I had the pleasure of having dinner with Chris Carder, CEO of ThinData, tonight. As you might imagine, one of the topics that came up was the role of email marketing and delivery in today's marketing mix and how that fits in with technologies like blogs and RSS.
I'm actually a fan of email as a marketing vehicle -- when done correctly, to the right audience, with the right message. Bleeding-edge early adopters might not be the right audience, but the 99.57% of Canadians who are not on that edge, probably are. My mom still has no idea what an RSS reader is nor is she likely to want to. But she gets email newsletters that she enjoys. As do I.
So I said as much to Chris.
Then he asked me .. "So why don't you have an email option for your blog?"
Uh.
Hmm.
Well?
OK ... here's the honest truth. It's because I'm a snob. And I like to think that the people who read MNIK are that .43% of marketers and geeks who are bleeding edge, use RSS feeds, and maybe even eschew email. And there's a cool Feed Icon for feeds! Email doesn't have a cool orange icon, Chris!
And then I thought, wow, Chris Carder is someone I respect and admire, and he has just told me he's not reading my blog because I'm not delivering my content in the form he wants to read it in.
And then I trooped on over to Feedburner, created an email subscription for my feed, and stuck it in the sidebar.
MNIK -- served how *you* want it.
Photo Credit: Smeerch