignored. Use your target demographics to dictate whether getting involved in Facebook or Twitter would be beneficial for your organization.

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I just got an email from Qdoba Mexican Grill (click on the image at left to see a larger version) and it was a great example of creative permission email.

I signed up to receive emails from Qdoba when I became a member of their frequent purchaser card. I’ve received several other emails from them and they have all been very straightforward.

When I saw the Subject Line of this email (Stinky Brown Bag), my first thought was that the email was spam and I should delete it. Then I read it again and realized that it was from Qdoba. I’d bet that everyone who works in an office has received an email like this at some point in their career. By using a creative headline like this, Qdoba got me to open an email that I might not have opened otherwise.

I’d be very interested to see what Qdoba’s open rate was on this email. In addition to having a clever headline on the email, they followed up with clever content and offered a deal. This somewhat deceptive subject line is definitely not a tactic that should be used frequently, but Qdoba was able to highlight a special offer in a unique way.

This kind of creativity should be employed in more email campaigns. One of the most important parts of an email marketing campaign is the email subject. The better your subject is, the more people that will open up your email. Of course, you still need good content in the email, but can use good headlines to get your foot in the door.

This post doesn’t really have anything to do with tourism, but I thought it would be a fun way to close out another week. National Geographic has created a truly amazing feature on their website called The Infinite Photograph.

Description from the Infinite Photograph’s website:

What makes up our world? Dive into this photo-mosaic portrait of the Earth to see it through the eyes of users like you. It’s made up of hundreds of photos of the natural world, each submitted by users to My Shot. (Submit a photo) Move the yellow square over an area you would like to explore, click, and go. Double-click on an image to see more information about it. Keep clicking—and diving deeper into the Infinite Photograph—to get a truly boundless picture of Earth.

Check out the video below for an example. You can visit the site and click through on your own to view the nearly limitless photos available in one large image.

Enjoy the site and have a great weekend!

Yesterday, Google unveiled a new feature on Google Image Search. Until then, Google Images had been a great utility when looking for specific images on the web. Whether you wanted to find pictures of different Indiana License Plates or the Indiana State House, you’d probably be able to find just what you were looking for. But what if you specifically wanted to find a picture of Indiana License Plates that were red, or blue, or even green? Your only hope was to type in “red indiana license plates” and hope that someone had tagged the photo as such.

Purple Flowers on Google Images

That all changed yesterday. Google unveiled the ability to filter images by color. Let’s say you want to find a picture of flowers for a blog post you were writing. the image on the left shows what you’d find if you just typed “flowers” into Google Image Search. If you only want pictures of purple flowers, simply click on “All Colors” just below the search box then click on the purple box and…voila, you have purple flowers!

Red Flowers on Google Images

If you want to find red flowers, simply click on the red box and you’ll be given a great selection of red flowers. Not only does this new functionality give you the ability to better refine your search, but the fact that Google can scan the images for specific colors opens up the door to some amazing technological advances in the future.

How will you use Google Images’ new color selection feature?

It was great to see so many partners from the Indiana Tourism industry at this year’s Hoosier Hospitality Conference (@HoosierHospConf on Twitter) at the Crowne Plaza in Indianapolis this week. In addition to some great panelists (@Doug Karr of Compendium Blogware, @Kyle Lacy of Brandswag, @Paula Werne of Holiday World, @John Palmer of MediaSauce, Santhana Naidu of Williams Randall Marketing and Jeff Robinson of the ICVA, just to name a few), there were some great topics discussed. Among those topics, RSS was only briefly touched. I had a few people make comments to me about being interested in RSS, but not quite understanding it. If you’re interested in reading my first post about RSS, please check it out.

The people at CommonCraft have created a wonderful video series called “…in plain english” (check out their channel on YouTube) where they give you a quick and easy to understand description of lots of different types of technology, from Twitter to blogs, from social media to wikis, even from web search strategies to electing a US President. Below, I’ve included their “RSS in plain English” video. It gives a great, simple description of what RSS is and how to use it.

So now you understand what RSS is, and how it can help you to stay up-to-date on websites and blogs that you want to follow, but who should you follow first? The Tourism Tech Corner, of course! Use this RSS link to subscribe to the Tourism Tech Corner in your new RSS reader (I recommend Google Reader). While you’re at it, you should probably subscribe to the new Visit Indiana Blog too (RSS link here).

Now that you’ve set up your RSS reader and you have started following some blogs, it’s time to begin subscribing to your favorite websites or blogs. If you’re using Firefox as your web browser (which I recommend), they make subscribing to RSS feeds REALLY easy. Look at the image on the right. I’ve boxed the RSS feed icons in yellow. Firefox actually scans the websites to see if there is a feed to subscribe to and if there is, Firefox will place the feed icon in the address bar. Simply click on the RSS icon and you’ll be able to subscribe to the site.

In a later post, I’ll talk about how to set up your website so others can subscribe to your RSS feed, but the basics of RSS are here and it can save a tremendous amount of time as you let the information  come to you, rather than spending the time to go find the information you want.