Email me, please! (Part I of II)

We all know that email is critical to the online shopping experience and to customer satisfaction. But would you believe that transactional emails are more important to customers than customer service reps who can answer questions? We were surprised, too, but that was the finding of a recent consumer survey.

73% of respondents in a recent survey we did through Return Path’s Authentic Response survey division said that email was “very important” to the experience with an additional 25% rating it as “important.” Only 2% said email confirmation were not important. The other elements we asked consumers to rate included customer service, ability to find products, return policy, free shipping. Of those, only free shipping scored as high as email messages to confirm orders in importance to consumers.

Take advantage of the vital role that transactional messages play in your relationship with your customers. …

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Inbox Reach Controlled by Reputation – Not Content – 83 Percent of the Time

Return Path launches Sender Score Resender, a new tool enabling marketers to test whether delivery failure happens because of content or reputation New York (October 16, 2006) – When commercial email does not get delivered to the inbox, the sender’s …

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Make Email List Rental More Effective with Contextual Marketing

The popularity of search in the last few years comes down to effectiveness. And that effectiveness is driven by intention. When someone types “Sony HDTV” into the Google search bar, they are probably in the market for a new television. Frankly, it doesn’t really take a marketing genius to take advantage of these types of opportunities.

We have found that similar low-hanging fruit can be found on the email side. …

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3 Steps for Getting Ready for the Microsoft Unsubscribe Button

Even the most diligent, best-practices-based email marketer will see marketing and transactional emails land in the bulk folder at email providers like Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo. This is generally caused by high consumer complaints. And we can all kind of get behind this idea, right? If consumers complain about your email then maybe you aren’t really following best practices.

Except that we also know that a high proportion of consumers use the “this is spam” button as a proxy for unsubscribing from legitimate email – up to 37% according to a recent Return Path survey. And this, rightfully, annoys marketers. They don’t want to be penalized if subscribers have simply grown tired of their offering.

So, it is exciting to see the recent news that Microsoft is planning to add an unsubscribe button in the header of its emails. …

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Moving Fast … financially speaking

We just received some more great news – Return Path ranked #4 on Deloitte’s New York Technology Fast 50 list! The list is based upon revenue growth over the past 5 years. This is another strong achievement for us to be proud of, on the heels of being selected #167 in the Inc 500 list, and a solid follow up to our #3 ranking on Deloitte’s list last year.

During the award presentation last week, Deloitte played a video of CEOs from the top 10 companies responding to various questions about their companies. Matt did a great job representing Return Path and clearly articulating how we are fortunate to have the attributes needed to grow a company: passionate employees, solid investors and of course, great customers.

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6 Simple Steps to Response-Driving Subject Lines

I have a secret. I love to write subject lines. It’s a task that many email marketers dread, but I think it’s fun! It must go back to my days on my college newspaper, writing headlines.

And, in my work with Return Path clients, I get to help write a lot of subject lines. So, I thought I’d share with you all the method Strategic Services has developed for writing subject lines. Following these 6 steps will make the task of writing subject lines easier and more effective. …

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Bounceback Handling Debate

Last week, Dylan Boyd wrote an article about bouncebacks for Media Post’s Email Insider. The article had some good points about the impact of bounces on your email program, though it left me feeling the need to clarify a few differentiators between bounce rates and delivery rates, and the overall reasons bounces occur. I wrote a response that ran in today’s Online Media Daily. To learn more about bounce handling and delivery impacts, read on, and let me know if you have any questions.

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Entice More B2B Offline Customers to Online Relationships

Since they have a relationship with your company, your existing customers should be the easiest group to entice onto your email list. Yet, many B2B marketers have email addresses for a very small portion of their offline customer base. Why do customers — even satisfied customers -hesitate to give you permission to email them?

The answer is, we marketers have let them down. A recent survey by Marketing Sherpa shows the very low tolerance business and technology professionals have for irrelevant or uninteresting email. …

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Hotmail delivery issues? Think Sender Score Certified.

Today’s Email Insider column details three steps legit marketers should take to get delivered to Hotmail. It leaves off one of the most obvious — Return Path’s Sender Score Certified. Hotmail – and more than 150K other domains — use Sender Score Certified as a “safelist” to separate reputable senders from bad ones. If delivery to Hotmail is important to you …

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How to Use Email List Rental to Make Q4 Merry

Across the land marketers in every industry are gearing up for their third and fourth quarter efforts. For business-to-business companies the fourth quarter is a time to grab the last of the ’06 budget and get themselves into mix for ’07. For business-to-consumer companies it’s all about hitting the spending trifecta: back-to-school, Halloween and Christmas…

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