Is Your E-Mail Getting Delivered on Prime or Subprime IP Addresses?

By Bill McCloskey, ClickZ, Mar 26, 2009

Are you shopping for an e-mail service provider? This month ClickMail Marketing released a white paper entitled "Choosing the Right Email Service Provider" in which it lists 20 factors to consider when shopping for an e-mail service provider (ESP). Number two on the list? Deliverability.

ClickMail Marketing, which sells, licenses, or represents over 24 ESP products, recommends looking for the following items in making your decision:... read on...

Clickz: Five More Gaming Trends Marketers Need to Follow

By Matt Story, ClickZ, Mar 10, 2009

This week, I continue my look at the top 10 gaming trends that marketers should be following in the coming year. You will find five trends below, while the other five can be found here.

By no means is this a comprehensive list of all opportunities, but it will give brands a good idea of upcoming trends that can be leveraged to reach their consumers.
  • Games Aren't Always About Winning and Losing
  • Gaming on the Go
  • Used Games Are the New Black
  • Gaming Help, If You Need It
  • Any Game With "Lego" in Its Title Sells

read on...

BtoB: Study: Many e-mail campaigns alienate customers, ignore marketing opportunities

Christopher Hosford
Story posted: March 12, 2009 - 1:35 pm EDT


New York—A large proportion of e-commerce companies employ faulty e-mail marketing practices that have the potential to aggravate their customers and sabotage subsequent targeting opportunities, according to a new study by commercial e-mail solutions company Return Path.

The Return Path study, “Increasing Revenues by Optimizing E-mailing Practices With Online Buyers,” found that 31% of e-commerce companies added customers to their e-mail lists following a purchase without first asking the customers if that was OK. read on...

BtoB: Secrets & lies: E-mail marketing design

Karen J. Bannan
Story posted: March 12, 2009 - 12:14 pm EDT

It’s a widely recognized industry statistic: About half the time e-mails don’t render because the recipients have images turned off. So what’s a marketer to do, then, about e-mail design? Should you bother with images? Should you go text-only? How much time should you allocate to e-mail marketing design? To answer these design-related questions—and to uncover one of the most common misconceptions—‘EMI’ spoke to Jeannette Kocsis, VP-digital strategy and media at Harte-Hanks Inc., a marketing service provider, and Ivan Chalif, director of product marketing for Alterian, a marketing software platform provider.

Lie: You need to control every aspect of your e-mail design.
You’ve probably got several e-newsletters in your inbox that only have a single image. Companies do this all the time, Kocsis said, because they are so worried about their branding message that they feel the need to control it completely. read on...

Global Gold: Welcome email marketing 'could be improved'

Wednesday 11th March 2009

A new report has indicated that businesses could do more to take advantage of the potential offered by welcome messages in their email marketing campaigns.

Compiled by creative agency Smith-Harmon, the research suggested that almost one-quarter of large online retailers do not send welcome emails to new subscribers, despite the fact that such messages represent the biggest opportunity to engage recipients and drive action.

Furthermore, 23 per cent of retailers were found to take more than 24 hours to deliver their welcome messages, decreasing the effectiveness of these emails significantly. read on...

ClickZ: Tips to Beat the Odds for Address-Book Addition

By Stefan Pollard, ClickZ, Mar 11, 2009

Your e-mail recipients are ready, willing, and able to whitelist corporate e-mail senders, but your chance of reaching the winner's circle is about one in four, according to a new study of consumer e-mail behavior and perceptions.

Database marketing agency Merkle's "View from the Inbox 2009" study shows recipients will take steps to make sure the e-mail they want gets delivered to their inboxes, but not every sender qualifies for preferential treatment.

How can you boost your chance of scoring inbox placement? Relevance and frequency still matter. Giving recipients ample opportunity to whitelist your sending address doesn't hurt, either.

First, a few statistics from the Merkle report:.. read on...

Email's 6 Deadly Sins

mediapost emailinsider: by David Baker, Monday, March 9, 2009, 1:00 PM

For generations before Brad Pitt and the movie "Seven," people have used the seven deadly sins as a way of describing the failures of society, morals and values. For my sermon today, I am using the deadly sins as a framework to point up our shortcomings as email marketers, and to illustrate the flip side-the best practices that would erase our offenses. (I intentionally left out the fourth sin, for obvious reasons.)

PRIDE, ENVY, GLUTTONY, ANGER, GREED, SLOTH read on...

Epsilon today released its Q3 2008 U.S. Email Trends and Benchmarks Results

epsilon.com, DALLAS, TX — January 20, 2009 - Epsilon today released its Q3 2008 U.S. Email Trends and Benchmarks Results which show steady email performance as measured by deliverability and open and click rates.

The quarterly analysis is compiled from aggregate data from the more than 6.2 billion emails sent by Epsilon in July, August and September 2008, across multiple industries and more than 200 clients. The analysis combines data from both of Epsilon’s proprietary platforms, DREAM and DREAMmail.

According to Kevin Mabley, Senior Vice President of Strategic Services, Epsilon, "Despite concerns about the declining effectiveness of advertising and the challenging economy, email continues to perform consistently in 2008.”

He added, “Our clients view email as a valuable and cost-effective marketing tool. We anticipate increased reliance on this highly measurable and engaging method of customer interaction as we enter the New Year." read on for the stats...

EMM March 2009

EMM March 2009



Sales Messages that Sizzle
Just fill in the blanks and Go!


How do you make your sales messages sizzle every time?

Copywriter, Bev Osborne shares with us a great little formula that you should apply to every single sales message you send out, long or short, email marketing or conventional print - even advertisements.

Read this article

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Designing an Interactive Email Template

Travelbound

Andy Parker, html - email designer at Pure takes us through the process of creating an email template which stays on-brand and makes email truly interactive.

Read this article
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Viral Marketing and Online Voucher Integration

Paramount Restaurants

In an increasingly competitive market, how do you get your customers attention? How do you increase your mailing lists? Are you able to make your marketing budget go further by creating a viral marketing campaign?

This month, Pure spoke with Ryan Badger, Online Marketing Manager at Paramount Restaurants Ltd.

Read this article

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Bouncing Back - Learning From Your Responses

With recession being at the forefront of everyones mind, it's hard to stay on top of who is still in the game.

We take a look at why you shouldn't discard your bounce rate and non-opens, and how to increase your market research by reviewing your negative numbers.

Read this article

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Forthcoming Events
Marketing TailorMade Training Event, 31st March, Grange City Hotel London

One of the leading email marketing experts at Pure, Robin Kennedy, will be presenting an informative seminar at this one-stop shop training day.

For more information head over to marketingtailormade.com.

Brighton Festival 2009
Pure Sponsoring Brighton Festival, 2 - 24th May 2009

Pure are supporting this unique festival by providing the use of their online email and SMS marketing solution PureResponse.

Further information is available at the Brighton Festival Website.


Mailchimp: Authentication IS related to deliverability

Authentication IS related to deliverability

March 19th, 2009

For those of you who don’t know, DKIM is a form of email authentication. Authentication is a way of proving your email is “authentic” and not a scam (like the kind of email scams that claim to be from your bank, or from PayPal).

High volume email senders (and ESPs) have speculated for the last few years about whether or not major ISPs will begin blocking emails that are not authenticated, and whether or not authentication will help you get your emails past spam filters and into the inbox.

For now, the official word from ISPs is "NO"... read on

"DKIM is the yahoo domain keys registration"

BeRelevant: How to Double Your Clients: 5 Tips for ESPs to Survive in a Commoditised Market!

Posted by Dan Barker on Mar 04, 2009 | Permalink | Category: Email Service Providers

In a previous BeRelevant post, they offered 10 Tips for Signing Up with a New Email Service Provider. Much of this was based on getting the best price you possibly can.

Fred Testard left a great comment on the article which he called "The voice of the ESP". Here was the gist of it:
I understand that a marketer wants to pay the lower prices, I believe that the marketer should instead be willing to pay for the right price.

On the one hand, ESP market is very competitive and CPM rates can't stop getting lower and lower. On the other hand, email marketing requires more resources to monitor, analyse and understand campaign results as to provide marketers with relevant consulting.

An ESP provides much more than just a powerfull MTA [mail transport agent] with a deliverability monitoring... and it has a cost.


Here are 5 cheeky thoughts on how ESPs should change the way they pitch & the way they price, all aimed at standing out in a market that's becoming more and more commoditised. read on...


Can you spot the spelling mistake in the original post? I was going to hire ITV to run an SMS competition for it but I thought better of it!

Pixelnews: How to build a successful newsletter ( RT: @pixelnews )

Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 2:08 pm pixelnewsapp.com

In the last post they gave you 5 reasons to start building a newsletter. As a continuation of that post, now, they give you the basic points to make your newsletter a successful one: read on...



"always nice to be reminded of the basics, new people start email marketing every day!"


pixelnews: 5 reasons to add a newsletter to your web or blog ( RT: @pixelnews )

Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 10:11


Even though is pretty clear that email is one of the most powerful and effective online marketing techniques, too many times when I talk about it with clients and friends, I still keep hearing questions like.. read on...

emailinsider: While We Wait For Spring, Deal With Your Data!

by Ryan Deutsch, Yesterday, 11:00 AM

As marketing budgets are being reallocated from traditional media to digital channels, many email marketers have a real opportunity to drive program optimization. Our clients hear a ton of chatter around "sexy" email concepts like heat mapping, social media, Web analytics integration, etc. All of these can offer incredible value to a marketing program. However, I would argue that the real optimization opportunity lies in the way you leverage customer data.

As email marketers anxiously wait for the "thaw" of winter and the economy, see if you can take some of those dollars that your organization had spent on TV and direct mail and use them to optimize the following..

Database of Record
Creating a Data Mart for Email
Connecting to Business Applications Across the Organization

read on...

marketingsherpa: 7 Useful Email Strategies for Consumer Marketers

marketingsherpa: Mar 05, 2009

If your marketing team is forced to do more with less, consider tweaking your email strategy and expanding it into other areas. Below we've outlined 7 strategies that come directly from MarketingSherpa's Case Studies and how-to articles. Includes research statistics and choice bits from Sherpa's Case Studies.

Seven Strategies to Heighten Email’s Efficiency
Strategy #1: Use best practices and basic tests
Strategy #2: Nurture leads
Strategy #3: Resurrect dead leads
Strategy #4: Boost user-generated content
Strategy #5: Cut expenses, increase satisfaction, multiply sales
Strategy #6: Sharpen autoresponding email strategy
Strategy #7: Organize and rally grassroots teams

read on...

marketingsherpa: Gauge Email’s Impact on Indirect Sales: 5 Metrics to Monitor

marketingsherpa Mar 05, 2009

Email marketing isn’t just a direct sales source. Email promotions and newsletters sent to prospects are also enablers of delayed purchases and sales generated through other channels.

Read how one marketer expanded the list of email metrics his team follows to assess their campaigns’ impact on delayed or indirect sales. That data helps them plan campaigns, design subject-line tests, and segment lists to maximize campaign ROI,

Metric #1. Readership and engagement
Metric #2. Churn rates by source of email address
Metric #3. Delayed conversions generated or supported by email
Metric #4. Short-term cross-channel measurements
Metric #5. Users’ behavioral changes

read on...

Seth Godin: Email campaign case studies (one good, one bad)

Email campaign case studies (one good, one bad)

In one week, I heard from two companies in the same industry. The comparison is instructive, I think.

Every month, I get a great email from Paul McGowan, founder of PS Audio. His newsletter is anticipated, personal and relevant. I signed up for it and I look forward to it.

I also got two identical emails (with different subject lines) from a speaker company called Thiel Audio, read on...


Seth tells it like it is!

DMA: Customer data – knowing where to look

dmaemailblog: March 02, 2009

You might say that I’m bound to say this but...email marketing is a bit of a no-brainer for tough economic times – it is highly measurable, can be highly targeted and exerts less budgetary pressure than most other DM disciplines. The smartest brands have grasped this and are devoting more time to the channel but, while they are recognising its importance, many are still failing to target their mails and segment their databases effectively.
read on...

Consumers fed-up of irrelevant marketing emails

econsultancy London, 2nd March, 2009

Research conducted by UK based email service provider, Emailcenter, has found that 7 out of 10 consumers wish to stop receiving emails from a company because the messages contain no relevant content. read on...

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also check-out how Apex Auctions solved this problem with their preference centre

SMEWeb: Marketing mistakes costing UK business

Marketing mistakes costing UK business
Written by Paul Williams, Monday, 02 March 2009

UK businesses are losing customers due to simple mistakes, warns Emailvision.
Europe’s largest email marketing service provider has identified the most common flaws based on the knowledge gained working with over 1700 clients worldwide.

As a result, the company has put together the top five email blunders that it has seen over the past year coupled with advice on how to avoid such mistakes and achieve maximum return on investment, read on...

Smart Minkey Marketing's 5 Step Approach to a Winning Email Campaign

Smart Monkey Marketing's Monkeymail march 2009 / 2009-03-02

The 5 Step Approach to a Winning Email Campaign
From the initial planning, design and content to who you're going to send it to and how you're going to track it, there's a lot to take in when developing an email campaign.

Get it right and the rewards are plentiful.

Get it wrong and you risk pushing potential business into the arms of your welcoming competitors.

Read on to learn their essential 5 steps to generating a profitable email campaign...
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those monkey's ain't half smart :)

BusinessStrata: Making email marketing relevant 'involves more than just content'

Friday 27th February 2009: business strata

Growing businesses need to change more than just their email marketing content if they want to make messages more relevant, an expert has claimed.

Kevin Senne, the global director of deliverability and product services for Premiere Global Services, has claimed that the concept also takes other aspects of promotional work and is based on creating "a last relationship" with recipients. read on...

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I'm thinking it should say 'creating a "lasting relationship" with recipients? but I could be wrong?

Companies urged to 'adapt to current direct marketing trends'

Growing businesses in the UK need to "work more intelligently" to acquire new customers in the current financial climate, an expert has claimed.
Friday 27th February 2009: Business Strata

Richard Lloyd, general manager of advice firm infoUK, has claimed that the answer to such problems is not spending increasing amounts of money on email or direct marketing.

He explained: "By looking at your best existing customers, you can identify trends and find more prospects just like them.

"Those prospects are often the best place to start when targeting new business." read on...

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This is a small step towards the Seth Godin view of permission: target the people who are already interested, learn from them, please them and if you give them tools they will do some marketing for you ie: be remarkable (a purple cow) and give people the tool to remark about you to their friends and colleagues.

Advise Me: Tip of the Week Give your recipients a glimpse of the past.

Advise Me: Tip of the Week: Give your recipients a glimpse of the past.

As email marketers, we spend a lot of time developing content that serves two masters - first and foremost our clientele. If our client base isn't appreciative of the information we are popping in their inbox - we won't be long for communicating with them. The other is our brand. Clearly we have a goal in mind when sending email: brand building, product announcement, sales information - whatever the goal is, we need to marry it nicely to the expectations of our recipient base and our management team. But what happens to your content after you hit send? If it doesn't live on - then read on!

Double Opt-in, Redux

Double Opt-in, Redux

By Bill McCloskey, ClickZ, Feb 26, 2009
Sponsored by StrongMail

My column, "Are You Really, Really Sure?" on the use of double opt-in versus single opt-in to confirm e-mail recipients new to your list generated quite a bit of controversy.

In the blogosphere, Rebecca Lieb, VP at Econsultancy and ClickZ Experts columnist, represented the argument for double opt-in. On the other side, Sara Ezrin's made a case for single opt-in.

Representing those in the trenches, the comment such as the following was typical:

I worked for a $.75bn company and generated around $30mm/annually through the email channel w/ SOI maintaining an average bounce rate of less than 1%, a fluctuating complaint rate rarely above minimum acceptable, and an 89-92% average deliverability quotient. If I'd have told my C-anything that we needed to switch to DOI he'd have thrown me out. If I'd have told my C-anything that our ESP insisted on DOI he'd have told me to find another one or start building in-house tools.

Whatever side you fall on, one thing is clear: read on...

Three Tactics to Manage List Inactivity

Three Tactics to Manage List Inactivity

By Stefan Pollard, ClickZ, Feb 25, 2009

Given that at least half of your e-mail address list can probably be classified "inactive," the question of what to do with this silent faction is highly relevant to e-mail marketers, especially in these tough days when you're being asked to make more sales with less budget.

This issue came up at the recent Email Evolution Conference, where attendees were asked to vote whether purging or retaining inactives should become the e-mail industry's best practice.

However, the solution goes much deeper than "always purge" versus "always retain." read on...

Clickz: E-mail: Evaluating Dedicated vs. Shared IP Addresses

E-mail: Evaluating Dedicated vs. Shared IP Addresses

By Jeanne Jennings, ClickZ, Feb 23, 2009
Sponsored by Responsys

Is your e-mail being sent from an IP address (define) that's dedicated? Or are you sharing an IP address with other senders? The decision has ramifications, whether you're using an e-mail service provider (ESP) or sending from your own in-house system.

Conventional wisdom in the e-mail world is that a dedicated IP address is better, but some companies can benefit from sharing an IP address, according to one ESP I recently spoke with. I'll lay out the pros and cons of each -- giving you the information you need to make the right decision for your organization. read on...

ClickZ: Building Online Communities by the Numbers

Building Online Communities by the Numbers

By Heidi Cohen, ClickZ, Feb 23, 2009
Sponsored by Omniture

Online communities are growing in this expense-conscious business environment because they provide companies with a cost-effective means to provide presales support, enhance customer loyalty, support the post-purchase process, and gather customer insights. These forums work for a wide variety of product, retail, and small media sites. Here's a set of guidelines to help your company build an active and effective online community. read on...