In yesterday’s posting, I mused about the apparent lack of response to two emails sent by me and Tim Klabunde on Wednesday announcing the launch of the current Design and Construction Report.
A few hours later, it seemed that the slumbering Internet came to life.
Suddenly hundreds of people appeared seemingly out of nowhere, to visit the publication and respond to the advertising and a few sent truly helpful and thoughtful emails to me. (I will respect the email confidences until I have permission to reprint the observations here.)
What happened?
Instead of using a general email from Constant Contact, Tim Klabunde used the internal group owners notification capacity within LinkedIn.com to send this email:
Group owners are allowed to send one “notification” email a week to group members. You can’t include graphics within the email but can set hyperlinks.
Why did this email succeed when our previous day’s initiatives appeared to have failed?
I can see these reasons:
- The email went ONLY to people who had a direct interest and relationship with the project. Unlike my general list which includes many readers who connected with me for reasons other than the Design and Construction Network/Report, Tim sent the Linkedin.com email only to people within the network;
- The email only had one topic and link — to the Design and Construction Report: It did not promote several competing links (as did Tim’s Constant Contact email on Wednesday).
- The email contained enough information to indicate that the content might appeal to a diversity of readers. My original email and the graphic only focused on the “Best Construction Blog” competition; yesterday, Tim ignored that aspect to highlight several other stories within the magazine.
The Statcounter report shows the results: Close to 500 readers visited the site and, this time and several clearly completed the process and read the magazine. I also recorded the single highest day of direct advertising revenue from the site though of course this revenue is hardly enough to support the business.
