Money quote:

On the website Mental Floss, someone has created a quiz called Obama Campaign Email Subject or Message From My Aunt?, which includes such hard-to-guess examples as “Is this still your address?” and “This email will offend you.” I scored only a 45% — 5 out of 11 guesses correct.

In most cases, I’m willing to give the sender the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes you forget you signed up to something, sometimes you get a promo email via one of your subscriptions, etc.

But the very last line in this particular email gave me pause:

If you prefer not to receive any unsolicited marketing emails regarding GM vehicles, please click here.

If you must include that in your email, you might consider a review of your strategy.

Haha, I caved and bought last night. I’ve wanted one for so long, and after receiving such personal emails (even before the one where you personally replied), I decided that was enough to convince me to buy on customer service alone. I really look forward to working with you. Thank you!

Yes, autoresponders / drip series work.

Email.  Holy cow, email.  This has been a blindspot of mine for years since I used to be an anti-spam researcher, do not really send or read mail that regularly outside of doing customer support, and hate newsletters with a passion.  Big mistake: my customers empirically do not feel the same way. (Patrick)

Pretty interesting story about a Halloween promotion for a (very) niche software product.

Quick question, after reading your newsletters for months now, I’m finally ready to buy

(Emphasis mine.)

You never know when a customer is going to buy. Most will pull the trigger early on, when their buying temperature is hottest. But not this prospect. Maybe she didn’t have the cash right away. Maybe she needed one last nudge over the fence; one more reason to justify the expense.

If you aren’t using email to stay in front of your prospect’s mind, you’re doing yourself a grave disservice. Sure it’s a lot of work. And no, writing the next email isn’t always the highlight of my day. But with the ease and ubiquity of autoresponder services, you need only write your series once, and it follows up with your prospects forever.

An Exact Target design tweak that increased sharing. Pretty cool how they observed behavior, then tweaked the design a second time to embrace visitor habits and increase sharing further.

And a copywriting post from yours truly.

Looking to test different buttons on your page? Read Eric Graham’s recommendations for maxing your button test results.

Jimmy D. Brown discusses the multiple ways to monetize the same content (and why this lets you charge higher prices).

But this transition will be good for businesses and brand marketers. Why? Because while it’s very difficult to gain access to a consumer’s email address, connecting with them via social networks is quite simple. Indeed, with Facebook’s 400 million members and 100 million daily mobile users, the network enables brands to connect with more customers than ever before–or, as Sandberg explains, “On any given day, you can reach twice as many people in the U.S. as watch American Idol–and that only makes up 30% of our global audience.

Emphasis mine.

If it’s so easy to connect, more people will do it. If it’s so easy, you’ll have every brand competing to “connect” with your prospects. Today we have email overload, tomorrow we’ll (apparently) have connection overload. Especially if it’s so easy.

Here’s the thing.

It’s OK if it’s hard to score your prospect’s contact info. That means it’s hard for your competitors, too.

And, if your prospect doesn’t give it up easily, then just think how powerful a gesture it is when she does finally fork it over? If it’s so hard to get, it sure must be valuable!

“Easy” doesn’t equate to “good” or “valuable.” Remember that when you’re thinking about your lead acquisition.

Nice use of an unsbuscribe page by Tiger Direct. So many companies waste the real estate and opportunity to monetize/engage (former) email subscribers.

Just because I exited your newsletter doesn’t mean I’m not interested in your site, products, etc.