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Be Well, Do Good Work and Keep In Touch
In addition to the Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor has a segment each day on NPR called Writer’s Almanac. He reads poetry, lists birthdays and closes by saying “Be Well, Do Good Work, and Keep in Touch.” What better message is there, this time of year?

Be Well
Have you gotten a flu shot? This year you only need one and it’s much better than being in bed for a week. Take care of yourself, especially when the wind howls outside. It’s so easy to get caught up in the busy-ness of the holiday season and forget basic maintenance. We vow to play with our kids more this year and eat candy with them less.

Do Good Work
The end of the year is finally here, and we are grateful to be busy. The best way for this company, this region and this country to turn things around is to be excellent. When we do our best, we are the most innovative, dynamic people on the planet and there is no problem we can’t solve. We at GMS are convinced that the most powerful thing we can do right now is to love what we do and do it to the best of our ability. Let’s challenge ourselves and each other.

Keep In Touch
Connecting with loved ones may be the second most powerful thing we all can do. Whether it’s via social media, lengthy letters, smarmy pictures or sentimental cards, it’s good to reach out, and it’s great to receive. No matter how old you get, do you ever really get over the thrill of seeing that you’ve got actual mail? Peace and blessings to you all this holiday season from your good friends at Global Marketing Services.

Email Trends for 2011
Mediapost recently published an article detailing predictions for email in 2011. Some of the predictions are technical and have to do with making email more accessible across multiple platforms. Some of their prognosticating has to do with the industry in general and bears repeating here as we all look ahead. The emergence of new messaging services like Facebook Messages moves the industry forward in speed and ease of use but sacrifices graphics capabilities so plain text messages will become an increasingly more important component.

Email will move in a more viral way, similar to “Likes” on Facebook thanks to share-with-your-network (SWYN) technology. Retailers use this to allow their network to forward promotions on to their friends and family for improved reach.

Mediapost predicts that marketers will be forced to turn their attention to inactives – subscribers who never respond to campaigns. This will have to be addressed as ISPs are more involved in what goes to the inbox versus the junk folder. Marketers will need to segment their network more effectively to grab the attention of their sleeping consumers.

Similarly, the author suggests that permission itself will morph from the opt-out model to consumers hiding themselves from retailers via Facebook Messages and Google Priority Inbox solutions. In short – content will be king and to succeed marketers will need to produce a product consumers want to receive. .

Do Not Track Legislation
What is it?
The FTC released a report in early December promoting an option for consumers to completely opt-out of tracking. Obviously this tracking is useful for precise ad targeting. The FTC report suggests that efforts to self-regulate within the marketing industry have been insufficient thus far. This so-called Do-Not-Track mechanism has far-reaching implications. If you as a consumer register on a Do-Not-Track list, it could extend to your mobile applications as well as internet usage. READ MORE…

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April W. Boone             April@GMStheBest.biz
John Boone                  John@GMStheBest.biz