Do You Believe in Magic? Take Our Quiz and Find Out If Your Email Program Conjures Frogs or Princes

By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting

I'm thrilled to announce the launch of Return Path's new email marketing response quiz: Are You An Email Marketing Wizard?

We get asked all the time by clients and prospects how their email programs compare to the best in the industry and what best practices they should be implementing to increase email channel ROI. With this Quiz, email marketers can now benchmark themselves based on the answers to ten questions about their email program. Find out if your email marketing skills qualify you as an Apprentice, a Magician, a Sorcerer or a Wizard.

Each of the 10 questions are designed to rate your email program on whether the best practices you use are basic (e.g., sending a welcome message); advanced (e.g., implementing segmentation); or best-in-class (e.g., employing a testing plan to optimize results). We also provide you with helpful information throughout the quiz that explains ...

Categories: Response

Retailers: Certification is a Holiday Response Booster

By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development

Retailers enjoy some of the lowest complaint rates in the business. Perhaps this is because of the "shopper mentality" among consumers. Many like to be treated like VIPS or insiders when it comes to sales and new product lines, and so even the high frequency (up to 10+ messages per week during the holidays) doesn't seem to drive a lot of complaints for retailers with strong brand affinity.

Problem is, it doesn't drive that much response, either. Sending more messages is not enough. The messages must offer more value.

I spoke at the Shop.org Annual Summit this week and met with dozens of retailers who are doing great things to strengthen their brand relationships through social and multi channel experiences. Email is such an integral part of the ecommerce equation, so it's well past time to take it off auto pilot and start to improve relevancy through segmentation and added value.

I blogged about this at the Shop.org site. Let me know what your thoughts are - and if you'd like a copy of the full presentation.

In conversations with retailers about how to improve relevancy, one thing is very clear ...

Categories: Email Deliverability | Response

Cool Email Idea: Personality Quiz to Drive Engagement, Viral Marketing

Smart consumer product marketers know that email can be a great at branding and building loyalty. But how do you encourage interaction when direct sales is not the goal? Maybelline recently featured a...

Categories: Response

Mary Queen of Shops: Cool Retail Ideas from the UK That Work in Any Market

By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting

The BBC recently aired a documentary called "Mary Portas: Save Our Shops." The narrator was Mary Portas, a UK retail and brand expert who also has her own popular series on BBC 2 called Mary Queen of Shops. The documentary, much like her show, included her vision for how local (meaning, UK-based) independent retailers can improve store traffic and revenue by emulating both traditional and innovative tactics that the big retail brands have found successful.

Why do our shops need saving? Because in the UK, like the rest of the world, the retail industry has been hit hard. According to BBC research, over 35,000 shops could be closed during 2009 in the UK, and Experian research shows that High Street shops (US translation: brand-name stores generally found in city and town centers) could be closing at a rate of 100 per day, a scary statistic considering that the UK retail sector generates £900 billion annually and one in six workers are employed by the retail industry, according to BBC research.

So Mary has her work cut out for her. ...

Categories: Response

Measuring Digital Marketing - And a Free Pass to DigiDay SOCIAL in New York

By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development

Digital marketing data has a tendency to overwhelm us, limiting the intelligence we gain and filling our days with just too much noise. As we expand our email marketing strategies to include social marketing, our spreadsheets bloat with conversation metrics, engagement measures and viral counts. As always, the way to stay sane (and strategically use data to meet your forecasts) is to identify the most important metrics and focus there. I hereby give you license to ignore some data points, in order to make better business decisions.

For example, if your executives only care about total revenue, then tracking referrals per subscriber is only important if you can track total sales by forwarded messages. Of course, to optimize that revenue, you will want to segment by the most active social influencers on your file.

If your social marketing strategy is all about brand, then tracking the ...

Categories: Response

Don't Forget About Email, And Do It Better

By Matt Blumberg
CEO & Chairman

Over the holiday weekend Fred Wilson, venture capitalist and prominent tech blogger, had a great post titled "Don't Forget About Email." As a proponent of all kinds of new messaging services, Fred's post serves to remind marketers that while hot new technologies like Twitter are great, they don't replace the need for smart, well-executed email marketing. [Disclosure: Fred is an investor in both Twitter and Return Path.] He gives some examples of emails that he especially likes from Hype Machine and Etsy.

I'm sure you're not surprised that we at Return Path agree that email is important. But what I think is really important for marketers to think about NOW is that ...

Categories: Response

Thinking Holidays? Think List Growth

By Bonnie Malone
Director, Response Consulting

As retailers begin to gear up their marketing plans for the holidays, driving store traffic is a concern for many. Fierce competition, lower consumer spending, and budget cuts are making it more difficult than ever to get customers through the door. And, while it certainly is necessary to focus on the best way in this economic environment to attract a crowd, it's just as important to have a plan for maximizing the impact that crowd can have once they are in store. More than the immediate satisfaction of meeting Q4 revenue goals, a well thought-out and executed strategy for list growth can compel the year-end revenue stream forward into 2010.

Think about the checkout process in your stores and consider weaving a few of these ideas into your Q4 plans to make the most of this year's holiday traffic:

Maximize checkout: Use the point-of-sale to gather customer email addresses. Both integrated cash-register collection and a manual collection form can work effectively to grow your file.

Bounce back: Offer customers ...

Categories: Response

Cool Email Idea: Self-Segmentation Email

What: Self-Segmentation Email

Who: State Line Tack

Why we love it: Looking for a quick and easy way to segment your file? Sometimes the best answer is to ask subscribers what they want. State Line Tack sent an email asking its newsletter subscribers to fill in a profile and identify themselves as either Western or English style riders. In horseback riding these distinctions are quite meaningful - different gear for both horse and rider, different types of clothing styles and so on. By getting subscribers to identify their riding style they can more easily focus their emails on the right products. Also, the whole process was simple: click on the update link, go to the form, choose your preference and hit submit. The whole thing was done in under 15 seconds.

What would make it better: The email itself should have been ...

Categories: Response

Happier Holidays Begin Now

By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting

It's that time of year again. If you're an email marketer, you're probably not thinking about hosting a back yard BBQ or staking out a spot on your favorite beach. Your head (and your company's bottom line) is much more focused on what's going to be in Santa's sleigh this year and how you can use email to ensure that your customers will be decking their halls with your products this holiday season.

Most email marketers plan their holiday strategy in the summer, and this year is no different. However, this year does bring with it a greater set of challenges. The current economic climate is stagnant at best. While the financial pundits predict signs of an upturn any day now, that hasn't translated to consumer spending. Purse strings are tight and marketers are going to have to work harder than ever this year to stand out from the rest of the holiday inbox clutter, resonate with their customers and provide relevant messaging that encourages brand loyalty and purchasing activity.

So what can a forward-thinking marketer do? The first step is to ...

Categories: Response

Need More Email Revenue? Check Out These Ideas

By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting

I had the chance to speak at the DMA UK's Digital Planning Conference, "Exploding the Digital Myth" last week. The conference agenda was focused on helping marketers integrate the various digital technologies available to them to target consumers with the right offers at the right time and in the right medium. The second-half of this two-day conference will be held this Thursday in London. Click here for registration details.

On the agenda with me were six other speakers, all experts in the digital space with deep experience in producing successful digital marketing campaigns. I was particularly interested by what Mark Brill, CEO of txt4ever and Chair of the DMA's Mobile Council had to say about mobile marketing. He pointed out that mobile is an extremely versatile digital medium with the capacity to strengthen CRM, retention and brand loyalty initiatives by handling customer service issues, while also focusing on customer acquisition through targeted marketing messages, as well as aiding in commerce through the management of e-transactions. It's no surprise that mobile is so successful, especially with statistics like these ...

Categories: Response