April 21, 2008
Each Monday, we'll discuss a few notable articles from the past week. These articles will touch on topics relevant to the email sender and ISP communities. Some topics of note will be phishing and spamming, email authentication, branding, online advertising, email statistics, and others.
Welcome to this week's blog posting.
I'm Seth Redmore, and I'll be your host while you're here. Thanks for joining us.
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Sender-line branding tactics in retail email
The first article of note comes from MediaPost’s Email Insider. This article discusses the various techniques that senders use to bring across their branding in the subject line.
This is particularly timely as Brandmail Solutions is going to be at the Email Insider Summit down in Florida next month. We hope to see some of y’all there.
To paraphrase the article:
“In their promotional emails, retailers used one of four branding tactics with their sender names:
1. They simply use their brand name. This tactic is used by 59% of major online retailers, including Bloomingdale's, The Home Depot, Omaha Steaks, Sears, Victoria's Secret and Walgreens. It's succinct, uncluttered and easy to recognize.
2. They use their dot-com branding. This tactic is used by 26% of retailers. (I also included here those retailers whose brand names already includes a ".com," like Buy.com and Furniture.com.) For instance, Macy's uses the sender name "macys.com" and Dick's Sporting Goods uses "DicksSportingGoods.com."
3. They use their brand name plus the name of the newsletter. This tactic is used by 11% of retailers. For instance, Wal-Mart uses "Wal-Mart Wire" and Norm Thompson uses "Norm Thompson E-News" as their sender names.
4. They use their brand name plus the name of their division. This tactic is used by only 4% of retailers, including Hewlett-Packard, which uses the sender name "HP Home & Home Office Store."”
Driving home that point:
“Branding in the sender address is critical become not all email clients display sender names; some just display sender addresses. When looking at the branding of sender addresses of promotional emails, it comes down to whether the retailer uses branding after the @-sign in their address, or both before and after it. The consensus is the more branding the better, with 73% of major online retailers including their brand name both before and after the @-sign. The remaining 27% use branding only after the @-sign; none use branding only before it.”
In other words, the concern exists that you have to say your name twice (New York, NY becomes NewYork@NY.gov - or something like that) in order to make sure that your branding is actually visible in the inbox.
(Link)
Pssssst. We have a better solution for you, so that you can spend your time worrying about things other than what “from” address to use.
That article got me wondering about the wide variety of areas to which branding and brand visibility in the inbox is valuable. The rest of this week’s post is dedicated to branding in all aspects of life.
Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'
(Keep movin', movin', movin',
Though they're disapprovin',
Keep them doggies movin'
Rawhide!)
Though not exactly applicable, the song was stuck in my head. And now it’s not. The next article comes from the Trucks at Work blog at Fleetowner.com.
“You hear a lot about the importance of “brand names” in the market place – especially in terms of supporting the brand and what it stands for. Truckers are more than familiar with this concept because they are some of the most “brand loyal” customers you’ll ever fin. I mean, I’ve talked to countless fleets and owner-operators that stick with Peterbilt, Kenworth, International, Mack, Freightliner, Sterling, Western Star, Volvo, you name it, and wouldn’t switch truck brands unless you paid them.”
True that. But, the real reason why I chose this article was the following paragraph:
“That’s why focusing on your own brand – whether you’re a fleet or owner-operator – is so important, almost like a “mantra” these days. (And “mantra” is a term from India meaning words or vibrations used as “spiritual conduits” to instill one-pointed concentration in the devotee. It originated from the Vedic religion of India, later becoming a fundamental part of both the Hindu and Buddhist religions.)”
A brand truly is a mantra. I hear people using the term “mantra” quite often, and I’m sure that they don’t really know where it comes from or what it means. These people do. (Link)
Branding and Art
Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com has a discussion of art and branding and the associated questions
“Illinois artist Conrad Bakker, whose art has a habit of raising uncomfortable questions about price and value in the art world, popped round this afternoon on a visit to New York. Conrad makes all his own work - he doesn't outsource anything or have assistants - and he's pretty much in charge of selling it, too: while he does exhibit in galleries, he doesn't have a gallery, and once a show is over he's back on his own. If you buy one of Conrad's works, then, there's a good chance you'll buy it directly from him, and you'll know that it was very much he who made it.”
What’s interesting is that this is sort of the assumption that most people make about art, I think.
“The contrast with the world's biggest A-list art stars could barely be greater. And if you think of the artists who are famous for having assistants make their art for them, starting with Andy Warhol and moving on through the likes of Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami, there's no indication that taking away the artist's touch has any kind of negative effect on the value of the art. If anything, the opposite seems to be true.
The result of this is that the most expensive contemporary artists are the most branded and immediately visible contemporary artists. You know a Hirst when you see one, or a Murakami, or a Serra, or a Koons. The normal mode of looking at art is reversed: you don't think "I like that, I wonder who the artist is" but rather "Oh, there's a Koons, I wonder if I'll like it".”
So, the assertion here is that the brand expectation actually directly influences your experience of the aesthetic. They raise a very interesting question at the end:
“One can't help but suspect that these brands might suffer enormously when the art market crashes, just because their values are supported more by branding than by aesthetic fundamentals”
Ok, so, the art is inherently less valuable because the value is highly influenced by the value of the brand? I think just like any brand, if the brand can maintain the value throughout turmoil in the market, the brand’s product retains value. Some brands will be more exposed, and some will be less. I think that their concern that the value is so heavily tied to the brand is kind of a red herring – perhaps smacking of a bit of art snobbery.
The unstated concern of a saturated market is probably much more of an economic factor than the “branding” of the art and move from artist self-produced to assistant-produced art. (Link)
Branding Your Baby
One hopes that it is meant in the marketing sense, and not in the cattle sense. Our last article comes from TMCNet.com, an article to which I can add little value other that quoting bits of it here:
Baby branding: Naming little tykes today can be as stressful as a marketing campaign
Standing out as an individual means so much in today's world that parents worry more about what to name their children than ever before, says Linda Rosenkrantz, who co-authored more than a half-dozen baby name books, including "Beyond Jennifer & Jason, Madison & Montana: What to Name Your Baby Now" and "The Baby Name Bible."
6 baby name books? You have to wonder if she just starts making up crazy names to see if people will actually name their children these names (Nutrition-aA? Xzpyrian? Aaaaabe?)
"People want unique names. They want to establish a certain image for their child," she says. "They're almost branding their babies. Some are literally naming them Lexus and Armani, but we won't talk about those."
Ok, I have to point out two things. One is that she did just talk about it, and two is how does naming your child Lexus or Armani give them a unique name? Armani is really someone’s name already, and Lexus is just a Corolla waiting to happen.
“Celebrity culture also strongly influences naming trends, Rosenkrantz says. We've become obsessed with celebrity pregnancies. Tabloids out the latest starlet to sport a baby bump, and celebrity pregnancies are covered almost as thoroughly as the presidential race.”
A rash of Obama’s are soon to ensue? Hillary Rodham’s?
Only 3 percent of parents recently surveyed by BabyCenter.com, an online resource for parents, say they regret the name they selected, primarily because it became too popular, is often mispronounced or doesn't fit their child's personality.
Just like your baby, the name is never ugly.
“And because of the added pressure of naming a child today, once parents decide on a name they often keep it to themselves until their new family member emerges from the womb.
"That's because of the pressure they feel to come out with perfect names," Rosenkrantz says. "They're so likely to get some disapproving remark from grandparents, parents-in-law, that they just don't want to risk it. They're bound to get negative comments with any name."”
I’m going to try this with my next launch. “Sorry, Noel. You have to wait until launch day to find out the name of the product.” (Link)
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