Mobile-enabled email has truly been the topic du jour for 2013 so far. A recent article says it best in its title: "Mobile Email Opens Now 41% & on Pace to Surpass PC by End of 2013." Whoa, that's huge!. So that's the "why" of using mobile email; now let's focus on the "how." There are three components that marketers should consider when creating mobile emails:» 1 Comments
A hundred emails are sent, and 95-98 of them get delivered. 30-40 are actually seen, 10-15 of those on a mobile device. 5-15 of those that received it will click through and if you are lucky, 1-2 will buy something. This process, repeated weekly over a year, can add up to a lot of effort to reach less than half your audience. Do you know what your aggregate reach is for this email audience? If so, what are you doing with the other half that just don't engage, or engage infrequently?» 5 Comments
As email marketers, we are guests in the inbox of our customers. We have been invited to enter into their personal world and, much as you do when visiting a friend at home, you need to respect their personal space. Taking the analogy even further, when you move and enter a new neighborhood (which I did not too terribly long ago), it's important to get to know and understand your neighbors. There's already an existing dynamic there; having a firm understanding of it helps to determine the role you play in that ecosystem.» 4 Comments
When I've argued in the past that marketers need to understand more about their competitors' email programs, I inadvertently left out one small detail: Many don't know who their competitors really are. They think they do, but things are different in the inbox.» 0 Comments
In my meetings with marketers, a common frustration I hear is that they lack the budget, people and time to get things done. Well, I've been hearing these complaints over and over - and have uttered them myself - in my nearly 30 years in marketing. But you have to do more than complain about your challenges to move your program ahead. Take charge instead. Create a new way of thinking among your email teams and reset the process for getting things done. Below is my prescription for getting off the hamster wheel, shaking things up and taking your marketing ...» 1 Comments
As consumers, we all get too much email. That means as marketers, at least collectively, we are sending too much. Now I know it's easy for any brand to point at its own ROI metrics and insist that email is still working very well. Yet you only need to look at the proliferation of inbox management tools to see a universe of email users struggling under the deluge. Our metrics tell us one thing, but studying user behavior provides some contradictory insights on subscribers' appetites for just one more message.» 2 Comments
How can your brand make the most of birthdays: a prime opportunity to do something thoughtful and premeditated, and connect a consumer to your brand? Is yours one of the 50 birthday emails that are sitting in someone's inbox the morning of? Here are a few ideas for planning your next-generation birthday or recognition program:» 2 Comments
March Madness is in full swing for all those college basketball fans out there. I know this because I think my husband may be the biggest Indiana Hoosiers fan I have ever known (and according to him, they are going to slaughter Syracuse). Of course I've spent many a night with ESPN and their bracketology assessments running in the background -- and have heard more Charles Barkley-isms than a girl can handle. So what do I do to cope? I turn it into email marketing fodder. So friends, welcome to Email Testing Brackets!» 0 Comments
Back in November of 2010, I wrote an Email Insider column titled "'Best Practices' Are Dead," in which I argued that the term "best practices" has been much abused and was too broad to cover what I called the never-break "ethical imperatives" and the okay-but-unwise-to-break "recommended practices." I didn't know it at the time, but that column would be the genesis of my new book, "Email Marketing Rules: How to Wear a White Hat, Shoot Straight, and Win Hearts," which discusses 108 email marketing best practices.» 0 Comments
Having observed the email marketing industry the last 15 years, I've come to the conclusion that our beloved channel is entering its next phase: adulthood. Although I foresee no really revolutionary changes that would immediately disrupt email marketing, several shifts are happening now that require your attention and action. These shifts are helping to create a new email-marketing paradigm with six essential buckets of ideas:» 2 Comments
