Hearst Magazines and the Direct Marketing Association will launch the second annual "Hearst Challenge" on June 1. The media company will give a $25,000 prize to the entrant who can best build a model to predict whether a consumer will open or click through an email promotion.
It's hard to imagine life without Google at this point. (Remember AltaVista?) Between its Web search, Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps products, the company is nearly ubiquitous for people who use a computer every day.
Google, well-known for its April Fools' jokes (remember Topeka?), put a new spin on its email service Gmail for its 2011 spoof. If you were hanging out on Google.com April 1, you might have seen this message just below the search box: "New! Gmail Motion: Turn your email into a true body of work."
April 01, 2011
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.
April 01, 2011
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.
April 01, 2011
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.
April 01, 2011
Rod Witmond, SVP for production management and marketing at Cardlytics, and Oscar Padilla, director of interactive services at Vertis Communications discuss whether brands should abandon e-mail marketing for social media.
March 24, 2011
Pitney Bowes has named Chuck Cordray the first president of its Volly platform, effective April 4. He previously worked as SVP and GM of Hearst Magazines Digital Media. Pitney Bowes is planning a second-half 2011 launch for Volly, which will enable brands to send messages such as bills, promotional mail and catalogs directly to consumers through an app.
March 22, 2011
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.
Every once in a while, I come across a piece of marketing that is so insightful, well-timed and relevant that I can't help but reach for my wallet. This happened to me about a week ago.
Domino's Pizza launched a Facebook contest on March 14 encouraging consumers to vote for their favorite style of pizza. The delivery chain is promoting the contest to opted-in members of the company's e-mail database, as well as its Facebook fans.
This is the first year that I've paid attention to the marketing that surrounds filling out my NCAA tournament brackets. Having paid attention, I see how oblivious I'd been.
March 08, 2011
Marketers can easily find themselves caught in a difficult situation when it comes to maintaining opt-in e-mail lists.
Meet the new SVP of marketing at Silverpop: Eric Holmen. The marketing technology company hired the former SVP of The Marketing Arm's wireless division in mid-January with Holmen taking office last Monday, February 21. The move marks the latest in the 39-year-old's twenty-year career in marketing (Yes, he's worked in marketing since he was 19 years old. Seriously.).
March 01, 2011
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.
March 01, 2011
Stephen Silverstein, CEO of Not Your Average Joe's restaurants, wanted a better, more comprehensive way to survey customers at the Massachusetts-based chain's 16 locations.
March 01, 2011
Choosing to ignore the digital aspects of direct marketing will likely earn your brand the consumers' collective cold shoulder. Just ask The North Face and Patagonia — two outdoor apparel retailers with distinct customer approaches that effectively blend e-commerce efforts with catalog mailings.
March 01, 2011
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.
Constant Contact, an e-mail marketing software provider, acquired social CRM company Bantam Live for $15 million on February 15. The deal will allow Constant Contact to integrate a social CRM platform in its e-mail services to develop a unified repository of customer data across all channels, including clicks, e-mail opens, survey responses, event participation and social media interactions.
E-mail marketing is far from dead, but marketers will have to adjust to social media, a range of mobile devices, prioritized inboxes and new security concerns, said Anita Absey, SVP of global sales and services at Return Path, on February 10.
February 09, 2011
Capturing valuable data about potential customers who have shown enough interest to visit your website is crucial to succeed in today's industry.
February 08, 2011
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.
E-mail services provider Goodmail Systems will cease operations on February 8, its chief executive told Direct Marketing News. The Mountain View, CA-based company employed 35 and was founded in 2003. Daniel Dreymann, cofounder and CEO of Goodmail, said the biggest reason for the shutdown was an aborted acquisition attempt by a firm he would only call a "Fortune 500 company."
February 01, 2011
Online retailers drove a holiday season of aggressive discounts that may be ingraining a culture of 24/7 bargain hunting among their customers.
February 01, 2011
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.
February 01, 2011
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.
February 01, 2011
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.
February 01, 2011
As consumers are faced with rising healthcare costs, competition among the country's leading drugstore chains, CVS and Walgreens, has increased, fueling sector-wide acquisitions and dueling marketing campaigns.
February 01, 2011
Just minutes after the ball dropped to usher in the new year, my Blackberry buzzed. I had already hugged or called my closest family and friends but was happy to accept the good wishes of another.
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.
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.
