Triggered Email Messages: Evaluate Your Performance with these New Benchmarks

Triggered Email Messages: Evaluate Your Performance with these New Benchmarks

"Epsilon released its Q4 2013 Email Trends and Benchmarks Report earlier this month and there’s some exciting new data here on triggered messages that will help marketers evaluate their email programs." Epsilon released its Q4 2013 Email Trends and Benchmarks Report earlier this month and there’s some exciting new data here...

Continue reading
Tags:
  11036 Hits

Relevance is Irrelevant

Relevance is Irrelevant

"I call bullshit. Because - in email- relevance is irrelevant, once the consumer chooses you. (Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth music.) Why do I know this? Statistics."

Continue reading
Tags:
  9917 Hits

Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization

"Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the technical term for strategically planning your tests. It’s the active process of defining the metric you’re trying to optimize, creating several hypotheses about what tweaks in your campaigns may increase your conversion rate, and measuring the effect of each hypothesis. It applies equally to email and landing pages, but I’ll limit the discussion here to email as much as possible."

Continue reading
Tags:
  12078 Hits

What’s next? Why Inbox data will fuel the next wave of email innovation

What’s next? Why Inbox data will fuel the next wave of email innovation

"Where are the big opportunities for email innovation over the next several years? My bet is on the Inbox."

Continue reading
Tags:
  9472 Hits

The State Of Email Marketing In South Africa

The State Of Email Marketing In South Africa

"Email Marketing in South Africa is truly in it's infancy. There are few true ESP's in South Africa, and very few companies truly using Email Marketing to it's full potential."

Continue reading
  13024 Hits

Leveraging Your Next Logical Product to Create Repeat Customers

Leveraging Your Next Logical Product to Create Repeat Customers

"If you’re a marketer, you’ve no doubt heard about the 80/20 rule. For those of you who haven’t, it’s simple: 80 percent of your revenue comes from 20 percent of your customer base.If that is indeed the rule, it means the vast majority of your business is coming from repeat customers....

Continue reading
Tags:
  10865 Hits

Buying on the Quarter: How to Get Your Best Deal From Any Vendor

Buying on the Quarter: How to Get Your Best Deal From Any Vendor

"Serious buyers will ask a lot of questions on a number of topics. They include service, implementation, integration, support, product roadmap, financial information on the vendor, timelines for contract negotiations and other elements that are necessary to make a move. Aside from asking a lot of questions, serious buyers tend to involve more people from their organizations to gain exposure to the platforms. As you work to understand how you may be getting scored by your vendor;"

Continue reading
  8015 Hits

The Green, Yellow, and Red Lights of Email Marketing

The Green, Yellow, and Red Lights of Email Marketing

"And what's the process for controlling email marketers and taking away the power of the channel? It's easy. Call them a spammer."

Continue reading
  7038 Hits

Using Cause Related Emails as a PR Tool

Using Cause Related Emails as a PR Tool

"Many companies use cause-related marketing to boost their brand image, build goodwill and create positive PR. This is widely apparent at holiday time and during October, for example, as businesses jump on the breast cancer awareness bandwagon."

Continue reading
Tags:
  7240 Hits

Top Resources for 'Best Practice' in Email Creative

Top Resources for 'Best Practice' in Email Creative

"The body of knowledge on best practices for email creative has grown exponentially in the time since I started working in online in the late 1980's at Compuserve. Today there are dozens of resources for traditional and cutting edge best practices in email creative. Here are some of my favorites:"

Continue reading
Tags:
  16154 Hits

Six Tips to Help Align Your Business and Your Teams

Six Tips to Help Align Your Business and Your Teams

"When your organization goes through change, it means you have to re-align your business leaders, your teams, your vendors and sometimes, your customers. What steps can you take to get back on track once you realize you are not aligned? "

Continue reading
  5489 Hits

The Creepy Side of Email and Big Data

The Creepy Side of Email and Big Data

"Personalization is touted in email circles as a positive. I tell clients all the time that including a recipient's first name and other personal details in a message has been shown to increase engagement. But there are times when personalization can be creepy."

Continue reading
Tags:
  24014 Hits

3 Tips to Get Your Email Program Goals in Tip Top Shape!

3 Tips to Get Your Email Program Goals in Tip Top Shape!

"What do you want to accomplish this year in your email program? Sounds simple right? "

Continue reading
  19163 Hits

Jobs

In this journey, many of us have had a lot of different jobs and worn different hats. I've had more than most. Recently I made a list of all the jobs I've had. Believe or not, here it is: I worked as a Sprout Farmer. I have been a grave digger...

Continue reading
  12753 Hits

Why Testing is Hard

Why Testing is Hard

"The question is, if everyone wants to test, then why isn’t everyone testing? The answer is that testing is simple in concept but really, really hard to execute. But not for the reasons you think."

Continue reading
Tags:
  13888 Hits

Make Data Privacy & Security Your New Year’s Resolution:

Make Data Privacy & Security Your New Year’s Resolution:

"Marketers, service providers and app developers alike must protect their data no matter where it resides. This includes holding service providers accountable by demanding they adopt the best practices available."

Continue reading
Tags:
  8973 Hits

The Ho-Ho and Ho-Hum of this season's Holiday Email Campaigns

The Ho-Ho and Ho-Hum of this season's Holiday Email Campaigns

As we start a new year, let's take a look at Christmas emails past. The 2013 holiday season was filled with promotional emails galore. Here are a few that caught my attention.

Continue reading
Tags:
  16221 Hits

Move Your Organization through the Process of Change

Move Your Organization through the Process of Change

"Problem: How do you deal with, and lead, the changes in an organization? Answer: You understand the process of change and apply it to the situation and person."

Continue reading
  5773 Hits

When Things Go Wrong: Handling Apology Emails

When Things Go Wrong: Handling Apology Emails

As email marketers, we cringe over what can possibly go wrong with our deployments - typos, broken images, broken links. And we lose sleep at night over the even bigger bloopers - missing or expired promo codes, products that sell out before the promotion is over, website glitches and more.

Continue reading
Tags:
  25167 Hits

Analytics and Easy, Actionable Tips for Email List Conversion

Analytics and Easy, Actionable Tips for Email List Conversion

"Back in September I wrote a post for this blog about the mindset of great email marketers: that they are always looking at the data and using the quantitative results to improve their future performance."

Continue reading
Tags:
  18701 Hits