Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the Silverpop Agent R.O.I Digital Marketing Tour 2011 at Intercontinental Hotel in Buckhead. The event lasted about half of the work day. Silverpop pulled out all of the stops and the hotel offered us a wonderful lunch, snacks and cocktails. I had lots of white tea to keep warm and I even picked up my first HonestTea to try later. I found out about the event on Twitter after seeing a tweet from Silverpop. We (FiPath) are also new customers. Here’s a gift they sent us last week:

Tootsie Pop and PopRocks were inside of the cup. I like the “pop” theme and the mug is perfect for tea.

I learned so much great information about how to create an effective email that our members at FiPath would love to read. One of my responsibilities is to manage and create content for the email. Or as Meg Heuer describes it, I am a Content Strategist. Sounds snazzy right? I really enjoyed being in a space with other professionals who experience the same frustrations as me. There’s no “how to” book for this crazy social space. I guess now it’s “mocial” now (social + local + mobile) as described by Loren McDonald. I took some great notes and I won a prize for most unique tweets! Below I have a recap of the top 5 takeaways:

1. The “forward to a friend” email option is dead. – This got me thinking. When was the last time I did this? Umm…well over a year ago. Nowadays, I share emails via Social media sites before I press forward to a friend!

2. Don’t make all of your emails a hard sell – Ask yourself, do you want an email that always says “Buy this” “Deal here”.

3. Care enough to send the very best email – Don’t send what you think people want to see. Or what someone tells you people want to see. Research!

4. Do not re-purpose advertisements and direct mail pieces – This one made me chuckle. I hate seeing re-purposed ads in email form!

5. Be human – Please and thank you aren’t called the magic words for nothing! These relational words make emails more human.