By: Bronto

The definition of sabotage is “an action aimed at weakening another entity” and comes from the French root word of ‘Saboter’ meaning to spoil through clumsiness. Sometimes marketers may be unaware that even though they’re not deliberately trying to hurt their program, their actions may directly harm their deliverability efforts.

Inactive Addresses

Often marketers do something that seems simple and innocent, yet poses a massive risk to their email reputation, deliverability and results. Sometimes marketers look for quick revenue dollars by maximizing all the contacts they have.  For example if you have a list of inactive contacts that you’ve tried to reengage with no luck, I recommend to keep those contacts separate from your core, performing list.  By keeping inactives as part of your core list, or adding them back into the list, there is an enormous risk of the inactive contacts spoiling the great deliverability rates accomplished with your very active list.  Don’t risk a couple extra dollars at the sake of delivering your message to an inactive list.

Another example of inactive lists are those where you have permissions but have not mailed to in months or years.  Sure, they gave you permission to include them in your mailings, but given the time gap they could have forgotten that exchange or even your business.  These are not healthy addresses, and should be treated as such.  Separate them out from your core list and send a campaign asking them to update their email preferences.  If they don’t respond to the email, remove them from your database.  Why take such a drastic action?  It doesn’t take many people to complain to the ISPs that your email is spam, which in turn hurts your overall deliverability to active contacts.  You need to consider is it worth the risk to take your core list of engaged subscribers who are opening, clicking and buying and sabotage it with a list of email addresses that will cause more harm than help?

By: CampaignMonitor

Starting off with email marketing tends to be a but of a chicken-and-egg scenario. You may be an awesome email designer and be all over a strategy, but without a good list, it doesn’t count for much. Conversely, you may have a list full of folks who are clamoring for what you have to say, but without a solid email newsletter…!

We spend loads of time talking about coding and sending email campaigns, so today lets look at how to build your lists effectively. Conveniently, our friends at MarketingSherpa did some research into the top 3 tactics you can use to build your campaigns, so I thought we’d cover these, as well as a couple of other ideas for growing your newsletter’s audience.

First up, lets look at what they uncovered to be the most effective list growth tactics:

How many of these have you ticked off already? If you’ve vowed to get more people signing up to your lists this year, read on for practical advice on how to make it happen.

Tactic #1: Catch new subscribers at checkout

If you’re selling a product or service on your site, providing the option to join your email list during the purchase stage may seem like a bit of a no brainer, but it’s often overlooked. Web apps like Lemonstand and Digital Delivery App make it super-easy to prompt paying customers into signing up, as do these e-Commerce integrations for WordPress, Shopify and more.

By: MailerMailer

1. Trade Shows. Collect email addresses at trade shows and events. Be clear about what the person is signing up to receive. Get your own Printable Sign up Form.
2. Business meetings. Trade business cards when you meet new potential clients and ask if they’d like to be added to your email list.
3. Webinars. At the close of every webinar, provide instructions to the attendees on how to sign up to receive your newsletter.
4. Website. Host a sign up form on your company’s blog or website. Add two to three bullet points explaining the benefits of signing up.
5. Store front. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, collect email addresses at the register. Draw your shoppers in by letting them know they will receive your newsletter along with exclusive coupons, discounts and sale alerts.
6. Contests. Another way to draw sign ups is to leverage contests or drawings. Add a snippet of text along with your sign up form such as, “submit your email address to win.” This method should be used cautiously. Since the person is only signing up in order to participate in the contest, and not necessarily sign up for your newsletter, you should include a brief disclaimer or checkbox that allows them to opt-out of receiving your newsletter to avoid any spam issues you may encounter.
7. Non-work functions. Not all networking takes place in office or business environments. You may find yourself at a party talking with someone who is interested in your business and wants to learn more. In this situation, ask for their business card or email address and let them know you’ll add them to your list so they can start receiving your newsletter.

By: Clickz

With the first few weeks in 2012 in the history book, some of us may have already fallen back into bad habits or the email hamster routine that allows for little else other than tactical management of the next email campaign (and there is always, the next email campaign). Others may have big strategic initiatives and a laundry list of plans to evaluate for 2012. Getting them done is hard. Ignoring them is easy.

My recommendation: Have a list for big picture initiatives and blocking-and-tackling measures. Then figure out the best way and resources to accomplish both them and establish a reasonable timeline. Oh, and make sure you avoid some traps that strangle progress and end any chance for positive momentum. My list of things to avoid in 2012 is below. Avoid these and continue to navigate the path to success. Overlook them and it could be an uphill battle.

1. Little to no exposure to the C-suite.
2. Talking about your program exclusively in opens and clicks.
3. Working with a partner or platform that has not elevated your email program at all.
4. A welcome message or series that was created by IT six years ago and hasn’t been updated since.
5. No new acquisition tactics to grow your list and minimize subscriber churn.
6. Lack of focus or coordinated efforts on how the social program can help email, not just the other way around.
7. Not dealing with deliverability and list hygiene issues, assuming that problem will just work itself out.
8. Knowing that your typical email campaign looks subpar on a smartphone and tablet but not understanding why or doing anything to address this.
9. Refusing to revisit campaign processes and the parts of the campaign development that take away valuable time and resources.
10. Improving your subscriber sign up experience at all touch points (website, retail, mobile, social, landing page, etc. ).

By: Promotion World

Achieving email marketing success starts with building an opt in list that will allow you to maintain ‘contact’ with them! Now this approach is one of the best internet marketing strategies you can use and a great way to increase your business efficiency online! On the other hand do NOT expect to get results quickly by constantly sending out promotions because this will result in many unsubscribing from your list!

Here are 3 things every list owner MUST do to maximize the results they get when contacting members of their opt in list!

Offer Useful Information

When you first begin making contact with your opt in list you want to avoid ‘bull rushing’ them with a blizzard of promotional materials! Instead offer information that will be of use and interest to subscribers and since you already know some of their interests, this should be easy to do! Remember that the fact of the matter is this, you are just ‘meeting’ these people for the first time so be nice, courteous and helpful whenever you can! You only have one chance to make a good ‘first’ impression!

Build Relationships

Establishing trust and credibility is crucial to your marketing effectiveness! Once these are established subscribers have a deeper sense of loyalty towards you thereby making them more receptive to your promotional efforts! The content you are offering your opt in list is what helps you gain their trust while building your credibility! Freely offering anything of value or interest is a great way to gain the trust of others and when what you offer is of good quality this tends to boost your credibility as well! A trusting relationship with people who view you as credible is a great foundation upon which to build your business! This is also why using email in this way is considered one of the best internet marketing strategies in use today!

By: DMA

I’ve got to admit, I don’t like spam. Not just professionally, it really gets my goat personally as well. It’s not that I’m a particularly sensitive soul when it comes to email communications, but I just don’t like being sent stuff I haven’t asked for. Ok, I acknowledge that most of the downright illegal and virus laden traffic is now being successfully filtered by the great work of the spam filtering businesses and ISP’s, so what’s left to Grinch about?

Email is a powerful marketing channel, and its superb revenue driving potential is now becoming widely acknowledged. Email hasn’t got to this position by itself, it has needed to be understood and strategies carefully put together by some pretty clever people to bring it to where it is today. Some recent DMA reports show that the public now acknowledge email as a marketing channel that provides value. In anyone’s book that’s an achievement, and it isn’t as if everyone is using the same strategies. However the similar thing about all the successful strategies is they are done well, with considerable thought and great execution. So in a channel that is going from strength to strength, why am I throwing my presents out of the sleigh about spammers?

The most fundamental practice and legal obligation regarding sending someone a marketing email, is that you need to have the person’s permission to do so. I’m not going to start splitting hairs about the pros and cons of opt in opt out etc, but it is pretty widely acknowledged that the person should know what they are signing up for. But that’s right isn’t it, you don’t want anyone on your list who doesn’t want to be there, right?

By: Bronto

You’ve worked hard to get people onto your email marketing list, but that’s only part of the battle. What are the things you need to do to make sure people not only stay ON the list, but stay engaged and interact with your messages? Here are 8 key ways to keep subscribers engaged through their lifecycle:

1. Set Expectations from the Start

You want people to be excited to join your list in order to receive certain communications from you.  In the case of Kaleidoscope Yarns – that’s knitting tips and tricks, free patterns, special offers, and more. Subscribers also understand that they are going to get one email a week.

By making it clear WHAT they are signing up for and, roughly, how often they can expect to hear from you, you’ll start your relationship off on the right foot with everyone on the same page.

Setting proper expectations is key to a good email relationship. It helps establish trust.

2. Keep it Relevant – Segment & Target

Another key to creating great relationships with subscribers and maintaining engagement is keeping content RELEVANT. We do this by leveraging data we have on our subscribers.

We can take advantage of the following types of behavioral data:

• Email behavior: What are they opening and click on? That is a demonstration of interest you can pursue.
• Web site behavior: What categories of product are they browsing? According to recent studies, we know that messages that leverage clickstream data, like abandoned cart and browsing recommendation messages, produce 9 times the revenue and 32 times the net profit of standard broadcast messages.
• Purchase behavior:  What have customers purchased from you? How much money do they spend? How many times have they purchased from you? When did they last purchase from you? You can do some really smart marketing if you have this data flowing into your email platform regularly.

We can also leverage demographic information gathered via:

• Sign-up: What are you asking for up-front? Highly consider name, location, birthday and interest areas for future segmentation.
• Manage preference center: You can run an ”Update Your Information” campaign to get data from existing customers and motivate response using a drawing or sweepstakes.

By: iMedia Connection

As marketers, we all know how important it is to make sure that our email and other direct marketing efforts are relevant to our customers. We also understand that customers are taking more control of their relationships with us and are demanding that we engage with them in ways that work. Doing this effectively requires a marketing strategy that integrates efforts across channels, while allowing for us to continuously “listen” to our customers and adjust tactics based on what we “hear” from them.

As we enter 2012, here are a few of the main themes that our analysis shows will be on every email subscriber’s wish list, as well as ways to engage with them and give them what they really want.

To belong

Everyone wants to feel like they are part of something. Utilizing “welcome” programs to initiate a sense of belonging — letting subscribers know more about your brand and your email, social, and mobile programs and their benefits — is a great way to make them feel part of your community.

This year, consider taking your welcome emails a step further and deploy a welcome series. Strategically crafted creative elements, calls to action, and messaging in each treatment of the series can enable continuous subscriber engagement and optimize results with double the open and click rates and three times the transaction rates of promotional mailings.

Integrating your digital programs can also create a sense of belonging and increase engagement. For example, leveraging Facebook to optimize email performance and acquisition by including email sign-up on your Facebook page can bring your digital programs together and make your subscribers feel connected.

By: HubSpot

Whether you’re just starting out with email marketing or you already have some experience sending marketing emails, you’ve probably wondered about the types of email communication you can send to your database.

Should you nurture your subscribers with weekly newsletters? Are dedicated sends better at optimizing your sales and marketing funnel? What about email digests? These are all valid questions that marketing professionals should consider when selecting the right format to meet their email marketing goals.

So which types of emails should you be sending? In this blog post, we’ll discuss the different types of email marketing communication and their respective advantages and disadvantages. This information should help you make both an educated decision when choosing the most appropriate email format to meet your specific goals.

1. Email Newsletter

When deciding whether you should use email newsletters in your marketing strategy, you first need to determine your goal. What is it that you want your email newsletter to achieve? You might want to nurture your existing contacts and become the first brand they think of when they need a product or service in your industry. Or your goal might be to increase social sharing so you attract new people to your list. As you define your goal, think about what metrics you can use to track your progress.

Email newsletters are characterized by three key advantages. First, they can spread your brand awareness. By building habitual communication with your email subscribers, you enable them to recognize your brand and associate it with a positive sentiment. Second, email newsletters can leverage existing content. Many companies do quick summaries of their most popular blog posts and link to the articles from their newsletter. Third, email newsletters give you the freedom to include different types of content that might be important to your organization. For instance, the same newsletter can contain a popular blog post, a new offer, an announcement of an upcoming event, information about a discount, and a link to a survey.

Email newsletters are also characterized by some important disadvantages. First, they dilute the main call-to-action. If you include a series of blurbs or article summaries, the attention of your recipients will most likely be spread across these tidbits of information as opposed to staying focused on a certain element. Second, the design of a newsletter becomes a much more complicated task than other emails like dedicated sends. You’ll have to spend some time deciding on the right placement of images and text, alignment, and prioritization of information.

By: Litmus

Ever get so frustrated with coding HTML email that you start seeing red? In the past couple weeks we’ve heard from a handful of red-eyed users reporting Gmail tests that are seeing black by showing up in inboxes with a black background (when that wasn’t your intended result!)

After digging into some testing, I realized that this issue isn’t limited to Gmail—in fact it affects a number of different clients depending on how you apply background colors in your code. As with anything HTML email related, this can be super frustrating since standard web code won’t always work the way you anticipate when sent to an email client.

Read on to get the scoop and find the one fail safe way to code background colors for consistent results across the board.

HOW TO CODE A BACKGROUND COLOR? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS…

Usually, background colors are applied to a few common HTML elements:<body> <table> <td> <div> and <a>. Depending on your experience and coding style, you might use one of six (yes, six) different ways to apply background colors to elements in your email:

• Using the HTML bgcolor attribute with a 3-digit hexadecimal color code
• Using the HTML bgcolor attribute with a 6-digit hexadecimal color code
• Using the HTML bgcolor attribute with an RGB color value
• Using the background-color CSS property with a 3-digit hexadecimal color code
• Using the background-color CSS property with a 6-digit hexadecimal color code
• Using the background-color CSS property with an RGB color value

By: Direct Marketing News

I’m angry, and I’m not alone. Almost every time I wind up on some company’s database, I get punished for it — with email that insults my taste, shows no regard for my intelligence, and doesn’t value my time. Since we’re both in the email marketing business, let’s agree to stop pummeling each other in the name of selling. Instead, follow these six tactics.

• Be useful. Just because our shared agenda is to sell something, it doesn’t mean our email needs to act like a used-car salesman. Let’s tone down the rhetoric, and start to bring our customer useful helpful tips, ideas or how-tos. They’ll actually look forward to the next email you send.
• Design for skimming. Yes, some people will read reams of email copy. But most won’t. That doesn’t mean every email should squeeze all of its business above the fold, though. Long-form is fine, but keep each copy block brief and let subheads carry the story.
• Hold their hand and never let go. We’re not just asking people to read our little email. We’re asking them to take a journey. It falls on the copywriter to make every new step in that journey feel connected to the last — from the email’s line to its headline and call-to-action, then to the landing page headline and all the way through to a “thanks for your order” page. The entire journey should be written as a single narrative. That’s how it’ll be read.

By: AWeber

Your website and email marketing lists aren’t just business tools that help you connect with customers and prospects – in effect; they’re the digital manifestation of your presence and personality.

So while it’s tempting to think about these resources as simple text blocks and images, don’t underestimate the psychological impact these bits and bytes can have on your readers.

One of the best places to employ tactics that appeal to a reader’s emotions is in your email list, when it comes to managing your unsubscribe rates.

If you’ve been having trouble keeping these numbers down, check out the following psychological strategies on how to reduce your current unsubscribe rates:

Strategy #1 – Harness the Power of Words

There’s no doubt that many words are psychologically charged, but the two that you want to focus on here are “quit” and “give up.”

Whether or not we like to admit it, these words exert a powerful psychological force on readers. Quitting and giving up don’t simply mean “stopping” something – the strongest connotation with these words is actually “failure,” and nobody wants to admit that they’ve given up on or failed at something!

This is why we stay in bad relationships longer than we should, and it’s why we dread having to tell Great Aunt Sally that we’ve left bad working environments over the holiday dinner table. Heck, even the tobacco companies know that most smokers experience a psychological hurdle at the thought of quitting smoking (even if quitting is a good thing in this case!).

So how can you incorporate this technique into your email marketing lists? Well, imagine if – instead of being unsubscribed automatically – subscribers were shown the following options, as developed by Copyhackers:

By: ClickMail

Business relationships differ from personal ones in a very big way: Sometimes it’s just time to move on.

Case in point: Your marriage might be for life and your kids are around for good, but your ESP could be a temporary relationship. As much as you might like your ESP, as long as you’ve been doing business with them, there still might come a time when staying with the ESP you know so well could mean a lower email marketing ROI.

If you’ve been with the same email service provider for more than a year, consider these five signs that it’s time for a new ESP:

1. Your in-house email list has grown.

With over 100 ESPs to choose from, you’re going to find that capabilities differ among them. This includes scaling to meet your needs as your volume of email grows.

2. Your email deliverability has shrunk.

As strange as it sounds, the email deliverability rate you’ll get with one ESP is not the same as you’ll get with another. As an email marketing agency, we test different ESPs with the same list and we get markedly varied results. When even half a percentage point in improvement means more email ROI, having the highest possible email delivery rate is imperative. It could be your ESP isn’t keeping up with your needs, and that’s affecting your bottom line.

3. You’re ready to automate.

Triggered, event-based email marketing is the way to achieve the most targeted, relevant messages possible. If you’re ready to go that route and your ESP isn’t, it’s time to move on…not get left behind.

The 80/20 rule is one of those deliciously consistent truths from the world of statistics. At its essence, the rule implies that 80% of effects are brought by 20% of causes. For example, about 80% of the comments on your blog come from about 20% of your audience. The rule is also referred to as the Pareto principle.

The power of the 80/20 rule is that it can force you to think more strategically about where you invest your time and effort. The trick, though, is that you first have to realize where this rule applies. There are several common places you can find the 80/20 rule at work in your email marketing

#1: Engagement and conversions

If you go to your email dashboard and run a report you are likely to find that about 80% of your opens come from about 20% of your audience. Dig down further and you might find that 80% of your clicks come from about 20% of your opens. Go deeper yet and you might find that 80% of your conversions come from 20% of the people who clicked.

Don’t expect your metrics to follow this principle precisely, because they won’t. That’s not the point of the rule. The point is to get you to realize that the largest chunk of your engagement is driven by a fraction of your audience. If you need to get more opens, clicks, or conversions, you can work to identify this 20%. Find out what makes them click and give it to them. Then, find out how you can convince the remaining 80% of slackers to join the elite fifth.

#2. SPAM complaints

When someone marks one of your emails as spam or junk, it leaves a black mark on your reputation as a sender. If you get too many black marks, your sender reputation falls into a ditch and takes your delivery rate with it.

You will likely find that about 80% of your SPAM complaints come from about 20% of your audience. You might even find this audience to be smaller, like around 10%, but the principle still applies. Find out what is causing this vocal minority to sully your name and either fix the problem, remove them from your list, or prevent them from receiving your emails in the first place.

#3. Design and production

Time management is another place you can apply the 80/20 rule. You will likely spend 80% of your time focusing on 20% of your email program. For example, maybe there is a monthly campaign that takes forever to plan and design, but the rest of your program is a breeze. Or maybe you spend 80% of your time creating content for your program and hounding coworkers to send articles for your newsletter. Or maybe you spend all your time in analysis and measurement.

A fraction of your tasks are likely eating the majority of your time. And just because you focus on them does not mean that they generate the majority of your results. The trick is to find the 20% of tasks that generate 80% of results and make sure that they are executed as well as possible.

Takeaway: The 80/20 Rule can be a useful tool to reframe your perspective, sharpen your focus, and produce desired results in your email campaigns. 

By: Sydney Morning Herald

The average reader spends just 51 seconds on your email newsletter, some experts say. And most readers fail to read past the first three items on your list, says marketing agency blog, Public Relations Sydney.

Given the bombardment of email these days, just getting readers to open a newsletter is tough. Still, most agree that email remains a cost-effective marketing tool that will keep playing a key role in the digital marketing mix.

Two business experts explain how to produce an email marketing letter that exploits the medium’s direct marketing clout.

Ten secrets of effective email newsletters

1. It’s all about the subject line, says marketing strategist Fran Iseli-Hall. “Your newsletter subject line makes a huge difference in the opening rate and it can make or break a campaign,” she adds.

So, “split-test” subject lines – measure which your target market prefers. Most customer relationship management systems (CRMs) enable split-tests and reveal opening rates and bounce rates, Iseli-Hall says, and points to MailChimp, Sendpepper, AWeber, and Constant Contact. Whichever you use, remember to put the recipient’s first name in the subject line to boost the opening rate, she says.

2. Keep the newsletter short and sweet, Iseli-Hall says. Her reason: long newsletters often get filed for “later reading”, destined for oblivion.

Be brief and your audience will get used to your message and open it because it takes minutes to read.

3. Never lead with your branding. “This one is huge,” Iseli-Hall says. Even design agencies get this wrong, she adds.

If you put your branding at the top or all over your newsletter, it will look “super-salesy”: a no-no.

“Most people don’t care about your brand – they care about what’s in it for them,” Iseli-Hall says. Branding should go at the bottom with your contact details.

By: Trada

E-mail marketing is an extremely effective tool — if used correctly. I learned from the lessons of hard knocks on what to do and what not to do. As with everything, it’s always better to ask the experts. This time we asked experts from Marketo, SendGrid and social media agency Room 214 for their thoughts on how to use email marketing, understanding regulations and how to create email marketing lists.

Meet the Experts:

Tim Falls, a Community Manager for SendGrid, an email delivery system that simplifies the process and produces better results. Check out hisSendGrid’s blog and follow him on Twitter @timfalls.

Maria Pergolino, Sr Director of Marketing at marketing software automation system, Marketo.  Check out the Marketo blogs and follow Maria on Twitter @InboundMarketer.

Ingrid Getzan, Group Practice Director at social media agency Room 214. Check out the Room 214 blog, Capture the Conversion and follow Ingrid on Twitter @igetzan.

Email marketing is one of the most heavily regulated online marketing components. What do companies need to know before getting started with email marketing?

Ingrid Getzan: Companies need to know the very basics;  go with a trusted email software company, don’t buy lists, don’t use certain words in the subject line that will be marked as spam, know an acceptable frequency to send emails, and most importantly, know your plan.

Too many businesses send out emails because they think they should, without having a clear agenda of what they would like to communicate. There is no better way to get blacklisted then sending out irrelevant or spammy emails – a sure way to kill your email marketing efforts immediately. Sit down and figure out at least a 6 month plan of what you want to tell to your subscribers. Figure out why they want to receive your email and make the information within your email valuable to them. Don’t just pick a template or extend promotional offers to them – make it exclusive and worth their time.

Maria Pergolino: Get familiar with Can-Spam Laws – this goes far beyond the laws in your country, exptending to anywhere you market.  Just because you are in the US, doesn’t mean can ignore laws in other countries you sell your goods.  To learn about Can-Spam Laws, check out this great guide by the FTC.

When you’re trying to promote your own business, people often say that it’s all about connections.

Unfortunately, the advice tends to stop there. How do you meet people? More importantly, how do you keep track of everyone? Networking opportunities come in all shapes and sizes, from the workshop to the convention, but the most frustrating part can be remembering who you talk to and what those people do.

This is precisely the problem with which Jill Singer, founder of Jill Singer Graphics, recently wrestled.

“I’m involved with so much networking, and many people I meet are also networking all the time,” she explains. “It’s a continuous challenge to stay on top of it all. Meeting and staying connected with people can be tough, too.”

Her graphic design firm, based out of White Plains, N.Y., has been helping clients to create professional-looking promotional materials for almost 30 years. And, as a one-woman show, she has had to mostly rely on networking and self-promotion to get the word out about her services.

At the end of a hard day of networking, Jill would always have business cards scattered in the bureau, a few in her wallet, and some contact information in her iPhone. It was overwhelming to remember who was interested in her business. This past August, that all changed when a client asked her to help with his Constant Contact Email Marketing campaign.

“He was really tricking me,” she laughs, “because he knew that it would be a great tool for me to use, too. And he was right.”

Following Up Through Email

Once Jill started using Constant Contact (and getting permission to send messages to those people she had met), she suddenly found that she had one safe place to put all of the information she exchanged at networking events — and even better, a way to stay in touch with those people.

“Emails gave me a great way to highlight pieces from my portfolio. So now if someone asks to see a sample of my work at a seminar, I can just tell him that I’ll send him an email,” she explains. “Email marketing is an easy way to stay organized and stay in touch.”

The more people you have on your email list, the more marketing messages you can send out and the more responses you can potentially get. But, growing an email list can be a slow and difficult process. There are no shortcuts to building a large, qualitative list of subscribers. In fact, it can be so much of a bulk email marketing migraine that after a while some people might feel like giving up on promoting new sign-ups altogether.

So, how do you build your subscriber database without all the worries?

1) Make signing up as simple as possible

Email opt-in should be made easy. The more clicks and keystrokes a potential subscriber needs to make in order to sign up, the more of them will abandon the process before you have them securely on your list. Why force a person to take multiple steps to do something that they want to do, if there are ways for them to do it with just one?

Lubricate your subscription process by testing the success of rate of single opt-in versus double opt-in. Think about reducing the amount of required fields on your subscription forms — most of which are always details you can ask your subscribers about later. And rewrite your confirmation emails to be as brief and skim-easy as possible.

2) Focus on converting web visitors

If (like most marketers these days) you are promoting your business via online channels, chances are that your website will be a hotspot for catching new sign-ups. This means that your email newsletter opt-in should be compelling, obvious and everywhere. Make sure the form is prominently placed on all your web pages and make it stand out visually. Also place, sign-up promotions on relevant content such as within articles and blogs, and at the end of slide shows.

To accelerate the performance of your email marketing program, you need to go beyond best practices and marketing intuition. Only with a measurable and repeatable methodology can you effectively engage your customers from introduction to conversion.

According to MarketingSherpa’s new Email Marketing Handbook 2^nd Edition, this can be broken down into six actionable steps, giving you a methodical way to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of your email communications.

1. Identify impact and purpose – Assess and prioritize placement in the path to purchase where email can have the most impact on your bottom line
2. Email marketing integration – Learn the evolving best practices to leverage the power of social media for sharing content and generating list growth
3. Content creation – Learn the three keys to relevancy: contagious content, segmentation and real-time communications
4. Quality list growth – Develop a strategy to build a quality list of brand evangelists for your company based on your resources and target audience
5. List hygiene and monitoring deliverability statistics – Know your relationship with ISPs and how your reputation affects your deliverability success
6. Testing and optimization – Understand what works for your organization and your customers to continuously test and optimize your email messages

This 252-page handbook helps guide marketers through a step-by-step process to elevate their email program results. You’ll also receive worksheets and exercises designed to help you prioritize and fine tune your message when adding lifecycle communications or promoting the latest mobile app.

Our goal is to have this handbook become your trusted resources for executing meaningful email communications.

Launch Special: Order your copy today and save $100, courtesy of Eloqua (Ends Feb. 17)

Case Studies and Insights Included in the Handbook:

• How Microsoft used triggered email to increase or 800% and CTR 2,100%
• iPhone-targeted landing pages boost conversion rate 40%
• MarketingSherpa’s six steps to accelerating email marketing performance
• How Kodak added 33% more email subscribers and 53% more YouTube fans
• Sign-up ad campaign increases email database 300% among target audience
• Anti-newsletter strategy nurtures $1.5 million in leads in 4 months at Citrix
• How cutting a house list 95% helped double sales
• 6 tactics to leverage social check-in to grow email lists and improve engagement
• 3-part triggered series generates 53% click-to-conversion rate
• Growing Email Lists with Social Media: KFC’s Facebook tool adds subscribers
• 5 tactics to engage and convert smartphone users
• Reformat, Reuse, Recycle: 5 strategies to stretch your marketing content
• Segmenting a database and delivering more targeted content
• How JetBlue’s automated triggers get 1,640% more revenue-per-email
• How to use SMS and relevant content to add opt-ins

Here’s a Summary of the Table of Contents:

• Chapter 1: Email’s sphere of influence (pg. 11-18)
• Chapter 2: Identify impact and purpose (pg. 19-56)
• Chapter 3: Measurement and results (pg. 57-68)
• Chapter 4: Integrate email into the mix (pg. 69-90)
• Chapter 5: Produce relevant content (pg. 91-122)
• Chapter 6: Developing and keeping quality lists (pg. 123-155)
• Chapter 7: Deliverability and legal compliance (pg. 156-176)
• Chapter 8: Executing engaging email campaigns (pg. 177-194)
• Chapter 9: Testing and optimization (pg. 195-206)
• Appendix and Research Library: Marketing and Optimization Glossary of Terms (pg.217-252)

For more information on the handbook, click here to download a free excerpt.

P.S. As MarketingSherpa newsletter subscriber, you can save $100 off the regular price of the Email Marketing Handbook 2^nd Edition. But hurry – this offer ends on Feb. 17.

By: Email Brain

3 recommendations for 2012 that has just started!

1) Begin your year’s communications with an email marketing plan

Keep your plans simple and make sure they’re realistic and reachable. Don’t waste time in 2012 on things that won’t help you. After all, it’s a lot more rewarding when you know your goals are within your grasp.

2) I resolve to make 2012 a year of measurement

With the statistical tracking features provided by most email service providers (ESPs) there’s no reason to practice guess-marketing. But if that’s what you’ve been doing, then there’s no better time than the present to become a monster of metrics.

Comparing your current figures against last year’s numbers, if you have them, will give you a better idea of how you are growing, what to expect, and let you anticipate high and low business periods before they happen; which also makes it easier to budget.

By: iMedia Connection

In this age of split-second attention spans and increasingly skeptical consumers, email deliverability is more important than ever. And, while a marketer’s ability to reach consumers with timely, relevant content is still paramount, there are more pieces of the puzzle to consider. When detailing the fundamentals of deliverability, it is important to note that the integration of your data with the sent content plays an instrumental role in closing the gap between you and your customers.

It’s essential not to overlook the fact that even the most brilliant emails will go unnoticed if your messaging isn’t received at the right time — or worse yet, not at all. Just making it to the inbox can be a harrowingexperience. Therefore, here are the requisite steps to ensure that your messages reach their destinations, efficiently increasing your campaign’s effectiveness.

The basics

The fundamental ways to reach your costumer’s inboxes are white listing, formatting messages correctly, creating solid subject lines, maintaining lists, and making sure your campaigns are CAN-SPAM compliant.

Delivery rate boosters

Maintaining a good relationship with internet service providers like Yahoo and Gmail helps ensure successful message delivery. In addition, choosing the right email service provider makes a significant difference, as one bad client can impact the deliverability of other clients. Furthermore, creating messages that don’t heavily rely on images can help you find the inbox, and obtaining up-to-date data boosts delivery rates as you reach customers with highly relevant information. Additionally, it’s important to scrub out un-subscribers and bad email addresses frequently.

By: Clickz

How secure is your email list? Does your privacy policy state how you will be using the email addresses you collect? Are your actions in line with the spirit as well as the letter of your privacy policy?

While these questions don’t go directly to the bottom-line performance of your list in the short term, they do have implications for your brand. Here’s a mini-case study and some tips.

Last year there were a few high-profile data breaches in the email and online world. If you’re a small organization that doesn’t collect credit card data, you may not be concerned about the security of your email list. But you should be.

The U.S. is somewhat unique in its regulations around collecting and maintaining personal data. While other governing bodies, like Canada and the U.K., have broad laws that apply to all organizations that collect this type of data on people, the U.S. does not. It has COPPA, which covers collection and use of personal data from children, and there are industry-specific laws for the healthcare and financial services sectors, but no umbrella regulations.

Just because it’s not the law doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have your own internal guidelines to protect the data on your email lists, even if you’re only collecting email addresses.

I was talking security with an email marketer recently and his response was that their database was hosted by a large, well-respected organization. That’s a good start, but that alone won’t ensure that you’re safe from a breach.

Whenever I sign up to receive email from an organization I “tag” the address I provide with a unique identifier, so that I know whom I’ve given it to. This is a luxury only those of us that own our own domain names can enjoy, but sometimes it’s very interesting to see who, other than the organization that garnered my opt-in, ends up sending to these addresses.

Case in point: the Republican National Committee (RNC). I opted in to receive email from the organization years ago. I have to admit that its emails had become “bacn” for me, meaning that while I remembered opting in, I had stopped opening the email it sent me. I was busy, I wasn’t getting that much valuable information from its missives, and outside of a presidential election year I just wasn’t that interested.

By: Ecademy

Its not about your ‘open rate’, its all about the ‘read rate’.

Firstly before looking at some tips and tricks to ensure your email campaigns are being read, it’s worth noting the 2 main considerations for successful email marketing.

A good contact list - contacts whom opt-in for your communications.
Good copy - communications that are about the reader, not just your business.

If you achieve these 2 main points above you are making progress, however let me share some more little tips with you.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays for B2B campaigns
Our research has demonstrated that you’ll get a higher response to your email marketing campaigns on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. When you think about this, it makes sense. On Mondays, people are trying to get back on track from the weekend, and on Fridays, people are trying to wrap things up before they take off for the weekend. However this is also dependent on your targets, so testing is the key to find the ideal time for your messages to be sent.

Mornings are best
Send your marketing emails in the morning, so that people have time to read them during their breaks or lunch hour. However don’t send to early! Mid-morning is best – first thing in the morning your prospects will be clearing out messages from the night before, and more importantly drinking coffee and talking about last night’s soaps!

By: MediaPost

Ahh, it’s that time of year again. The time when we look at our travel schedules and realize that it is Email Marketing Conference Season! The season kicks off with MarketingSherpa and wraps with Media Post’s Email Insider Summit  — four months of immersing yourself in learning and innovating the email industry, one conference at a time!

Each of the conferences has a slightly different approach and value, but regardless of whether you plan to attend one, all, or some combination thereof, one thing is for sure — you need to be prepared to learn! Now, the lovely destinations of these events can sometimes make it difficult to get approval to attend (Vegas, Captiva Island, Hollywood, Fla. and so on); however, if you prepare a serious list of goals and objectives that you hope to attain while in attendance, it should make your life just a little bit easier (though selling Key Largo to my husband to attend MediaPost’s Social Media Insider Summit took some doing…).

Top Four Email Conference Take-away Goals for 2012

Given the industry topicality to date, I have prepared a start: the “Top Four Email Conference Take-away Goals for 2012.” What information should you really want to walk away with? Well, here ya go!

Measuring Attribution for the Email Channel
The conversations in 2012 are likely to drive directly toward multichannel marketing and channel integration, as they should. Email has lived in a silo for far too long — and asking questions about, and planning for, multichannel customer experiences is where we should be. That being said, in order to do this effectively you need to be able to properly attribute revenue to the various channels being leveraged. So while you are attending these conferences, be sure to ask: How are you measuring or attributing revenue to the email channel versus other channels in the marketing mix?

Channel Integration with the Email Channel
Coming this season to the Email Marketing Event Channel: “Integrated Marketing Communications.” How do you do this effectively? You will likely see a number of case studies about brands successfully integrating mobile, social and others with their email programs. The question of the hour here is “why?” Why did you integrate those specific channels with the email program, AND what is your definition of integrated? As you uncover the answers to these questions, you are better prepared to answer the various use case opportunities that will present internally — and you should have the necessary fodder to directionally advise the effort.

By: BtoB Online

Timely, direct and effective communication is essential to the success of any startup. Email marketing fits the bill unlike any other marketing tool. The email channel has evolved beyond the typical e-newsletter. Now campaigns with videos, surveys and other rich media content give burgeoning companies the edge they need. It is also relatively inexpensive—something that is always important to a new company.

If you’re launching a new venture or just looking to make the most of the email channel, use these five tips to make the most of your email marketing efforts.

1. Devote time to your email marketing. Email allows you to create messages quickly, distribute them for pennies and see a possible return of $43 for every $1 dollar spent (that’s the industry average, according to the DMA.) I say possible because effective email marketing takes forethought. Be prepared to invest some time in planning and executing campaigns. Sit down and draw up a calendar to plot your first few months—and keep an eye on the stats. You can always adjust as needed. Then, plan for a more thorough review of your program after six months or so. Dig into the response numbers to see what’s working, what needs to be adjusted and what should be kicked to the curb.
2. Build an engaged audience. Since no business wants to be stuck with a big announcement and no one to tell, you’ll need to build a permission-based email list. You might think it would be easier to buy a list, but this can lead to complaints, poor delivery and even blacklisting—something a startup definitely wants to avoid. Create a strong signup form and link it to all your customer touch points (website, transactional emails, social media, sales counter, email signature, etc.). Tie your form to an automatic welcome email, and thank new subscribers right away. Studies have shown that these can net four times the average open rate and five times the normal click-through rate. Plus, you’ll immediately cement a new relationship.