Happier Holidays Begin Now

By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting

It's that time of year again. If you're an email marketer, you're probably not thinking about hosting a back yard BBQ or staking out a spot on your favorite beach. Your head (and your company's bottom line) is much more focused on what's going to be in Santa's sleigh this year and how you can use email to ensure that your customers will be decking their halls with your products this holiday season.

Most email marketers plan their holiday strategy in the summer, and this year is no different. However, this year does bring with it a greater set of challenges. The current economic climate is stagnant at best. While the financial pundits predict signs of an upturn any day now, that hasn't translated to consumer spending. Purse strings are tight and marketers are going to have to work harder than ever this year to stand out from the rest of the holiday inbox clutter, resonate with their customers and provide relevant messaging that encourages brand loyalty and purchasing activity.

So what can a forward-thinking marketer do? The first step is to ...

Categories: Response

Need More Email Revenue? Check Out These Ideas

By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting

I had the chance to speak at the DMA UK's Digital Planning Conference, "Exploding the Digital Myth" last week. The conference agenda was focused on helping marketers integrate the various digital technologies available to them to target consumers with the right offers at the right time and in the right medium. The second-half of this two-day conference will be held this Thursday in London. Click here for registration details.

On the agenda with me were six other speakers, all experts in the digital space with deep experience in producing successful digital marketing campaigns. I was particularly interested by what Mark Brill, CEO of txt4ever and Chair of the DMA's Mobile Council had to say about mobile marketing. He pointed out that mobile is an extremely versatile digital medium with the capacity to strengthen CRM, retention and brand loyalty initiatives by handling customer service issues, while also focusing on customer acquisition through targeted marketing messages, as well as aiding in commerce through the management of e-transactions. It's no surprise that mobile is so successful, especially with statistics like these ...

Categories: Response

Cool Email Idea: Re-Engagement Email Series

It's always tough to know what to do with email addresses that haven't shown any click activity over a long period of time, especially for publishers. Is the person at the other end happily reading each issue, but...

Categories: Response

New Case Study: What do you do when you don't know what to do?

By Bonnie Malone
Director, Response Consulting

Think about when you were a child - it was nearly summer break and you couldn't wait to go to the pool! You were looking forward to spending countless hours splashing around with friends and the freedom of being out of school. There was just one problem: you didn't know how to swim. So, what did you do? Did you dive right in and hope for the best? Or, did you sign up for lessons with a swim instructor?

When it comes to email marketing, many companies dive in head first, only to realize after the fact that email is much more complex than clicking the "send" button. The smartest companies, like CIG, look to industry experts for strategy advice and education on email basics and best practices before they put the first toe in the water.

Return Path's Response Consulting team had the great pleasure of working with CIG recently to strategize and launch a brand new email marketing effort centered around ...

Categories: Response

Episode #9 of Reputation Radio is LIVE!

Our new episode of Reputation Radio is available now on iTunes.

In our first segment we interview Return Path's Margaret Farmakis and Stephanie Colleton about their study of email practices by some top US retailers. Then, in our Cool Email Ideas segment Margaret shares a great example of fun (and funny!) transactional messaging from CD Baby.

Is there someone in the email universe you think we should interview? ...

Categories: Response

What's In a Name?

By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development

One of the great promises of email marketing is to have a one-to-one dialogue with your customers and prospects. Unfortunately, not many email marketers in either the U.S. or Europe today are actually delivering on that promise - most email marketing is mass marketing, with the same message going to everyone. However, since technology makes it easy to insert a first name salutation, some marketers and publishers try to give the appearance of friendliness and a personal touch.

Generally, I caution against using personalized salutations in broadcast email marketing. There are several things to consider:

1. Consumers know that you don't know them. Assuming too much familiarity too early in the relationship may have the reverse affect intended. Consumers may be off put by the forwardness, and tune out this message and all others to come. This is especially risky early in the relationship. Be careful with personalized salutations ...

Categories: Response

We Are All In the Digital Publishing Business

By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development

At this week's DPAC III event three hundred publishers, brand advertisers, agencies and technology solution providers gathered to discuss the state of the digital publishing industry. The content was great and the conversations very thought provoking.

Key takeaways for me, along with links to the Digiday Daily blog posts that I wrote from the show floor:

The new consumer priority is saving, not spending. Marketers must adjust our messaging and channel strategy to engage with consumers who value savings, quality and collaboration when buying. The "I want" culture is shifting to a "We need" mentality. ...

Categories: Response

Cool Email Idea: Email Welcome Series

What: Email Welcome Series

Who: HMV UK

Why we love it: We've been evangelizing on the power of a welcome series to introduce new subscribers to your email program for a long, long time. But it's still relatively rare to find a great example of one in action. HMV sends a three-message educational series about using their UK site that is really top-notch. The first message is a true welcome and gives the subscriber important information about their account. The second message is aimed at helping the subscriber navigate the site more efficiently by highlighting the search functionality and the recommendation features. Finally, the third message includes additional information about their pricing and return policies, a pitch for their "jukebox" feature and information about their email alerts program.

What would make it better: That email alert feature mentioned in the final email could be ...

Categories: Response

Live from the Email Insider Summit: Tactics that Work Now

By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development

Despite the fact that Bear Stearns had already collapsed, the recession was not even discussed at last May's Email Insider Summit. This year, the world looks a bit different, and many marketers here are telling me that they've had to change their practices significantly in order to adjust to the new reality. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as it seems many of us are more focused on subscriber satisfaction, retention and keeping ISP complaints low.

A panel of smart email marketers on Monday that was moderated by Mediapost editor David Goetzl, highlighted some great strategies that are working for them right now. Bottom line: email is now the rockstar of the marketing team. Bravo! Good for us. Um ... uh oh. Now we better perform! I've tried to summarize some of the panelists key strategies here.

For more live blogging from me and others at the event, check out the Mediapost Raw Blog or follow all of us on Twitter using #MPEIS. (My Twitter is @StephanieSAM).

Brian Jaffe, Director, eCommunications for Nationwide said, "Retention is the new acquisition for us ...

Categories: Response

Assumed Permission

By Stephanie Colleton
Director, Strategic Services

One of the key data points from our recent research study, Increasing Revenues by Optimizing Emailing Practices with Online Buyers, was the number of retailers who assumed that by placing an order, a customer would want to receive promotional emails. Thirty-one percent of the retailers in our study did not mention promotional emails at all during the checkout process but then immediately began sending promotional emails anyway. Five percent mentioned that promotional emails would be sent but gave the customer no way to opt-out.

Is this practice illegal? No. Is it a good idea? Not necessarily. We understand the temptation here. Customers are providing their email address in order to receive the transactional emails associated with their order. And retailers know that if they add a pre-checked opt-out checkbox, some customers will uncheck the box. By not asking for permission, more subscribers will be added to the list. But marketers must first ask themselves these questions before adopting this type of permission strategy (or maybe we should we call it non-permission strategy): ...

Categories: Response