Bethesda List Center is pleased to announce a new list,  China Wireless News Enewsletter Subscribers. The  publication is a BDL Media publication.

This list has  7,400 email subscribers who read the English  language publication. This weekly publication covers the exploding world of wireless telecommunications (telecom) in one, if not the largest, markets in the world.  The number of additional cell phones and the infrastructure to support these telephones makes every manufacturer and reseller dizzy with anticipation.

Topics covered in the eNewsletter include:  Information Technology, Electronics, Internet, Law & Policy, IT Security, Software, Stocks, Telecom, and Wireless in China. The readership is heavily upper and technical management in China and in companies who have an interest in the events n there.

All eMails are sent from China, so that many of the deliver-ability  issues are overcome. This means that the time to order, set-up, test and send your campaigns is a bit longer than usual.

Full details are provided on the Bethesda List Center data card which is linked here:

http://www.bethesda-list.com/datacards/ChinaWirelessNews-listrental.htm

This list was featured in DirectListline June 3, 2010.

Today is Census Day in the USA. This event happens every 10 years, as it has from 1790. A great time to get the pulse of our nation’s activities.

Very interesting interview with the Director of the US Census on the PBS Newshour last night about the in’s and out’s outs of trying to find every person living in the USA.

This counting includes everyone, not just citizens. The first census counted everyone and all after that have made the effort as well.

It is not possible to overestimate the importance of the Census to government and our marketing industries.  Gathering the data for what was said to be 120,000,000 households is a task that is vastly under appreciated.  Last Summer, every street with housing on it in the US was walked by a Census worker who noted all housing addresses.

This was after getting all the commercial lists, various utility lists, government lists and the like. A massive undertaking to attempt to reach everyone who puts their head down in the US to sleep.

Costs – amazing.

If  you are among the folks who return the printed form. Cost to the taxpayer is estimated at under 45 cents.

Don’t fill out the form and someone is going to the door and asking the questions. Cost $60.

Both cost figures are way below the cost of a typical marketing sales call for almost every company. “Volume, it’ s volume.”

Here is a link to the video interview

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/jan-june10/census_03-31.html

What is the most important word in a Subject Line?

As with direct mail,  “You or Your” remains a winner.

Here is an article in eMarketer Digital Intelligence discussing that. Other keywords that work in direct mail are good too.. but.. the word “free” is just a knockout by many servers and their spam filters.

http://ow.ly/1prsb

Direct marketing has always been on the early edge indicator of the health of the economy. Perhaps things are beginning to show “some green sprouts.” A few things I have noticed.

• WOMMA announced in their eNewsletter that a survey of Linked-In jobs listings in the Advertising area found about 1,700 jobs being advertised. This may be a big change.
• Linked In has become a defacto spot to list new jobs. Today, Sears was spotted using Twitter to announce jobs says the LA Times
• Direct Mail seems to be increasing (or will be) ..we are seeing a slight increase in average order size.  And, the occasional “good order” is beginning to show up again.
• The Census is using direct mail to increase response to the Census’ fill out and return percentages. Imagine sending close to 100 million+  pieces of mail
• eMail now seems to be used along with postal to boost response.

What are your signs of how the economy is doing?

Tweeter and Corporate Blogging Guru Debbie Weil has a series of talks in Washington on social media topics. Last night the speaker was Anil Dash of MacArthur Foundation funded Expert Labs.

The location, a wired cupcake shop in Georgetown with a pink bike parked out front, thus the name of the series.

Dash says the goal of Expert Labs is to open government (gov 2.0) using social media to LISTEN as well as talk to their audience. His company is currently working with the White House Science and Technology office. So far, no other gov’t agencies, Congress, etc.  Of course, he saw applications in the commercial sector as well.

During the discussion of his project, there was discussion about citizen participants having  to “put on a tie” when talking to gov’t. Really some form of identification and a call for responsible comment.

IMHO, not the way to get folks to participate.  Especially in this over-media hyped environment. Dash mentioned that most issues now activate the legalize pot crowd when comment is called for. So his software is able to collapse issues and summarize.

This new software is designed to have a civil conversation and learned discussion. Good idea, hard, if not impossible, to impliment. That is where Expert Labs software and cloud computing coming in.

Other attendees, in discussion with me, felt the whole conversation with all 305+ million Americans, in theory, was 20-30 years away due to computer limitations. I don’t think it’s the computer limitations but the fear of government, the certainty that everyone thinks they know best that is factor to slow this “group listening.”

I live and work in the Washington area and see plenty of boldface political people in  everyday life – at the supermarket, the gym, getting coffee and whatnot. They generally seem to be genuine but all too often, their objectives are driven by many things, the least of which is direct public input. Even for good ideas.

That is hard nut to crack. Did the Constitutional founders expect us to run everything by opinion poll? Or was it their belief that even a “common man” can do the job of representative in Congress by voting and shaping legislation he believes best represents his voters and any other groups he is representing.

Well, the numbers of pieces of mail are down (mostly the recession), the costs of running the USPS are up, despite cost cutting.

Congress has to admit a few things:

•     Give more leeway to the USPS when it comes to decisions [not mentioned the  voting USPS workers in each and every Congressional district]
•     A large number of USPS employees retiring in the next few years
•     Many post offices are not profitable now, alternatives needed
•     Saturdays, does delivery make sense?
•     Legacy costs – health care, pensions, all sorts of stuff you can’t imagine are there

What the Post managed to avoid – you go to use a USPS machine and about 60% of the time, the thing is not working properly. Err, you have to wonder would that fly in a totally privatized company.

Here is the link to the Washington Post lead editorial for March 10, 2010.

http://ow.ly/1gJoC

As the direct marketing industry we need to make sure that we do our part to help the discussion to be more friendly to our position. Now, direct mail is about 52% of the volume. We should have some clout and the Direct Marketing Association and others have a great opportunity to develop a leadership role.

Led Zep, The Clash, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Bowie’s Ziggy, Tubular Bells, etc…. Kinda hard to believe I remember when they all came out. Now the ever brilliant marketing department at Royal Mail has put them on stamps.

Having gotten a first day cover, they are pretty wonderful. They look better than the dusty albums in the box.

Nostalgia…

Brand Republic covered this –    http://ow.ly/1gi0J

Royal Mail  set up a special site http://ow.ly/1gi4g

Stamps who’da thunk they are so fun? Not the USPS generally.

So says this very interesting article from WordTracker, “The long tail of keyword research”…

http://ow.ly/1g7TU

It appears the author is right. Even the top 20% of all your clicks have many, many very small traffic keywords.

The number of searches done in the month studied was 113 Billion across the search-universe. There are lots of potential customers who don’t think and act like you, thus you need to cast a wider keyword net than you might think you need to. But don’t just stuff words on the page, that is not too useful and your sentences sound and read in a very strange fashion.

The result on the “long tail” thinking is expressed as a graphic “the long tail is so long that the head is of no significance”.

This article is a goldmine of good ideas for natural SEO campaigns.

This is from our friend Greg at Hippo Direct.

It is really one of those things every marketing person needs to keep handy in postal and Email.  As you probably know, every postal address has a zip-code. This permits more rapid sorting and delivery. Well, lots of marketing folks need to target only key states. Here is the summary http://ow.ly/1eHrl

City SCF ranges are also available.

Bethesda Emedia has been working diligently to put up articles on a variety of subjects. We have about 100 articles that we consider a “best of” group.  Best of all, they are organized with tags that include:

• SEO (search engine optimization)
• Direct marketing
• Direct mail,
• Email marketing
• B2B
• B2C
• Ecommerce
• Google
• Social marketing

We search out articles from many sources, this is not just a bare knuckles promotion for one or two companies. Some of our best ideas come from those who Tweet themselves. Our Twitter site, djamesbethesda, re-tweets winners as well.

Access to the Bethesda Emedia Marketing Library is free.

Tell me what you think.