Consider this 72-character subject line, and see what happens as it begins to get truncated.

New herbal fresh soap available at special price at your  local Harry’s (full length)

New herbal fresh soap available at special price a (50 characters)

New herbal fresh soap available at speci (40 characters)

Also, be sure to place as much critical information at the beginning of your subject line, rather than at the end as a hedge against important content being truncated. In the examples above, the name of the retailer gets chopped off, as does the “special price” reference in the 40-character version. Those are pretty important pieces of information that the marketer surely would want front and center.

In a recent  Email Marketing Reports post, Mark Brownlow offers up this free Excel spreadsheet that shows you how your subject line looks at any length between 10 and 125 characters. It’s a great tool that’s definitely worth downloading.

Bottom Line

1. When writing email subject lines, keep character count limitations in mind.
2. Put the most important information up front.

I don’t know about you, but with just over 150 friends on my own Facebook page, I’m getting more Farmville, Mafia Wars and Bejewelled Blitz updates than I can handle or care about. With 10 million fans, I can’t imagine what Starbucks is going through.

Truly, though, a fan base that large is a testament to Starbucks’ social media savvy. By promoting special offers, coupons, discounts and more on Facebook, the company keeps its customers engaged with its online content and in-store products.

Starbucks’ success with emphasizing product promotions on Facebook seems to validate the results of a Razorfish study last year that found that traditional direct marketing techniques like offering discounts and deals are the keys to building engagement on social networking sites rather counting on some deeper connection to a brand. Except from Online Media Daily, 7/15/10

For more  on Starbucks’ successful Facebook program, read the Online Media Daily article here.

For a more detailed look at the findings, the survey can be downloaded here, free of charge.

1 in 5 people suffer from the pain of arthritis. By the year 2030, 67 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 4 adults, will be living with arthritis.  *The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Although the weather was pure June Gloom, the mood was anything but, with stilt walkers, live music, face painters, food and drink setting a festive tone. When it was time to walk the Walk, we hit the streets of Santa Monica, along with thousands of others, and completed a refreshing 3-mile route. It was a great experience and, once again, thanks to everyone who supported us!

Why? Because that’s how vanilla is made. And who pays attention to vanilla?

No knock against vanilla (unless it’s in candles), but great marketing does not start with a strategy position that reads, “I hope every single person likes it”. Great marketing, and I’m talking about the kind that gets results, not just awards, is provocative. It challenges people to think differently about something.

Not everyone is going to like that. But you have to ask yourself, who are you trying to impress, everyone or your target? Then the question becomes, will this offend my target? If so, perhaps you should rethink the creative. Otherwise, go bold and don’t worry about ruffling a few feathers.

1. Discover all relevant communities of interest and observe the choices, challenges, impressions, and wants of the people within each network.

2. Don’t just participate solely in your own domains (Facebook Fan Page, Twitter conversations related to your brand, etc.). Participate where your presence is advantageous and mandatory.

3. Determine the identity, character, and personality of the brand and match it to the persona of the individuals representing it online.

4. Establish a point of contact who is ultimately responsible for identifying, trafficking, or responding to all things that can affect brand perception.

5. As in customer service, representatives require training to learn how to proactively and reactively respond across multiple scenarios. Don’t just put the person familiar with social networking in front of the brand.

6. Embody the attributes you wish to portray and instill. Operate by a code of conduct.

7. Observe the behavioral cultures within each network and adjust your outreach accordingly.

8. Assess pain points, frustrations, and also those of contentment in order to establish meaningful connections.

9. Become a true participant in each community you wish to activate. Move beyond marketing and sales.

10. Don’t speak at audiences through canned messages. Introduce value, insight and direction with each engagement.

Click for the complete list.

This should a big no-brainer. But my experience  tells me that the lines of communication are not as clear as they should be.

A little background first. I once had a boss who told me I had to “manage up” better. I had been working on my projects in a vacuum, not sharing progress or giving heads ups about potential obstacles. As a result, my boss would get nervous that things weren’t happening as they should be. Clients are like that too.

Personally, if a client has to ask how things are coming along, I know I’ve dropped the communication ball.  So why not go out of the way to make sure that doesn’t happen? This is especially important with new clients who are just getting to know you. To start with, at the beginning of an assignment set the proper expectations  in terms of timing and deliverables. Let them know what they’ll be receiving and when. Be clear about how many revisions they get before going into change order mode.

Once your client knows what to expect, keep the lines of communication open. Let them know that later in the day they’ll be receiving the first look at that new landing page. Or, if there’s been a delay, let them know why and how it will impact the overall time line.

I’ve found that a bit more effort on the communication front pays large dividends in two key areas:

1. It puts the client at ease and lets them know you’re managing their time, money and brand in a professional and accountable manner.
2. In the event that things do go a bit sideways, the client is usually more forgiving if they’ve been part of the process from the beginning. They’ll also be less surprised since they’ve been kept in the loop and were likely aware of potential issues.

Granted, these are not breakthrough insights, and successful marketers have been doing this for years. These are best practice basics that, in today’s fast paced world, we sometimes forget to do. And that’s a shame, because  the extra effort required to ensure that your clients are well informed goes a long way toward keeping them happy, and keeping them as your clients.

1. Using a weak password Stay away from simple names and obvious choices with a number tacked onto the end. Instead, mix upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Better still,  add a number or symbol the middle of your password.
2. Providing your full birth date Avoid showing your full birth date in your profile (day, month, year). This info can be used to obtain additional personal info, or access to your bank and credit accounts. Just show only your birth month and day, or nothing at all.
3. Ignoring useful privacy controls Take advantage of Facebooks many options for limiting what private information is seen by who-knows-who.
4. Posting a child’s name in a photo caption Just don’t do it. And, if someone else adds a tag to one of your photos with your child’s name, just delete it by clicking “remove tag”.
5. Mentioning being away from home When you do this, you’re letting everyone know that the house is empty.
6. Being found by a search engine You can stop strangers from accessing a profile by going to the Search section of Facebook’s privacy controls and select “Only Friends for Facebook” search results. Be sure the box for Public Search isn’t checked.
7. Permitting youngsters to use Facebook unsupervised. If there’s a young child or teenager in the household who uses Facebook, have an adult in the same household  become one of their online friends and use their e-mail as the contact for the account in order to receive notification and monitor activity.

Read the original Los Angeles Times article here.

Click here to read the Los Angeles Times’ in-depth comparison of the iPad versus the Kindle.