Response Posts
Aug
05
What: Weekly Activity Report
Who: Realty Tracker
Why we love it: Realty Tracker was a site that collected leads on behalf of real estate agents around the country. They sent teasers for those leads by email several times per week. They also sent this weekly Activity Report with a summary of available leads. To make this email as valuable as possible, they included great content that is aimed at making the agents more successful. For example, in the issue shown here they used research on what repeat buyers want from real estate agents. Past issues have included information about home sales trends, how to set goals and real estate marketing tactics. Of course, many of these tidbits speak directly to the service that Realty Tracker provided in the form of online lead generation.
What would make it better: They could ...
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Jul
31
We are always shocked how many marketers miss the boat with their Welcome messages. Some don't even bother to send them, which is just a huge missed opportunity. Others send them, but...
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Jul
28
By Bonnie Malone Fry
Director, Strategic Services
The culture of most multi-channel retailers is one of great suspicion and possessiveness, created through silos within every function of the company. Whether it's marketing and merchandising at odds with each other, or IT operating in their own world, or even accounting -- seemingly lost somewhere in the abyss -- these silos make working together extremely difficult. Factor in the business need to implement a major initiative (like holiday sales), and the divide becomes a chasm. What is the root cause of this discord? And, does it really have to be that way?
The answer here is two-fold ...
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Jul
24
By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst
Greetings from the Online Marketing Summit Summer Roadshow! (You can register here. Enter the code ReturnPath10 and save $200.) Return Path is in Milwaukee, Northern New Jersey and Chicago this week speaking and meeting hundreds of very smart online marketers. It's a wonderful event for everyone in online marketing - not just email marketing. The show continues across the country and I encourage you to sign up.
Our presentation is around lifecycle marketing in email - why and how it's so important to make sure that email is relevant. This is not just because your deliverability depends on it. Although your deliverability DOES depend on it. Want a response? You first have to consistently reach the inbox. That is directly tied to how relevant your subscribers think your messages are. Relevant messages have low complaint scores, the key factor in sender reputation and good deliverability. Irrelevant or too frequent messages have a lot of complaints - subscribers clicking the "this is spam button."
Relevancy may be a buzz word that is overused, but it's still ...
Categories: Response
Jul
16
By Bonnie Malone Fry
Director, Strategic Services
When you were a teenager, how often did you ask good-ole Dad for money? You'd borrow $20, go out with friends to see a movie or go shopping, spend every last dime and look forward to doing it all again the next week.... Those were the days, right? Well, it seems that some marketers loved it so much that they are managing their email programs with the same mentality. While living in the present and begging for money to fund each and every need was generally the accepted behavior of a teenager, corporate executives don't enjoy playing the role of "good-ole Dad." Nowadays, it literally pays to do a bit of planning before you ask for more funding. Consider these alternate tactics to get incremental monies for your program ...
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Jul
15
By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst
A very interesting study of subject lines was released last week by our friends at Alchemy Worx. The headlines focus mostly on length - is longer better than shorter? Is 40 characters better than 50 or 70? Let the debate rage, but I recommend ignoring it.
Focus instead on the key question this study helps answer: Whether subject lines of any length can predictably impact response rates.
Most of us think that subject lines only impact open rates - if the subject line is compelling, then the message breaks through. This is certainly true, but the Alchemy Worx report rightly also focused on broader engagement.
According to the study, open rates are optimized when the subject line is shorter - probably because shorter subject lines focus on a very specific offer. For example, "10% Off Until Thursday" is short, and compelling and easy for the subscriber to immediately understand the offer. If that message resonates, the subscriber opens. Certainly all the research we do here at Return Path supports this - clarity and simplicity in a subject line is always better than cleverness or complexity.
What I found more compelling is ...
Categories: Response
Jul
14
By Margaret Farmakis
Director, Strategic Services
Once upon a time, in a far away land, there lived a method of communication called email. Marketers liked email because it drove revenue, strengthened their customer relationships and provided branding opportunities. It was determined that the success of email should be measured using a few key metrics. And so marketers created the open rate (the number of opened emails divided by the number of sent emails).
The open rate was an indication of how many people "opened" or viewed an email message. In order to track this, an invisible image tag was embedded in the HTML email message. When the subscriber's email client used to display the marketer's email message requested that image, an "open" was recorded by the image's host server. And thus, the number of times a message was opened could be tracked. And marketers were very happy.
Alas, those were simpler times ...
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Jul
09
By Stephanie Colleton
Director, Strategic Services
At the recent MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum 2008, I hosted an Email Lab and provided on-the-spot email program evaluations for several B2B marketers. One of the trends I noticed was that the majority of the companies I met with were not collecting email addresses on their websites. Their list growth came from new customers, paid acquisition, email append and business cards provided by their sales people (more on that in my next post). What a missed opportunity! These marketers assumed that no one would seek out their company's website and voluntarily sign-up for their email program. That assumption is most likely costing them a potentially valuable source of new customers. Adding an email capture form to their website should require minimal time and resources and is well worth the investment. ...
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Jun
30
By Anita Absey
SVP, Sales & Marketing
Our good friends over at Forrester are fielding a survey for email marketing professionals aimed at getting a handle on how email is used in companies today. This is a great opportunity for you to have your voice heard - Forrester's research has a huge influence in the marketplace of ideas. Plus, taking the survey gives you access to the aggregate data. ...
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Jun
25
By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst
It's time to get serious about your Q3 goals. One way to do that is focus on improving your email program so you can ramp up your revenue for the upcoming season. In fact, summer is the perfect time to focus on content that builds lasting relationships that will resonate with your subscribers when they ramp up their spending for back to school and the holidays. So instead of kicking back during the summer months, take this time to invigorate your marketing program and learn something new about how to make your email stand out from the crowd.
So how should you kick off you summer educational program? Watch the "Is My Email Inbox Worthy" webcast and read the companion research study, "Creating Great Subscriber Experiences: Are Marketers Relationship Worthy?" Then join me and other Return Path experts at the Online Marketing Summit this summer. Why the pre-conference homework?
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