eROI Days Email Agency

18th September 2006
By Leah Vyse

A new energy drink called Cocaine, aimed at the young party-going market, has been launched in the US.
The product, which shares the same name with the illegal drug also associated with a young party-going circuit, has been marketed as giving a bigger and better high than any other energy drinks but without the crash the similar drinks cause.

The drink’s maker Las Vegas-based Redux Beverages claims that five minutes after consumption the drinker will achieve a high which is then followed by a caffeine boost 15 minutes later. The effects are supposed to last for up to five hours.

The maker also claims its latest product is 350% stronger than leading energy drink Red Bull.

The drink’s creator claims its effects are caused by the use of simple sugars that don’t need to be broken down by the body in order to create a “sugar buzz”, which is accompanied by a large dose of vitamin B12.

Redux have also proposed that consumers will experience a psychological boost after hearing the name of the drink.

Subject Line: Put that Coffee down. Coffee is for Closers

If you are in sales and you haven’t seen the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross”, then you are missing out on some of the best ‘hard-ball’ sales lines ever created. A sales buddy of mine forwarded this email that resonated with us as it truly was a company “created by salespeople for salespeople.”

For most of us marketers, this language is far too direct and forward, but for Landslide’s audience, it hits the nail on the head. The email reads:

“Closers:
• Follow a killer sales process
• Have impactful conversations
• Differentiate the buying experience

Give us one click and we’ll give your sales team the jolt of Landslide.

Click here to get started!”

Men’s Health magazine’s Gil Schwartz writes “The Email To Don’t List”. The advice is very candid, stream of conscious, but insightful:

1. Don’t thank me. If you’re my boss and appreciate something I’ve done, that’s cool. Otherwise, bag it. I hate being thanked, particularly with a “thx.” And don’t copy me when you thank someone else, either, unless they saved a little girl from a well or something. I’m busy dealing with the other 150 e-mails I got today.

2. Don’t involve me in a CC circle jerk. Some people think out loud on issues of moderate import for 300 e-mails. And I’m in on all of them, because some doofus copied me on e-mail number one. E-mail should be used to inform, to resolve an issue, to end a conversation, to pass along a job, or to get out of something minor, without the need for personal interaction. But don’t use a toothpick to dig a hole.

3. In fact, don’t copy me on something that’s just going to annoy me. If something is going wrong and you need to unload, be a man: Call me. Otherwise, you’re using the electronic bypass to avoid my 18-wheeler as we trundle down the information superhighway.

4. But don’t forget to copy me if I should know about it. That’s right. I’m inconsistent. Figure it out. Knowing when to get people involved and when to leave them out is a basic management skill.

5. Don’t make me think about anything for more than 15 seconds. Send me 12 long single-spaced paragraphs and I’ll send you the bill for a bump up on my bifocal prescription.

6. Don’t expect a response to every e-mail. I don’t expect you to answer me all the time, either. I put the letters NRN—no reply necessary—at the end of most of my e-mails. It cuts down on “Thx” and “Will do” and “No problem” replies from people who think I want them.

(more…)

We are always asking people what they think about certain issues facing the internet and web marketing. We started last month asking people about their email inbox preferences. Seemed that we hit a nerve as so many marketing sites and bloggers picked up on it and carried the message around the global block.

This month we are curious about another issue, time management and needs. Not from a business perspective, but from a consumer/lifestyle perspective. We are all becoming internet junkies and what impact is this having on our lives outside of work? Is there a life outside of work as there used to be?

Help us understand how the world is changing between work and life and we will post the results for you in September. Take the Email Addiction Survey and see where you stand >>

I’m a bald guy and proud of it. I have a special kinship with other bald folks, but I’m having a tough time with another bald CEO in the email world.

Dan Fost, a journalist for the San Fransisco Chronicle, writes, “With his perfectly shaved head, Jim Fowler looks like Mr. Clean. But don’t be fooled. The CEO of San Mateo’s Jigsaw Data Corp. prefers to liken himself to another famous cue ball: Dr. Evil. In taking on the identity of Austin Powers’ archenemy, Fowler is riffing on the reputation he’s gaining online as a man willing to knock down established social mores, while showing what critics say is an utter disregard for people’s privacy.

The furor is over Jigsaw’s system of encouraging people to enter business contacts into an easily accessible Web database. Sign up at the site, www.jigsaw.com, and you can get points for entering the contents of your Rolodex. You can even sell those points for money. Since it started operations on Jan. 1, 2004, Jigsaw has amassed a database of 3 million contacts at 150,000 companies, and the company expects that to grow to 5 million by year’s end. Only 131 of its 105,000 members sell points, Fowler said. “Almost all trade data to get data.” Michael Arrington, who writes the TechCrunch blog, fingered Jigsaw as “evil,” calling it a “really, really bad idea.” Rafe Needleman, who writes for the influential tech publication Release 1.0, said that it was “clever but creepy” and that it breaks the social contract.

Annalee Newitz, vice president of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, an international organization based in San Francisco, called Jigsaw a “stalkers’ paradise,” as well as a breeding ground for identity thieves and spammers. David Batstone, a professor of ethics at the University of San Francisco, said that if someone took his information off of his business card or from the signature attached to an e-mail he sent — two common methods that Fowler encourages — then he would feel “like there had been a real violation of ethical expectations that we have with each other.”

Read the full article >>

I came across a blog that was right up my alley - The Spam Obituaries! The blog starts with an explanation of itself: “Hi, I’m William Ridenhour. By day I train as a chef under Delia Smith. By night I write the Spam Obituaries.” The blog takes the names from spam e-mails, bring them to life and kill them off swiftly. Odd, but interesting. Check it out.