Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Abraham Harrison Staff, Activating Bloggers, Blog Messaging, Blog Strategy, Blogger Activation, Blogger Code of Conduct, Blogger Engagement, Blogger Ethics, Blogger Gifts, Blogger Influence, Blogger Outreach, Blogger Relations, Blogger Response, Blogger Service, Brand Advocacy, Brand Ambassador, Brand Promotion, Brand Reputation, Branding, Chris Abraham, Circumadvertising, Direct Email, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Email Outreach, Gift Giving, Gifting Bloggers, Give Swag, New Marketing, New Media Marketing, New Media Strategy, Norman Birnbach, Online Advertising, Online Advocacy, Online Brand Promotion, Online Branding, Online Communications, Online Community Outreach, Online Engagement, Online Entertainment, Online Evangelism, Online Influence, Online Marketing, Online Media, Online Messaging, Online Outreach, Online PR, Online Pitch, Online Public Relations, PR Back Talk, PR Blogging, PR Blogs, PR Ethics, PR Hubris, PR Industry, PR Pitching, Pitching Bloggers, Pitching New Media, Pitching Social Media, Pushing Swag

This morning, Norman Birnbach wrote an article wherein he suggests that I emphasize giving swag:

One of his tips is to “Give swag” — a point that Chris Abraham emphasized in a recent interview. The reason is that blogging is often a second career and there are few perks so swag can make a difference to get bloggers to respond.

He is not wrong, but I think I need to clarify my definition of “gift-giving.” I don’t emphasize giving away swag, necessarily — what I do emphasize is gifting — and giving ’til it hurts, “What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception.”

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2 Comments » Posted on June 16th, 2008 by Chris Abraham

Filed under: Election Strategy, Email Etiquette, Email Marketing, Email Outreach, Email Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Political Strategy

If you’ve ever been involved in a political campaign or you’ve contributed to a candidate - and they’ve gotten your email - then you will realize that your are now in a database that’s very hard to get out of. And you’ll be contacted by like-minded politicians running for office. All asking for money.

So when I read Matt Asay’s article in Cnet, Pining for an open-source political campaign, I began to laugh. He contributed to Mitt Romney’s campaign - he know one of Romney’s sons - and is getting up to four emails per day. Very little understanding of email marketing and relationship building on the part of Romney’s team.

But Matt comes up with some suggestions. Here they are:

  • All of the politician’s information - voting record, positions on the issues, etc. - would be available online in one place. The candidate’s source code, as it were. I wouldn’t need someone to call me to tell me to vote for him or her - I could choose for myself after reviewing “the source.”
  • Because of the first point, there would be no need for campaign staffers to pepper me with emails or phone calls. The source code would either attract my interest or it wouldn’t. Open source encourages a passive sales model. The sales team only bothers with those that show an affirmative, proactive interest in the “source.”
  • Candidates would win on the basis of who they really are, not who they can pretend to be. Romney takes heat for flip-flopping, but let’s be honest: how many politicians have you seen that won’t flip-flop on an issue to pull in votes? Very few. Open source the candidates and perhaps we’d have less of this buffoonery.

I like all three.

No Comments » Posted on January 14th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Abraham Harrison LLC, Election Strategy, Email Marketing, Email Outreach, Email Strategy, Political Blogs, Political Strategy, Social Meda, Social Networking, Social Networks, Word-of-Mouth, Word-of-Mouth Marketing

The Washington Post is pointing out that, once again, passionate grassroots support is outperforming traditional top-down marketing. And the weapon of choice appears to be email. It may just affect who will end up being the next president of the United States.

GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and Baptist minister, has had some extraordinary help from volunteers - some of whom aren’t directly involved in the campaign - who are tapping into their network of church goers and like minded citizens. This is a classic example of key influencers at work, using word of mouth to effectively spread the word about Huckabee’s stances…particularly about home schooling.

A very telling part as to why this is amazing is that the previous frontrunner in the state, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had aired 5,000 televison commercials in the first nine months of the year. In the same time period, Huckabee’s team had aired not even one. Now, Romney is behind.

Those of us in social media constantly talk about tapping into the community. I’ve often had doubts about that. Not because the concept wasn’t sound…but because , quite often , there wasn’t a community to be tapped into. Here there is.

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1 Comment » Posted on December 17th, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Conversation Marketing, Email Marketing, Email Outreach, Email Strategy, Online Engagement, Online Outreach

I received an email from Ian Lurie via Facebook* that had a link to some pretty great and simple advice on how to avoid getting your email stuck to the SPAM box tar-baby. From my experience, and point three in Ian’s blog post, one way to avoid this trap is by keeping it simple: plaintext emails, often labeled as “send as plain text.”

“Use a plain text e-mail, or at least minimize images. An e-mail that’s all or mostly images will likely get flagged as spam. I can’t point to any hard evidence of this, but years of experience has shown me that text e-mails perform better, as far as deliverability.” Via Conversation Marketing

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No Comments » Posted on November 18th, 2007 by Chris Abraham


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