Join Us at the Online Trust Forum 2011

On October 17th – 19th, Return Path will be attending the 6th Annual OTA Online Trust Forum in Washington DC. The theme this year is “Realizing the Promise of Trust,” and we are thrilled to be participating in and sponsoring this event. The Forum will address the business, technical and regulatory challenges impacting online trust and confidence in online services and communications. We’re looking forward to keynotes by the Federal Trade Commission, Center for Democracy & Technology and Publishers Clearing House.

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Word of the Week: Video

The push for video in email is simple. Email marketers have seen huge boosts in response rates, as well as an increase in conversions and revenue when video has been present. A recent Mediapost article reminds us of the huge gains in click through rates and engagement when video in email is present. They state an example of shoeline.com increasing sales conversions by 44% when using video in their emails. Past case studies from other companies have also had similar results.

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A New Practical Application for Email

How many times have you made a purchase and needed to return an item, but couldn’t find the receipt? Or, the receipt got accidentally washed in that new pair of pants and is totally unreadable? Or, your husband made the purchase and has no idea where the receipt could be – or if he actually ever got one?

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Prospecting Under CASL

Since Canada recently passed a new national anti-spam law (which I’ll refer to as CASL – Canada’s Anti-Spam Law) I’ve been thinking about how this may affect lead generation and business prospecting by email. Honestly the CAN-SPAM Act is not hard to comply with, and still folks fail to meet the standard – and CASL appears to me to make things a bit tougher.

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Word of the Week: Opt-in

This week’s Word of the Week is opt-in, where I highlight some blogs and articles dealing with opt-in and how marketers depend on proper and effective opt-in methods for higher list growth and deliverability.

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More Questions Around “Building Reputation and Spurring Engagement in the Age of Social and Mobile”

I recently presented a webinar for the AMA entitled “Building Reputation and Spurring Engagement in the Age of Social and Mobile.” You can listen to the recording. We had a great attendance, and didn’t have the opportunity to answer all of the audience questions. I promised the listeners I would follow-up in a blog post, so as promised; here are the answers to your questions.

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How to Be a Great at Ping Pong and Email Marketing

I love ping pong, and that’s probably a bit of an understatement. I may have gotten a blister from playing so much during my last visit, but I will neither confirm nor deny that. Luckily, I’m not the only one who appreciates a good game of ping pong. I’ve had a lot of fun spending time with some terrific Return Path players. As it turns out, ping pong is actually good for you, according to this article sent around by our own Senior Director of People, Cathy Hawley, who beat me the last time I visited. I’m currently in training for the rematch.

So what does ping-pong have to do with email marketing? It turns out that the best practices that apply to optimizing your email marketing campaigns and the skills required to win a game of ping pong are actually very similar. Let me elaborate…

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Email marketers must come to their Census

Since 1801 the UK has set aside one day every decade for the Census – a nationwide count of all the people and households in the country to create a snapshot of the population. The decennial Census has been sent out to every household in the UK in the last few weeks, and forms must be completed and returned by post, or filled out online, by Sunday (March 27). This got me thinking what we’d find if we were to carry out an email Census at the same time.

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Part 1 of 3: Email and Social – Better Together

Everyone wants to be a part of the newest, latest, sexiest thing. Thought you were hip with that iPad you got for Christmas? Nope. Now that iPad 2 was just launched, you have dated technology. You might as well be watching movies on a VCR. On a tube TV.

And so it is with marketing. Social media, which seems to come in a new flavor every other month, is hot, new and fun. Email is, most agree, not. But despite the media’s love of talking about social media and rumblings about the decline of email, email marketing is still very relevant and powerful because it gets results.

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How Associations Can Use Email to Enhance the “Members Only” Experience

I’m currently working on a complex consulting project for a large US-based membership organization. The goal of the project is to help the client improve engagement with the email program and increase key performance metrics. As I work to finalize my recommendations, I keep coming back to a quote made famous by Groucho Marx: “I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.”

What does this have to do with email best practices? A lot actually.

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