Note: Integrated Gmail is a Firefox add-on.
Pro Tip: If you’re not using Firefox, start using Firefox.

If you’re like me, you routinely have plenty of reading to catch up on from bloggers and news sources that are fed into your Google Reader. Sure, it would be easier to check it constantly, but who can remember to click that Reader button at the top of your Google page?

More often than not, I log into Gmail and do the email routine, log out, and move on with my day. Before long, my Reader is backed up like Porta Johns at the Taste of Chicago, and I have to neglect things I may have enjoyed in order to catch up.

Enter Integrated Gmail, a convenient organizer that is added on to the Firefox browser. If you’re a feed junkie, you just may love this timesaver.

Integrated Gmail has been downloaded 1.374 million times since its creation.

If you woke up this morning and thought to yourself, “Boy, I sure do miss working with Venn diagrams,” have I got a blog post for you! But in all seriousness, if you have any interest at all in how your company is perceived in the Email, Mobile, and Social Media marketing trifecta, you’ll find this Venn immensely worthwhile.

It comes from flowtown dot com, and I recommend you click that link if you’d like to see an enlarged version of the graphic below. Having a voice in Email, Mobile, and Social Media is absolutely essential to healthy growth, and this fact won’t be changing anytime soon.

So where do you fall?

If your blog is getting plenty of comments, Thank Me Later could be of use to you. The following scenario likely plays out frequently: A visitor stumbles upon your content, likes what she sees, and leaves a comment on your article. She then continues her journey across the vast landscape of the Internet, forgetting about your blog and her comment on it.

This is where Thank Me Later can help. It sends an automatic email to the commenter (whose email was captured when the comment was submitted), and thanks her for her visit to your blog.

“Thank Me Later is great for your blog because it reminds visitors of their comment a few days later, and prompts them to engage in further discussion and reading on your blog. It gives you the opportunity to keep alive a connection with the visitor after they have left your blog.” – Thank Me Later FAQ section

Used correctly, this can be a useful tool that gives gentle reminders to those who were captivated by your blog content. Used incorrectly, it can come off as a spammy nuisance that leaves the nasty taste of a Twitter auto DM in the mouth of the recipient.

So how are the thank yous perceived as helpful rather than annoying? Send commenters one email and one email only, provide other helpful links in the thank you (such as e-list or RSS links, or a link to related articles-even ones on other blogs), and be genuinely gracious in the email.

It may not be right for your blog, but you can’t argue with the price of free Wordpress plugins. We’ve linked to Thank Me Later’s page above, but we’ll provide the link below, as well. If it’s able to retain just one additional visitor, the benefits could be exponential.

Thank Me Later – Wordpress plugin

Utilizing Social Media sites for your business has already been proven in many cases to be a smart marketing move.  Think about it:  Marketing is all about getting messages out to the target audiences in order to drive traffic, interest and sales.  What better way to do this than to engage in dialogs with your customer base?

The key to effective Social Media marketing is not the number or quality of Social Sites you create.  Rather, the real work is driving people to your sites so they can be engaged.  After all, just because you build it, doesn’t mean anyone will see it.

So while it’s important to create and manage your sites effectively, it’s also imperative that you promote those sites everywhere you possibly can.  Everywhere.

Company emails go out 24/7 to vendors, customers, coworkers, etc.  While the employee’s signature line is normally not thought of as a place to sell, it is a place to promote.  This is evident in the number of emails that come across with the signature line that says something like “Please save our planet.  Only print this email if absolutely necessary.”

But rather than just promoting your “green” stance, why not also provide links to your company’s social media sites?  It’s not hard, and they do generate clicks.  You will need  a programmer to do this, but it’s not that hard.  And once it’s done, it’s done.  Every email that goes out will have links back to your sites for all to see.

Here’s an image of my digital signature that is always at the bottom of my emails.  Clicking on the image will take you to my social media page that lists all my links.  Try it.  Then try it with your business.  It really works.

You likely are well aware of my company’s Social Media Marketing Program that we named “Sparking”.  You can learn about it by clicking here.  While this program successfully and cost effectively increases our clients’ followers, friends and fans through a wide mixture of social media and Web 2.0 tools, our biggest goal through Sparking is to grow our clients’ e-lists.

At a recent conference, I sat on a panel with three social media “experts” who said that our focus was a waste because people didn’t use email anymore.  I was stunned — not because these “experts” had a different opinion, but because they were so anti-email.

When I pointed out to that everyone on the panel communicated with each other before the conference via email, and that eblasts were the number one way people at the conference linked to the registration page, they were silent.

It seems to me that social media experts like their tools so much that it has had a negative effect on their abilities to generate sales and exposure for their clients.  Each one of the panelists was an expert on one social media tool (Facebook, YouTube and Twitter), which is likely why each one professed that their tool of choice was all that was needed.

Well, what’s needed is results.  And short of online sales, the best way to measure results is to track the response from those who follow you by analyzing eblast clickthroughs and reads.  Email works in tandem with other tactics to increase engagement, deliver relevant content and build contact databases.

And don’t believe these people when they say email is dead.  While Twitter and Facebook certainly offer other ways for people to communicate, the simple truth is that most adults (young and old) have an email account and check it often.  Heck, some have more than one.

Here’s a chart just released from MarketingSherpa that dispels the myth that email is dead.  Note that this chart is about how consumers share information about a product or service they find interesting:

Ways Consumers Share Information

According to MarketingSherpa, the chart views “how email is used to share information, because this activity is so central to social media sites. Email is dominant, even in this regard.  When we look at media use over the last 15 years, we see a pattern of aggregation and adoption rather than replacement. Some media suffer in the exchange, but none are eliminated entirely. More commonly, their uses become more refined.  For example, we may find that Twitter and Facebook gradually reduce our use of email to convey quick messages and content to social groups, but it’s far less likely that social media will replace email for commercial transactions, receipts and the like.”

In conclusion, email is not dying.  It’s not even sick.  It’s still the number one way that people share important information.  And, to boot, it’s the only clear way you can monitor what your friends, fans and followers do with the information you give them.

Aaron Smith from Email Insider wrote often during the campaign about President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign and its highly effective use of new media and direct marketing tactics to tap into and engage with a wide base of supporters. Many say this strategy gave Democrats the crucial edge needed to win this year’s election. So Aaron summed it up with this interesting look.

It wasn’t just Obama’s presidential campaign that used email effectively this year; it was the Democratic National Committee program as a whole. They followed email marketing best practices to engage and inform their subscribers, as well as solicit donations. I’m not going to go so far as to say the DNC’s email program was the reason Democrats won the White House, but I do think email played a more important role than ever before in this election.

Lessons we can all take away from the DNC’s email program from the past year:

Be relevant. I know regular readers of the Email Insider are probably tired of reading the words “be” and “relevant” next to each other. However, it’s no coincidence fellow Email Insider writers and industry colleagues so frequently tout the importance of sending relevant emails. In a nutshell, being relevant means sending messages that appeal to the interests of your recipients. A message that isn’t relevant isn’t likely to get much attention.

This year’s election was certainly a relevant topic for just about anyone living in the United States, so it wasn’t exactly a stretch for the DNC emails to be relevant (indeed many online retailers also included plenty of election-themed messaging throughout the final months of the election). But they took their program many steps further by segmenting and sending targeted messages based on geography and past behavior.

Be engaging. The DNC kept a constant barrage of emails coming during the campaign, keeping them engaging by using such tactics as creative — often dramatic — subject lines and timely alerts. Most interestingly, they used different friendly “from” lines, coming from various Democratic celebrities like “Hillary Clinton” or “Michelle Obama.”

Be clear. A good call-to-action should always let recipients know what steps they should take and where a link will take them if they click on it. The majority of emails from the DNC included prominent buttons with bold text reading “Please Donate,” in addition to well-articulated text links that included strong emotional appeals combined with clear steps to take action. Here’s a great example of a primary call-to-action link from one of the emails I received in October: “Take a minute to consider what’s at stake, then please make a donation of $5 or more today.”

Be strategic. At the end of the day, successful execution of any email program starts with long-term strategy and planning. It’s obvious a lot of thought went into the DNC’s email program. Without laying the groundwork of segmentation, messaging, list-building, frequency and contingency planning, they wouldn’t have been able to effectively execute and adapt to the rapidly shifting political landscape throughout the long campaign.

Whether you’re a bleeding-heart liberal or dyed-in-the-wool conservative, you can still agree, I think, that the DNC developed and ran a great email program this past election cycle. Regardless of our personal political leanings, we can all study and learn from their campaign and put some of their ideas to work in our own email programs.

Our resident geek sent me an email even though he only had a phone with him. I never heard of this, so I thought I would share it with all of you since it might be a good way for those without Smart Phones to still stay connected. One associate of mine uses this system to send himself email reminders rather than writing himself a note. The system is called Jott (www.jott.com) and it accurately turns your voice into emails & text messages. Simply call Jott and speak your message. Jott converts your voice to text and sends your message. Jott can also create reminders, lists & appointments. Sign up for your FREE Jott account today.