To break through inbox Q4 clutter with your holiday-agnostic emails, try these tactics
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Button Up Your Email 
Posted by Darrah MacLean on Nov 17, 11:18 AM
Have you ever found yourself standing in front of an automatic towel dispenser, waving your hands frantically over the hands-free scanner, praying for a towel to come out? Yeah, me too. A week ago, I found myself working up a sweat in front of a towel dispenser when a waitress finally came in and said, "Oh, you have to actually touch the button." To which I said, "But the button says hands-free." Her response? "Oh, it's wrong. You actually have to touch it." Interesting. This little interaction got me thinking about the importance of directions, or as we call them in the email universe: CTAs. They are the clicking points of your emails, and you'd best be spending some time crafting them.
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Customer Segmentation 
Posted by David Baker on Nov 16, 1:44 PM
This is a subject we often talk about in apologetic terms when it comes to email marketing: segmentation. It's a really time- consuming commitment for an organization to do great segmentation. While traditional monetary-based segmentation (Recency Frequency Monetary-RFM) and demographic segmentation drive most programs, what is the value of behavioral segmentation -- or better yet, attitudinal segmentation? There's obviously value in all forms, yet I find the challenge is balancing the right segmentation methodology with an organization's ability to work within these guides
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I'm Calling Your BS 
Posted by Kara Trivunovic on Nov 12, 12:07 PM
As the year winds down, marketers seem to be doing two things: planning for next year's successes, or making excuses for not being able to do more with their email marketing programs. To the former group, kudos to you. To the latter group, I am calling your BS. Following are the three most common excuses I get from marketers for why their email isn't more relevant.
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Posted by on Nov 11, 11:09 AM

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Email's Antisocial Sin 
Posted by Morgan Stewart on Nov 11, 2:49 PM
In all the talk of social media and its influence on email marketing, it occurred to me that email marketers consistently commit an antisocial sin. Worse still, it is a sin often taught as a "best practice" in order to decrease the hassle of managing a large number of responses to marketing email messages. I am writing of the dreaded "no-reply@" email address.
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How To Avoid 'Back Alley Syndrome' 
Posted by Chad White on Nov 10, 10:43 PM
Imagine you're walking through a store and see signs for a demonstration of a product you're interested in. You follow the signs to the back of the store and through a door that leads into the back alley, where you see the product demonstration going on. It's not the best brand impression, so chances are you're not going to stick around.It's the same thing when you reach a dead-end landing page without any branding, navigation or secondary content. I call this "back alley syndrome," and I've seen two glaring cases of it from major retailers in recent months.
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Ways To Increase Conversions From Seniors 
Posted by Cynthia Edwards on Nov 9, 2:04 PM
A study by Focalyst shows that seniors (62+) using the Internet today have higher purchase intents than younger segments do, in major categories such as travel, CPG, entertainment and pharmaceuticals. What's more, seniors who do use the Internet have almost double the income and are twice as likely to have gone to college and still be working and married, than those who are not connected. And there are other considerations about this huge demographic that should make them interesting to email marketers....
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Your No. 1 Upgrade For 2010: Lifecycle Marketing  
Posted by Loren McDonald on Nov 5, 2:52 PM
If you're already thinking about how to take your email-marketing program to the next level in the coming year, you should start by switching out your batch-and-blast program for one that uses lifecycle marketing to send highly targeted and relevant messages. Although it might be a challenge to persuade your upper management to invest time and money to upgrade your email program, this story of a company that boosted its conversion rate 40% using segmentation and targeted messaging might help loosen up the budget.

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