As we all know, email marketing works so I won’t bore you with the stats. Instead, let’s see what an email marketing consultant is and what they can do for you.

Email marketing consultants generally take three forms, an Email Marketing Agency, a freelancer, or an in-house staffer at an Email Service Provider (ESP) or traditional agency; all of which have skills and experience that are specific to developing effective email marketing strategies. However, their core competencies and service offerings vary…greatly.

So do you need an email marketing consultant? If so, what type? Ask yourself the following questions:

Is my mailing solution right for me?
Does my ESP or in-house solutions provide all the features I need? Am I using the features that I’m paying for? It is easy for me to use? Is my throughput in-line with my cost?

What am I mailing?
Have I mapped out what should I send? Such as welcome emails, newsletters, abandoned orders, promotions, and reactivation emails? What am I missing? Where does the email communication chain breakdown?

When should I be mailing?
Should I use information based on my recipient’s actions to send emails, such as white paper downloads or cart abandonment? What about date-driven emails, such as holiday-only buyers or anniversaries. What’s my editorial calendar for my newsletters? Am I keeping track of ad-hoc promotional emails?

What are my business rules?
Have I decided what causes a message to be sent? What data is needed to support the message? Should the data import process be manual or automatic? What content is sent when those conditions are met? What’s my plan for “from names” and “subject lines”? Should I mix it up? What and when should I test?

What are my goals?
Have I established goals, such as number of downloads, sales, registrations? What do I plan to do to grow my list? What can I do to reduce attrition?

What are my reporting needs?
Do I need to see more than just clicks and opens to improve my results and prove my case?  Do I need my tap into outside data such as CRM and website analytics tools to establish and track my success metrics?

Email marketing is a valuable endeavor for most marketers, but the process can be challenging and time consuming. An email marketing consultant or agency can help you meet your goals while allowing you to use your time to operate other aspects of your business.

Need more than just insight? An email-focused agency can also provide with the supporting services, as well as direction, that are required to launch and support a strong email marketing program; read how-to hire an email marketing agency to learn more.

Takeaway: Before deciding to go it alone, first carefully consider your needs, and options, then initiate a conversion with prospective suppliers. Email can do more than you might think.

We asked our contributors to answer a couple of questions we thought would help eMail marketers take stock of the year past and plan for the year coming. As editor of The eMail Guide, I’m proud to say you’ll find their answers very insightful and helpful. So, enjoy 10 bloggers blogging!

Happy Holidays!

Jim Ducharme
Editor,
The eMail Guide

Dylan Boyd – www.eROI.com

Biggest mistake you saw eMail marketers make in 2009?
The biggest mistake I saw was not the addition of social buttons into emails but, the addition of social sharing functions into email marketing without a solid plan of what marketers were going to do differently with these channels. So many marketers I noticed wanted to not miss the boat of joining the social media rush; but adding Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn without a plan of engagement or measurement around the use was a mistake for many. I think that this was a true learning year for many marketers around social media and I am hopeful that email marketers will see it as another communications channel and treat it differently from email. The cadence, frequency and uses can be so different even when sharing so many similarities. I also hope that they realize that there is a two-way commitment in using these channels that are not a controlled and planned as they typically approach email marketing. It is a commitment of more time and resources than many have yet to understand.

If you could see eMail marketers do something differently in 2010 what would that be?
Move faster. In looking at how many consumers and customers now engage, the campaign planning that is often done is too far out to work in the daily changing landscape of marketing, timing and competition. By the time that the campaigns roll around many factors have changed and having the ability to react and be nimble is important to gain greater leverage over the opportunity of timing. Planning is still very important but being more agile in your execution is going to win in 2010. Testing to smaller focused segments is going to help with this shift.

Thank you for allowing us to share some ideas and participate in meaningful dialogues with many of you around the world. Sites like The eMail Guide are a great resource for all of us and we hope to add more to the conversation in 2010.

Stephanie Miller – Returnpath.net

Biggest mistake you saw eMail marketers make in 2009?
Not understanding the difference between “bounce rate” and “inbox placement.”  They are very different. You must track them both. The first is a measure of list quality and the second is your opportunity index. If you don’t reach the inbox, you cannot earn a response.  Inbox placement is the first line of opportunity for response and revenue. You can’t manage and optimize it if you aren’t tracking it.

If you could see eMail marketers do something differently in 2010 what would that be?
I’d like to see email marketers earn their rightful place at the digital marketing table.  Email is a great dialog channel (like social and event marketing) and great for traffic driving (like search and webinars) and great for retention (like a blog or newsletter). Email drives a tremendous amount of revenue and response.  Yet, still, email gets treated like an inexpensive tool and not as a strategic weapon.  Broadcasting and over mailing will cease to be effective very soon.  Email marketing needs resources and some TLC for segmentation, targeting and content strategy.

You look great today!  Thanks for being part of this community!  Send feedback! (And fruitcake).

Janine Popick – www.verticalResponse.com

Biggest mistake you saw email marketers make in 2009?
In 2009 one of the biggest mistakes we saw small businesses make was stepping up their email campaigns a bit too late. Instead of building good relationships with their customers throughout the year, many businesses waited until they desperately needed sales from their customers and then bombarded them with emails. So these businesses were in their customer’s inboxes when they needed the customer, not necessarily when their customer needed them.

If you could see email marketers do something differently in 2010 what would that be?
Nail Your Email Marketing through testing and customer surveys. Your customers are your lifeblood in these economic times so in 2010 it’s going to be even more important to make sure you put as much thought as possible into how you communicate to them. Test a different format, or a different day to send your email campaign. Squeezing an extra few opens, clicks and sales can make a huge difference for your business all throughout the year. Also make sure you are sending regular surveys to your customers to find out how they rate your product, your company and customer support. Find out what you can be doing better, then tell your customers how you’re changing your ways in your next email newsletter because you’ve heard their message.

On behalf of VerticalResponse, I’d like to thank you for following my posts on The eMail Guide. I hope you have found the posts useful, and would welcome any suggestions on future topics you’d like to see covered from an Email Service Provider. We hope you have a safe and wonderful holiday season with your friends and family, and look forward to posting again in the New Year!

Fred Tabsharani – www.Port25.com

Biggest mistake you saw eMail marketers make in 2009?
One of the biggest mistakes we saw marketers make during 2009 was not respecting the preferences of their subscribers.

If you could see eMail marketers do something differently in 2010 what would that be?
Develop a sound master preference center to include social media and SMS credentials, and use it as a landing page.  Market the preference center as you would a product or a promotion

On behalf of Port25 Solutions, we’d like to extend warm wishes for a Happy and prosperous New Year.  The entire email industry is one large growing family, and, one of the elements we admire most is its level of commitment toward fighting spam and proving that email is the nervous system of communications.  We consider ourselves lucky to have peers so dedicated toward their craft. Here is to email!

DJ Waldow – www.blueskyfactory.com

Biggest mistake you saw eMail marketers make in 2009?
In 2009, I saw many marketers switch email service providers (ESPs) because they were not happy with their inbox deliverability. However, when they moved to a new provider, they forgot that they are in control of much of their own deliverability. If your deliverability is on the fritz (read: decline), a good starting point is usually to look internally. Are you sending timely, targeted, relevant email to subscribers who have asked for it? What does your opt-in process look like? Are you setting proper expectations around content & frequency? Are you sending too much email? Not enough?

If you could see eMail marketers do something differently in 2010 what would that be?
2010. In a perfect world, I’d like to see two things. First, I’d like more resources dropped into email marketing. Heck – it’s the highest (measurable) ROI of any online channel and yet typically email marketing is a fraction of someone’s full-time job. Most “email marketers” also manage the website, the SEO, etc. I’d love to see the C-suite invest time and money into this lucrative channel.

Second – and this is certainly not new – I’d love there to be more testing. Don’t guess on what day or time is the best to send or what subject line or copy or creative will garner more opens/clicks/conversions. Take advantage of the tools your ESP offers. Take the time to do the A|B testing that is necessary to maximize results. Test. Test. Test. Tweak. Test. Test. Test. Send. Review.

Happy and safe holidays to all and to all from all of us at Blue Sky Factory!

Chris Wheeler – www.Bronto.com

Biggest mistake you saw eMail marketers make in 2009?
Not having a full grasp of what the law requires around sending email.  Normally, this would be okay, since not everyone is expected to know every tendril of law ever written.  However, when email marketers begin moving away from an understanding of CAN-SPAM, their intent becomes skewed. As well, I saw a movement from a lot of marketers (not all of course) where permission was seen as being more expendable than it has been in the past.  The more comfortable you are with not following CAN-SPAM, the easier it is to also move away from the best practices that raise the bar from CAN-SPAM to actual permission based marketing.  While you may be in compliance, not receiving permission to email someone degrades the customer experience and thus the relationship with the email marketing entity.

If you could see eMail marketers do something differently in 2010 what would that be?
Revisit why they’re engaged in email marketing in the first place.  For some, this won’t be a long process since they have a clear vision.  But, for others, be it money, conversions, list size or quantity of email send over a certain period of time, I would recommend refocusing your efforts around both the recipient experience and the brand you represent.  Personally, I feel like the inbox has come under assault with marketers being too lax in thinking a recipient’s expectations are in line with their own and they just send away — ISPs have come to this conclusion.  There’s discussion of CAN-SPAM being revisited so I think it’s safe to say the government is starting to feel this.  Marketers will get caught being defined externally if they don’t find ways to do it responsibly and internally.  Forcing recipients to give up on their email because the messages they want are so overpopulated with those they don’t, move to another email address or just see it as less of a 2 way communication mechanism, will hurt the entire industry in the end.  We have the power to reinvent and define ourselves (as both vendors and marketers) so hopefully 2010 will help lead this charge.

Without having an audience, it would make everything we pundits have to say moot.  So, with that in mind as well as the holidays, thanks so much for following me and my peers in the email industry and have yourself a fantastic holiday season.

Anna Yeaman – Stylecampaign.com

Biggest mistake you saw eMail marketers make in 2009?
Mailing frequency and Irrelevant content: The top reason (73%) that subscribers opt-out of email programs is that the emails are not relevant.  66% of email users list frequency as a reason to unsubscribe.  - Merkle: View From The Inbox 2009

If you could see eMail marketers do something differently in 2010 what would that be?
Add a preference center: List churn is around 30% annually. A preference center would allow subscribers to update their address and set frequency and content preferences. The same study shows that subscribers who set preferences have 50% higher levels of engagement.

Here’s one of the best opt down pages I’ve seen: http://emailmarketingvoodoo.com/blog/post/before-you-go/

For marketers who already have a preference center, work on making it easy to find and enticing to subscribers. Changing preferences can feel like a chore - dry language and placement with other account admin options. Many customers opt to unsubscribe rather than go through the hassle of updating their preferences.

Happy Christmas from LA, big thanks to everyone who took the time to read TheeMailguide posts and share their comments.

Mathew Vernhout – www.thindata.com

Biggest mistake you saw email marketers make in 2009?
Over mailing (recency / frequency) especially around holidays along with untargeted email – even simple gender targeting, one message does not fit all. As well, there are still folks out there who think it’s OK to purchase, rent or share lists.

If you could see email marketers do something differently in 2010 what would that be?
Fix items above. :)

Cheers and happy holidays!

Chris Healey – www.TheeMailguide.com

Biggest mistake you saw eMail marketers make in 2009?
From my perspective inside the arts & culture industry, I would have to say my biggest complaint is that many galleries, artists and organizations will design and launch an email campaign without any links, landing pages or social media options attached.  More often than not there is not even a web-hosted version of their email!  Engagement is currency for the arts, and a press release by email should be the tip of the iceberg for communications between and artist and the audience and not a means to an end unto itself.

If you could see eMail marketers do something differently in 2010 what would that be?
Everyone talks about video in emails but frankly I would rather see live chat embedded in an email campaign – I usually have immediate questions if I am interested at all.  As well, again specifically aimed at the arts and culture sector, please make sure emails are added right away to your list and that there is a personal greeting as confirmation. I’ve handed out hundreds of cards (especially at the Toronto International Art Fair 2009) asking to be put on an email list and so far I am maybe getting about a dozen galleries sending news to my inbox.

Thanks to the great community involved with The eMail Guide! Great topics, lessons and discussions that are invaluable to marketing as a whole and Jeff and Jim are tremendous resources for our industry. Thanks for following and happy holidays to you all!

Jeff Ginsberg – TheeMailguide.com

Biggest mistake you saw eMail marketers make in 2009?
The biggest mistake I saw eMail markers make was thinking that they could do what they wanted to do for less money and in an unrealistic timeline.

We saw too many companies come to us with projects that had no budget and unrealistic time expectations.
Wake up marketers! Just because it’s eMail does not mean it should be free and doable in a day.

If you could see eMail marketers do something differently in 2010 what would that be?
Properly planned campaigns that have:

1)     A strategic objective

2)     Something to track. We were forced to run a number of campaigns that did not have links to click through to the website.

3)     A way to track conversions outside of the campaign. Closing the loop is our middle name.

Best wishes to everyone in #eMailmarketing. A happy and safe holiday and great success for 2010. Think eMail marketing and get in The eMail Guide.

So, what have you learned this past year that you would like to pass along to others? We invite you to share your eMail wisdom with the community by posting your comment!

Neil Schwartzman over at CAUCE has been doing a heck of a job keeping us all up to date on the progress of C-27, which among other things, addresses spam. The bill will now get a second reading before the Senate Thursday. You can follow the progress here.

Other C-27 posts of interest:

Read Michael Geist’s comments on the progress of C-27 here.

Bill C-27: CRM expert concerned Canadian eMail marketers not ready

5 things eMail marketers need to know about bill C-27

Do you have questions about C-27? Post them here and we’ll get you answers.

As an early member of the eROI management team, Dylan leads business development efforts and client strategy programs. Under his marketing and sales leadership as VP of Sales and Strategy, eROI has enjoyed seven years of continued growth, been named INC 500/5000 company in 2006/2007/2008, and garnered numerous creative and business awards.

Working in interactive since 1996, Dylan is a widely renowned email marketing, customer life-cycle, and engagement marketing strategist, developing and enhancing online presence for brands like HBO, Kettle Foods, Konami, FastCompany, Icebreaker, Travelocity, Providence and OHSU Health Systems, Wacom and many more.

Prior to joining eROI, Dylan successfully built global e-commerce and online business solutions for large corporations, and developed interactive content and strategy programs.

He currently serves on boards and chairs initiatives for the Email Experience Council, Portland Advertising Federation, HIVE Awards and Start Making a Reader Today (SMART). He routinely speaks at OMMA, EIS, AMA, EEC and other industry events. Dylan is regularly published in MarketingSherpa, MarketingProfs, iMediaConnection, MarketingVox, Chicago Tribune, ClickZand All About Email, along with authoring TheEmailWars.com since 2005.

In his spare time… he works more.

• Web – eroi.com
• Blog theemailwars.com
• Twitter dtboyd or eROI
• Facebook facebook.com/eROI
• Linked In : http://www.linkedin.com/in/dtboyd

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it make a sound?  If a bill passes in Parliament and no one is around to care, does it still take effect?  I never really had a great answer for the first question but, the answer to the second one is a resounding yes, and in the course of researching the implications of Bill C-27 for clients I was surprised by the distinct lack of opinions apparent from the Canadian email marketing community.

I recently made this comment to Jim Ducharme (editor of The eMail Guide), who recently posted his “5 Things Marketers Need to Know” here at the eMail Guide.  Jim replied with a couple of points:

1- It appears many Canadian companies think of Canada after the US because so many do the bulk of their business there.

2- There’s a tendency to assume we won’t do it any different than the Americans and so if you are covered for Can-Spam you are covered for any laws here.

I think Jim hits the nail on the head, and it may also be a matter of many of us simply leaving our homework until the last minute like we used to in high school.  There are some serious implications that will affect most email marketers; in particular that we won’t be able to email any customers that we haven’t had a “business relationship” with for two years.  This is especially the case for those of us involved in winback or cross-promotion campaigns for former (or even current) customers that haven’t transacted with us for a while.  It will certainly be interesting times for the Canadian email marketers in January if and when Bill C-27 does indeed pass.

Curtis Rushing,
CRM Planner and StrategistBlitz – a division of Cossette Inc.
Cossette.com

Bio
Curtis Rushing leads CRM initiatives for clients of Blitz, uncovering key customer data insights and optimizing new and ongoing marketing initiatives, including curriculum and trigger-based email programs.

We have to admit that we’ve been pretty blown away with the growth we’ve been seeing here at the eMail Guide and we thank you for the support and enthusiasm! Certainly one very good indicator of success is the number of great bloggers who want to start coming onboard as columnists and we have some fantastic ones coming online over the next couple of weeks.

Everyone here in the “bullpen” is thrilled to welcome Janine Popick to the rotation! Janine is the President, CEO and founder of eMail marketing leader, VerticalResponse. Janine’s eMail marketing blog is hugely popular and we couldn’t be happier that she is bringing years of experience and insight to The Email Guide blog!

Janine has over 17 years of experience leading direct and internet marketing programs for some of the biggest brands in technology and entertainment. Janine led the Direct division of NBC Internet as well as XOOM.com. She also managed direct marketing for a variety of technology companies like Claris Corp. a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple Inc., Insignia Solutions and Symantec Corporation.

Janine holds a Bachelor’s degree from Hofstra University in Communications and English. She has been a private investor and serves as an advisor in the U.S. and Europe.

Janine is VerticalResponse’s CEB (Chief Executive Blogger) and won the 2006 ClickZ Best Marketing Blog Award, the 2007 Stevie Award for Best Blog, a 2008 SIIA Codie Finalist for best blog and 2009 Stevie Finalist for Best Blog.

She is a columnist for Inc.com “Women in Business” and has been published in DM News as and featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, ClickZ, and B2B Magazine.

VerticalResponse Marketing Blog for Small Businesses.

Follow her on Twitter @janinepopick.

In an effort to stem the Nor’easter of frenetic twittering and blogging created by the Wall Street Journal’s recent predictions of the imminent death of eMail. The eMail Guide intends to square off against them and take a strong stand on the issue along with the eMail marketing community who have been speaking loudly and clearly in their belief that email is not dead.

Lord knows Wall Street has made mistakes before.

Vote now! Speak your mind! Is eMail marketing dead or ain’t it?

Oh, and you can send an eMail directly to the WSJ author by clicking here or better yet, send the Wall Street Journal a fax!

Takeaway: Just cuz you see it in print doesn’t mean it’s so.

Brendan Lewis got a lot of tweeting going today after one of his posts made mention of keeping it simple when it comes to HTML in eMails. It seems a lot of people keyed on that one point with their RTs and yet the full post had 7 solid nuggets of common sense wisdom gleaned from Brendan’s experience with eMail Marketing. I’d hate for you to miss the original post so here it is.

Besides, according to Brendan’s bio he’s a vet of the Australian Calvary and anyone who can fight while riding a Kangaroo has got my full respect.

Takeaway: Experience is the best teacher.

What lessons do you have to share? Post them!

It’s not important what technology can do. What’s important is what you can do with technology. I’ve spent my whole professional life as a writer and editor promoting this truth. It applies to everything and anything in our digital world today.

While with Standard Broadcasting I was part of an all out effort to expand their reach from traditional to digital media and at the same time was one of the first expert radio commentators tackling technology issues. As the inaugural editor of PCWorld.ca, I was very proud of our efforts to demystify technology and provide consumers with a trusted resource online. I’m looking forward to applying those same skills here at The eMail Guide.

Communities drive the web. Without communities all we really have is a giant strip-mall with infinite parking. My mandate here at The eMail Guide is to build the premier community for email marketing resources. Obviously, this is not a task accomplished in a vacuum. We have a team of skilled professionals and contributors who want to share their experience and knowledge with you and help you achieve your objectives!

Our team includes you! This is not a one way communication! Your suggestions and feedback will guide the content and resources we provide. Knowing how important this is, you can be assured that your comments and emails will get prompt replies from a real person – me. Each and every contact with a community member here provides the opportunity for us to create even more worthwhile content and help even more people reach their goals.

I’m looking forward along with all the staff here at The eMail Guide to being your number one resource for email marketing!

Marketing Sherpa has picked up on a common concern amongst email marketers and has responded with some solid advice by providing solid if unspectacular strategic talking points to engage the most common internal threats to your email list. This article is re-assuring for all of us in the industry that we are not alone in being assailed by panicked co-workers and short-sited managers who would be all too willing to slash-and-burn the house email list for short term gain. Marketing Sherpa provides the common sense response that may even result in more resources and support for the company email marketer.  You can find the article here.

Week-End Trends: No references to Christmas in August yet

From The Retail Email Blog by Chad White comes the latest status Retail Email Index, a measuring of weekly email campaigns and strategy by the top 100 retailers. This week, Chad observes the current lull in Christmas marketing in the late summer contrasted with other holiday and event based metrics. My sense is that is not too late to engage in your Christmas primer campaign, but don’t forget about Labor Day and of course Back-to-School.  Do you think there has been an increase or decrease in promotional email volume since the same time last year? You might be suprised at the difference, but considering the emphasis on email marketing during these tough economic times I was not too surprised. You can find the blog posting here.

Big CSS guide update including mobile email clients

From the Campaign Monitor Blog by David Greiner comes something very, very useful when designing an email layout – a really, really good CSS guide. What’s too old? What’s too new? What about mobile clients? Does Eudora matter anymore? CSS is truly where the email marketer labors in the trenches and this free and downloadable guide is your best bet for making it through another campaign. Downloading it is exactly what I am going to do after linking up to it in this article. Thanks David & the team at Campaign Monitor Blog! You can find the Big CSS Guide here.

The 2.0 kids are alright

Both Jeff and I anticipated learning some new things about SMO via the interviews, since this rapidly evolving communications platform is all about how smart, talented individuals are shaping it.  Many colleges are now incorporating social media marketing into their programs and since our job description called for a recent graduate of such a program, we looked forward to finding learning more ourselves.  We were not disappointed.

• Podcasting was a staple in current marketing programs, as well as blogging.
• Curiously, Twitter was more of a personal choice development of these graduates rather than as part of the social media curriculum, though I certainly expect that to change in the near future.
• Email marketing and list development were core courses for these same programs and
• YouTube seemed to be taken for granted as a channel for any online campaign.

This was great to see, but what was really interesting was that there were people applying from all kinds of professional backgrounds involved with web communications. We had an application from a Certified Microsoft Engineer turned email marketer turned writer turned social media marketer. There was also a professional blogger whose sample posting could of been a top-notch wikipedia article, complete with footnotes and a bibliography. The best formatted resume came from a coffee shop Barista who launched list development and online branding campaigns for her employer in the summer with good results.  She got an interview as her resume was a PDF – those who simply pasted unformatted text into an email did not get an interview. Other factors that emerged as cues for an interview or not were:

• those who were active on social platforms already got our interest.
• being naturally social and communicative was a core personality requirement. A personality is a personality on any level after all.
• be interesting! Being able to talk about anything with thoughtful responses and insights is what social media is all about.
• not being afraid of technology – it’s better to admit not knowing something than nodding sagely.

A Social Media Party

Those we did not hire we still hope to work with someday, at least as future projects would dictate involvement. Each person has different strengths and interests, and all of them are important and very useful. We went in looking for a social media marketer and came out with a network of 2.0 talent.

Who did we hire? Why, Jenny Kim of course. Smart, interesting, active and successful with her own social media endeavours. Welcome aboard Jenny!

This is how we sat when conducting the interviews for a social media marketer

]]> http://www.theemailguide.com/email-marketing/advertising-social-media-jobs-is-good-social-media-marketing/feed/ 1 http://www.theemailguide.com/email-marketing/promotions-and-incentives/five-reasons-to-be-listed-on-the-email-guide/ http://www.theemailguide.com/email-marketing/promotions-and-incentives/five-reasons-to-be-listed-on-the-email-guide/#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:21:41 +0000 Chris Healey http://www.theemailguide.com/?p=1371 Drive qualified traffic to your website

Have you seen the cost of google adwords relating to the permission email marketing industry? Inclusion in The eMail Guide directory provides the click-throughs to your service or product at a fraction of the cost – and our basic listings are free so why not open one right now and see for yourself.

Don’t forget that our blog is always looking for industry experts such like you to contribute.

As an open blog for the email professional community, we are pleased to offer editorial content space for your industry article or post.  You can even become a regular contributor and get listed as an expert in our author profile and enjoy some prestigious company.  With The eMail Guide publishing original posts everyday about permission marketing every day, our popular blog is a valuable resource for all of our members.

Advertise with a banner ad to get an edge on traffic looking for your services and products.

Want to broadcast through our entire site? We want you to as well and our banners ads are the perfect vehicle to do just that. With a leaderboard and box ad spaces available and 5,000 impressions for free, your message will appear everywhere on The eMail Guide and appear often.

Post your jobs, events and promotions for free and create buzz and valuable backlinks to you.

A great compliment to your communications strategy, The eMail Guide’s classified, events and promotions sections are for email marketers to get the word out on everything from webinars to coupon codes to networking opportunities.

Got something you would like us to review, blog and tweet about?

Just ask – we love to get the word out to our thousands of followers. We review blogs, platforms, trends, events and websites and then we tweet about it on our popular Twiiter account @TheeMailGuide . There are exciting new channels we are developing in our secret email lab, so stay tuned….

The eMail Guide

It is said that the real first test of a business is to stay open for more than a year, and I believe this applies to a blog in the sense of reaching one hundred posts. Many blogs die quickly – if no one reads a post, does it actually exist?- but the problem Jeff and I are finding is too few hours in the day for all the posts we would like to write.

Permission eMail marketing is burgeoning during the recession.

New and exciting social platforms deliver multiple interactions and messages to subscribers. SMS and devices have changed the way we think about email layout. The call to action has become lean, mean and more focused in the sea of noise that is the landscape of our industry. There are many more trends and issues we need to deal as well and we need the help of email marketing experts from all areas and niches to blog with us to cover everything. 

Jobs, reviews, webinars, conferences. We want to hear about it and we want to tweet about it as well. 

So here is looking at another 100, and here is a picture from The eMail Guide official 100th blog posting gala and extravaganza – I tried convincing these sidewalk ice cream vendors that an email marketing campaign was worth their while, but they seemed more interested in chump change.

These ice cream vendors seemed uninterested about our 100th blog post

That’s right, you’ve arrived at the comprehensive web directory of permission email marketing service providers – The eMail Guide. If you had not found us then you would probably have a great deal of trouble and time spent finding even a few suitable companies to handle your particular email marketing needs. Now that you are at the right place, relax and take your time looking through our hundreds of companies offering specialized services.

That’s a lot of information already, we know, but every listing is carefully researched and categorized by our expert staff who have been working within the email marketing industry for over ten years. Our recipe for a successful email relationship is listening to our clients needs and then asking questions and listening again. The result is The eMail Guide, built for email marketers and service providers like you.

Your membership based email communications needs are as individual as the people you building a relationship with. Fundamentals such as list management, data collection and even ISP relations are a great place to start considering what vehicle your message needs to be the most effective and functional design possible.

Looking for more of wow, bam and zing to the content of your campaign? We’ve got the industry leading companies for graphic artists, flash designers and copy writers to achieve the visual impact and creative communications that succeed in this industry.

Of course, the email is only the middle man for this process and strategy, research and consultation are the engines that take you and your demographic where you both want to go. Check out these category listings for experts and gurus who can help guide you and your message to your mission critical goals and achieve the metrics permission email marketing uses to measure success.

Feeling like a kid in a candy store yet? We hope so, because that is how our eMail Guide is supposed to make anyone in our sector feel who needs to find information, a service or a partner to accomplish their marketing and communication needs.

And we want your feedback, your thoughts and your contributions to make The eMail Guide the best possible resource and daily source of information no matter how small or large you are. Our blog is a great subscription service for insider tips and tricks of the trade, as well as keeping on eye on the latest trends and technologies that affect us all. If you are looking for a job or looking to hire someone with the best possible qualifications, our classifieds are a perfect resource. The core of our industry is networking and development, so be sure to be appraised of upcoming events such as conferences, workshops and webinars.

We hope you have found this brief introduction useful to get you started on using this The eMail Guide to it’s full potential to accomplish your goals. Now you can focus your time and energy into your market and let us bring the news and information to you. If you have any questions or comments or still not sure where to start, feel free to contact us and we’ll be happy to help!

On behalf of The eMail Guide, I’m Chris Healey.