@ClickZ: E-mail Marketing vs. E-mail Sales

ClickZ, Apr 20, 2009: Jeanne Jennings.

In "E-mail Marketing vs. E-mail Sales" Jeanne Jennings discusses "true email marketing" and compares email's use in a marketing and brand role and a sales orientated role.

In my experience, email is used in B2B more for sales than marketing, check the article and see where your company might land...read on


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clickz: Your Reputation Can Throttle Your Delivery

Another cracker on reputation, I mentioned it the other day, here it is with more detail from Stefan Pollard, ClickZ, ...read on


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clickz: Two Free E-mail Deliverability Tools

Jeanne Jennings, for ClickZ, on Apr 6, 2009, gives us a couple of free deliverability checking tools, I'm already familiar with Sender Score but I have not played with EDS yet, I'll update when I know more...

Today I'll share two free resources that can help you identify and address potential deliverability issues related to your sender reputation. Either resource alone is valuable; when used together, they can provide the information you need to safeguard your e-mail reputation and deliverability...read on


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bizcommunity: Good design triggers better response when marketing by email

Issued by: Striata 3 Apr 2009 13:11

In email marketing, design plays a significant role in how recipients respond to the message. Whether recipients engage can be significantly influenced by the application of best practices in email design.
Mia Papanicolaou, Head of eMarketing at electronic messaging specialist Striata, stresses the importance of considering how people read online and how the email appears in their preview pane...read on


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Starting email marketing

This is a pretty good strategy starting point from Steve Adams on April 2 for BtoB's ask the expert called "What are some tips for small businesses that want to start an e-mail marketing program?"

There is also what appears to be another version of the same article in MediaPost: 'Five Tips For Building A Strong Email Marketing Foundation' on the same day by Steve Adams again but this seems a little easier to read.

They are quite basic but in my experience quite a few small businesses just go "let's do some email marketing" allocate someone in the office to do it who has never done it and it doesn't get done properly and just becomes an interruption rather than a communication tool.

It is vitally important to really have a good framework and perspective before you actually start sending emails. Seth Godin says that you should have a good story and be remarkable (Purple Cow). Whether or not you agree to that extent, you do need to have something to say and it really helps if your web-site can back you up. So many small businesses will not combine their web-site with their emails and put all of the content in a massive email and just link to the home page but sometimes that is better than nothing.



If you are a small business and you are just starting with email, this is useful, you might also want to check-out Jeanne Jennings (clickz) and Mark Brownlow (Email Marketing Reports) who are two of the most reliable sources of email marketing knowledge I have found in the last two years.


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EMR: The myth of targeted opt-outs RT: @MarkatEMR

I have just read another cracking article from Email-Marketing-Reports, called 'Targeted opt-out email: busting some myths' where Mark discusses the pros and cons of emailing people without explicit permission, you'll have to read the article and I'll have a comment on there but one thing to remember is that the law's are not enough for recipients.
Spam filtering software, ISPs reputation monitors and more are now giving more and more power over our deliverability to the recipients of our emails.
Telling Spamhaus that you have not broken the law when they block your entire hosting centre, after a spam complaint, is not going to get you anywhere. People who sign up for the protection of spam filtering software only want emails that have been asked for. So if anyone marks an email as spam the fall-out could be horrific.
Hotmail and Yahoo are focussing more and more on the reputation of the IP address and sending domain's, these can go up and down depending on nearly every action a recipient takes: marking as spam is bad, opening and clicking is good, moving from junk folder to inbox is good. These things can really pile up and before you know it you can only send 200 emails an hour to them before they start sending them back or just deleting them on impact.


Permission is good! Read the full arrticle on EMR now




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clickz: Top 10 Triggered E-mail Programs to Build Relevance

In his article Top 10 Triggered E-mail Programs to Build Relevance, for ClickZ, Apr 2 2009 (I know I'm quite behind on these), Ed Henrich tells us about Triggered email campaigns.

Most of them are one2one emails triggered by an action. I would put all of these into the transactional genre, except the Browse program, that is dynamic content based on behavioural analysis.

How do you reach out to your most engaged e-mail subscribers in a relevant way? Segmentation works, but often a faster, easier way is to develop a set of triggered marketing programs. These "lights-out" automated programs work while you sleep. You can reach out to your customers when they most want to hear from you -- when they're actively engaged.

Here are my top 10 examples of trigger-based e-mail programs and the benefits they deliver for clients...read on


BtoB: Why would someone report me as a spammer?

Kevin Senne, Premiere Global Services, Story posted: March 26, 2009 - 6:01 am EDT

On occasion, when I talk with new prospects, I find out during the vetting process that they do not have permission to market to their entire database...the perception of spam, and how it might affect their ability to deliver e-mail... we all bristle even at the vaguest accusation that we are spammers...the definition of spam for end-users is the receipt of any e-mail message that they didn’t explicitly request...read on


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Vertical Response: Deliverability and Your Email Campaigns - What You Need to Know

On March 23, 2009, Vertical response wrote a useful overview on the all important deliverability...

As legitimate email marketing senders, we all get frustrated when we get unsolicited email clogging up our inboxes. It's not only infuriating it's time consuming as well.

On top of this, phishing and spoofing are even more infuriating to us since that's just plain illegal. Phishers are those people that act as a legitimate company you may or may not do business with and "spoof" the from address to make it look like that legitimate business. How many of us have clicked on a link from our bank, eBay, or another legitimate company asking us to "update our information" which may include our credit cards?

How Does an ISP Authenticate a Legitimate Email Sender?
A New Measure to Weed Out Unscrupulous Email Senders
What You Should Know

...read on


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If you are looking to do email marketing right, start here

The legendary Jeanne Jennings, writes "Why E-mail Matters More Than Ever" for ClickZ on Mar 23, 2009.

This is an extremely good 'how to' of the right way to email market today. If you are looking to do it right, start here.
And remember, it's all about permission

Times are tough. Companies are cutting marketing budgets and staff; organizations are looking to do more sales with less upfront investment and fewer people.

Recent statistics show that developing an effective e-mail marketing program is more important than ever. There are ways to make your e-mail marketing efforts a key part of weathering this storm ...read on



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Clickz: The Future of E-Mail: Four New Marketing Segments You Need to Know About

In her article for ClickZ on Mar 16, 2009: The Future of E-Mail: Four New Marketing Segments You Need to Know About, Jeanniey Mullen describes some of the new marketing segments which are more orientated around the long tail rather than the quick hit.

A lot of this is related to the deliverability issues that have appeared more recently. Senders have realised that throwing as many emails out as possible and trying to get in front of as many people who's email address they have as they can, have found that they are stuggling to get in the inbox.

The way forward now is to focus on permission. Interacting with the people who want to be interacted with. Jeanniey tells us how to find some key areas of interaction and advises us how to interact back ...read on

Clickz: Low-Cost Lead Generation

In her arcticle fro ClickZ, Oct 1, 2008 on Low-cost lead generation: Karen Gedney, supplies in interesting example of leveraging leads from free content on scarce information.
An ebook that was/is available for purchase in one go was distributed for free a section at a time.

Most prespectives on email marketing is about the ROI of the email campaign and many sales people and consultants really struggle with the publishing angle. Clickz itself is a good example as well as Email Marketing Reports.

Providing free content online and via email then wrapping it with relative adds gives the audience what they want without interupting them with ads to get to the content. At the same time there is ample space to advertise products and content of the same subject to people who have already show interest in it.

This can be and is expanded into newsletters and some transactional emails to add additional cross and up sell opportunities within the same brand.
If viral tracking is implemented properly, incentives can also be provided for current subscribers and customers to encourage them to recommend leads and prospects.
Leveraging and encouraging the people who interact with your brand the most to market for you is the way forward, especially with so many social media tools available now (Seth Godin).


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Clickz: Why 'Opt-Down' Improves on 'Opt-Out' for Unsubscribers

In his article "Why 'Opt-Down' Improves on 'Opt-Out' for Unsubscribers" for Clickz, Stefan Pollard (Mar 25, 2009) talks about Opting down as an option as well as the opt-out.
Opting Down is a preference centre option where you give your recipients more control about what to contact them about and how often.
It is one of the more indepth and helpful preference centre atricles I have read.

With all of this talk of preference centres I think we now need some case studies of how businesses have actually implemented it from scratch.
Here's one...


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Return Path: Growing Your Email File with No (New) Acquisition Budget: Get a Free Checklist

By Stephanie Miller, VP, Global Market Development 15/04/2009

The pressure is on! Now more than ever, the email channel is being asked to contribute higher revenue. Yet, we all must make that happen with existing (or lower) resources.

Many among us succumbed to the pressure to produce more revenue by increasing email frequency - thus generating some short term revenue gain. But we also churned the file, measured by increased subscriber fatigue, unsubscribe requests and complaints to the ISPs (when subscribers click on the Report Spam button), as well as depressing inbox deliverability and overall response rates.

"The harder way is to take the high road," he said. "To take a longer term view and commit yourself to improving the subscriber value."

Don't find yourself in six months wishing you had started now! Here are six real world examples from the panelists on how they are building their email files, and increasing revenue, even in this recession...read on for the 6 top tips and the free checklist download


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Clickz: Increasing Readership for Your E-Newsletter

By Karen Gedney, ClickZ, Mar 18, 2009, Sponsored by ExactTarget

Those of us who publish e-newsletters spend a huge amount of time writing content for a small amount of people who actually read our articles -- or at least that's the way it can seem at times!

Here are two ways I found to increase the readership for my weekly e-tips focused on one part of my practice -- the fundraising industry.

LinkedIn & Past Articles ...read on


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DMA Blog: Give your domain a health check

Give your domain a health check

Posted: 16 Mar 2009 06:19 AM PDT, DMA Blog

One factor which is often overlooked with regards to email deliverability is the health of a sending domain name. The actual 'from' domain plays a very important job when it comes to getting your emails delivered to your subscriber's inbox...read on

onestopclick: Subtle touch required for email marketing

onestopclick: Monday, March 16, 2009, 13:53, onestopclick.com

UK businesses should maintain a light touch when it comes to email marketing, it has been claimed.

According to Eric Groves, senior vice president of global market development at e-commerce solutions provider Constant Contact, over-communication can erode clients' trust...read on

econsultancy: New Study Shows Value Of Web Analytics In Email Marketing

econsultancy: Published on: 8:00AM on 16th March 2009

Significant improvement of response through use of behavioral data

Amsterdam, 16 March 2009 - Nedstat announces the publication of their new commissioned study 'Integrating Web Analytics With Email Marketing To Improve Campaign Performance', conducted by Forrester Consulting on their behalf. Based on a recent market survey conducted by Forrester, the study unveils that marketers integrating Web analytics data with email marketing applications can generate nearly four times more revenue and 18 times greater net profits compared with marketers using simple untargeted mailings...read on

Clickz: The Future of E-Mail: Four New Marketing Segments You Need to Know About

By Jeanniey Mullen, ClickZ, Mar 16, 2009

It's said that the only constant is change. As you look around the world of marketing, you can certainly see significant change happening.

Retailers are moving away from short-term dramatic discounts and moving toward value pricing for the long haul. Technology companies are steering away from marketing technological advances, instead embracing sustainability. Even in e-mail, we're seeing changes come from a strategic perspective.

One of the most exciting changes coming down the road for e-mail is how we look at segments in our e-mail databases. Historically, segments have consisted of your tried-and-true responders and non-responders. From there, sub-segments have often included new customers, high-value customers, high-transaction customers, and so on. The approach to e-mail segmentation has typically followed standard direct-marketing practices.

Times, they are a changin'...read on


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smartbiz: Build Your Email List Through Knowledge Sharing

Build Your Email List Through Knowledge Sharing

By Neil Anuskiewicz, 15/03/2009, smartbiz.com

Email marketing can often be an outstanding source of both new business and especially repeat business. One of the greatest challenges of email marketing is email list building.

Current customers are an excellent starting point for your list building efforts and can substantially increase your customer loyalty. Start your list building efforts by asking for permission to add them to your email list at the point of sale or contact...read on

Business Strata: Inactive subscribers 'should not be removed from marketing lists'

Friday 13th March 200

Growing businesses should think again before removing all inactive subscribers from their email marketing data lists, it has been claimed.

Loren MacDonald, vice president of industry relations for Silverpop, said rather than thinking about whether to retain or remove such consumers, firms should consider how they can engage them...read on

Sherpa: Make Email and Social Media Work Together

Make Email and Social Media Work Together: Interview with Sergio Balegno

By Sean Donahue, Senior Reporter, More Posts

Whenever a new technology or channel emerges on the marketing landscape, debate inevitably follows over its impact on traditional tactics. Not surprisingly, the rise of social media marketing has sparked questions over whether these channels will diminish the importance of email as a means to reach customers and prospects...read on


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Clickz: Q&A: The Future of E-Mail Marketing

Q&A: The Future of E-Mail Marketing

By Jeanniey Mullen, ClickZ, Mar 12, 2009 Sponsored by Responsys

More than 60 people wrote in questions during ClickZ's "Future of E-Mail Marketing" Webinar, featuring a presentation by Zinio CMO Jeanniey Mullen, today. Here are unedited questions from the Webinar transcript and Jeanniey's follow-up written answers... read on


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