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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Jun
20
What: Email to encourage store traffic.
Who: Bath & Body Works
Why we love it: When Bath & Body Works launched their website, they didn't do ecommerce so their email needed to build their brand and send traffic into the brick-and-mortar stores. Their solution was to create print-and-go coupon emails. This is great technique for increasing sales, plus it proves the value of email to store employees, making in-store email collection easier.
What would make it better ...
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Jun
17
By Bonnie Malone Fry
Director, Strategic Services
Yes, it seems to be that time of year for retailers...time to start planning for holidays promotions. (Can you believe it - already!?!) In the blur of deciding on campaign themes, offer strategies, and creative approach, don't forget about the Shopper, who is at the center of this whirlwind. To optimize success in the inbox, take a few minutes to consider subscriber feedback from last year's campaigns (via Return Path's 2007 Holiday Survey). Implementing adjustments now, during the planning period, is most efficient -- as this is the ideal time to affect change:
Relevance is still key. Nearly half (45%) of subscribers ignore every email if prior value has not been proven. And, 58% use the subject line to determine if the message will be of interest to them. Don't give in to the temptation to "batch-and-blast," which may negatively affect subscriber response and your brand perception.
More isn't necessarily better. 29% of subscribers deleted messages ...
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Jun
16
By Anita Absey
SVP, Sales & Marketing
Our friends over at Silverpop have a new study out on how top internet retailers use email marketing. We were most intrigued by this stat:
"And the most surprising finding: one out of five companies that didn't offer recipients any choices when they opted in to receive emails did give recipients choices when they tried to opt out. As a last ditch effort to keep subscribers on board, these companies offered to send less often or send different types of content."
This strikes us a very risky strategy, for three reasons:
1. As Bill Nussey at Silverpop points out, this tactic can hurt deliverability if your recipients use the "this is spam" button rather than the unsubscribe button to stop getting content that isn't interesting to them. ...
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Jun
12
What is it: Call to Action for Email Capture
Where it is: TechWeb homepage
Why we love it: Crush the competition? Who doesn't want to do that? This newsletter box screams "sign me up!" Of course, compelling calls to action don't mean anything if taking the action is difficult. In this case, the easy-to-use box eliminates all barriers to sign up (i.e., no passwords, no demo data) so the compelling copy can do its job without hindrance.
What would make it better: More prominent placement. This sign-up box should be ...
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Jun
11
By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst
Three times in May I spoke at industry events with folks who are preaching edgy things with mobile, social networking and rich media. Ideas that are way out there, very high tech and extremely whiz bang. Makes your heart thump. Being the email expert made me feel like the red-headed stepchild (and since I have red hair, I can say that with all impunity). Email is standard, and boring, and not at all the new kid on the block.
Bah, I say, bah humbug. I started out my talk at Digital Hollywood with a slide that showed a huge stack of money. This, I declared, is why email is anything but boring and dull. It earns a tremendous ROI and it's a powerful opportunity for growth. It's not some "future" thing that hasn't been tested and reaches a potential audience in the tens or hundreds or thousands. Email is ubiquitous for both B2C and B2B, proven, and incredibly profitable.
Roy Young, publisher of MarketingProfs agreed. "I think of email as ELECTRICITY, the juice that makes all the other activities/channels possible," he said. ...
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Jun
03
By Bonnie Malone Fry
Director, Strategic Services
With all the industry buzz around relevance, you would expect that the email marketing programs of most major US brands would be fairly sophisticated. Best practices, like sending a welcome message and targeted segmentation would be common. Preference centers would be everywhere. But, our recent study of 61 top-brand marketers found that wasn't typically the case. (And, we're talking about companies like Best Buy, Nike, Sony, and Disney, to name a few.) In fact, we were rather surprised by the findings:
Anyone home? A shocking 60% of the companies in our survey did not send a welcome message. Of the 40% that did send a welcome message, only 33% sent it within 24 hours. The remaining 7% took anywhere from two days to three weeks.
Blackhole? The shock of the missing welcome messages was compounded by the astonishing number of companies ...
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