For one, Americans are already used to making transactions online. Whether it be to pounce on that “Today Only” sale from Bestbuy.com, or to have the week’s bag of groceries get delivered to their doorstep, the cons of making a purchase online is now close to none.

Filipinos on the other hand, are more accustomed to buying their stuff in person. They do it not only because of apprehensions on shopping online, but they would just rather have their stuff right away. The courier services (or lack of) do nothing to help the present situation.

One thing I learned on a trip I made to the US in June of 2003 — is that you don’t even need to shop online to benefit from a little email marketing.

Being the movie buff that I am, I used to mark my calendar for DVD release dates. During the months I was there, the big releases were the Superbit Version of Spiderman 2 (We didn’t have Bluray yet back then), as well as the Back to the Future Trilogy DVD set. Though there were set release dates for both titles, I wanted to make sure that I found out just in case they were released in advance. Hence my trip to Best Buy’s website to sign up for an email alert. Though I got the DVDs even without waiting for the emails to arrive (as I frequented Best Buy every chance I got while I was there). The bottom line is, I got an update for what I had signed up for.

I wish I had kept a copy of that particular email, as it’s a perfect example of how you can benefit from signing up to receive an online retailer’s emails. If you signed up to receive alerts and start feeling like you’re getting blasted with too much “spam”, look for a preference settings page to adjust the frequency. If not, the ol’ unsubscribe button is always there.

Before you hit it though, always remember that not everything you receive is a sales pitch. There’s a little bit of service in there, so always keep an eye out for it.

In the Philippines, Halloween and Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated by most. There’s no such thing as Cyber Monday, and Black Friday isn’t what we would say the best retail day of the year. Looking at the subject lines in my inbox, I see that most US retailers (those that survived) showing no signs of the economic storm it had to go through more than a year ago. Spending was down. Jobs were lost. Americans cut corners any way they could.

On our own shores, we experienced our own storm more than a month ago.  As rains filled up our streets, washed away cars, houses, and lives, we saw how natural it was for Filipinos to share whatever they could for their countrymen. And then we saw those same people be first in line at one of our local malls’ 3-day sales. It’s funny how people from opposite sides of the globe react to almost similar situations. Most of this is rooted on the belief that Christmas season begins as soon as the “ber months” arrive.

Using consumer behavior in the Philippines as a starting point, here’s a general guideline (or an idea) on how you can become the first mover online in your own market this Holiday season.

1. Have your Christmas gift pages up and ready - Go look at your numbers and find out which items were fast moving the previous year. Chances are, they’ll get the same attention this year.
2. Release an early Christmas email. - You might say, well it’s not even Christmas yet. Think about it, while others are gearing up for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Cyber Monday, you’ve already gained a distinct advantage in getting your customer’s attention. Sometimes, being different is the best way to get your market’s attention.
3. Bump up em’ discounts as soon as December rolls in. - You’ve already started promoting the items on your site, now convince your customers they should follow through with their purchase by giving them better discount options.

You've got to find a way to stand out.

When coming up with an email campaign calendar, always remember the inevitable rise in volume of emails being sent.  In most cases, some of your competitors may even have better deals than you do. The most important thing to remember is that there will always be a way to gain more opens, clicks, and purchases (while protecting your company’s profitability margins). All you have to do is be prepared.

Email Marketing isn’t even in its infancy stages here in the Philippines. The lack of reliable payment gateways, along with the typical Pinoy’s reluctance to give his credit card information, make it impossible for emails to become valid points of purchase. While sites such as Bidshot and Ebay.ph provide the platforms, transactions happen through simple kaliwaans instead. Do you know anyone who has acquired any item through honest bids?

Such is the unfortunate state of e-commerce in the Philippines.

While this is the case, there are some local sites out there that show a lot of promise. Take FHM.com.ph for example. It has the makings of a brand that can adapt remarketing strategies to boost its revenue.

Let’s go through some facts:

• FHM.com.ph is independent from its print counterpart, FHM Magazine.
• While the site has the full support of the magazine, its direction is different – to provide an online platform for its subscribers.
• Boasting a user base of 60,000+ members, and 16,000,000 page views a month, it has the legs to reach out to an untapped market.

Some ideas the team came up with:

• How about using the FHM brand to promote a product or service? Online initiated subscriptions should yield a percentage for the platform.
• Include the following in the weekly update email and charge the bar a promotional cost for spreading the word for them.

“This week FHM Live goes to Route 196, featuring blah blah blah”

Again, these are all just simple ideas that can lead to bigger things. Expect more examples in future posts.

A few years down the line, when payment gateways have been improved, and the Filipino consumer finally realizes he doesn’t have to go to the neighborhood sari-sari store to purchase a sachet of shampoo, email marketing will become a very vital part of every online business.

Just this morning, a high school classmate forwarded to our user group an email supposedly from Yahoo, asking anyone who receives it to send in their account information.

It sure had me fooled for a while. If you look at all the elements of the email, it looks like a legit email from Yahoo. One thing you have to remember though when receiving supposed “system generated emails”, is that these people have the capability to filter accounts that haven’t been opened for a long time. Why the need for an email like this?

The following information were almost believable:

• The from address- Whoever made this account must have gone great lengths to register that email name, as the exclamation point (!) isn’t allowed in the first name field of Yahoo mail.
• The sender’s email address- “mailcenter_customers@yahoo.com” is one hell of a sender email address, that it almost passes as a believable one.
• Trust elements- The “Yahoo Customer Care”, “Case number”, and “Property fields” are a nice touch.

There were a few things however that made me raise a red flag:

1. Since the email is supposed to be system generated, seeing a “Dear Valued Member” greeting did not make sense at all. All correspondence I get from Yahoo usually includes my name in the first line.
2. System generated emails usually have “don’t reply to this email” messaging. This email lacked this messaging that is standard of all emails like this.
3. The email didn’t have a set deadline on when the information requested should be sent in.
4. Last but not the least, the nature of the information being requested is too sensitive. Even the closest people to me don’t know my username and password.

Before you give in to emails like this, one thing you can do is check with your friends if they’ve received a similar email from Yahoo mail. If they haven’t, then chances are the email is bogus. In times like this when identity theft or password phishing online is normal, it would be a good time to be cautious and educate yourselves with what can be done.

Yahoo has their own security page here. Might be a good idea to check it out.

One of the many things I love about my job, is that I get to help my company millions of dollars a year just by occupying a few kilobytes of our consumers’ mailboxes. I’m not one of those Internet marketers who send out bogus online Lotto thingamajigs. As you will find out through the course of this blog, you’ll realize that a lot of mailbox TLC goes into every online campaign our team churns out.

I had no idea what we did polluted the environment.

The mere act of people around the world deleting spam and searching for legitimate e-mail falsely labeled as junk creates the annual energy consumption equivalent in the U.S. of 2.4 million homes using electricity and the same greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion gallons of gas.

While the author of the article backs her claims with “researched” data (wow, did she really compute all of that?), I just had to take it to heart that she never bothered to make any kind of differentiation between legit email and spammy er, spam.

Well, the info is still good to know right?