Building Customer Loyalty with Email Segmentation

Loyalty-targeted emails can result in open rates as much as 40 percent higher than bulk mailings. That’s a statistic worth noting. If you don’t currently use segmentation to cater to subscriber preferences and build loyalty among existing customers, now is the time to start.

Thank-You Notes

A simple “thank you” for subscribing, purchasing, or providing feedback goes a long way toward building rapport with your audience. Let subscribers know you appreciate their business and offer them a special discount or coupon code to be used toward a future purchase.

Shopping Cart Recovery

Use shopping cart recovery software to remind customers of unfinished purchases. A timely email letting them know the cart is about to expire or that the items are now on sale may be enough to bring them back to your website.

Redemption Reminders

If you use a loyalty program that incorporates points, coupon codes or e-dollars, send subscribers an email when these incentives are about to expire. They’ll appreciate the reminder and the tactic could boost your sales.

Feedback

Solicit customer feedback in the form of interest and opinion surveys, product reviews and social sharing buttons. Customers appreciate knowing that you care what they think.

Shopping Preferences

Use previous subscriber behavior to target emails toward individual shopping preferences. By tracking what users click on, what they search for and what they ultimately buy, you can create emails that cater to their needs.

Demographics

Send offers that relate to the subscriber’s location, age, profession or gender. You don’t want your senior citizen market to receive emails about college savings or your Los Angeles subscribers to receive information about discount flights from New York to Miami.

Purchasing Volume

Customers who spend significant money with your company should receive special offers such as free shipping, platinum status, or early notice of sales. On the other hand, one-time spenders may also be encouraged to shop again if you offer them a special deal.

Repeat Customers Vs. Prospective Customers

Both repeat and prospective customers deserve special attention but in a different way. Offer special deals or discount codes to repeat customers, and make sure they aren’t turned away when they notice that your prospective customers get seemingly better offers than they did. You can entice both these markets by creating email messages tailored to their needs and purchasing habits.

eConnect Email offers stellar list segmentation options that allow you to send emails designed with a particular audience in mind. Use custom fields to manage subscriber data and then segment your lists based on the criteria and user behavior of your clients, customers and subscribers.

Takeaway: By segmenting your email list and catering to subscriber preferences, you build valuable customer loyalty and increase open rates significantly. Can you think of other ways to nurture repeat shoppers?

By: MailerMailer

Poor sending practices and list hygiene can negatively affect your email sender score and reputation, ultimately causing you to be blacklisted. Additionally, high complaint rates, rented or purchased email lists, and a dismal IP sending history can lead to a diminished sender reputation. Companies such as SenderScore.org, aggregate data from a variety of ISPs, spam filters, and security companies in order to distinguish legitimate emails from spam. Based on the data and a variety of email metrics, SenderScore then assigns a score between 0 and 100 to the IP address, where 0 is the worst and 100 is the best possible score.

Clearing your name and working your way back toward a positive sender reputation may take a few months, but it is possible. Here are a few sender best practices to improve your reputation.

Clean up your email list

Cleaning your email list includes removing inactive list members, confirming that active list members still wish to receive your email, and removing names that you may have rented or purchased. First, take your entire list of email addresses and identify those that are inactive or have not opened your email in several months. Based on the number of consistently unopened messages, use your best judgment to determine what qualifies as an “inactive” list member. For example, you may decide 5 consistently unopened email messages qualifies as an inactive list member and decide to remove them from your list.

Next, ensure that your current and active list members have actually requested to be on your list and want to continue receiving your email. You can do this by sending a brief email to your active list members to verify their address and confirm their interest in your email. Lastly, identify and remove all purchased or rented email addresses from your list. In most cases, email addresses obtained through purchased and rented email lists have not given their permission to receive your emails. This increases the chances of those recipients filing your message as spam and hurting your sender reputation.

By: HubSpot

We talk a lot about how critical landing pages are to the effectiveness of your inbound marketing. But no matter how many landing pages you have and how well-optimized they are, no one will get to see them if you haven’t mastered the art and science of creating killer calls-to-action. They’re the gatekeepers of your landing pages, after all! Those tiny little buggers have to jump out to your visitors, convince them of the value of your offer, and get them clicking — which is why it’s crucial that marketers don’t make silly mistakes that could seriously harm their CTA click-through rates.

Luckily, this blog post can serve as your reference next time you create a new CTA or modify an existing one. If you’re making any of these common mistakes when creating your calls-to-action, get in touch with your designer ASAP (or just break into your inbound marketing software) and fix these conversion-killing faux pas.

13 Common Mistakes Marketers Make With Calls-to-Action

1) Overselling and Under-Delivering

Your call-to-action sets certain expectations with your visitor — the language you use tells them what they’re going to get if they redeem your offer. The thing is, sometimes calls-to-action promise the sun and the moon to ensure they capture a click, but then don’t actually deliver on those high-falutin’ promises. Let’s take a random CTA from HubSpot’s website as an example:

Sr. Inside Sales and Lead Generation Specialist @ MetraTech

Directly support the strategic development and tactical execution of marketing lead generation programs to drive MetraNet across industry segments and across regions. Oversee programs from inception to completion including, demand generation, outbound/inbound communications, online advertising, email campaigns, promotional offers, website content development, SEM, SM, webinars, event management, press and media relations. Versatility is the key; the ideal candidate has proven creative copywriting skills, killer lead generation skills, analytical aptitude in tracking marketing performance, and demonstrated experience in providing ROI results.

Responsibilities:

• Build lead generation campaigns and programs to support sales and elicit direct responses
• Complete a high volume of outbound calls to prospective clients
• Create email marketing and lead nurturing programs to build marketing database
• Ensure leads are advancing through lead generation funnel and that appropriate follow-up is completed timely
• Collaborate with sales team to escalate sales opportunities and achieve conversion targets
• Participate in online forums, twitter and LinkedIn discussions
• Provide input and support SEO and PPC efforts
• Assist in building content like white papers, blog posts, case studies, research, best practice guides, FAQS, videos and industry trends
• Drive website traffic and awareness through content, landing pages, email, advertising, events and SEM
• Recommend, optimize and report on programs utilizing Google Analytics, SM tools, SalesForce, LeadFormix and other 3rd party tools
• Cold-calling experience (50+ dials per day)
• Account prospecting and nurturing experience

Manager, Club Carlson Email Marketing @ Carlson

Set plan for and manage the Americas email communication channel for the Club Carlson hotel rewards program to accomplish marketing objectives. Responsibilities include long-term planning and enhancement, as well as near term scheduling, content development, cross-departmental coordination, and email performance assessment. Closely align work with hotel brand and other Marketing partners, and regional loyalty teams.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES 

• Work with E-Commerce to create the long-term email communication strategy for various target audiences and to maximize communications personalization.
• Devise and coordinate the messaging and creative needed for Club Carlson emails to drive program enrollments and brand revenue.
• Ensure that communications tone and messaging is in concert with Club Carlson branding standards.
• Continuously optimize emails through rigorous analysis of guest segmentation, database triggering capabilities, and related testing.
• Analyze campaign metrics to evaluate revenue and acquisition performance.
• Implement effective strategies and recommend new ideas/innovations to enhance email channel activities and grow Club Carlson membership.
• Leverage member engagement by monitoring and improving overall perception of email value and style.

20 Ideas to Inspire Your Next Email Newsletter

It’s that time again; the deadline for your upcoming email newsletter is looming, and you just can’t find the energy or inspiration to even start.

In fact, you find yourself staring at the screen with eyes slightly out of focus and fingers itching to type ‘w-w-w-dot-f-a-c-e-b-o-o…’ into your web browser.

Sound familiar? Well help is at hand. Instead of procrastinating, shake off the cobwebs by going for a walk (depending on the neighbourhood), bouncing ideas around with a colleague, or drawing a mind map to organize your thoughts.

If that doesn’t work, check out the list of ideas below.

Make some friends

1. Invite other staff members to contribute stories to the newsletter.

2. Find that person who’s always taking photos of team activities and projects and ask if they’ve got anything you can use.

3. See that grad student sitting and staring out the window or that guy whose project has just finished? Go and have a chat and ask them if they would like to help brainstorm or have a go at writing an article.

4. Make friends in high places. Many company directors and team leaders often have messages or news they would like to share with clients but they just don’t have the time. So help them out, and ask them if there is anything important they would like you to write about.

5. Introduce the new guy or girl in a staff profile or interview. Or re-introduce an existing team member that your audience really needs to know (or know better).

6. Check in with your friendly local industry association. Nearly every industry from Engineering to Hospitality to Advertising has an industry association, so find out if they would like to contribute to your newsletter.

Think like a journalist and sniff out a story

7. Find out the news for your industry. Browse industry publications and websites and see what are the latest innovations, trends or scandals.

8. What’s on the radar? What are people talking about around the water cooler? Yes I’m sure there is quite a lot of talk about the latest Biggest Loser episode but what are people really getting passionate about? Ask 3-5 people this question and see if a pattern emerges. ‘What do you think is the most important thing going on at [company name] at the moment?’

9. Interview someone in the company who is considered (internally at least) an expert on a topic.

10. Talk to clients or other team members who talk to clients. See if you can answer a common question, spot a trend or write a ‘top 5′ list.

11. Know what your clients like? Whether it’s sneakers or coffees, write a review or invite someone else to.

If there’s no news then make some

12. Hold a competition. It could be a staff competition that you take photos of and write an article about or it could be a competition for your readers.

13. Include a survey or poll in your newsletter and use the results in the next one.

14. Write a case study. One of the best ways to demonstrate how great your company is without boasting is to let your successes speak for themselves.

15. Hold an event. Celebrate successes such as when your company wins a new client, completes a project, or organises a team bonding activity. This is not only great for your team culture, but sharing these events with your clients helps them to feel like they know you.

16. Share the love. Clients are the ‘life blood’ of companies and an easy way to make them really happy is to give them a bit of free advertising. Especially if they have something of interest to offer your recipients.

17. Investigate some social media and see if there is something you can get started on. Start by searching for what other people are saying about your company and products and then branch out to other topics relating to your audience.

Be yourself and have some fun with it

18. Tell a personal story or share some company news. Depending on your industry, some clients may like to get the ‘inside scoop’. Knowing what is going on at a company beyond the products and offerings can help your customers get to know and understand you better.

19. Do a bit of research and write an article on the company’s history. All companies have a story. Maybe it was an idea two friends had on holidays or the owner saw a fantastic opportunity.

20. Get creative and instead of writing an article, show or teach your recipients something using a presentation, webinar, infographic, photo album or video.

Takeaway: Don’t give up – no matter how bad your writer’s block is, there’s always a good story around the corner. You just have to find it by thinking laterally, talking to people or even making the ‘news’ happen.

By: Thomsonlocal.com

2012 will prove to be a great year for well-targeted email marketing.

With the marketing  mix becoming  much  more varied – as online technologies mature – and previously separate marketing channels become far more integrated, it easy is to get caught up in the latest trends and lose sight of the things that make business to business marketing successful.

2011 saw social media rise to new heights and it was inevitable that it would soon be adopted as a core business tool. Social media marketing in many ways reinvigorated firms’ online marketing efforts and allowed them to refocus their aims on producing far-reaching campaigns that spanned a plethora of different platforms. It was this ‘all inclusive’ attitude towards social interaction that set the pace of marketing in 2011, which is why we saw firms returning to tried and tested methods – like B2B email marketing - but using them in fresh, integrated and innovative ways.

While there were a number of new tools also pushing their way into the mainstream – such as online video and the rapidly growing platform of mobile marketing – it is clear that underpinning all this innovation were familiar techniques and methodologies. While content was to remain king for 2011 web-based marketing strategies, data was the cornerstone of B2B marketing – in particularly, segregated, up-to-date, highly-organised business lists.

By: HubSpot

It’s not an uncommon scenario: Business bloggers get so caught up in the grind of churning out quality content on a regular basis, they tend to forget about some of the other fundamental factors that contribute to a successful blog. One of these factors is a growing subscriber base. You know, those dedicated blog readers that keep coming back to your blog on a regular basis? The people who consistently read and share your content with their networks?

Unfortunately, too many bloggers undermine the value of these loyal members of their blog’s readership. But the fact of the matter is, the more subscribers you can get to opt into your blog the wider you can expand the top of your funnel, and the more people you’ll have coming to your website. So if you haven’t put a lot of calories into growing your blog’s subscriber base, consider these 20 simple ways to attract more ‘regulars’ to your blog.

20 Simple Ways to Generate More Blog Subscribers

1) Clearly Display the Subscription Button/Email Opt-In Form

First of all, don’t make it difficult for visitors to your blog to figure out how to opt in to your blog. Display a clear call-to-action module to subscribe to your blog, along with an RSS subscription button and a simple, one-field email opt-in form near the top of your blog – above the fold. Don’t make your visitors search through all the bells and whistles in your blog’s sidebar to subscribe. Put it right in their face, and make it stand out.

2) Demonstrate the Value of Subscribing

If a visitor is new to your blog, they’re likely going to need some convincing that it’s worth coming back to time and time again. Just as with any effective call-to-action, you need to clearly demonstrate that value of subscribing to your blog. Explain what the visitor will get from the blog when subscribing. In the HubSpot blog’s subscriber call-to-action, for example, we explain what the HubSpot blog covers — “all of inbound marketing – SEO, blogging, social media, lead generation, email marketing, lead nurturing & management, and analytics” — so visitors have a clear understanding of what they’ll get from subscribing.

3) Create a Dedicated Subscription Landing Page

In addition to the subscribe module right there on your blog, create a dedicated landing page that you can direct people to via other channels such as social media, other pages on your website, PPC, or email. This way, rather than saying, “Visit myblog.com, then look for the subscriber option at the top right. You know — right below the banner CTA,” you can say “Visit myblog.com/subscribe to be the first to receive our latest blog content!” You can also use the extra real estate on this page to better demonstrate your blog’s value, as we did with HubSpot’s blog subscription landing page.

By: MarketingSherpa

SUMMARY: Over time, sending general emails to an entire database can erode results. However, many marketers continue to do this, because they’re unsure of how to move beyond “batch and blast” practices to a more targeted approach.

Yet, this change can be easier than you might expect. See how a marketing team from one e-commerce company selected a high-value segment, sent a targeted offer, and saw conversion rates jump by 208%. You will also learn which segment the marketers chose, and how they crafted a strong offer.

by Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter

CHALLENGE

The marketing team at Artbeads.com wanted to pursue targeted email marketing. The beads and jewelry-making supply retailer sent marketing emails each week, but they were the same for everyone on its list.

Devin Kimura, CEO at Artbeads.com, wanted to avoid getting addicted to the quick revenue that can come from batch-and-blast.

“When you have to pay those bills, you run a big batch-and-blast promotion with a sitewide coupon that can bring a lot of money in the door. Then you have to replenish that inventory you just sold, so you have to run another discount campaign. Then your customers start to get hooked on the discounts coming… It’s a very damaging cycle,” Kimura says.

Kimura and his team needed to identify valuable segments, send targeted emails, and increase results — all on a small budget.

CAMPAIGN

Artbeads.com tested targeted emails in several one-off campaigns last year. The team hoped to prove the value of sending targeted emails, generate revenue, and spur the company to invest further.

By: Napa Valley Register

Email marketing is a powerful tool, but there are some things you need to know to make it work well for you. If you answer “no” to any of the following questions, you may be missing some important opportunities to make more money.

• Do you send valuable information to your customers at least once every one or two weeks? (Not sales information with discounts or updates on your business, but real information that helps your customers succeed.)
• Do you customize your emails to use relevant information about the recipient? By simply using a person’s name, you can increase your readership results by 15 percent or more.
• Do you do any “split testing” with different offers?
• Do you test different email templates and track “open rates” to be sure readers are actually reading your messages?
• Do you preview your email in Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and a smartphone? Make sure you check them all.
• Do you minimize your use of images to make sure the message can be read when readers have their pictures turned off in Outlook? (If not, you can lose up to 76 percent of your audience.)
• Have you got an automatic series of messages and activities set up to go out to subscribers based on a specific action from them?
• Do you track open and click-through rates on every email you send? If you are not using an email marketing service, it is difficult to track this activity.

By: CMSWire

E-retailers have a habit of sending messages at least once or twice a day to their database of customer email addresses, regardless of who they are or the last time they made a purchase. Marketing managers are still attempting to unravel the mystery of what makes some people open and read their messages and others immediately trash them.

There is one obvious clue — settling for mass blasts will do nothing for garnering positive attention.

In Marketing Sherpa’s 2011 Benchmark report, targeting email audiences with relatable materials was respondents’ number one obstacle to email marketing effectiveness. Creating segmented email campaigns based on audience behavior was cited as the most valuable e-marketing tactic, but also the trickiest.

With the explosion of Big Data however, the e-commerce and marketing industries are stocked with enough fresh, timely consumer information to write off email blasts for good.

Dive into the Treasure Trove

Increased accessibility and availability of computer storage and power has opened the floodgates to a deluge of consumer analytics. All of this data — from who’s ditching their virtual carts to who’s buying a particular shoe in a particular color — can be leveraged by e-commerce businesses to target their audiences.

Email Marketing Coordinator @ Avenue Stores LLC

Set-up, Code and Deploy Email Marketing Communications. Report results.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Manage email campaign execution including list selection, set-up (HTML/slicing), testing, deployment, and monitoring of email delivery using a mass email broadcast tool.
• Assist Team with the development of email strategies, segmentation recommendations, and email test plan designs.
• Create reports to monitor, analyze and optimize campaign performance on a daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal basis.

REQUIREMENTS
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

By: Street Fight

Getting a consumer to enter their email address and subscribe to a daily deal newsletter is the easy part. Getting them to actually open and interact with an offer is another story. With the average Internet user receiving at least three daily or weekly shopping newsletters — and roughly 60% of adults subscribing to more emails now than last year — it’s become increasingly difficult for daily deal publishers to cut through the clutter and get their offers noticed.

In an effort to boost the open and purchase rates on their marketing messages, a number of deal providers have turned to technology companies offering email optimization platforms for help. These highly specialized email optimizers provide services that marketers can use to make their e-newsletters as effective as possible, and many can be used congruently to close the purchase loop and encourage consumers to buy more daily deals.

Here are six email optimization platforms that daily deal companies can use to improve their email marketing efforts.

1. AdStack
Email publishers and e-commerce websites looking to earn more revenue from their email marketing efforts can use AdStack to actually change the content of their emails after they have been sent. AdStack’s LiveOptimizer tool works in real-time to optimize email images and landing pages as a way to improve click and conversion rates. AdStack works with publishers like Bloomspot, Martini Media, and GamerNook, and offers pricing plans that range from free to $99 per month.

2. Sailthru
Sailthru is a platform that publishers and e-commerce companies can use deliver tailored messages to their loyal customers. By analyzing consumer behavior and generating data based on those results, Sailthru helps publishers create behaviorally targeted messages that their customers will actually want to read. Sailthru works with a number of daily deal publishers, including Thrillist, Group Commerce, and Tippr. The company charges clients based on volume, along with a flat monthly fee for accessing the platform.

eCommerce Email Leader @ Sonepar USA

Sonepar USA is seeking a Senior Email Manager to have overall responsibility for the US strategy and execution of customer service emails, revenue generating emails and customer marketing emails. We are looking for an experienced Email Marketing Leader that can quickly impact revenue goals. Responsibilities for this role include creating and managing a very aggressive email schedule for the US

This individual will drive the email optimization and testing plans. The individual will work very closely with the analytics and local marketing teams to define the email strategy and report on weekly results. This individual will work closely with the Marketing, and E-Commerce teams to define the messaging and design for each email campaign. Candidate will manage the relationship with the Email Vendor.

Responsibilities:

• Drive email strategy to drive measureable results such as: loyalty, purchasing frequency, number of product categories, etc.
• Define business objectives, develop campaign strategies, and identify opportunities for marketing email campaigns to increase conversion, purchasing frequency, loyalty, and sales.
• Grow email file significantly by working with customer-facing employees and data providers.
• Mine and segment the customer list to identify new engagement opportunities to drive sales, loyalty and retention. Work with other team members to ensure all efforts align with strategic goals and objectives.
• Manage the email schedule and facilitate email production to deliver to the targeted customer base. Work closely with corporate and field teams such as Marketing, BI, Ecommerce, Technology and Customer Service in executing the email plan.
• Collaborate with the Operations and IT teams to develop and ensure servicing trigger emails (order confirmation, shipping confirmation, you decide, etc) are delivered accurately.
• Improve processes and maintain BDP’s to maximize effectiveness and minimize time to market of emails.
• Develop and test new messaging, design and landing page strategies to improve customer acquisition and conversion.
• Manage deliverability, performance and reputation of all email communications.
• Define/set company email standards and metrics that drive overall goals. Develop a reporting structure to measure and track results. Train customer support.
• Evaluate external email management platforms and lead conversion to single platform/partner.
• Define plan to meet aggressive monthly revenue targets
• Work with management to define specifications for new email concepts.
• Share and document best practices for email design, copywriting, offers and subject line testing.
• Work with writers to define messaging for emails and select imagery
• Apply B2B Ecommerce experience and education by contributing to new feature and test ideas, leading new initiatives, and responding to changes in the market.

By: San Francisco Chronicle

The April 2012 email marketing trend analysis by email marketing leader, Elite Email, reviewed one million emails across a variety of vertical markets to identify what businesses were saying to consumers and what content consumers were most likely to engage with. During April, the top email marketing trending topics were related to outdoor activities and outdoor maintenance.

Toronto, ON (PRWEB) April 30, 2012

Elite Email, a leader in email marketing solutions, has unveiled their April 2012 email marketing trends. By analyzing a sampling of one million emails across a wide variety of vertical markets, Elite Email is able to get a pulse on the hottest trending topics. The analysis uses an advanced algorithm to identify trends and patterns about what organizations are saying to their consumers in their email marketing campaigns and also what consumers are most actively engaging with. The email marketing analysis is based on organizations that are located in either the USA or Canada.

In April 2012, with the weather outside beginning to get nicer in many parts of North America, there was a huge spike in small business email marketing campaigns related to outdoor activities and outdoor maintenance.

Many seasonal email marketers, such as landscaping and lawn care businesses, helped to fuel the trend. After having their marketing in hibernation for most of the winter, they were now out in full swing. April 2012 saw a huge increase in email send volume from businesses in this industry reaching out to past customers in an effort to obtain renewals and also trying to spread digital word of mouth. This year Elite Email witnessed a huge amount of landscapers and lawn care companies sending emails where the call to action was “Send This To Your Friend” instead of previous years where it was the more traditional “Sign Up Now”.

By: Eloqua

Buyer’s remorse. We’ve all felt it at one point. Sometimes it’s a pair of ill-fitting shoes, in worse cases it’s a fixer-upper that turns into a money pit.

Whatever the case, you definitely don’t want to feel remorseful about your email marketing vendor. If you’re launching email campaigns, but you’re not seeing the results you expected, don’t blame the sales guy…yet. There are four common reasons why you may be experiencing roadblocks and some email marketing tips to combat them.

1. Your Message is Too Generic
Email is one of the most common ways that you communicate with your audience, so it’s imperative that your message is relevant and compelling. Your prospective audience needs to feel they have a question or a problem, and that your call-to-action will help solve it. If I receive an email encouraging me to download a white paper but it’s on a topic I don’t care about, the email probably won’t even get opened.

2. Deliverability is a Problem
Think of sending an email like applying for a credit card. If you have a really bad track record of paying bills, you probably aren’t going to get approved for a new one. Email marketing works the same way – if you (or your vendor) has a less-than-stellar reputation, your e-mails may be getting rejected. An easy way to check this is to visit senderscore.org – it’s simple and free, and definitely something worth monitoring.

By: iMedia Connection

I’ve been fielding a lot of questions lately about delivery. Sometimes the askers of these questions really mean deliverability. I take a deep breath, keeping in mind that most of the uninitiated still think they are the same thing, harmonize my chakras, and calmly correct them and help them ask the right questions. Let’s start this brief diatribe, and I promise to be as succinct as possible, with a few definitions:

Delivery: the act of delivering something. In this case, it’s the act of delivering email.

Deliverability: the act of specifically delivering email to the inbox versus the spam folder versus having it blocked outright for various violations or offenses.

Delivery metrics are generally a precursor to deliverability metrics. Delivery metrics inform marketers about how much email was sent and how much arrived. This is an important metric to help them understand the cost of their mailings, from a CPM standpoint, for those that outsourced their email marketing to a third party.

When we try to get at metrics beyond the raw numbers of messages sent, and we ascertain where they went — which ISPs blocked the sending IP — then we’re in the realm of deliverability. Deliverability measurements are disputed and don’t always jive. Some mailers will measure deliverability using a formula similar to this:

Method one: deliverability = (total sent minus total soft bounces) divided by total sent
Method two: deliverability = (total sent minus (total soft bounce plus total hard bounces)) divided by total sent

Mobile Devices Spell the End of Email Subscriber Text Entry: How to Adjust

The policy of asking your email subscribers to write lengthy reviews, comments, or even customer service requests has faded to extinction due to the proliferation of mobile web-enabled devices which make extensive data entry painful or outright impossible.

Thanks to these changes, email marketers should be vividly aware of the restrictive nature of text and data entry on smartphones and tablets, to ensure that they don’t frustrate their customers into unsubscribing. Here’s more on that:

Windows 8 will kill the desktop? Not likely!

Many observers cited the beta launch of Windows 8 as the death of the conventional desktop paradigm and point to a future where all computing will be done on handheld devices. Unfortunately these claims ignore the reality of the majority of desktop PC users who apply their devices for conventional office productivity purposes.

In other words, desktop users respond with, “You give me a way to enter type on a tablet at 90 words per minute while seeing two textbook pages side-by-side in actual size as I do on my 27-inch monitor, and I’ll toss my brand new liquid-cooled overclocked Intel Core i7 2600K with 16 GB of RAM and twin SSDs into the trash.”

Yes, tablets are wonderful to watch a movie or read a novel while sipping your favorite cinnamon half-caff latte at Starbucks but just try to write a manuscript or a report on one and you’ll be tossing it in the trash along with your cardboard cup.

The “Achilles’ heel” of mobile devices

The “Achilles’ heel” of all current mobile web-enabled devices, such as tablets or smartphones, is that the options they offer for data entry are mostly laughable:

• Pecking away at an onscreen keyboard slows the fastest touchtyper to a crawl.

• Using auto-text-complete recently caused a high school lockdown when “Gunna be at West Hall” became “Gunman be at West Hall”.

• Adding a conventional keyboard to a tablet’s dock eliminates the reason to have a tablet in the first place.

• Voice Recognition is ‘grape tiff ewe donut mined righting non cents’.

The physical format of mobile devices is also not conducive to data entry. Your ‘big smeary sausage fingers’ are hardly precise styluses, and unless you hold your device in front of your face, you’ll soon be visting your chiropractor for neck work.

Efficient mobile data entry is still a dream

Given that the current data entry standard is the QWERTY keyboard which has been around for nearly a century and a half, it would seem obvious that if there was a way to enter data into an electronic device in a more efficient manner it would already be on the market.

Speedy and efficient data entry is the better mousetrap of the 21^st century and whoever comes up with it is guaranteed a spot alongside Warren, Slim and Bill in the billionaires’ highest echelons.

Until the advent of that future data entry Einstein, the burgeoning millions of mobile users will be stuck in a data handicap ocean where truncated ‘txtspk’ rules the waves and full paragraphs have sunk to the murky depths below.

Distill the demands on your subscribers to simple clicks

This mobile data entry reality presents a clear and present challenge to all email marketers. Your mobile customers may be able to efficiently read your incoming emails on their devices, but you had better distill your requirement for their actions down to little more than clicking on a Call-to-Action link that’s at least 44×44 pixels, or you might as well be sending your email newsletters directly into their Trash.

Given that your mobile customers will find it nearly impossible to reply coherently, enter an essay contest, or provide a comprehensive review on their smartphones and tablets, it is wise to avoid such requirements.

Takeaway: When composing your overall email newsletter strategy, keeping in mind the data entry restrictions of your mobile customers can help you craft a campaign which is mobile-friendly by strictly limiting the demands you make of your subscribers. Your customers will reply positively to your efforts to make your email requests and Calls-to-Action easily clickable by ‘big smeary sausage fingers’ without requiring any text entry at all!

Manager, Email Marketing Platforms @ Prudential

Prudential’s eBusiness Development Group (eDG) is a center of excellence whose mission is to Internet enable Prudential’s lines of business to allow them to better serve their clients, producers and prospects and drive incremental business value out of those relationships.  Within eDG, the eMarketing Development team provides a center of excellence for building and supporting state of the art platforms in support of Prudential’s Lead Generation efforts, Web Metrics and Reporting, Social Media activities and Marketing Campaign management.

We are seeking an experienced solutions architect/computer programmer with resent J2EE hands-on experience to join our eMarketing Development area and report directly to the Vice President of eMarketing Development.  This individual will work on managing our Email Marketing platform and interface with internal and external  Marketing and Servicing areas when designing and building various interfaces into that platform.

Major Responsibilities:

• Analyze requirements, translate them into deliverables, create and maintain project plans, perform unit and system testing
• Independently perform hands on development and unit testing;
• Collaborate with the development teams from multiple business units and build individual components into complex enterprise web systems;
• Establish, track and report on service level measures for the platform and related services
• Jointly with the vendor prepare Statements of Work

By: SimplyCast

By mastering these fundamental email marketing metrics, you’re laying the groundwork for, what we like to call, “expert analysis.”

Essentially, these data points are the bare minimum of what you need to look at regularly in order to judge your campaign’s success (or failure, in some cases).

Consider these metrics as your email marketing first aid kit.

First, we’re going to explain what each metric means, and then, we’ll teach you how to calculate each metric. Though many email marketing software systems spit out these metrics when you ask them to, we find it’s nice to know how they came up with those numbers.

After reading our list, what are your basic email marketing metrics that you just can’t live without reviewing?

1. Email List Size

What does it mean?

Email list size is, well, what it sounds like: the total number of subscribers to your email list. Generally, it shows how far your reach is for this specific channel.

How do I calculate it?

• The total number of email subscribers you currently have
• The number of email subscribers you have for each email you offer

2. Open Rate

What does it mean?

How many email subscribers open your email.

By: MediaPost

Before we get to the “how,” let’s explore the “why”?   In today’s age of rich media and social connectivity, multi-modal consumers reserve their attention for the most compelling, contextual experiences. With that said, how does a static medium like email survive as a marketing tool?

Unlike in the past, it’s harder than ever to time email to select times and days of the week, given the transient consumer and mobile device.   The experience is still static, compared to richer experiences on sites and through video.   The tactics of design and the traditional ISP inbox experience haven’t changed much over the past few years. Maybe it’s a little easier to manage now, but the rendering experience or design and ad experience is still pretty poor for most part.

Based on how we consume email today, the channel can drive brief experiences that shape our knowledge and behaviors as well as be a conduit for procedural knowledge (how to do something).  The key term here is “brief.” Consumers are still combining stimuli — and mobile consumers are less of a dedicated  or focused audience when triaging email on their personal accounts while on the run.  No more boring elevator rides, or even moments of quiet reflection;  the vast majority of consumers are continually plugged in, using idle time as email and social media triage time.

Email Marketing Manager @ Huddle

We are seeking an all-star marketer with the passion and creativity to build meaningful online and offline momentum surrounding our customers worldwide. You’ll own and manage email planning and production, from conception through launch. Your job will involve strategic, long-term planning, along with daily iterative execution. If applying segmentation logic to email campaigns and A/B testing are second nature to you, read on!

Responsibilities:

• Help drive our customer engagement strategy by developing a comprehensive email program for our customers to enhance customer retention.
• Execute the entire email process including coding, creative direction and design, content, development, and QA.
• Own content requirements, including e-books, podcasts, videos and infographics.
• Leverage email marketing tools, including Eloqua and Saleforce, to develop transactional, promotional, and informational content strategies that drive customers to our product.
• Conceive and develop segmentation strategies to ensure email relevance to all customers.
• Develop a detailed email schedule that maximizes efficacy.
• Utilize aggressive A/B testing and regular optimization to maximize campaign performance and improve email key performance indicators and isolated campaign-driver effectiveness.

By: Travel Market Report

Despite all the hype about social media, email is still our predominant communication vehicle. Email is also an exceptionally powerful marketing medium – but only if you do it right.

Here are 10 tips to help travel sellers get the most out of their email communications.

1. Target what you send.
One of the most exciting things about email is that travel agents can easily target what they send by creating multiple lists. Lists can be comprised of customers, prospects, people who have shown an interest in a specific service, etc., and you can send a different message to each group that matches their exact interests.

Try that achieving that with any form of traditional marketing! How about television advertising? Even if you could afford to shoot 30 different commercials, there’s no way to send a specific commercial to a specific group of homes.

2. Use an email marketing service.
Sending bulk email on your own is nearly impossible. Plus, email marketing services with good reputations and high standards get incredibly good delivery rates. I work for an email marketing service (the very best one, but there are dozens), so this may appear self-serving, but the reality is that on your own you cannot come close to achieving the results that an email service delivers.

Another advantage of email services is their tracking capabilities – who opened it and when, who clicked on what, which links were most popular – something you could not build on your own. The fees for email marketing services start out at around just $15 per month. If that’s not in your marketing budget, you don’t have a marketing budget.

3. Make it easy to subscribe.
Permission-based email marketing, where a subscriber opts in to receive email from you, is the only email marketing worth doing. Subscribing is usually done through a web link, so put the link everywhere you can on your website – on every page and in a prominent location (upper left). Put it on your Facebook page, on your regular emails in the signature line and Tweet it on occasion.

Email Marketing Manager @ Bloomingdales.com

• Develop new communication strategies to optimize email program, improve customer retention and drive incremental sales – triggered campaigns, lifecycle marketing program
• Drive and manage email process – merchandise, content, messaging and segmentation
• Develop and execute testing strategies to improve email metrics
• Analyze email campaign results including audience, offers, messaging, creative, deliverability, open rates, click through rates and conversion
• Manage email project workflow – develop schedules, manage team to deadlines, work with merchants to select key items, write creative briefs and gather approvals
• Communicate email strategies and plans to email vendor for proper implementation
• Share email program insights and recommendations with key internal partners for ongoing optimization
• Regularly forecast sales, response and budgets
• Partner with direct mail team to develop cross-channel learnings and insights to develop optimal contact strategy