May 24, 2012

Success has no purpose

May 19, 2012

Alfred

May 9, 2012

In praise of the email newsletter format

[Subsc­ribe to the gaping­void news­let­ter here.]

This made me very happy– Aus­tin Ray from Mailchimp inter­vie­wed me about my “fan­tas­tic open rates”.

Mailchimp, as you know, is what powers my daily car­toon news­let­ter. With email news­let­ters, at least with Mailchimp, the ave­rage “open rate” is around 6%-8% i.e. for every hun­dred peo­ple you send out to, six to eight peo­ple actually open it and read it, as oppo­sed to just sen­ding it to the trash.

Our news­let­ter is 40%+. That’s amazing.

We were impres­sed to find out that Hugh Mac­Leod‘s MailChimp cam­paigns con­sis­tently main­tain a fan­tas­tic 40%+ open rate. What does a car­too­nist know about email mar­ke­ting? Well, as it turns out, he doesn’t worry about all the typi­cal “email expert” stuff like A/B tes­ting, sen­ding at dif­fe­rent times of day, expe­ri­men­ting with sub­ject lines, etc. Ins­tead, much like Email Ins­pi­ra­tion, he just sends a fun image, and the peo­ple love it.

“I think it’s because we keep it sim­ple — a nice car­toon to brigh­ten your day, deli­ve­red to your inbox every mor­ning,” Hugh tells us. “Peo­ple like get­ting that a whole lot more than, say, a daily, long-winded spiel about why y’all should give me your money, make me rich, yak, yak, yak…”

I highly, highly recom­mend doing the news­let­ter thing. More than the blog, more than Twit­ter, Face­book or Goo­gle+, these are the peo­ple who who REALLY WANT to sup­port your busi­ness, who REALY CARE about your brand, who really want to inte­ract with it. What Seth Godin calls a “Per­mis­sion Asset”.

And best of all, with a good list, these peo­ple– the peo­ple who REALLY allow you to do what you do– are easy to iden­tify, This makes your mar­ke­ting A LOT easier, because the peo­ple who REALLY mat­ter to your brand are RIGHT THERE in black & white, on your list. Nobody subsc­ri­bes to a news­let­ter unless they really want to, unless they really think what you’re doing is impor­tant. Life is too short.

Exactly.

P.S. Yes, I highly, highly recom­mend Mailchimp as the ser­vice pro­vi­der. They kick ass, they’ve been very good to gaping­void. Thanks, Mailchimp!

May 9, 2012

Leaving the mainstream…

This is the latest car­toon to go out in the news­let­ter.

I’m not anti-mainstream; it has its place. That being said, it isn’t for for everyone.

And yes, some­ti­mes you have to leave it, to find out who you REALLY are.

I can cer­tainly relate…

May 8, 2012

The trouble with big companies…

Media_httpdistilleryi_foeee

May 8, 2012

All three possible answers

May 8, 2012

I hate my life

May 6, 2012

Happy gapingvoid Birthday! My Blog Turns Eleven…

Over the wee­kend, gapingvoid.com tur­ned ele­ven years old.

I won’t dwell on it too much, other than to say,

1. Yes, it has been an ama­zing trip,

2. Thank you very much for all the love over the years and,

3. Loo­king back, I con­si­der “Per­so­nal Faves” (2001) to be the best thing on it that I ever wrote. Writ­ten as I was set­ting the blog up, it set the tone for what came after– “How To Crea­tive”, “The Hugh­train”, “Evil Plans”, “Free­dom Is Blog­ging”, then the actual gaping­void busi­ness itself, the “cube gre­na­des” and the great team of peo­ple I work with etc– it all came from that. And I  honestly, honestly doubt that I would had come this far without it:

When I first lived in Manhat­tan in Decem­ber, 1997 I got into the habit of dood­ling on the back of busi­ness cards, just to give me something to do while sit­ting at the bar. The for­mat stuck.

All I had when I first got to Manhat­tan were 2 suit­ca­ses, a cou­ple of card­board boxes full of stuff, a reser­va­tion at the YMCA, and a 10-day free­lance copyw­ri­ting gig at a Mid­town adver­ti­sing agency.

My life for the next cou­ple of weeks was going to work, wal­king around the city, and stag­ge­ring back to the YMCA once the bars clo­sed. Lots of alcohol and cof­fee shops. Lot of weird peo­ple. Being hit five times a day by this strange desire to laugh, sing and cry simul­ta­neously. At times like these, there’s a lot to be said for an art form that fits easily inside your coat pocket.

[…]

An artist is quite a f*****-up thing to be, and to be honest I’m not sure if I would recom­mend it to any­body. Still, in my collec­tion there are a cou­ple of exam­ples that, in some sick and twis­ted way, make the whole thing seem worthwhile. For the first five minu­tes, at least…

Any­way, for those who hadn’t seen it before, I thought it was worth sha­ring [Here’s the link again]. Again, thanks for all the love, and God­bless. Now I have some more car­toons to draw. Rock on.

May 5, 2012

Suck at everything

May 4, 2012

Of course you hate your job.