If you are using e-mailings to get people to visit your website, chances are at least some of your messages are considered as spam. A recent study indicates that 93% of all emails we receive are spam. How can you make sure your message is not perceived as such?

Some time ago, I received this cryptic email:

Upon clicking the link, the even less informative website appears:

My initial thoughts during this experiences were:

• The message seems to have been sent by someone I know… but it has no subject, no information.
• It’s instructing me to click, but why? I am suspicious of this “mystery” tactic.
• Once I click, I realize that the email’s only goal is to get my personal information. I leave the site.
• I am irritated that this person sent me a spam email and provided my email address to someone without my consent.

How can legitimate marketing emails avoid looking like spam? Here are three points we learn from the previous example:

1. Be crystal clear as to the purpose of your email
   Compare the above-mentioned email to this one from YouTube:

   

   There is no doubt as to the subject, and the link sends the user directly to the content, without asking for anything. It’s even more important to be clear when using social marketing features, such as “send to a friend”, because the message is sent from someone the recipient knows personally and is more likely to be read. If the message is perceived as spam, the recipient will resent it all the more for using someone they know as the conduit for unwanted sollicitation.

2. If you use “curiosity marketing”, make sure you know what you’re doing
   Arousing curiosity without seeming manipulative is an art (and a science) best left to specialists; most people that try to use it create resentment and end up seeming deceptive. A lot of research is involved in this kind of marketing in order to develop strategies that:
• Make people want to know more about the product or service
• Answer the “What’s in it for me?” question
• Time messages precisely to maximize interest
• Carefully target messages to a specific audience

In the case of this particular message, the “strategy” completely failed. They relied solely on the fact that the message was sent by someone I know, and assumed that it would be enough to get me to sign up.


3. Don’t force people to do something they don’t want to do
   I assume that this website is some kind of social networking site where you can interact with people you know. However, this is merely a deduction using the few clues I noticed from the email and the sign-up page. This is not enough for me to give up my personal information; I need to be convinced that this is not just an email-gathering strategy for a spam mailing list. If more information about the website had been given on the page, it’s possible I would have chosen to sign up. Like most people, I want to be in control of what I disclose (if anything) and why. The only control I have in this instance is to either a) put my faith in their good intentions or b) leave. I pick B.

For more reading on the subject:

• Managing the power of curiosity for effective Web advertising strategies (AllBusiness.com)
• How to Drive Customers Away from your Website: Confuse, Frustrate and Anger Them (Lucid Web)
• Incompetent Email Marketing = Lost Future Opportunities (useit.com)

There’s a viral game of blog tag going around, where bloggers tag each other to post five things about themselves on their blog. I’ve been tagged simultaneously by Ferry den Dopper, my Dutch counterpart and Muriel Vandermeulen, who has an interesting blog (in French) about how to write for the web.

I guess it means that either a) someone wants to know or b) (the most likely reason) they ran out of people to tag… So here it is:

5 little-known facts about myself

1. I speak 2.85 languages
   As a linguist wannabe, I have studied several languages including Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), German, Spanish and (currently) Hindi. I am originally a Francophone and I also speak English. The remaining 0.85 language is separated as follows:
• Chinese:0.00 (I forgot everything!)
• German: 0.05 (Read Only)
• Spanish: 0.25 (Read & Understand)
• Hindi: 0.55 (Read, Understand, Speak 30% fluently)
2. My High School career profile found me best suited to be an oceanographer
   Even though I don’t really like water or submarines
3. Every single hat I have ever tried on has looked good on me
   Consequently, I am saddened by the fact that people don’t wear hats anymore, and I can’t wear any of my vintage hats outside the house…
4. My current favourite TV show is Battlestar Galactica
   I haven’t felt this good about a SciFi show since Babylon 5!
5. I killed my first fly at 6 months of age
   By a freak coincidence, I threw my shoe and it landed on the wall, on an unsuspecting fly that had just landed in that very spot!

Now it’s my turn to tag:

• Cristina Favreau, a good friend of mine and passionate Small Business Coach
• Language Hat, my favourite linguistic blogger, who also happens to love hats!
• Sandrine Prom Tep, of ergonomia.ca, a Montreal-based usability colleague I have yet to meet

I realized some time ago that my articles tended to talk about websites that make mistakes rather than highlight the ones that show concern for their users. Even though there is always something to learn from mistakes, I wanted to start talking about usability more positively, whenever possible.

That is why I have created the Lucid Web “Wink”, my personal acknowledgment of good usability examples I notice on the web. It is not meant to be any sort of authoritative judgment; it’s simply my way to highlight a feature, design element, process or anything that makes my life easier as a consumer on the web.

It took me several months to find something worthy of mention, but today, on World Usability Day no less, I did. So, I am happy to announce that I am awarding the first Wink to

istockphoto.com
for their Search Help function that allows someone to
refine search results according to the meaning of keywords.

(iStockPhoto is a royalty-free high quality stock image website)

I’m sure this exists somewhere else, but I had never seen it before and it was really helpful in finding an image for my new blog header, which is designed by a very talented guy called Simon Oxley. This useful feature saved me time and made me smile… what else can you ask for on a rainy Tuesday?