• Where the Money Comes From
    Finally, on day three of the conference, the economy's potential impact on the ad world was mentioned, particularly how it might affect email marketing budgets. Executives from PetSmart and The Hartford offered some insight into how budgets are managed at their respective companies. PetSmart's Ron Hauwert said he's expected to have a 2% ROI rate. So, for every two cents he spends, the goal is a return of $1 in revenue. But if he can prove success, he can make the case for an increased budget. At The Hartford, Melanie Lombardo said she has the advantage of overseeing all …
  • Email is a Creative Medium
    The two partners in Seattle-based email creative agency, Smith-Harmon, did their best to persuade marketers that static, text-based email may be a thing of the past. Add some "bells and whistles," they said. Two prominent examples: video and user-generated content. While there currently is no system to successfully embed a video player into an email, the execs suggested inserting a graphic that looks like a video player. Then, people can simply click on it to watch the video on a player housed on a marketer's site. They said the video links have increased click-through rates by 5%. The execs -- principals Lisa Harmon and Aaron Smith …
  • Mullen: Email Marketing Held to "Higher Standard"
    Jeanniey Mullen, evp and CMO of Zinio/VIV, just addressed the dreaded "SPAM" issue in this vein: Email continues to have a challenge -- perhaps disproportionally -- from a perception standpoint. It's "held to a much higher standard" than, say, direct mail. Direct mail can wind up in a mail box and be reflexively tossed away, but unwanted emails can create a more visceral reaction in consumers. And so Mullen says that's its "impact on a brand('s)" perception and image can't be understated, and must be managed with kid gloves. 
  • Dog Bites Man: Email is Here to Stay
    The conference began with several Ball State students at least raising the issue whether email will continue to be the primary form of online communication for the younger set. At least one suggested social network platforms could overtake email -- both in social and notably professional lives. But commenting on conclusions drawn from the three-day event, an attendee just said she convinced email will remain preeminent -- at least in the workplace. It offers a  "professional" format that social networking's informality can't match.  
  • Dog in a Thong
    PetSmart's Ron Hauwert mentioned three things that can hold-up a campaign:   1) Accounting for systems issues and hiccups there.   2) The difficult and weeks-long process of navigating approval from the company's legal team.   3) And what he referred to, tongue-in-cheek, as talent issues: It takes time to get the photos of a dog in a thong or one spooning with a Labrador.  
  • Payday Strategy
    One of the most interesting aspects of the presentation by Dela Quist, CEO of UK email specialists Alchemy Worx, was his take -- based on extensive testing -- on when to send out emails focusing on offers. His thoughts: -Never send out an offer in the second week of the month. This theory is based on what happens in the UK, but has relevance in the US. In the UK, where people generally get paid once a month, their checks come around the 25th. And so over the next 15 days, they feel flush. But by the second week of the following month, they begin to yearn …
  • Content vs. Retail
    UK email marketing pundit Dela Quist says emails with content "makes people click more than offers." Reason being, a small percentage are buying "at the moment you sent the email." Seed the interest through info without the hard sell, it appears. On the content front, Quist says some of the content that leads to higher conversion rates are recipes, games/puzzles ("huge in the UK") and top-five or top-10 lists in a particuluar field -- all are "sticky."
  • Early Days
    Chatting with a couple amateur Internet "historians" last night -- and they offered some interesting tidbits about two former linchpins in the early "online communication" days: CompuServe and Prodigy. Turns out CompuServe was purchased by H&R Block, looking to diversify in its "non-tax" season, back in 1980. And Prodigy, launched four years later in 1984, was a co-venture between Sears, IBM and CBS. (CBS dropped out in 1986 as the company divested non-broadcast assets.) In 1990, CompuServe led with 600,000 subscribers; Prodigy was at 400,000. (More details for both on Wikipedia.) But soon AOL triumphed over both until ... ?
  • Early Days
    Chatting with a couple amateur Internet "historians" last night -- and they offered some interesting tidbits about too former linchpins in the early "online communication" days: CompuServe and Prodigy. Turns out CompuServe was purchased by H&R Block, looking ahead to online tax transactions, back in 1980. And Prodigy, launched four years later in 1984, was a co-venture between Sears, IBM and CBS. (CBS dropped out in 1986 as the company divested non-broadcast assets.) In 1990, CompuServe led with 600,000 subscribers; Prodigy was at 400,000. (More details for both on Wikipedia.) But soon AOL triumphed over both until ... ?  
  • Conversion Rate Increases Up 56% or More
    Microsoft executive David Barlin said he believes a campaign combining display ads and email marketing can yield highly impressive conversion rates. Barlin -- a product planner for Windows Live Mail, who works on the Hotmail and instant messenger products -- said company research shows integrated campaigns using banner ads and search can lead to conversion rate increases in the 22% to 56% range. But he's convinced further research will indicate using banner ads linked with email marketing will boost conversion rates at a level above the up to 56%.    The research effort â€" testing what's …
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