LinkedIn Totally Blows Email Marketing Opportunity

Oh LinkedIn. Reid. Can I call you Reid? I know we don't know each other personally, but really: we have to talk. Sit down and let's chat.

You see, you just sent me this email about your 100 millionth member. (Congrats, by the way. Impressive).

But, you know, it has issues. It really is, frankly, a horribly missed opportunity. Plus you're breaking the law. Needless to say, that's not good for your pending IPO.

Marketing Fail

This was the perfect, perfect opportunity to give us early adopters something special. Some special feature. Free upgrades. Discounts. Extended trials of your premium services. Anything!

But instead you gave us, well, diddly. You emailed us all but failed to answer the 100 million question: so what? What was the point, Reid?

You just blasted all of us, your early advocates, and gave us nothing. No reason to go back to the site. No incentives. Not even a "hey, haven't seen you for a while, come on back." A little ego pampering about how insightful we are, kinda sorta, but maybe we knew that already, y'know?

Such a wasted opportunity.

And by the way: The Law called CAN-SPAM

Yes, CAN-SPAM is largely worthless. It is, nevertheless, the law. And you broke it, what, a million times?

See, your email wasn't transactional. It was marketing. So the law requires, amongst other things

• Physical contact data.
• Unsubscribe instructions.

And it didn't. Unless I'm blind; here's mine. Did I miss it?

You see, Reid, in the war against spam and in promulgating email marketing best practice, it's important that industry leaders like you and LinkedIn get this stuff right. And you didn't. Not even close. It's frustrating for us toiling away in the field when major Internet firms skip even basic compliance.

So, Reid. If you need an email marketing service or some consulting please do let me know. Happy to help you avoid wasting what is, in other news, a fabulous milestone. FeedBlitz makes sure basics such as compliance and authentication are taken care of for all our users, automatically.

   

So Social It's Nearly Communist: LinkedIn Added to FeedBlitz

Ok, so silly headline; here's the beef:

• Every list on FeedBlitz can now publish to their LinkedIn network.
• Every subscription form now has a LinkedIn option.

Why use FeedBlitz for this?

Here's a screenshot of a LinkedIn update from earlier this morning, powered by this post at FeedBlitz News.

We do it better. You get the title, the opening content and a graphic thumbnail image. Better yet, the updates link to your blog, the post and your subscription form. Every post to your LinkedIn network therefore does triple duty in terms of also getting readership back to your site, the post and onto your mailing list (just like our Facebook integration does).

Integrated Metrics. LinkedIn interactions will appear on the social media engagement report, alongside your email, Facebook, Twitter and IM subscriber activity.

Publishers with LinkedIn accounts can integrate FeedBlitz right now at Newsletters - Mailings - LinkedIn - set it up now, it takes less than a minute.

   

Join the FeedBlitz LinkedIn Publisher Group

I've personally been a little neglectful of my LinkedIn network recently, something I redressed with a vengeance over the weekend. And now I've set up a group for FeedBlitz publishers at LinkedIn, so you can all network together and expand your personal networks by dint of having FeedBlitz in common.

So, if you're a FeedBlitz publisher and you'd like to join our LinkedIn group, follow this link.

Talking of LinkedIn, a fabulous way to keep in touch with your LinkedIn network activity is to use FeedBlitz to mail you a daily update! This works for anyone, regardless of whether you're a FeedBlitz publisher or not:

1) Log in to LinkedIn.
2) In the left hand menu bar, click "Home" if you're not already there.
3) Click the iddy biddy orange RSS icon to the right of "Network Updates."

1) Go directly to http://www.linkedin.com/rssAdmin?display
2) Enable the feed for network updates if currently disabled.
3) Copy the RSS link.
4) Paste the RSS link into the form at the bottom of http://www.feedblitz.com/ and continue with the standard dual opt in subscription process.

You'll get a daily update of all your network activity directly to your mailbox, complete with table of contents and the usual FeedBlitz yummy goodness.