6.30.2010

I declare a change is needed!!!!!

…to work emails.  Well, more specifically – their subject lines.  How many emails are we bombarded with every hour?  Between personal and work, I am continually checking 3 different email accounts a day.  

I asked myself if emails arrived at all 3 at the same time, which would I check first? Guess work email…YOU LOST.  Loser.

Yeah ANYTHING that arrives in my Yahoo! (yeah it’s embarrassing to admit I still have a yahoo email) and my Gmail (totally redeems me for the first one) is automatically a 1000% better.  You might think, well that’s because your friends email to those.  You’d be wrong. Loser. I jest.  

In actuality most of my friends email me on my work email. So why then?  It’s the subject lines.  They are sooo much catchier on my personal email.  They are witty, personalized sales pitches dedicated to grabbing my attention.  And guess what? I love it.  OR else I would have unsubscribed already.

My point is, try as I might, I can’t unsubscribe from your boring, rambling work email.  So can we least try to improve them?  Make the subject line hilarious, random, terrifying, and/or inappropriate.  I don’t care, just make me want to open it!  

I’ve come up with some that I plan to begin using today:

A maelstrom is a very powerful whirlpool.
I have 7 eyes.  Do you know where the other 3 are located?
Robot masters the robot dance.  Check it out!!
Check out my latest blog post (you a-holes BETTER open that one.)

-Jaime Mac

PS: It’s social media day.  In honor of it, I graced you with a new posting.  Lucky.

6.24.2010

How to start a wine club


I debated titling this "How to make alcolholism socially acceptable".  

My wine club came from my failed attempt to join a book club.  I never went to a single meeting, because I never read the book.  After 3 missed meetings, they stopped including me.

Still, I was sad when I was shunned out of book club because I had been excited to meet new people, socialize, and laugh.  I LOVE to read just about anything until you tell me I have to read it. Then suddenly it's worse than a trip to the dentist.

But tell me I HAVE TO drink wine with my best friends and suddenly I'm not so quick to push back.  Viola! WINE CLUB was born.

The rules are simple:
1. Don't talk about what happens at wine club
2. Create a face book page - if you're nerdy enough to start a wine club, you're nerdy enough to follow this rule
3. The host picks the topic and supplies "sobering" apps - topic's can range from type or region to funniest label
4. The guests bring the wine or get the fuck out. That second part is more of an "unsaid" rule
5. Everyone takes turns talking about their wine while those around them get sloshed on it - this also usually means we end up shouting over the speaker to talk to each other about the wine. It's cool. Embrace the chaos.
6. The person closest to sober takes notes and posts to the facebook page - our notes have gone a bit...downhill.  Check out our facebook page to see.


If I could change one thing about my HBIC Wine Club it would simply to be that the president/founder should get a crown and scepter.  Hindsight truly is 20/20.

Is it tacky to go buy your own though? As *the* HBIC can I just create a 7th rule forcing the girls to band together and buy me queenly gifts?  Probably. But it seems a little late to enforce such a rule.


So, I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH - get your tiara early and think out your rules ahead of time.  No one likes an unorganized HBIC. 

Good luck with your club and be sure to make me an honorary member!

Jaime Mac



PS - I'm not going to explain the picture up top.  If you expected me, then you are not yet ready to start a wine club.  Rules are invented for reasons. Mostly saving face kind of reasons, but reasons nonetheless. 

6.22.2010

Don't Argue With a Weird Person. You'll Never Win.


Nick just asked me why Tank is always running around the house with my underwear.  I told him it's all summed up in my blog post An Open Letter to Tank.  To which he responded, “I’m not reading that voodoo shit”.  Voodoo shit? Did I hear that correctly?  I here I thought I was the weird, dramatic one.  But even I don’t call anything pertaining to the web and social media voodoo.  He also refuses to get on Facebook or check out my twitter page.

So naturally I yelled, “You never listen to me when I talk….viamysocialmediachannels.”

This was followed by a I’m-concerned-for-your-mental-health kind of look and confirmation that I am still the weird one in this relationship.  

 Jaime-47; Nick-0.

6.15.2010

Discrimination on a young adult.


Last week I ran into Barnes and Noble to buy a few books I needed.  It was definitely not my proudest moment when I got up to the register and a *sweet* old man smiled and asked “what lucky kid are these for?”

As I glanced down at the 3 Harry Potters and just released Twilight novella I had in my hands, I couldn't help but want to stab this man.  

Why did I want to stab this man I just met? Because his job is to know books.  

And anyone who knows anything about books knows these are classified under the “young adult” genre.  The thought that this MAN could so easily apply a stereotype of the books reader age group is an injustice to shoppers of B&N. 

A stabbing would allow ME – the common consumer – to take a stand on discrimination. It would be my little way of making the world a better place.   

It would also make me feel better for being called out on my cheesy purchases in front of a long ass line. :)



UPDATE: I actually went on B&N’s website.  Twilight is listed as teen reading and Harry Potter under the Childrens section.  I can only assume this is a conspiracy against me for taking a stand against the man.
 

6.10.2010

Part genius, part bad ass, and just a dash of ego.


I’m special today. Why? I came up with an email idea that proved very successful - successful enough to be included in a blog from an industry expert.  Um hello…that makes me part genius.  You may be wondering what the other part of me is…bad ass.  Genius and bad ass it’s a killer combo.  I might also have a smidge of overzealous ego, but that’s a story for another posting. 

Today is about my big idea.  It proves that a “big” idea doesn’t have to be big at all. Knowing how attached we are all to our smart phones, I got to thinking about mobile strategy.  Do people really want deals to their phone? The answer I came up with was maybe. And that was enough reason to build a test.

I had my email vendor take a campaign we were already pulling together and design a smart phone optimized version of it.  We sent this version to anyone who had opened one of our emails on a phone in the last year.   The results were pretty astounding.  A 20% lift in open rates.  It was the SAME email,  just better rendering for this type of user.

Although I was not mentioned, nor was I given a tiara or [even an] award for my ideas, I am still pretty proud to see them in writing.  So…here ya go!

Blog Posting:


Happy reading!