The superhero movies this summer have me reminiscing on my life in comic books. See, prior to email I spent a number of years in the US comics industry, in various creative and production roles. The energy and variety was incredible, and I had the opportunity to be part of projects ranging from adaptations of blockbuster movies to an IT-themed daily webcomic for the world’s largest software company (there’s much more to comics than superheroes!). Looking back, I recognize remarkable similarities between the media of comics and email. Both industries are notably similar in the energy [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Email Marketing Column

Email is seemingly tailor-made for collecting customer information. In a perfect program, collection begins at the point of sign up. Yet marketers know the fewer the questions asked, the more likely the customer is to opt-in. It's a balancing act, though, because marketers also know that the more demographic data they can collect at that point, the easier it will be to deliver relevant, timely emails throughout the span of the relationship. Lack of relevancy will result in unengaged subscribers, poor engagement metrics, junk-mail placement and, ultimately, unsubscribes. Building a smarte [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Email Marketing Column | Retargeting & Remarketing

In the online marketing world, we seem to be regularly gripped by a passion for the next big thing, the hip new marketing tactic that everyone is trying. But some of the most effective methods are relatively unsung. They just chug along and deliver results. Email Marketing Email is the most underappreciated marketing channel. Everyone likes to talk about the sexiness and adventure of social media, but it’s email that truly has the most money-making potential. If Facebook was the email killer, it'd have killed email by now. It wasn’t until early 2010 that ZAGG started dedicating [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Features & Analysis | Internet Marketing Industry

There are mixed messages for e-mail marketers in a new benchmark study from digital marketing software provider Silverpop: E-mail open rates are falling, but click-through rates are on the rise. The findings are included in Silverpop's 2012 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study, and include analysis of e-mails sent in 2011 and Q1 of 2012 by more than 1,100 brands in 20 countries. The exact number of e-mails studied isn't mentioned. Silverpop reports that the overall open rate for all regions was 20.1 percent, which is down from the 22.2 percent that Silverpop reported in a July 2009 st [...]

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Email is a unique channel. Because it is sent digitally, and click-throughs drive traffic online, retail email marketing is traditionally thought of as only driving ecommerce orders. It is often thought of in the same vein as something like search engine marketing, which directly drives traffic and conversions exclusively online in much the same way that direct mail has traditionally been thought to drive only in-store traffic. It’s time to reconsider the conventional wisdom, however. Used correctly, email marketing drives a significant amount of traffic and revenue in the online and i [...]

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Recognizing the industry needed a scalable design strategy that acknowledged the growing stable of web-enabled devices, Ethan Marcotte coined the term “responsive web design.” Designing responsively means planning for a site to span and appropriately adjust to a range of screens and resolutions, rather than creating unique interfaces or experiences for each. Marcotte’s recent book, also titled Responsive Web Design, defined the idea as having three key pieces: Flexible, grid-based layouts Flexible images (and media) Media queries Responsive Email Their powers combin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Email Marketing Column

Email  is a one-on-one conversation with your reader, which is part of what makes it so effective for marketing. Thousands of people may see your message (depending on the size of your list), but the conversation ultimately happens in one person's inbox at a time. Because email feels so personal, your messages need to connect with the people you're talking to. You need to keep each individual engaged with your message so that your email can sell. Here are four ways to draw a person into conversation in the inbox. 1. Draw Them In With Killer Headlines The subject line is your conversat [...]

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Mobile email is no longer coming soon. It's here, and it's here to stay. Mobile-friendly tactics like single column, large text, and big tappable buttons have entered the industry’s collective list of best practices. Skinny emails and @media are a far cry from standard, but it’s much easier to find an example in my inbox each day than it was even a few months ago. To illustrate that point, I nabbed a few messages from my inbox. Amazon has been making impressive strides towards a mobile-friendly email program over the past few months. I'm seeing skinny messages, responsive designs and [...]

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It's almost summer, and that means it's time to change up your emails. Why's that? Tailoring your emails to the season will help you meet your subscribers' current needs and acknowledge you care about what's on their mind. We've got some content ideas that will help you with meeting seasonal needs, but you can also use these ideas to spice up subject lines, provide bonus resources or ignite social media conversations. Here's what you can do by season: Summer What's on their mind: summer vacation, BBQs and fun outside. How your email campaign changes: Offer solutions: activit [...]

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Well-run email marketing programs account for as much as 20 percent of a retailer’s online revenue. While some might view that as an aggressive number, I am of the opinion that a fully-developed program, complete with lifecycle messaging, triggered programs, segmentation strategies, abandoned shopping cart series, etc., will drive even more than that. Whatever the percentage, there is no arguing that email’s contribution is significant, and with this level of revenue on the line it is critical that retailers have a solid team in place to manage and execute this aspect of the busines [...]

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Email marketing is a highly effective way to make sales. Hopefully, you have a web form set up to invite your site visitors to subscribe. But what does your form look like, and what does it say? Do visitors respond well to it, or do they ignore it? Would a different form do better? By taking 5 minutes to create  a split test -- a presentation of two forms to see which does better -- you can find out. They’re very easy to set up. When you’re ready to, follow these instructions (or these if you use AWeber). But before you get started, let’s discuss: What You Should Test On Yo [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Email Marketing Column

Though Yahoo has handed over its search and PPC advertising business to Microsoft, the company still provides services to small businesses such as web hosting. ecommerce through Yahoo stores, and domain registration. As part of its suite of tools, the company today rolled out a small business marketing dashboard -- meant as a one-stop shop where small businesses can monitor (and tweak) their online presence. The offering has free components and opportunities to upgrade by paying for services. It includes Local Visibility -- which looks at local listings sites like YP.com, Yelp, Google and C [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Local | Email Marketing | Google: Analytics | Yahoo | Yelp

The majority of email messages will be read on mobile devices by the end of 2012, predicts email services firm Return Path. In a newly-released study, the company says email open rates have increased 82.4% between March of 2011 and March of 2012, now accounting for nearly 30% of email opens. Apple devices -- iPhones, iPads and iPods -- accounted for 85% of mobile opens. On the iPad alone, email opens have increased 53.6% year-over-year. Those mobile views are mostly happening on the weekends, while desktop views are more likely to occur during the weekdays. When it comes to desktop clien [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Email Marketing | Statistics: Mobile Marketing

Spring has finally arrived, and for most retailers that means something of a lull in holiday frequency (once Mother’s Day has passed), making it an ideal time to get a fresh perspective on email reporting. RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) scoring has long been the go-to method of ranking the value of customers on file. Historically, this metric has focused solely on purchase data -- or lack thereof, if a customer is in the database but has not bought anything yet. Adding email engagement on top of your RFM Scoring data can deliver a fresh look at the value of your customers, resultin [...]

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Mobile internet growth isn't just limited to the web. Consumers are also using mobile devices more frequently to read emails. According to a new report from marketing agency Knotice, more than 27 percent of emails were opened on a mobile device during the second half of 2011. That number is up from about 20 percent during the first half of 2011 -- a 36 percent gain during the year. Knotice reports that phones accounted for 20.6 percent of mobile email opens, and tablets made up the other 6.8 percent. Perhaps not surprisingly, iOS devices make up the majority of that mobile ema [...]

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Word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews, either from someone they know or a stranger's opinions online, are the most trusted sources of information for buying decisions, according to the latest Nielsen's latest Global Trust in Advertising report, The findings speak highly for information gathered through social media or other forms of user-generated content. Meanwhile, though traditional paid media still are trusted by a great number of consumers, their influence is on the decline. Nearly half of consumers around the world say the trust ads on TV (47%), in magazines (47%) and in newspaper [...]

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If you're involved in marketing, you'd better be using email to send promotional messages to your customers. It doesn't matter how old they are, consumers overwhelmingly prefer to receive marketing via email and there's no close second place channel. The data come from ExactTarget's 2012 Channel Preference Survey -- the 14th report in the company's Subscribers, Fans and Followers series. ExactTarget asked almost 1,500 US online consumers (age 15 and up) about how they prefer to get permission-based marketing messages and a whopping 77 percent said email -- a number that dwarfs all other [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Features & Analysis | Statistics: Email Marketing | Top News

Most marketers rely on a few standard metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of their company’s email campaigns: deliverability, open rate, click-through, conversion, and unsubscribe are the favorite few. But there is one key metric that many are overlooking, one that many Email Service Providers don’t even display: Click-to-open rate, often abbreviated CTOR. CTOR measures the relevancy and context of an email by taking the number of unique clicks divided by the number of unique opens, and then multiplying by 100 to show it as a percentage. What it tells you is simply this: Of the subscr [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Email Marketing Column

Email and social media are pretty similar when it comes to what drives consumers to connect -- or disconnect -- with brands. A new study from email provider Constant Contact and Chadwick Martin Bailey shows that the chance to get discounts and special offers is the primary reason that consumers "like" a Facebook page and why they subscribe to a company e-mail list. The survey, conducted in late 2011, involved 1,481 adults in the U.S. who completed a 15-minute online questionnaire. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they subscribe to a company mailing list to get discounts and spe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Facebook: Pages | Facebook: Statistics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Email Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media

Fewer emails -- only 76.5% -- landed in inboxes worldwide in the second half of 2011, a significant decline from the typical 80% rate that has held for the past 3 years, according to a new study released by deliverability firm Return Path. This is the first time the company has seen a major decline. The results indicate that 1 in 4 emails were being delivered to the spam folder or being blocked during that time period, as compared to the normal 1 in 5 rate. Spam folder placement came in at 8.4%, and emails being blocked by ISP-level filters came in at 15.1%, or 20% worse than the first half [...]

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