Study Finds Top-Brand Marketers Are Missing Out On the 1-to-1 Marketing Advantages Offered By email Marketing

Eighty Five Percent of Marketers' Initial emails Lacked Personalization According To Return Path's New Subscriber Experiences Study

New York, New York and Denver, CO - For Immediate Release - Eighty five percent of companies failed to personalize the first email message sent to new subscribers, Return Path discovered with its new Return Path Subscriber Experiences study. This lack of customization, combined with other missed opportunities, leaves marketers unable to leverage the true power of email marketing.

Return Path, the leading email performance management company, conducted the study by subscribing and studying the email programs of 61 companies from the retail, consumer goods, travel, and media/entertainment industries.

The problem is not lack of data. Marketers are collecting information at sign-up that could be used to personalize their initial and subsequent emails. ...

Categories: Press Releases | Response

From the Email Insiders Summit: The 18-24 Perspective - Is Email Archaic?

By Bonnie Malone Fry
Director, Strategic Services

One of the most interesting sessions at the Email Insiders Summit was a glimpse into the perspective of the 18-24-year-old demographic. To kick off the conference sessions, MediaPost invited three students from Ball State University to participate in a panel discussion about their communication practices, and how email fits (or doesn't) into those habits. For the audience comprised entirely of email marketers, their answers weren't exactly welcome news:

• Social networks (primarily Facebook) have a monopoly on the 18-24-year-old attention span. These young people use Facebook as their primary communication method, not email. One panelist noted the efficiency of the channel to communicate instantly to all of their friends and contacts - - everything from causes supported to birthdays to events they are attending. For most, whenever they were online, they were logged into Facebook. ...
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Email Fills the Gaps in Society and eCommerce

By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst

I am proud and humbled to have led a team of incredible email marketing professionals in a volunteer effort to help a charity through the DMA's Email Experience Council annual "Eality" nonprofit initiative. This year, the small but scrappy Women's Bean Project of Denver, Colorado was selected. The Women's Bean Project helps disadvantaged women gain life and job skills by making bean soups, brownie mixes and other goods for sale online and through retail partners. When we started the project last August, there was no email program. When we officially closed the effort last week, there was a program - and not only were email newsletter subscribers viewing two times the number of pages views than other customers, we nearly collapsed the organization's production capacity with a Mother's Day email promotion that sold 85 baskets in a week.

You can read all about it in eec founder Jeanniey Mullen's ClickZ column or in our case study.

Like all great projects, this was a good learning experience for me. Three things stand out ...

Categories: Response

Five B2B Email Marketing Tips and $200 Off The MarketingProfs Conference

By Stephanie Miller
Global Markets Catalyst

Here we are, oh email marketers, caught in the middle. On one hand we are celebrated for being the go-to resource for generating short term revenue results (anyone have that "hey, our numbers are down, send another email" conversation this week?). And yet, funny how the applause dies down when the budget talk comes around and we continue to be handicapped by limited investment and strained resources. What's an email marketer to do?!

With that reality as our foundation, I'm leading a panel of great marketers at the upcoming MarketingProfs B2B Marketing conference in June. Return Path blog subscribers can save $200 with promo code ESPK08.

Here are five ideas from our panel that you can steal now for application to your own program, and which will be expanded upon during our panel at the conference.

1. Turn the recession to your advantage. Email is so easy and inexpensive to get into, so more and more businesses are sending messages. You can see the result is in your inbox - more and more clutter. ...

Categories: Response

What Do Women Want? Email and Chocolate

By Margaret Farmakis
Director, Strategic Services

According to a recent study by BlogHer and Compass Partners, 36.2 million women are participating in a blog every week: 15.1 million are publishing and 21.2 million are reading and commenting. Perhaps even more interesting, the women that took part in the study said they would give up alcohol (55%), their PDAs (50%) and reading newspapers or magazines (43%) in order to keep writing and reading blogs. Their dedication had limits, however: 80% of the women surveyed refused to give up chocolate.

So, other than the fact that the confections industry can breathe a sigh of relief, what does this mean for email? Marketers, take note: Women online have purchasing power. The study found that the women who are engaged with blogging are educated (57% graduated from college) and well paid (46% earn $75K or more). These women could very well be your most active, responsive and engaged subscriber segments. How can you serve them better? Consider these three ideas ...

Categories: Response

Marketing to Mom

By Bonnie Malone Fry
Director, Strategic Services

With Mother's Day coming this weekend, I've been thinking a lot about "Mommy marketing." Pregnancy, childbirth and new parenthood offer a predictable set of challenges that makes this audience a natural for lifecycle marketing. And, are you surprised to hear us say this, a natural for email.

A colleague of mine recently had a baby and she was struck by how many companies spent a lot of money purchasing her name and then sending her direct mail - including samples! - but didn't build in an email component.

Let's take a look at a few of the big companies, what they did and what they could have done better

Categories: Response

Email Marketing Secrets

By Stephanie Miller
VP of Strategic Services

The secret to high return email marketing is that there is no secret. There is only one way to drive higher revenue and deliverability is to create compelling subscriber experiences.

And it's important to remember that email subscriber experiences don't happen in a vacuum. Our subscribers are also our prospects and customers and interact with us in many channels outside of email.

I spoke this week about great email marketing in a presentation titled, "Seven Email Marketing Secrets" at the newly revamped and rather fabulous Interactive Marketing Expo (produced by the Chicago Association of Direct Marketing). One thing that really stands out when you meet with direct marketers is that email and mobile marketing are embraced as important and fascinating channels, but are not the drivers of the direct marketing mix. I spend so much time talking about email marketing with email marketers, that it's refreshing to get out of the echo chamber and talk about email with folks who do direct or interactive marketing and dig in to why email can be such an important part of a multichannel approach.

This is, of course, the strategy that every successful email marketer takes. ...

Categories: Response

Rocky Mountain High

By Anita Absey
SVP, Sales & Marketing

Last month we took our best email experts and hit the road to bring fresh, new marketing ideas to San Francisco and Los Angeles. This month we embark on the next leg of the tour.

Next stop is the Mile High City on May 27. Not only will you learn best practices from our expert team of Return Pathers, but you will get first hand knowledge and advice from other email marketers just like you. On tap for Denver, are email marketers from Memolink, Shop at Home, Sierra Trading Post and LifePics who will share their experiences on how they cope with everyday email challenges to drive revenue for their businesses. Best of all, it's a great opportunity for you to get your specific questions answered one-on-one during our email expert roundtables.

Categories: Response

Focus on Subscriber Experience: Learning a Lesson from Evite

By Stephanie Colleton
Director, Strategic Services

This past Sunday the New York Times Magazine ran a column by Virginia Heffernan ranting about Evite. Her complaints about the party-planning service were many, but one sentence really jumped out at me:

"And why, for the love of both partying and efficiency, aren't the details of an event -- the time and place -- in the subject line or at least the email itself?"

The reason, according to Heffernan's column, is that Evite wants to drive page views, which translate into ad dollars, by forcing recipients to click through to the party details page. In this case, what's good for the business isn't good for the consumer. ...

Categories: Response

Pulling the Trigger on Trigger-Based Campaigns

By Bonnie Malone Fry
Director, Strategic Services

As every marketer continues on the quest for higher response and ROI, triggered campaigns centered around website behaviors (previous purchases, abandoned carts, browse history, etc) are becoming more and more popular due to their high subscriber relevancy and response. However, in the whirlwind to implement such high impact programs, it's easy to lose focus on the subscriber experience. To truly optimize results, and foster your relationship with the subscriber, keep these three tips in mind ...

Categories: Response