Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently caused a stir at the Nielsen Consumer 360 conference by reportedly stating that Email is dead (she would say that wouldn't she and if you listen to the whole clip she didn't actually say what she was widely reported to have said).
However, her argument that only 11% of teenagers use Email daily is compelling and I find when talking to students they don't really understand the concept of email marketing - they just perceive most marketing emails as Spam while being positive about integrating with brands through social networking sites.
What consumers say about their email and social media usage
Two recent surveys from the email industry suggest email is very healthy in terms of account usage and…
Email marketing has alway enjoyed a reputation as a reliable source of responses. Send an email, get sales...send an email, get registrations...send an email, get pageviews...
While the results are still remarkably good, each year they get a little bit worse...if you accept the ROI figures published by the USA's DMA:
2008 $44.93 (return for every $1 invested)
2009 $43.62
2010 $42.08 (estimated)
Not much worse, mind, and many other marketing channels would sell a close relative for those kinds of figures.
However, high ROI comes largely from email's low costs. If you want to ramp up the actual profits attributable to email, you have to invest more in targeting and technology.
The rate of decline also depends on what else is going on in the online environment. And there are several trends that warn against email complacency.
1. The diversification of communication
For many years, email was pretty much the only way you could get updates on…
In email marketing, what you see is not what your readers see. Literally.
The lovely HTML email template you or your designer sent to your email account may look great to you. But once that email lands in the inboxes of your list, it can look very different.
How can that be?
Read full post on 9 email preview tools…
The email marketing world sometimes thinks of itself as too specialist. [Agree - integration should be the name of the Email game for it to stay relevant in today's social media world: Dave Chaffey]
Consider the sign-up form, for example. It invites website visitors to complete a transaction: you agree to provide regular doses of valuable content and/or offers and the subscriber "pays" for this by giving you an email address.
If payment is completed - the address is submitted correctly - you have a conversion. If we're dealing in transactions and conversions, then surely there's much we can learn from the ecommerce world?
(Think, for example, of all the information out there about website order form optimization: lessons that might equally apply to your subscription form.)
One retail phenomenon we can borrow is the idea of buyer's remorse [or "Post-purchase dissonance" as they call it in academic circles].
Read Mark's six…
Email marketing essentials are our weekly round-up of best practice advice for email marketers and CRM specialists.
We review the best sources on email marketing which you can see in our post How Advanced is Your Email Marketing. and then summarise them here for you.
Our recommendations on best practice in Email Marketing for week starting 30th August 2010
The implications of Gmail's New Priority inbox
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: There's no denying this is a great feature for Gmail users bringing their most important emails to their attention.
Implication: The implications for email marketers are well put here by Riaz Kiani but they're not really actionable. We simply need outstanding offers and/or email content that is regularly opened. And a desirable brand. That's what everyone is striving for already.
Ready, Set"€¦Reactivate
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary:…
In this talk I look at the opportunities for combining one of the newest digital marketing techniques with one of the most established. It's structured around 5 key questions to make your email more engaging:
Q1. How engaged are our email subscribers? Suggestions for measuring and goal-setting for engagement
Q2. How can we increase relevance? Recommendations on email engagement strategy
Q3. What will make our campaign more engaging? 5 ingredients of an engaging campaign
Q4. How can we make our email templates more effective? Practical tips for an engaging template
Q5. How can we integrate email and social media? Examples of email and social media integration
I was asked to deliver this talk by Smart Focus who I have worked with for over 5 years as an adviser and to collaborate on developing whitepapers on email marketing best practice.
…
This is a question asked in the UK Netmarketing forum. I thought my answer might be interesting to other marketers reviewing their e-mail marketing, so here it is!
The remainder of the question:
"If you were purely looking at the design and copy of such an email. Lets take for granted that mailing list is well targeted and the offer is good. Ive recently heard Hotmail doesn't like CSS, "click here" is frowned upon by SPAM filters, and a host of other dos and don'ts. As a newbie though Im finding it tough to determine best practices, so who better to ask than the list. I'm not after trade secrets just some good pointers.
Thanks in advance.
Lee
My answer
5?! That's a good challenge for email marketers on the list. I may have cheated with a few more. I would say, based on the limitations of "newbie emails" I see, and what works…
With today's interest in social media it's easy to forget the importance of regularly published email newsletters for customer communications.
They were in fact the first marketing tool that offered sharing (forwarding) capabilities - an early social media tool! If you already produce a regular email newsletter, it's a good time to review it and see if a refresh is in order.
To help you think through the issues to consider in an enewsletter refresh, my interview this month is with Denise Cox who, through the service and advice provided by her company, Email Service Provider Newsweaver, has been helping com
panies deliver email newsletters since 1996, so her specialist advice is well worth listening to!
Key features of a successful Enewsletter
Q1. What are the essential ingredients of an effective enewsletter for different consumer audiences? Please point us at some…
A review of "Successful Email marketing strategies" book
By Arthur Middleton Hughes and Arthur Sweetser
[amazon-product]1933199164[/amazon-product]
[amazon-product region="us"]1933199164[/amazon-product]
Despite all the interest in social media marketing in 2009, the direct contact and targeting available through email marketing means that email remains one of the most potent digital communications methods for encouraging repeat site visits and sales.
When my review copy arrived, I was pleased to see a new book on Email with "strategy" in the title since in my training workshops and consulting I find that Email communications strategy is one of the biggest issues that many organisations are grappling with.
I was also pleased to see that the book authors were two experienced direct marketers familiar with the database marketing aproaches which have been used so effectively for marketing with direct mail. Some of you may know Arthur Hughes from his previous books such as "Strategic Database Marketing" or from his …
This is a summary of a Merkle whitepaper on consumer Email preferences and behaviour published in March 2009.
In my summary I have highlighted the main implications of their findings using an example of a great new Enewsletter format I have recently received from the Cancer Research charity:
1. Time spent with permission email
Similar to previous year. Fifty-nine percent of all email users spend twenty minutes or more with permission email weekly, with just over one quarter spending an hour or more weekly.
Permission email accounts for about a quarter of all time spent with email, second only to its primary function of communicating with friends and family.
Implications for email marketers: This isn't much time, so ensure main information or offers are clear in subject line (of course) and headings of Email.
2. Adding senders to address books
More common than previously thought. Just over half of all permission email recipients have…
