Finding the resources and executing a sound mobile email strategy has become a marketing priority.
What's in our mailbox this month: Did these brands hit the mark after the storm of the century...or did they just blow?
In a sea of numbers, there are some that matter when it comes to email marketing and some that only look important.
Swedish contemporary art gallery Bonniers Konsthall crafted a series of exclusive—and hyper-personalized—email invitations to the VIP opening of its "More Than Sound" exhibition.
The Essential Guide to Email Marketing is packed with actionable information, as in everything you need to know to keep your email programs running smoothly.
What's in our mailbox this month: Tourism emails. Do these emails make you want to get up and go?
'Tis the season for holiday email marketing mania. Here's how to ensure that customers open email messages with as much enthusiasm as opening a holiday gift.
Confused by all the advice on how best to reach consumers through email marketing? While opinions may differ, here's a basic list (worth checking twice).
Industry insiders voice their opinions on the trends marketers should be following. No fads here.
For leading brands JetBlue, FedEx, and National Geographic Society, email remains the glue that binds their multichannel marketing efforts.
Beware of the complacency that can set in with the common message-segment-send cycle of email marketing. A focus on continuous improvements in core areas can dramatically enhance email campaign results.
Consumers are still open to receiving email marketing messages via email, but be prepared to have youremail quickly deleted if it's not relevant.
Dairy Queen set out to increase its Blizzard Fan Club base while simultaneously giving members an extra scoop of customer service.
A boutique hotel used an email campaign featuring a video of its event space to garner a 20% open rate.
When the National Hockey League (NHL) announced that tickets were going on sale for the 2011/2012 season, the league realized that hockey fans don't always live in the same city as their favorite team.
Children's e-commerce emails: Who plays nicest?
In the face of growing choices in digital channels, marketers are doubling down on email, increasing investments as they work to more precisely tailor messages.
What's in our mailbox this month: Targeted consumer emails from Panera's, Rewards "R" Us, Shari's Berries and Go Daddy. Who had a bright idea and what belongs in the trashbin?
At Orbitz, targeting based on demographic and psychographic data is so refined that the company sends out campaigns to as little as 10 people.
Avoiding common email marketing mistakes will ultimately drive better campaign ROI.
Talk about your "static" emails. On Jan. 2, Dish Network contacted a Direct Marketing News staffer who willingly agreed to accept emails from the satellite TV services provider. Poor staffer.
Kristin Hambelton, VP of marketing at Neolane, a marketing technology company, discusses email spending growth rates and the dangers of over-mailing.
Jeff Nicholson, VP of global marketing at Pitney Bowes Software, discusses email best practices and an oncoming "opt-down" movement.
Active Ride Shop, a Mira Loma, Calif.-based skateboarding outfitter, has a passionate customer base that enthusiastically turns out for skating competitions, fashion shows and other brand events.
Daniel Schotland, VP of client services at Experian CheetahMail, discusses best practices for holiday email marketing.
When Pei Wei Asian Diner introduced the Caramel Chicken entrée, the Chinese food chain took advantage of the occasion to beef up its email database. Pei Wei, which is owned by P.F. Chang's China Bistro, worked with email provider ExactTarget to create a multichannel campaign centered on email to help spread the word.
Volkswagen improves email with help from Proximity London.
Angela Lester, managing partner at Tribal DDB, discusses the power of email creative and why targeting may not be the best first approach.
Janine Popick, founder and CEO of VerticalResponse, discusses how small businesses are integrating email with social media.
The way businesses and consumers buy things today has been forever transformed by the abundance of information available on websites and social networks. This is fueling a significant change in the way marketing teams work with sales to drive revenue.
Roadify updates New York City commuters about mass transit delays via its mobile app, but consumers must sift through a scroll of service changes to find those most pertinent to them.
Windows Live Hotmail has released five new tools to make email inboxes more user-friendly by weeding out "graymail" messages, or these unwanted, legitimate marketing messages.
Brian Giese, CEO of True Influence, discusses what kinds of content works well for b-to-b emails, addresses the challenges of list churn for b-to-b marketers and talks about email deliverability at the enterprise level. Giese has held executive level positions at Harte-Hanks, I.T. Selling Worldwide and Avectra.
Daniel Schotland, VP, client services at Experian CheetahMail, discusses how retailers are preparing their email marketing programs for the holiday season, shares insights into email volumes and talks about list building during the holidays for future campaigns. Prior to working at Experian, Schotland held leadership positions at CRM firm i-loft, email marketing firm Post Communications and Deloitte Consulting.
Gary Levitt, founder and CEO of email marketing services company Mad Mimi, which boasts 95,000 users and sends 1 billion emails per month, talks about empowering even the smallest mom and pop businesses in a flash sale age.
Art.com's AllPosters.com uses the imagery of vintage movie posters and famous artworks like Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" to spice up email marketing messages. Of course, if the email is not delivered, those beautiful images are meaningless. So when the e-commerce company had trouble getting through to Gmail accounts, it aimed to get to the bottom of the problem.
Like the big mail drops of yesteryear, people are being inundated with email, which gets ignored and deleted. The "wow" factor, once a signature of direct mail pieces, is sorely absent in email
Major league soccer team the Los Angeles Galaxy understood when best to court consumers to opt in to their email marketing program: at games when those consumers are decked out in Galaxy gear. But as agile as the team's stars may be, its on-site acquisition strategy wasn't at all.
For years, "relevancy" has been a buzzword of email marketing. Brands are more aggressively and effectively using analytics to make sure their messages resonate with consumers, though with that opportunity comes challenges.
Dave Scott, founder and CEO of list marketing and lead generation firm Marketfish, talks about how traditional list marketing tangles up small agencies and what his company is doing about it - and about meeting the challenge of reaching the 65-year-old, left-handed golfer in Boca Raton, Fla.
Neil Capel, cofounder and CEO of Sailthru - whose technology automatically tailors email, Web and advertising content across unique users and works with publishers including AOL/Huffington Post and The Daily Beast/Newsweek - discusses the challenges facing producers of email newsletters and what his company did to streamline distribution and boost consumer results for client Business Insider.
Nick Heys, founder and CEO of EmailVision, discusses how email marketing is being used around the globe, shares insights into EmailVision's acquisition of marketing firm smartFOCUS, and talks about email as a customer retention channel.
When it is done right, email is still one of the most effective forms of marketing that companies can use, so it can and should remain as one of your primary communication channels.
For years, Genzyme Corp. has operated a two-track email program to maintain contact with consumers interested in its Synvisc-One treatment for osteoarthritis of the knee. However, its email opt-in form failed to deliver, says Christine Waite, director of Synvisc-One patient marketing at Genzyme.
When a tornado hit Tuscaloosa, Ala., this past April, the American Red Cross had to act quickly to create a response plan. The organization, whose motto is preparedness, takes this philosophy to heart, from disaster relief down to its marketing programs.
Geoff Linton is VP and co-founder of digital marketing firm Inbox Marketer, which helps brands use email, mobile, social media and the Web to build engaged online communities of customers and prospects. Its clients include AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark and Publix. A direct marketing expert with more than 20 years of applied experience in both client and agency roles, Linton's experience spans many sectors, including financial services, telecommunications, consumer packaged goods, technology and manufacturing.
A digital marketing veteran of 17 years who has worked for shops including Acxiom, Digital Impact and Euro RSCG, Christopher Marriott joined email and social media marketing firm StrongMail Systems in mid-August. He has responsibility for the company's New York-based agency services division, working with brands including Travelocity, InterContinental Hotels Group and Discover Financial Services.
Industry executives discuss whether email marketing and social media are a match made in heaven and if the two channels complement one another to build lists and new audiences.
Like throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it sticks, today's email marketing strategy is a hit-or-miss methodology of one size fits all. In one fell swoop of the "send" button, it seems the most common practice is to inundate your audience with as much information as possible, as frequently as possible.
El Paso Playhouse has two methods to communicate with consumers: its twice-weekly email newsletters and Facebook. But the theater wanted a way to link the two to grow both consumer bases.
For Freshpair, an e-commerce company that sells women's lingerie and men's underwear, building an email list is an ongoing priority. To help entice customers to add another email to their inboxes, the site is running regular contests including a "National Underwear Day" contest, which gives consumers the chance to win a free pair of underwear.
Scott Olrich, chief marketing and sales officer at Responsys, discusses his company's expansion into Germany and how email marketing will evolve over the next year.
Johannes Neuer, eCommunications Manager at The New York Public Library, discusses how the library uses triggered emails, how it uses in-library signage to build email lists, and the growing importance of integration of email with mobile and social media.
Social media gets lots of buzz in marketing circles, but most marketers will admit that they haven't been able to monetize the channel. However, some savvy marketers are experimenting with how to use social media as an email acquisition channel, since email is known for its strong ROI.
Outdoor goods retailer Moosejaw Mountaineering faced the predicament of keeping consumers informed about promotions and events via email while not bombarding them to the point that they would unsubscribe.
Email is more effective at driving business results when it's paired with social media — so why do so many marketers stop their measurement at traditional metrics like deliverability and open and click-through rates?
Marc Haseltine, Manager of Email Marketing at National Geographic Marketing Services, discusses email integration with social media, mobile and direct mail, and how the digital channel will be around for years to come.
Nick Heys, founder and CEO of UK-based email marketing software company Emailvision (which operates in 17 countries and has more than 3,000 clients worldwide) and a technology entrepreneur with more than 20 years' experience in direct marketing, talks about the company's recent expansion and the continued convergence of email and channels such as social media and mobile both in the US and abroad.
Multititle publisher Bonnier Corp. is using email marketing to build relationships with customers who are subscribing to its new iPad magazine. Subscribers who opt in to email messages while buying the digital magazine will receive an email survey with questions about themselves, and what they like and dislike about the iPad edition.
Electronic Scrip Inc. (ESI) introduced its eScrip program in 1999 to serve as a fundraising conduit for schools and nonprofits to receive a portion of money from consumer purchases at participating merchants. To broaden the merchant base, ESI debuted a group buying program, Bluebird by eScrip, in May.
Reading and sending email are two of the primary uses of a mobile device. Considering this, those responsible for digital marketing must make an effort to optimize their strategies to be effective and efficient in a mobile environment, especially given the growth in the marketplace.
Tim Kopp, CMO of ExactTarget, discusses how Twitter is being integrated with email, shares examples of multichannel marketing campaigns work and talks about how digital communications are evolving. Kopp has held executive level positions at WebTrends, Coca-Cola and Procter and Gamble.
Dan Springer, chairman and CEO of email services provider Responsys, helped take the company public in April, raising about $70 million in net proceeds.
A recent report from Proofpoint, an email security supplier, found 35% of US companies investigated a suspected email leak of confidential or proprietary information in the past 12 months.
Vintage Tub & Bath customers are not impulse buyers. The online retailer's flagship products are its clawfoot tubs. The site's shopping cart abandonment rate hovered around 80%, a gaping revenue opportunity the company couldn't ignore.
Social media has turned email, an established channel for most marketers, into an exciting new frontier for marketing testing, learning and optimization. By tapping social insights and integrating social and email programs, both programs are strengthened and the customer dialogue is enhanced.
Wasp Barcode Technologies, a Plano, Texas-based small business that manufactures barcode software and solutions for other small businesses, recently went from blasting its entire list with the same emails to segmenting that base and then layering on top a series of triggered email messages.
Greg Cangialosi, the president and CEO of Blue Sky Factory, discusses social data, security issues and split testing.
The timing of email marketing campaigns is an age-old debate for those in the industry. Everyone wants to optimize the timing to improve open rates and sales.
When you are in the midst of executing an email or social marketing campaign — rushing to meet deadlines, pulling together creative, copy and getting approvals — it is easy to lose sight of your campaign objectives.
Founded in 1999, Magazines.com, a magazine subscription service, sells more than 2,000 publications. The company has used email to communicate with customers for nearly a decade, but most of those email communications were "general broadcast," says Nikki Getman, email marketing director at Magazines.com.
Paul Kemshell, cofounder of WRM Media, a global email vendor and list broker based in the UK, discusses current trends in email marketing in Britain and how it compares to the US.
While the first crack of the bat on March 31 signaled the opening of the 2011 Major League Baseball season, the marketing for baseball teams started weeks prior.
Founded more than three decades ago, Indianapolis-based Drum Corps International (DCI) has expanded to become a global nonprofit organization. Each summer, DCI hosts 100 music events in North America as part of its annual Drum Corps International Tour.
Brands use social media in two major ways: creating a social presence on networking sites to communicate with consumers and monitoring what's being said about their brand online.
Not many customers on the National Geographic Society e-mail list opt to receive mail at the new @Facebook.com address. This hasn't stopped the nonprofit from thinking about how its e-mail marketing program should incorporate this new domain.
One of the first questions an e-mail marketer must ask is, "What time should I send at?" Every marketer wants to ensure their message is the one that gets opened, the one that a customer or prospect lingers over, reading and clicking through perhaps to purchase or receive further information.
Ryan Tuttle joined BrightWave Marketing, an e-mail focused digital agency, in January. He's the former COO of Engauge Digital where he rose in the ranks from account manager at Spunlogic, which was later acquired by Engauge.
E-mail marketers that provide service or editorial messages stand a better chance of customers opening and clicking their e-mails than those sending marketing messages, according to a new survey from Epsilon and the Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council.
Florida-based coffee retailer Boca Java recently tested a "three-pack special" campaign against three segments of customers — those who previously ordered two bags, three bags and four bags of coffee.
As a small business, every one of Pet Camp's 10,000 active customers is vital to its continued growth. The pet boarding facility opened in 1997 and about four years ago, it opened a second location dedicated to cats.
Despite marketers' best intentions to weed out e-mail spam, they are sometimes the victim of phishing or spoofing campaigns whereby a spammer uses their information to send out fake e-mails to consumers, sullying their name and customer goodwill.
Web-based e-mail usage has declined among younger consumers, with a 59% drop among 12-17 year-olds, according to comScore's 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review, released last week. But this finding is not a death knell for the future of e-mail marketing.
E-mail can be a powerful strategy for marketers, but challenges in the industry remain, from data management to inbox fatigue to continued deliverability challenges. As president of Infogroup Interactive, Mike Hilts is responsible for leveraging the strengths of both Infogroup's Yesmail and Walter Karl Interactive brands to create interactive marketing solutions and strategies for clients.
The relaunch of Bloomberg Businessweek last April followed a large e-mail survey sent to subscribers designed to get a sense of what they'd like to see from the magazine.
Marketing supports two primary business objectives: business getting and business keeping. Fortunately for marketing professionals, e-mail has firmly established itself as the most cost-effective tool for accomplishing both objectives.
The football organization's database included a handful of different marketing lists from various sources including ticket sales, merchandise sales, season ticket programs and youth programs.
Amazon Web Services, the b-to-b in-the-cloud technology platform of Amazon.com, launched a marketing and transactional e-mail service on January 25 for businesses and developers. Amazon tracks outgoing e-mail messages to ensure they meet ISP standards, queues them for sending, or returns them to a business for corrections.
E-mail marketers are facing many new hurdles in 2011, as well as some old ones. Direct Marketing News chatted with Michelle Eichner, VP of product management at Unica, an IBM company, about the challenges of selective inboxes and the importance of clean lists.
Dot Foods, a food redistributor, previously used very little segmentation in its marketing e-mails. It received complaints from customers who said they received too many messages from the company, which was seeing limited success with its e-mail marketing program.
Marketers continue to struggle to ensure their e-mail marketing messages, images in particular, display accurately on mobile devices.
When your e-mail program is profitable and running smoothly, don't get complacent.
Video provider Movies Unlimited was fortunate to possess solid website traffic, but it had a problem with shopping cart abandonment.
E-mail service providers are changing the way they deliver messages to consumers, introducing social and prioritized inboxes. Spencer Kollas, director of delivery services at StrongMail, talks with Direct Marketing News about how marketers must abide by what his company is calling the "new rules of e-mail deliverability" in 2011.
Microsoft and e-mail service provider Responsys are partnering to enhance the consumer experience in the Windows Live Hotmail service. The companies are promising to create more engaging and rich experiences in Hotmail through the deal. In an interview with Direct Marketing News, Aaron Smith, VP of campaign services at Responsys, discussed what the partnership means for marketers.
The rules of e-mail copywriting are evolving for the age of mobile e-mail. Geoff Smith, VP of field marketing at Epsilon, explains how e-mail marketers are changing their copywriting strategies to reach busy consumers on the go.
Mansell Group, an Atlanta-based technology marketing services company, has acquired Seattle-based e-mail marketing firm WhatCounts. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
E-mail service providers have found a new way to acquire customers in the small business category, a cost-conscious group, by way of an age-old marketing tactic: free samples
Yahoo recently unveiled a new webmail interface worldwide, codenamed "Minty," which follows on Hotmail's recent makeover and Gmail's release of the "Priority Inbox."
The marketing team at La Quinta Corporation, a hotel chain of more than 800 properties, suspected that it could get more out of its frequent traveler program.
Company of the week R2C GroupR2C creates, produces, distributes and measures messages that inspire and compel consumers to do something with a brand to drive commercial advantage. The full-service advertising agency specializes in creative, production, media, analytics and performance. |
What's in our mailbox this month: fitness postcards from Retro Fitness, American Woman Fitness Centers, Union's United Taekwondo Academy, and Bally Total Fitness. (We're totally pumped.)
Social data can improve a brand's bottom line and customer relationships. Just ask brands Infiniti and Diamond Nexus.
Here are three must-have data sets that every marketer should include in his or her email strategy.
