Expert warns businesses against sending 'too much' email marketing

Expert warns businesses against sending 'too much' email marketing
Business Strata - Business News - Farnborough,Hampshire,UK
Growing businesses that do not use email marketing in conjunction with social media could be "missing a real opportunity", according to an expert. ... read on

See all stories on this topic

Email marketing company Pure’s solution crosses the language divide

Email marketing company Pure’s solution crosses the language divide
Free press releases (press release) - Oxford,UK
Pure announces its new language module as part of its pure response email marketing software. One of the many benefits of email marketing is that, ... read on

See all stories on this topic from google

Businesses 'beginning to understand the potential of email marketing'

Businesses 'beginning to understand the potential of email marketing'
Business Strata - Business News - Farnborough,Hampshire,UK
Growing businesses in the UK are beginning to understand the potential of email marketing, according to an expert. John Coyne of consultancy firm ...
See all stories on this topic from google

Trigger-Based Email Marketing Improves Sales and Customer Experience

Trigger-Based Email Marketing Improves Sales and Customer Experience
Practical Ecommerce (subscription) - Grand Junction,USA
“That’s what trigger email is all about.” There are multitudes of email-marketing service and software suppliers, providing online-registration, ...
See all stories on this topic: google

BtoB newsletter Oct 2008

Case study: How ClearBrick built its e-mail list
By Karen J. Bannan

Software provider ClearBrick offers its customer experience planning software to small companies across the world. Until April 2007, it got the word out using pay-per-click ads and direct marketing...
FULL STORY

---

Why are our targeted weekly e-mails getting little response?

Answer: When a marketing program does not work, always go back to the basics of marketing 101: right target, right message, right timing, right channel.

Despite advances in scenario-based Web design created to track customer online behavior and build profiles or personas, for targeted marketing campaigns, your customers are still bombarded with tons of irrelevant messages—often the result of batch-and-blast campaigns sent by stove-piped e-mail applications and outsourced e-mail service providers—each day.

If you aren’t getting responses, it is quite likely that your customers view your correspondence as spam rather than relevant or valuable information, regardless of whether or not they have opted to receive your e-mails. Relevance is key in e-mail.

Assuming your target audience, timing and channel are right, it’s time to step back and take a closer look at your message and its relevancy. What about your personalization capabilities? If you’re relying on customer profiles and Web behavior alone, it’s time to expand your approach and take into account all customer interaction: Have you met face to face at a trade show? Spoken on the phone? Engaged in preliminary sales discussions?

Often these data are stored in two different locations. Customer profiles are housed within your Web and e-mail system, and real-world customer interactions are stored in the sales force automation (SFA), or customer relationship management (CRM) system or a lead management database. What you need is an enterprise marketing platform that will link the two. Adding this technological infrastructure links online data accumulated through Web and e-mail tracking with offline data stored in SFA/CRM and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to automate the communication process.

There are a number of platforms out there, however the best solution will manage and gather data as well as support more personalized, tightly coordinated communications across multiples channels, not just e-mail. This technology should be able to handle sophisticated marketing automation work flows—especially those supporting highly personalized, large-volume outbound communications and should integrate with back-end transactional solutions.

At the same time, the technology should continuously and automatically monitor response rates and digital body language to provide you and your sales staff with up-to-the-minute details on campaign performance. With A/B testing and measurable results, you’ll be able to devise more targeted, impactful campaigns while integrating e-mail with new and existing communications channels to increase customer loyalty and drive sales—a far cry from the soulless batch-and-blast campaigns flooding your customers’ inboxes.

Patrick McHugh is exec VP-North American operations for Neolane (www.neolane.com), a provider of enterprise marketing software.


Back to The Basics - How is your email perceived?

Back to The Basics - How is your email perceived?

Posted: 01 Oct 2008 10:39 AM CDT

To continue with the theme of email Bests Practices topics, I think it's fair to state that both the ISPs and their email recipient clients are able to differentiate between legitimate marketers, and spammers. But the ISP and the email recipient share a frustration with the legitimate marketers. They notice inconsistencies in recognizing the need for best email delivery practices by the legitimate marketers.

When all is said and done, it is the ISP, and the email recipient perception that will affect your deliverability. As a whole, both parties, act as the combined force for deciding whether or not they accept your email to the recipient inbox.

To break this down, most ISPs are mainly concerned about certain technical factors about the email itself including; the header and subject line information, the body of the email, the reputation and past performance of the sending network. So you want to ensure the content and technical setup in your emails can pass the filters, gateways and servers designed by the ISPs for their customer's privacy; furthermore, you want to ensure that your emails are recognized by the human ISPs postmaster employees, as your email subscribers - for more on this see the five R's of email.

With the email recipient, the issues become more about the presentation, the intent of the email, and the recognition of the sender, and less about technical specifics; therefore, it is important that you ensure that your emails are recognized by the email recipient, as legitimate email. It is imperative that your intentions and practices are clear and conspicuous to the email recipient at the time of subscribing and with each message being delivered. By ensuring both the ISP and email recipient are satisfied, increase the likelihood that your email will make it to the recipient inbox.

So, are your issues technical or presentational? Do you know how some ISPs interact and collaborate with their clients to combat spam? Are you aware of the differences in how the ISPs and email recipients in other countries regard data collection and protection?

The answers could be as simple as a consistent "from domain", ensuring a proper DNS setup, a broken URL link which does not go to a legitimate "Subscribe" or "Privacy" link, or a misinterpretation of countries data protection legislation.

So ask yourself - "Where do my sending practices need tweaking?"

Email marketing 'high earner for firms'

Email marketing 'high earner for firms'
One Stop Click - London,UK - October 1, 2008 13:57
Email marketing can offer organisations "incredible" levels of cost-effectiveness and high returns on investment (ROI), it has been claimed. ... read on

See all stories on this topic from google

How to Succeed With Email Marketing

How to Succeed With Email Marketing
TheStreet.com - USA - 10/01/08 - 09:03 AM EDT
Entrepreneur.com's Gail Goodman recently spoke with Rosen to understand more about her business and the important role email marketing plays in her success. ...read on
See all stories on this topic from google

Email marketing 'a question of balance'

Email marketing 'a question of balance'
M Consulting - Birmingham,UK - Wednesday, 01 October 2008
According to Dianna Dilworth of dmnews.com, firms using email as part of a financial services marketing campaign should balance the need to maintain regular ... read on

See all stories on this topic from google

Offer subscribers the ability to change the frequency of their emails

Offer subscribers the ability to change the frequency of their emails

Posted: 30 Sep 2008 11:19 AM CDT

To make emails more relevant to your subscribers, offer a preference panel that allows them to control what they receive from a company. Offer the flexibility to pick areas of interest, frequency, etc. Allow readers the ability to change their selections with each mailing. Make it as easy as possible! Stay away from complicated password-protected access, these are a real turn-off, and readers may just start deleting your emails rather than try to change their subscription.

The unsubscribe function would of course be a part of this panel. But subscribers may not want to unsubscribe completely - they may simply want to hear from your company less frequently. Smart marketers should look into offering options other then "remove me from everything". And, since "too frequent" is one of THE top reasons for reporting an email as spam or unsubscribing, this preference panel would go a long way in building a good relationship with the subscriber.

Emailless_8

Here's a great example from J.Crew, which gives the subscriber an opportunity to control the frequency - or to easily go on to remove themselves from all J.Crew mailings. This form comes up when the recipient selects unsubscribe. J.Crew offers a polite touch point between the initial 'click here to remove' request and the final 'remove' function. (NB: The form is pre-populated with the email address.)

Jennifer Curtin
Head of Marketing
Newsweaver

Emerging platforms 'are changing the role of email marketing'

Emerging platforms 'are changing the role of email marketing'
Business Strata - Business News - Farnborough,Hampshire,UK
The growth of social media and mobile devices is changing the role of email marketing within promotional campaigns, according to an expert. ...
See all stories on this topic from google

Email Marketing Clinic: Could 'opt outs' be damaging your reputation?

Email Marketing Clinic: Could 'opt outs' be damaging your reputation?
IT Wales - Swansea,Wales,UK
The recipient just clicks on the link, your email marketing software package handles it, end of story ...right? Not necessarily. Firstly, there two ways a ...
See all stories on this topic from google

MarketingSherpa’s New Benchmark Guides Offer Budget Planning Help

MarketingSherpa’s New Benchmark Guides Offer Budget Planning Help
PR.com (press release) - Levittown,NY,USA
The sixth annual edition of MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Guide will be completed by October 2008. It is being completely re-researched and ...

See all stories on this topic from google

"Cover Your ASSets! What Marketers Need to Know to Stay in ...

"Cover Your ASSets! What Marketers Need to Know to Stay in ...
Emediawire (press release) - Ferndale,WA,USA 29/09/2008 20:14
He is a Certified Information Privacy Professional and a Certified Email Marketing Professional. Luis is one of the most widely published authors in the ...

See all stories on this topic from google

Well on Your Way to Creating Successful Email Campaigns.

Well on Your Way to Creating Successful Email Campaigns.
By Winston Bowden: Friday, 3rd October 2008

Microsoft challenged email marketing designers after the release of Outlook 2007. In the past, Outlook rendered HTML email using Internet Explorer. ...

Good email design is a critical part of ensuring a high response rate -

A major frustration within the industry is the lack of standards to guide designers when creating HTML email. Though there isn't one email-marketing design bible, there are fundamental design rules that should be applied.

This article reviews some of the high-level design principles as well as more in-depth rules affecting some of the most common issues and questions we are most often asked...
read on - it's very good

Email marketing 'still an attractive option' in the economic downturn

Business Strata - Business News - Farnborough,Hampshire,UK: 26/09/2008 19:55
An expert has claimed that email marketing is "still an attractive option" for growing businesses looking to promote their work during the economic downturn ...

Email Karma.net

Links for 2008-09-24 [del.icio.us]

Posted: 25 Sep 2008 12:00 AM CDT

Train your brain - Email Experience Council

Train Your Brain - 25/09/2008 Email Experience Council



The Truth About Email Marketing (FT Press, August 2008) is the new book by eec member Simms Jenkins, CEO of BrightWave Marketing, and creator of EmailStatCenter.com (an eec sponsor).

The book covers 49 proven email marketing best practices and bite-size, easy-to-use techniques that get results. The Truth About Email Marketing has received strong accolades since it was published in August, including praise from eec members.

"Simms has a great knack for simplifying the complex world of email. From the novice email marketer to the email aficionado, The Truth About Email Marketing provides insight and thought-provoking content that all of us can use in our email and online marketing efforts."
- Aaron Kahlow, CEO & Founder, Online Marketing Summit


***Exclusive offer for eec'ers***
Get a copy of The Truth about Email Marketing for 25% off, plus free shipping (US only). Just purchase the book through the FT Press store and enter the discount code Emailmark01 during the checkout process.

5 ways to ensure good e-mail content

September 25, 2008

-


» FEATURE

5 ways to ensure good e-mail content
By Karen J. Bannan

The quality of your e-mail newsletter content is usually directly proportional to how widely it’s read and to whether or not readers unsubscribe.
FULL STORY

ADVERTISEMENT
How can you acquire new customers when people are spending less in today’s slow economy? Without the right processes and metrics, your well-intentioned customer acquisition programs can become expensive experiments, with few results. Get on track for better results with this step-by-step self audit.
Download the free customer acquisition audit guide now.
» ASK THE EXPERT

How can marketers adjust their e-mail programs in a slower economy?

Answer: At a time when economic concerns are forcing companies to look carefully at marketing budgets across the board, e-mail is still an attractive option given its extremely high ROI. (According to the Direct Marketing Association, e-mail will generate $45.65 for every dollar spent in 2008.) To achieve that ROI however, you must look at allocating your spending so that every dollar is working to drive the maximum benefit.

The first step is to categorize and analyze the expenses associated with your e-mail programs, including the money being invested in database development, customer profiling and segmentation, strategy, e-mail creative, e-mail deliverability, e-mail production and e-mail deployment. Because highly targeted, tested and well-crafted e-mails almost always generate better results, you’ll want to make sure that you’re investing properly in these areas.

If you find that a lot of your budget goes to e-mail deployment, you should ensure that you’re leveraging the right solution to meet your needs. While many companies have historically outsourced e-mail marketing to e-mail service providers for lack of a viable alternative, the latest generation of in-house e-mail marketing solutions can enable companies to lower their costs by eliminating CPM fees, which increase alongside e-mail volumes.

The bottom line is that reducing your e-mail deployment costs will allow you to allocate more of your budget to strategic areas that can actually lead to increased conversion rates, such as A/B testing, dynamic content creation, database enhancement, transactional e-mail optimization and Web analytics integration. Spending your money on the areas that can make the most difference is always a smart decision, but even more so in a slowing economy.

Ryan Deutsch is director of strategic services at StrongMail Systems (www.strongmail.com), a provider of e-mail marketing solutions.

Go to BtoB's Web site

ADVERTISEMENT
Benchmark Your Results:
Key Metrics for Successful Lead Management Programs

BtoB Webcast: Thursday, Oct. 2 at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT

Marketers are under pressure to deliver measurable results. How do you stack up against the competition? Attend this Webcast to evaluate your lead management program's effectiveness against industry averages. We'll reveal overall response rates to lead-nurturing emails, the number of touches it takes to win and more. Register now!
» E-MAIL NEWS

IAB issues best practices for e-mail data management

New York—The Interactive Advertising Bureau has issued Email Data Management Best Practices, a position statement recommending privacy and data security guidelines for publishers, marketers and service providers....
FULL STORY