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April 29, 2005

Email: Turning Up the Volume
If you want a little snippet of the report mentioned below, iMediaConnection provide it for you in the form of an article by David Hallerman. Lots of statistics for you to enjoy and critically evaluate.

How GE Healthcare Gets Email Clickthrough Rates of 7-10%
Case study of how...well...see the title. Lots of very specific practical details and ideas you can transfer to other markets.

Incoming Links Development Guide and Directory
If email response rates or PPC prices are getting you down, cheer yourself up with a few new links to boost your company's organic search listings. The above (also free) site is the best resource around to help you.

E-Mail Marketing: How to Improve ROI
If you have a spare $695 (and who hasn't?), eMarketer just released a report with the above title. It looks at the effectiveness of email and how best to optimize your efforts.

April 28, 2005

Q&A with DoubleClick's Eric Kirby
The general manager of DoubleClick's email solutions business offers up some thoughts on the state of email marketing and what marketers should be doing now and in the future.

He's another to see event- and action-driven emails as the natural successors to purely campaign-based offerings.

Larry Chase's Top 10 Trends for the Next 10 Years
Larry's been around a while and has his finger firmly placed on the pulse of online marketing. Among his predictions: a strong future for email marketing AND its apparent successors, like RSS and podcasting.

April 27, 2005

Testing Email Creatives in Gmail and Hotmail Email Clients
Vendors eROI offer up some guidelines on the use of CSS and html in emails sent to two of the more important free email address providers.

B2B vs B2C Email Marketing: Main Differences
Jeremy Dent explores some of the key factors that make B2B different.

InternetRetailer.com - E-Mail Marketing Survey
Long, detailed article giving the results from the recent Internet Retailer email marketing survey. Based on responses from large online retailers, email marketing is doing well, and the results make fascinating reading.

As with all surveys it seems these days, you need to apply some objective thought to the conclusions drawn.

For example, retailers who email more frequently get higher response rates. That doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get higher response rates if you up your mailing frequency, as is implied by the author.

One great thing about the article is you can send it to any of those "email is dead" people. I quote: "Almost 45% of respondents to the survey say the response rates to their e-mail marketing campaigns are climbing; only 16% report a downward trend."

April 26, 2005

Building an Opt-In E-Mail List
Jeanne Jennings has some words of advice for those just starting to build their opt-in lists, plus some thoughts on address appending.

One comment I'd disagree with is when Jeanne says to collect addresses before creating any emails because "there's no sense creating an e-mail newsletter (or other type of e-mail communication) if there's no one to send it to."

While intuitively correct, there's much to be said for having something to show prospective subscribers before they commit to giving you their address.

Integrating E-Mail Marketing and Web Analytics
David Daniels looks at the latest efforts to combine website metrics with email campaigns, so you can segment future campaigns based on the click behavior of recipients.

E-Mail Marketers Fear Messages Not Delivered
A small survey by vendor Skylist suggests that the three biggest concerns for email marketers are deliverability, campaign analysis and declining response rates.

April 25, 2005

Why Can't Email and RSS Just Get Along?
Exasperated by the apparent need for some RSS advocates to declare email dead, and for some email advocates to declare RSS a meaningless fad, I spent a tax deductible $30 on a press release to plead for the obvious middle way.

April 22, 2005

The Nomenclature of Opt-In
Derek Harding defines some of the terms used by marketers and others when describing sign-up processes, and touches on the semantic and practical problems associated with each.

As an aside, he suggests that on double opt-in lists, "on average over 50 percent of initial requests are unconfirmed." Just FYI, the equivalent figure on my own newsletter is 39%.

There's a cat in among those pigeons
MarketingSherpa.com release the results from a study which looked at how effective email marketing and list hosting services are at getting their own html newsletters delivered to different ISPs and email providers. Watch out for red faces and quick rebuttals.

Later edit: Prophetic words indeed. The pigeons fought back, and Sherpa have withdrawn the original article pending clarification and more data. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of feathers ruffling.

Adestra clinic
Marketing agency Adestra are running a free email marketing clinic at the Online Marketing Show, which takes place June 8th and 9th in London, UK.

Creating the right impression with color
Karen J. Bannan cites an example of how a color change helped boost an e-newsletter's metrics and explores some of the implications of color for email design.

Yesterday's e-mail tactics, strategies make way for today's
Bill Nussey has some thoughts on how email marketers should be refocusing their efforts, strategies and tactics in light of the ever-changing email landscape.

April 20, 2005

Questions for OgilvyOne's E-Mail Marketing Director
And the questions (which she answers most lucidly and usefully) concern setting out your B2B email strategy and tactics, building lists in niches, and benchmark metrics.

The Perils of Appends
No comment, just a sharp intake of breath and an "ouch!"

April 19, 2005

Email irony
Yesterday I tried to send an email to someone who'd left a request via form at one of my websites. He uses a challenge / response system, so I got the usual "Please confirm you're a human being and not a spammer" mail back.

Except my anti-spam software filtered the anti-spam challenge/response request into my spam folder. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

Personalize and Customize E-Mail
Paul Soltoff bemoans the prevalence of generic emails sent to all those on a list. Then suggests how you might begin the process of customer database segmentation through an evaluation of recency, frequency and monetary outlay.

ISP Steaming Over Coffee Spam
Here's an example of how big brands can get caught up in messy spam litigation...another reminder to encourage rigorous email marketing practices across the organization and all those associated with it.

April 18, 2005

Establishing the Right Email Frequency
G. Simms Jenkins offers up various rules of thumb and guidelines you can use to plan the frequency of your mailouts. Some nice suggestions in there, particularly regarding segmenting for frequency in addition to content.

April 15, 2005

What can I do to re-engage inactive subscribers on my e-mail list?
Stephanie Miller offers some answers...

April 14, 2005

Note to Affiliate Marketers: Knock It Off
Shawn Collins looks at the use of email by affiliates and affiliate merchants and points out where they're falling (very) short of best practices. As he says, it's a tragedy that in 2005, some marketers still need to be taught how to use the BCC field.

E-Mail Delivery Monitoring
Kirill Popov and Loren McDonald offer reviews of four companies involved in assessing (and then hopefully improving) the deliverability of your emails across different ISPs and email client services and software.

April 12, 2005

Spam and phishing
The latest survey from those fine folks at the Pew Internet & American Life Project suggests that while people are getting more spam, they're less bothered by it.

Of particular interest to marketers is the factette that the percentage of respondents who said "spam has made them less trusting of email" dropped to 53% "compared to 62% a year ago."

April 11, 2005

Know More About Your E-Mail Subscribers
Jeanne Jennings has a range of ideas for persuading your subscribers to divulge more information about themselves.

E-Mail's Seven Seconds
Nice article from Al DiGuido. He recalls life selling billboard advertising and the traps that many advertisers and agencies would fall into when it came to billboard messaging. Then he compares this with email and suggests it's time to stop obsessing about deliverability and open rates, and focus more on the art and science of advertising / marketing.

RSS Advertising, Coming Fast
Dave Morgan reports on a working and promising example of advertising in RSS feeds, and considers the potential of this delivery medium.

April 10, 2005

Campaign management upgrades dominate product announcements
Karen J. Bannan outlines a number of product upgrades from various email marketing vendors, and gets some advice on whether you need to think about changing products or services.

Clever Tactics to Update Bad Addresses on Your Email List More Easily
Case study of Duke University Alumni Affairs, and the procedure they use to turn bad email addresses into good ones. Definitely some ideas to borrow there.

Gates Wants to Can Spam -- Fast
Interesting overview of Microsoft's various efforts to beat the spam plague - they've filed over 200 lawsuits against spammers and virus writers.

April 07, 2005

Sheryl Stroud Fultz takes the selling principles honed in decades of direct marketing and applies them to email. The outcome is some interesting suggestions for your subject lines and email content.

B2B E-Mail: A Completely Different Ballgame
Karen Gedney gets a smorgasbord (spelling?) of insights into useful B2B email tactics from Jeanniey Mullen of OgilvyOne Worldwide.

April 06, 2005

MailerMailer Releases Email Marketing Metrics for 2004
MailerMailer (an email list management service provider) just released a metrics report for the second half of 2004. The above link takes you to the press release with a results summary, and you can get the report as a freebie if you sign up to their newsletter. See http://www.mailermailer.com/metrics/ for details.

Among the highlights - improvements in deliverability, but slight drops in open rates and CTR. Nice to see the company acknowledging the impact on measured open rates of image supression features in recent email client upgrades. In other words, a drop in open rate may be more to do with measurement difficulties rather than a real reduction in the number of people "opening" the emails.

E-mail authentication. Then what?
Dave Anderson of Sendmail reviews the state of play regarding authentication efforts, and then raises some related pragmatic issues for businesses involved in sending or receiving email (which is pretty well all of us).

April 05, 2005

E-Mail List Testing, Step by Step
Paul Soltoff has some insights into assessing the value of those rental lists.

April 03, 2005

Microsoft expands antifraud campaign
Microsoft's money is now going after the phishers. Any efforts to rid inboxes of criminal and unethical activity can only help build trust in email, to the benefit of legitimate marketers.

April 01, 2005

Google doubles Gmail limit to 2GB
Google ups the ante in the world of free email addresses.

Experts address deliverability issue at DMA event
Short report on the Direct Marketing Association's E-Mail Deliverability Panel in New York. There's a brief overview of some deliverability musts, plus an interesting snippet on how a "trust" seal can lift sign-up rates.

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