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Permalink Reply by Eun-Shil Park on January 20, 2012 at 6:35pm

The same here with me. Just tried recently to connect for a newsletter by a Korean law firm with also an english language button. Registering was even in English too. And then the -party- begins! The confirmation is in Korean! The following weeks only newsletters entirely in Korean! And yes, the RSS feed didn´t work either. Yup! I understand your frustration...

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Permalink Reply by Philipp Grunwald on January 21, 2012 at 12:59am

It is not so much about the fact that the newsletter is in Korean (I am OK with that / I expect it to happen! ;)) and - if the registration works for me - also not about myself, but it is totally mindboggling how they blow business and marketing opportunities out of the window!

And more so that someone (with absolutely zero technical understanding, I am sure) is allowed to instruct an agency with building a website and will approve of it, even though the technical implementation is clearly not allowing the client company to achieve its business and marketing goals! But that probably happens if you let a manager - appointed based on seniority (or a buerocrat) - sign off on a service - instead of someone from the IT or customer relations department...

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Permalink Reply by Carl Kwan on January 21, 2012 at 12:23am

Aside from the problems you mention with newsletters and such... The reason most Korean companies don't use Aweber, et al, is most likely due to Korean companies never really having to worry about spamming their email lists.

It's almost impossible to find an unsubscribe link. E-Mart has one, but then it asks for login information before you can unsubscribe.

Email marketing, done right... meaning with permission, double opt-ins, and having an easy way to allow people to unsubscribe from lists... doesn't seem to be very important. 

I like Aweber and MailChimp. I use MC for my presentations site and find it really does the job. I used Aweber for the same site, but couldn't justify the cost. However, if you've got multiple lists for a number of sites, then I'd definitely go with Aweber.

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Permalink Reply by Philipp Grunwald on January 21, 2012 at 1:06am

Yep, I also don't understand why so many people go with AWeber, I mean they don't offer more for the higher price...

Asides from that, yeah I guess it is a legal thing. You sure know this is a big deal in the USA and also (especially?) in Germany. So for German companies (who also disobey the rules or ignore them - but only sometimes!) I regularly reprimand them with a huge template, as soon as I get such an e-mail lacking those standards! Looks like this, even though most people might not be able to read German:

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

hiermit möchte ich mich von Ihrem Newsletter abmelden.

Ich möchte darauf hinweisen, dass Sie gegen gängige Praxis des Online-Marketings verstoßen.
Bitte lesen Sie sich die "eco Richtlinie für zulässiges Online-Marketing" (http://www.eco.de/dokumente/Richtlinie_OnlineMarketing_2009.pdf) aufmerksam durch. Vor allem Seite 15-17, ich zitiere:

Die Abbestellmöglichkeit muss bei jeder Werbe-E-Mail vorliegen. Die Pflicht zum Zurverfügungstellen einer Abmeldemöglichkeit sowie darauf hinzuweisen ergibt sich auch aus § 7 Abs. 2 Nr. 4 bzw. Abs. 3 UWG, § 13 Abs. 2 Nr. 4 TMG und § 28 Abs. 4 BDSG.

Zudem:
Der beste, weil nutzerfreundlichste Weg ist die Integration eines Abbestell-Links in jede versendete E-Mail. Dieser Link befindet sich in den meisten Fällen ganz unten in der Mail. Ein Beispiel:

"Wenn Sie unseren Newsletter nicht mehr erhalten möchten, klicken Sie einfach hier: Newsletter abbestellen"

Jede gute E-Mail-Marketing-Software bietet eine entsprechende Funktionalität, die sicherstellt, dass jeder Nutzer, der auf diesen Link klickt, automatisch keine weiteren E-Mails mehr erhält. Nach dem Klick auf den Link sollte der Nutzer auf eine Seite gelangen, auf der die Austragung aus dem Verteiler bestätigt wird.
Eine beispielhafte Formulierung:

"Wir haben Sie aus unserem Verteiler gestrichen. Sie werden keine weiteren E-Mails von uns erhalten."

Es ist nicht nötig, dem Nutzer die Abmeldung per E-Mail zu bestätigen. Vielmehr ist es so, dass diese weitere E-Mail im Extremfall vom Nutzer schon als unzumutbare Belästigung verstanden werden kann, da er dem werbetreibenden Unternehmen ja gerade die Erlaubnis zur Zusendung weiterer E-Mails entzogen hat. Keinesfalls zum Einsatz kommen sollten Prozesse, die dem Nutzer die Abmeldung erschweren, wie z. B. das sogenannte „DoubleOptout“, bei dem der Nutzer nach der Abmeldung eine E-Mail erhält, die ihn auffordert, die Abmeldung per Klick auf einen Link zu bestätigen.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Philipp Grunwald

But then again, if there is no legal basis for this in the Korean law (like in the German "Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (BDSG)), then indeed as you say it is useless. And of course I also don't usually send this to big corps (like E-Mart would be), as they are usually "smart" enough to hide any way to contact them. So there are one or two companies who still force me to receive their crap i.e. through linking up the newsletter subscription to the account, i.e. as long as you don't want to delete your account they will force you to receive their e-mails. Of course this imho damages their bottom line and reputation, but of course they might have a different opinion, ok, that's how it shall be...

PS: I am not sure if I understand your "spamming" sentence. You sure mean the companies don't have to fear legal prosecution due the lack of laws concerning spammy behavior?

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Permalink Reply by Carl Kwan on January 21, 2012 at 10:28am

Great information Philipp. 

What I mean by spamming are the constant emails. I get something from Tour Cabin at least once a day, everyday. This seems to be very common practice among many companies.

And yes, most Korean companies have no idea how to do email marketing correctly.

And the websites are horrible in terms of the user experience. Add to the fact that the majority are built on Flash and with tables and that's a nightmare for people on Apple mobile devices and for SEO.

One of my clients completely rebuilt their websites after I advised them about the aforementioned problems. Luckily, they listened :)

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Permalink Reply by Philipp Grunwald on January 21, 2012 at 2:41pm

hehe, good to hear about your client! He will indeed have an advantage in marketing etc.

It is crazy how Korean businesses could seemingly (a) ignore Google (and SEO?) and because the website listing mechanism to Naver still seems to be manual (because of Naver or because of Adobe Flash?!?) and (b) even though so many million Koreans use iPhones and browse from mobile devices! (I mean even on Android it is not thaaat easy to display flash, is it?)

And after all I don't get the myth that "Korean websites were built with a lot of bling because the internet there is so fast", because a lot of Korean websites only "convince" with pop-ups, crashes and slow loading times even on the standard 100 MBIT-LAN connection we all have here in Seoul. I think they were simply built like that because "Adobe Flash" was here early and easier,more WYSIWYG and versatile compared to the early webstandards for Koreans who consistently have a hard time with English...I speculate of course.

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Permalink Reply by Philipp Grunwald on January 22, 2012 at 3:16pm

By the way, I just remembered, that actually the same is true for event invitations!

There are countless solutions out there, from "Eventbrite" to "DoAttend" (free for free events), Google Forms and meetup.com, but when I had to register for government(-sponsored) events (many tourist events are!) or Seoul Global Center events, I usually had to fill out a Word document, which didn't even use the form features available in Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat PDF !

So someone receives my silly Word document by e-mail and puts those data somewhere manually - or don't do anything with it at all...It makes me cringe at the simple thought about it!

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Permalink Reply by Carl Kwan on January 22, 2012 at 4:36pm

Yes, the processes used by many companies are the major source low productivity.

Another solution would be to use Facebook. 

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Permalink Reply by Philipp Grunwald on January 22, 2012 at 7:38pm

But facebook has no form for "ARC number". LOL You know, they always want all my info from me...

And I sure wouldn't put my e-mail address or phone number on facebook in a million years.

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