Outside the Firewall

I love Open Source

I was having and issue with the google analytics site search feature on our site. I’d been struggling for months trying figure out what query parameters might work. I finally went to the Drupal.org site today (site is built on Drupal), searched the comments, and promptly found the answer. This has nothing to do with Open Source but it did get me thinking about it in general.

The very short story: I’ve dug Open Source since about 2001 when I found out that Apache runs the net (I love the net). One night I was astounded to find out about this group of people who banded together to create software and gave it freely to others.  Astounded to find out that the software they created powered the internet.

Community, that’s it for me.

Email List Open Rates - Don't settle for average

I’m looking at email open rates in iContact and thinking about industry averages.  Some think that having average email open rate is good however I think industry average is a cop out.  Assuming you are in a niche, your list should have higher email open rates.   Seriously, the people on niche market lists are much more interested in your product/service and so more likely to open your email.  Check your bounce and complaint rates to see if your email is being received, but otherwise…don’t settle.

If you’re in a niche and have average open rates here are things that might help:

• Concentrate on better email headlines
  • Write a markedly different email headline. If your email is being recieved but not opened, chances are the recipient has filtered your email.  Try to get out of that filter.  If its by headline keyword(s) you’ve got a shot. All you need is one chance.  Change “Introducing, such and such”  to “Another great synonym for such and such… ” for example.

Make your emails more interesting to read.

• • Follow through with interesting subject matter.  Don’t tell me everything has been done.  Find cool, relevant angles.  Last week we told our thousands of list subscribers about interesting ecommerce sites built with Magento, an application we recently released.
    

    Magento features tools for site management, marketing promotions, search engine optimization, catalog management, and more. Winner of ‘Best of 2008’ awards from Infoworld magazine and SourceForge.net, Magento is the most highly respected open source ecommerce solution available today.
    

    Here are 3 cool sites from around the world built with Magento:
    

    • Based in London, UKKO is a new luxury menswear brand for fashion conscious golfers both on and off the course. Fore!

• Famed table radio producer Tivoli Audio expands online in the Czech Republic with Magento.

• • From the USA, NerdyShirts.com sells unique tee shirts for nerds. Our favorite? Mii Love.

(Links clicked per person rose considerably compared to four previous weekly emails sent.  This is only one metric, taken one time, but it is encouraging.  What might happen measured and optimized over time?)

When I was in secondary school (no, I don’t remember which one, don’t you think I’d tell you if I remembered?) my pop once repremanded me about my report card.  I had a ‘C’ in math.  He said, “Do you know what a ‘C’ means?  A ‘C’ is average!  Are you average?”

No pop, I’m not.  Thanks

Shaffe

Anyone translate Belgian? Also, need info: pool table moving/movers in Phoenix, Queen Creek to @Gangplank. Lotta chit to do, let’s move out.

Update: Idiot am I.  French and Dutch are the languages spoken in Belguim.