And just like that… January’s already over. Who has their email campaigns all ready for back to school sales this fall? How about holiday 2012? Have you laid out a Content Plan for 2012? If you raised your hand, you’re dismissed (and I’m impressed). If you’re like the rest of us, you’re surprised to find yourself in February already and haven’t planned your 2012 Digital Marketing Content... [Read more]
George Bilbrey of Return Path wrote a thought-provoking piece for MediaPost on how marketing objectives interact with deliverability objectives. The article takes on the question of whether deliverability tactics are at odds with marketing best practices. The response, to paraphrase, was that improved deliverability increases revenue, reduces the chances of damage to sender reputation, and improves... [Read more]
Between smart phones and desk jobs, people are checking their email at enormous rates. As a business, this can be an important way to reach customers. Yet, with an ever growing amount of spam and sales junk, people are learning to skim through their inbox, eyeing the most important emails and deleting or ignoring the rest. You don’t want to be one of those emails. Still, ATYM Market Research found... [Read more]
It’s easy to focus exclusively on the content of your messages when it comes to creating engaging emails. But all too often, it’s the interactions at a more fundamental level that will make the most difference. If you’re not considering these four engagement opportunities, you could be missing out on the chance to earn or keep the attention of your subscribers. The Sign-Up Process Because it’s... [Read more]
Sharing a good bottle of wine with friends is simply a much richer experience than consuming one alone. Additionally, a mutual appreciation for the same types of wines you and your friends consume creates a far more substantial sharing experience. In this two part series, I’ll explore why mutual associations with brands will dramatically increase open rates and drastically reduce spam complaints,... [Read more]
Here at GetResponse, we recently launched our segmentation feature, and we already have the use of personalization and dynamic content. So we encourage you to gather as much data as you can on your clients, so you can have the ability to ‘Market to One’. But is there such a thing as too much data? Today I am going to talk briefly about some key points to remember when creating your web forms and... [Read more]
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... [Read more]
The Top 25 Questions You Must Ask Before Sending Any Email Newsletter By Denise Keller As a small business email marketer, your newsletter can be considered in many ways to be the face of your entire company to a large number of your customers. You can ensure that your newsletter is coherent, correct, and adheres to readability and legitimacy standards by properly answering these 25 questions. Is... [Read more]
Online retailers love email marketing because of its high potential to drive profit while keeping the campaign costs pretty low. Besides, done right, email marketing is permission-based and is, more or less, easily automated. Big brands do it: GAP, Victoria Secret, Overstock, Timberland, and pretty much everybody else. Together with my PadiAct colleagues, I wanted to get a glimpse of the techniques... [Read more]
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 2nd Edition, this can be broken down into six actionable steps, giving you a methodical... [Read more]
Successful email marketers recognize the importance of building relationships with subscribers. But how exactly do you do that? Well I believe that relationships are built on trust. And trust is gained by delivering on clear expectations. With email marketing, this means making promises to new subscribers up-front and then delivering on these promises time and time again with all of your emails. So... [Read more]
When it comes to email marketing, email marketers love to throw around big terms that make us sound smart and make it seem as though we’re on the cutting edge of all the cool technology and marketing trends. No doubt you’ve heard terms like personalization, throttling or dynamic content. But really, what is the difference between personalization and dynamic content anyway? The biggest misnomer... [Read more]
The fear of a bad reputation or negative feedback keeps many businesses from engaging in conversations with customers and prospects on social media. At the basis of this are often misconceptions and a lack of strategies to efficiently monitor, analyze and respond to online feedback. This leads to missed opportunities and often to wrong investments of time, resources and budgets in tools, practices... [Read more]
As an email marketer, you’re probably well-versed in strategizing your content across a variety of platforms, and you mobilize your resources to do the most with what you have. But are your emails mobilized? In this case, we mean optimized for mobile. Get it? Mobilized! Defined as: streamlined or otherwise mobile-friendly version of your email content. Mobile is here to stay, and it’s growing... [Read more]
We have a list of 17 insightful infographics to help you make sense of email marketing and the world of online. Due to an “Infographic Labor Union Strike”, the other 6 infographics will be back working once a labor settlement has been reached. —————————————————————————————————————————- What... [Read more]
When was the last time you created an email and sent it out to your entire subscriber list? Last week? Lifecycle marketing offers a more personal approach to creating emails by targeting them toward customers at various stages in their relationship with your company. By segmenting your audience based on their current interest level, you can create emails designed to elicit the next logical response.... [Read more]
I’d like to ask you one question: how you are going to make your next test as remarkable as it can be? This is the opposite of boring When you are designing email marketing optimization, normally your goals are the best starting point: conversion or customer value. That might be translated into things more measurable like opens, clicks, sales, ROI, etc. The percentage of increase in the results... [Read more]
Whether you’re new to email marketing or a seasoned campaigner, you’re probably familiar with the term “automation”. In fact, it’s probably something you’re already doing in a really simple way with email autoresponders. If so, then you already know that automation is an extremely useful tool for: Saving time in handling repetitive tasks Improving timeliness and relevancy for subscribers Creating... [Read more]
People love to play online. Part of the appeal of Facebook is that it gives you so many opportunities to interact with people and with the companies you’re following. Email has traditionally been less interactive than websites or social media, but the current trend in email marketing is to enable interaction with the subscriber. That way, you can capitalize on the surfer mentality (give me something... [Read more]
Email is a unique marketing channel because it is permission based. That’s one reason email has a high return on investment: If consumers raise their hands and say, “Please market to me;” they are likely to purchase in the future. But building a large opt-in subscriber base takes dedication, strategy and time. Here are seven tips to help with that process. 1. Use Strategic Sign-up Locations Your... [Read more]
