I sure hope so. Many other cool companies like TED, MTV and Vera Wang like the hairy, cute MailChimp guy.

Switching email services is always a bear even if it’s named after a monkey. We’ve been using Feedblitz for the past year and while I’ve been happy with the process of sending out the bi-weekly mail, I’ve felt it was hard to make changes and user-friendly-ness was more stress than I, or my team, could stomach.

This week we made the jump. There are still some fleas here, but know we are working on them. For example, the ezine won’t always be this long and next time you will see abstracts and then click through button.

Before we changed, we researched several options and my design and IT team recommended MailChimp for a few of reasons.

1) We could create an ezine from our weekly blog posts feed.

2) It allows a lot more design features. We like pretty mail.

3) But most of all it did not require our community, which has gotten pretty big, to have to re opt-in. I was concerned that this would loose folks because of the hassle and did not want that.

4) The cost was about the same as Feedblitz, under $50 bucks a month.

5) The platform works well with social media sites and apps.

On the downside, we also learned that programming know how is needed to break the standard feed formats.

We hope you like the new look and welcome your feedback. We’ve also made some changes to the site which I will be reporting back on whether they were worth the time and expense.

Thanks for your continued support!

That is a million dollar question. Email continues to get high marks as an effective channel to reach customers and prospects, but it can also cross the line of too much, too frequent and even feel pest-like.

Oddpodz is very sensitive concerning how often we reach out to our community. Starting this week, we are going to employ a new schedule of sending ezines to our friends and supporters. Twice a month we will blast our top posts from our three blogs. On the off ezine blast weeks, we will post a wrap up article in the Grow your Business blog. And if you want a daily dose of Oddpodz, please sign up for our RSS feed too.

Let us know what you think? Just enough? Too much? Need more?

Subject lines are critical in email. They are often the power behind getting read. Equally as important are the words you want to avoid, so your email does not get Devoured by the spam eater. I found this list and some other good SEO tips. They seemed to cover the bad boys.

100 spam trigger words & phrases to avoid

1. #1
2. 100% satisfied
3. 4U
4. Accept credit cards
5. Act Now!
6. Additional Income
7. Affordable
8. All natural
9. All new
10. Amazing
11. Apply online
12. Bargain
13. Best price
14. Billing address
15. Buy direct
16. Call
17. Call free
18. Can’t live without
19. Cards Accepted
20. Cents on the dollar
21. Check
22. Claims
23. Click / Click Here / Click Below
24. Click to remove
25. Compare rates
26. Congratulations
27. Cost / No cost
28. Dear friend
29. Do it today
30. Extra income
31. For free
32. Form
33. Free and FREE
34. Free installation
35. Free leads
36. Free membership
37. Free offer
38. Free preview
39. Free website
40. Full refund
41. Get it now
42. Giving away
43. Guarantee
44. Here
45. Hidden
46. Increase sales
47. Increase traffic
48. Information you requested
49. Insurance
50. Investment / no investment
51. Investment decision
52. Legal
53. Lose
54. Marketing
55. Marketing solutions
56. Message contains
57. Money
58. Month trial offer
59. Name brand
60. Never
61. No gimmicks
62. No Hidden Costs
63. No-obligation
64. Now
65. Offer
66. One time / one-time
67. Opportunity
68. Order / Order Now / Order today / Order status
69. Orders shipped by priority mail
70. Performance
71. Phone
72. Please read
73. Potential earnings
74. Pre-approved
75. Price
76. Print out and fax
77. Profits
78. Real thing
79. Removal instructions
80. Remove
81. Risk free
82. Sales
83. Satisfaction guaranteed
84. Save $
85. Save up to
86. Search engines
87. See for yourself
88. Serious cash
89. Solution
90. Special promotion
91. Success
92. The following form
93. Unsolicited
94. Unsubscribe
95. Urgent
96. US dollars
97. Wife
98. Win
99. Winner
100. Work at home

Do you know of any others? Please share.

Some other tips to remember.

1. Writing subject lines for email should include: thoughtful creativity, keywords, a sense of urgency, value points, benefit words and emotional triggers.
2. Don’t repeat your subject line, just because you think it’s a campaign. Your readers may not know that. They could think it’s something stuck in the pipeline and likely trash it. Instead, if it’s a campaign or you have branded your series, add a number, a keyword tied to benefit or hot topic phrase.
3. Test. Split your list and try a couple variations.

Where do you draw the line and decide what is honest to goodness marketing and networking, and what is invasive, obnoxious and sleazy SPAM?

It’s a hard call.

I get lots of email from people I know damn well  I’ve never opted in to their email list. Plus they even use a respected email service that claims to be spam free and still my in box is stuffed full with unrequested messaging and junk. I’m starting to question how spam free they are. I’ve used company for several years called Feedblitz. In fact, I just became an affiliate last week. This means if you sign up for their service, Oddpodz will make a commission. However, my recommendations are always based on my experience with the company, the small are a bonus ;) Whatever service you use, do your homework, because switching providers often requires having your community re-opt in and you can loose some long time followers.

Back to Feedblitz, I was attracted to their service because your blog is the feed/content for your email. I’ve learned many people still prefer mail over RSS feed. They do a good job, and don’t tolerate list dumping or spamming. And if you have an issue you get to speak to real person.

I often wonder, did this happen because of  some business group I joined and they sold their list, or did this company get my biz card and randomly add me to their email pool or did they buy my name from a list broker,  in any case, 99% of the time I’m annoyed because fundamentally I hate spam and any relative or form of it makes me cranky.

The other side of the coin. As a business owner who is trying to build a market of followers and customers, I’ve considered buying lists. I understand the math behind if you reach out to 10,000 people and offer something of value, 5% may join in your party. Is that a bad thing?

Can you say direct mail? Since I’ve been on this planet, I’ve been introduced to many a worthy businesses and products via an ice cold piece of direct mail.  I know my name was purchased some where down the line in the marketing and capitalism world of business promotion. And I’m cool with that. I know I can also choose to chunk the uninvited mail into the trash at any moment.

Here’s my take on the subject of uninvited, no permission email marketing.

Buying an email or snail mail list is OK if you reach out with a valuable offer, one or two times.  And as  long as you provide an easy, clear way to opt-out at any point.

If you don’t provide the opt-out option and you Ignore the recipients request to stop receiving your stuff, then you deserve to get the worst computer virus ever and get struck by lightening too.

Be honest with the people you reach out to. Don’t tell them they signed up, if they didn’t. That just adds to making the world feel crazy, when they may not have lost their mind yet.

Love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

1. Have you purchased lists? Where?
2. Did you get a good return?
3. What email service to you use?
4. Where is the best place to report spammers?
5. Are you still using snail mail?