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In this list, Conversational Marketing readers can find related news and posts to enhance their email marketing skills. We share and collaborate on the latest email marketing strategies, technique and best practices.
When it comes to driving action and creating engagement online, email is king.
Email is the single most powerful weapon in any marketer’s arsenal.
If you follow the journey of some of the most successful bloggers online today you will discover that effective email marketing is an integral part of their approach, for one good reason; email marketing works.
New mediums have emerged over the years only to wither away quickly but one medium remains strong, and that medium is email; one major reason for this is that we can’t do without checking our emails every day.
The problem with email marketing is that, as users, we’ve gotten so used to emails now that we ignore the majority of the emails we get. How then do you stand out as an email marketer? How do you get into the inbox of your readers and get them to take action? This article will give effective email marketing tips for bloggers.
Many interactive marketers rely on email subscriber valuation (ESV) to justify budgets and plan messaging strategies, according to a new report by Forrester Research, which presents a three-step formula for calculating ESV.
Below, a synopis of the new ESV formula, issued by Forrester:
A good marketing event always gets you excited to return to the office and apply what you've learned. The trouble, though, is few of us remember everything we heard. Many more of us do not make it to the event at all, and we're out of luck.
That is, of course, unless you're talking about the MarketingSherpa Email Summit. We're back from Las Vegas, and we've gone through our stacks of notes to give you the top five insights to improve your email marketing. You get tips on deliverability, optimizing designs, boosting lists and more.
Have you been trying to figure out how to integrate Social Media into the email communications you send out for your Restaurant? Fear not! It's actually far easier than you think.
MarketingSherpa asked CMOs to prioritize their top five business objectives for email marketing for the next 12 months and then rate whether email marketing is either somewhat or very effective at achieving these objectives. While 85% of CMOs ranked increasing sales/revenue as their top email marketing objective, only 65% found it to be effective at achieving that objective. Driving website traffic, increasing lead generation, and nurturing prospects all ranked higher in terms of effectiveness.
Landing page creation, optimization and analytics best practices.
Learn how to reduce the rate of email unsubscribes and maintain a happier email marketing list.
An interesting infographic exploring the email subscription practices of leading fashion retailers. While many are following standard email marketing best practices, there is still plenty of room for improvement, particularly with personalization (only 26% ask for subscriber interests) and opt-in (only 5% use double opt-in).
Email subject lines are a form of headline. They attract attention and get your email content a chance to be read, so write them well.
First impressions mean everything, so make sure you provide your new customers with a proper introduction to your brand. This article outlines 10 things to make sure you include in your welcome message(s).
Good design does not necessarily mean fancy graphics and never-before-seen user interactivity. Design often hinges more so on simplicity and functionality, as is the case with HTML emails. The importance of email design is two-fold: first, design plays a big part in getting your email into your customers inbox; once that hurdle is cleared, design helps encourage the user interaction that represents your true end goal.
Read on to gain best practices to ensure recipients not only receive but also read and interact with your messages.
Accoding to this 2012 predictions article, the sheer fascination of launching social marketing campaigns will subside. Also discussed are five trends that will impact marketers in the coming year, including behaviorial segmentation, cross-channel attribution, and the negative impact of continue to message dormant email accounts.
How brands, such as Kodak Galler, AAA, and Lexus, are using a variety of approaches to make email marketing more interactive, improving engagement and gaining critical insights that can be leveraged in future communications.
As 2011 draws to a close, our thoughts race ahead to the campaign
plans of tomorrow. What should the forward-thinking email marketer be
considering as part of their email program for 2012? To help with this
question, here are some predictions for email in 2012:
1. More emails will be sent than ever before in 2012.
Consumers are signing up to receive emails in larger numbers. Everyone
in email marketing should continue to focus on relevancy to ensure that
they're building quality mailing lists and, in doing so, maintaining a
healthy sales conversion per audience ratio.
2. Subscribers will be demanding greater respect for their privacy. Consumers became more aware than ever this year about the amount of information available online related to their purchases and interests. Behavioral targeting via cookies has become the norm.
The importance of sending relevant email messages is frequently discussed by email marketers at conferences, webinars and on blogs. However, how many organizations achieve this objective? To answer this question, MarketingSherpa surveyed more than 2,700 marketers and asked how their organizations were sending email communications based on four key areas: relevant content, sending time, segmentation of subscribers, and the clarity of the conversion goal in the email.
Landing page creation, optimization and analytics best practices
Take one look at your open rates and you’ll understand that the primary reason for your own failure is unopened email. Obviously you cannot get your message across if your audience deems it not worth listening to from the get-go. You are in a BATTLE for the soul of your targets’ highly guarded inbox.
This article offers a good overview of how to truly identify and reengage inactive email subscribers. What struck me was the advice to look beyond opens and clicks to all known data about each subscriber. If someone hasn't opened or clicked an email in several months, but continues to buy your products, then they aren't inactive, per se. Your emails, even if unopened, could be serving as a reminder to directly visit your website and make purchases. Keep reading for additional insight.
I won’t write out the entire presentation for you in blog post form – that’s what Slideshare is for – but here are the high points of this presentation on Killer Integration of Facebook and Email Marketing, where I offer 17 specific ways to tie these two important programs together.
2 Sides of the Same Coin The notion that Facebook is a tool to create new customers is massively flawed. Research from DDB shows that 84% of fans of company Facebook pages are current customers. Of course they are. Think about how you use Facebook. You don’t randomly surf around, clicking the “Like” button for companies of which you’ve never, ever heard. Why would you want their info in your news feed? Consequently, Facebook is primarily a tool for keeping your brand top-of-mind among customers who have given you permission to do so. Through this messaging, you hope to solicit repeat business and customer advocacy. And email marketing sets out to do the exact same thing. Thus, the people in charge of Facebook and the people in charge of email marketing in your company should be the SAME PEOPLE.
3 Types of Integration There are three main areas where Facebook and email marketing can and should be integrated: Strategic Integration Channel and Audience Integration Message Integration Strategic Integration of Facebook and Email Marketing There are several areas of overlap here, but perhaps the most illustrative is the fact that the metrics used to measure both tactics are mathematically quite similar, even if we call them different names: Email subscribes = Facebook “Likes” Email unsubscribes = Facebook “UnLikes” Email opens = Facebook impressions Email clicks = Facebook feedback Email forwards = Facebook shares You can even derive the value of your overall Facebook marketing effort by examining it through the prism of your existing email marketing investment. I wrote a post about this new way to calculate what Facebook is worth to your business a while ago. It includes a link to a free Facebook valuation worksheet. Channel and Audience Integration of Facebook and Email Marketing The goal is not to get an email opt-in or a Facebook “Like”. The goal is to get both. Consequently, whenever you are asking for you, you should be asking for the other, as well. Email thank you messages. Email unsubscribe preference centers.
Facebook landing tabs. Social log-ins using software like JanRain. Message Integration of Facebook and Email Marketing Tons of options here for using (and re-using) your Facebook and email content. Use email subject line testing to optimize Facebook ad headlines. And vice-versa. Test image effectiveness via email, incorporate into status updates or Facebook ads. And vice-versa. Just like Sponsored Stories, incorporate fan expressions of advocacy into your email content. Incorporate most popular email content into status updates. And vice-versa. Tease upcoming emails via status update.
Do Not Eat This Entire Sandwich The presentation has 17 ways to tie Facebook and email together. Do not try to tackle all of those at once. Pick the two to four that make the most sense for your company, and try them. Them, add two more. And two more. Until you’ve integrated your programs in many ways. Remember, however, that your Facebook and email marketing will NEVER be optimally integrated if different groups (or even different agencies) are handling them. You know how you can tell social media is a truly big deal? It’s become too important to stand on its own.
I often speak with inexperienced email marketers that rail against blacklisting. Many are angry that ISPs have the "right" to divert the commercial electronic messages they send from the inbox, sending them to the junk mail folder or, even more frustrating, to the black hole where email missives go and are never seen again.
Read the rest of this article for insight into why, although they're an obstacle for legitimate email marketers, blacklists and filters exist are at the same time a necessity.
5 Tips for the Best Email Marketing and Highest Conversions
Inboxes are full of marketing emails. Marketing experts and retailers alike agree that a successful email campaign is critical to most retailers’ holiday success. But with shoppers under email attack by so many retailers, how can you avoid your offer being just another email that gets ignored? At the end of the day, your holiday emails are only worthwhile if they result in sales.
All your calls-to-action are happily driving sales, searches, downloads, donations, phone calls or Facebook love. But not the unsubscribe link. This sniveling wretch spends his days sucking subscribers out of your database. (And his nights cavorting recklessly with dental appointments and taxes down the “Needed but not Nice” gin and whiskey joint.) As we’ll see, however, unsubscribes are not all bad. And there are good ways and bad ways to manage them.
Read the rest of this humorous, yet insightful post to discover 9 tips for making your unsubscribe page better.
Got a great email marketing solution? Got a solid opt-in and scrubbed contact list? That’s half the battle to a great return on your email marketing investment. Here are six simple tips you can use to improve almost any email marketing effort. 1. Remember why it’s called a “message”. If you think of your email campaign as an ongoing dialogue with each prospect, it will change your strategy. For instance, in a dialogue, you have to keep the conversation going – and that means listening to the people you’re talking about. (How are they responding? What actions are they taking?) It also means staying relevant. (If they visited your blog after your last email, but have never been to the products page after several messages, stop sending them messages that try to drive them to the products page – offer them an incentive to take some other action instead.)
Written by Jeff Bullas - View Comments Categories: Email Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media Marketing Research and surveys are continuing to show the growing importance of Social Media for marketers in 2010, with nearly six in 10 planning to include social-media spending in their next-year’s marketing budget, according to the “2010 Media Planning Intelligence Study” from the Center for Media Research. The Last 2 (interestingly) were Traditional National Mass Media Note: The study was conducted conducted between July 17 and Aug. 10, 2009 and is based on a survey of 1,972 MediaPost subscribers, including 1,164 who report that they have planning, buying, approving responsibility for 2010
Improved segmentation and better targeted content are being credited for the surge in consumer approval of email marketing over the past 12 months, according to the 2011 DMA Email Tracking Study published by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in conjunction with fast.MAP and Alchemy Worx.
The number of consumers reporting that half or more of the marketing emails they receive are of interest to them has increased more than threefold over the past year, from one in ten (9%) in 2010, to one in three (30%) in 2011. Moreover, just one in four consumers now say that only less than 10% of the marketing emails they receive are of relevance to them – down from two-thirds (64%) of consumers in 2010.
Read more about the findings on MyCustomer.com.
This story from Direct Marketing News covers a new DMA report which reveals that marketers will spend $163 billion on direct marketing in 2011, a 5.6% increase from the prior year. Additionally, the DMA projects that direct marketing ROI will reach $12.03 of sales per dollar of expenditures in 2011.
This post discusses spam traps: valid email addresses used to identify and blacklist spammers, as well as legitimate marketers lacking proper email collection and data hygiene processes. Drawing an analogy to speed traps, the article offers 6 rules of the road for avoiding spam traps and keeping IP reputations, including:
This post in BtoB Magazine by Kristen Hambelton, VP of Marketing for a Marketing Automation provider, covers 5 ways for B2B marketing strategists to improve data quality and increase deliverability rates.
Tip include:
Data Hygiene - Regular database hygiene such as removing duplicate records, undeliverables and inactive or incorrect email addresses is critical to keeping your reputation intact.
Bounce Management - It's crucial to have processes in place to manage hard bounces (emails that are permanently undeliverable), as well as soft bounces (emails that temporarily can't be delivered because the recipient's mailbox is full or the message is too large).
Inactive Addresses - Instead of continuing to send inactive users standard emails, segment them for a win-back campaign; if they don't respond, stop emailing them altogether.
Welcome Message - A welcome message sent to new subscribers is not only important in establishing contact and starting to build a relationship of trust but also has great revenue potential.
Double Opt-in - From a deliverability standpoint, the preferred option is a double opt-in, which requires new subscribers to take explicit action—such as clicking a confirmation link—before they're added to the list.
Are you currently keeping up with some of Kristen's tips? What are some of the challenges you run into with your email marketing campaigns?
Your email infrastructure can often mean the difference between poor and great deliverability. As the key link to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and corporate mail servers, it helps eliminate potential bottlenecks, keeping the floodgates open for your email messages. Good infrastructure also automates many technical aspects of email deliverability, reducing marketing’s dependence on IT.
But let’s be clear: infrastructure isn’t the end-all, be-all of email deliverability. On the contrary, nearly every aspect of email marketing contributes to messages reaching the inbox—or not. One area that’s often overlooked, yet very manageable is the message itself. Below are seven key elements of email messages, with best practices that marketers can easily implement to improve deliverability:
Research is still as important as ever. But now it's much easier to do. You no longer need to plan and execute surveys or events. One of the benefits of digital marketing is that you can simply monitor the conversation. Using clients for Twitter, Facebook forums or your own Q&A/FAQ section on your site, you can gain real-time results and at a far lower cost than that of traditional surveys.[/wordwrapleft] This is a well-known concept. The costs involved with using this business strategy, while not non-existent, are certainly far lower than traditional methods. You no longer need multiple departments – making it cheaper. You no longer need to create huge advertising campaigns for minimal returns – making it cheaper. In addition, the tools you need to monitor conversations is free.
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