Apr
13
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
Our partner Emailcenter, an email service provider in the UK, recently polled British consumers about their inbox habits and preferences. It's a good study (free registration required) and the report is full of wonderful ideas to improve email marketing response and deliverability.
The main findings are straightforward:
1. Consumers get a lot of email.
2. Relevancy matters.
3. Many marketers take a short term, aggressive approach to email.
It's not surprising the study finds that most email marketing is pretty terrible - it's irrelevant, untargeted and poorly timed. What the study really points out is that consumers notice. ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Apr
09
What: You order has arrived email
Who: Adagio Teas
Why we love it: Most e-tailers send a series of post-purchase emails that often include an order confirmation and a shipping notice. But very few send a message to tell you your order has been delivered. This quick note from Adagio Teas lets you know...
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Apr
06
By Stephanie Miller
VP, Global Market Development
In a meeting today, a UK-based CEO said to me, "Isn't email dead already?" I guess if you equate "alive" with "the coolest new thing to hit the airwaves this month," then yes, I suppose email remains in the opposite camp: the respectable position of being a proven, trusted and incredibly powerful direct marketing channel.
Our friend Dela Quist, founder and CEO of AlchemyWorx in Britain seems to have the same kinds of visceral reaction that I do when hearing over and over again that email is dead. He discusses it here on the DMA-UK blog and the comments from others are quite interesting as well.
For years now pundits have been predicting the death of email - first because of spam, then because of RSS, then ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Mar
31
By George Bilbrey
President
The death of email hypothesis goes something like this:
I love the data that the Pew Center for Internet research produces (good AND free). Recently they released their "Generations Online in 2009" study about how different age groups use the internet. So what can we glean from the study?
Major findings:
So that's not too surprising, right? When you're young you have more of a social life ...Tell me more
Categories: Response
Mar
26
By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting
The relationships that email marketers strive to build with their customers and prospects follow many of the same practices that exist for nurturing and growing personal relationships. When those practices are ignored or taken for granted, the relationships rarely flourish and often fizzle out quickly.
For example, when it comes to finding a mate, no one expects to get married without having a first date. When it comes to email marketing, welcome messages are just like a first date. They set expectations about what's to come, give the subscriber a chance to evaluate the email program's potential benefits, and provide the subscriber with enough information and incentive to take the desired next step (in the case of email that's open, click or purchase).
A successful first date will always lead to a second date, and an optimized welcome message will increase the likelihood that a subscriber will interact with future messaging and prime the subscriber to become active and engaged over the long-term.
And yet, many marketers still don't give the welcome message the respect it deserves. This was evident in a recent study we conducted of the email experiences created by online retailers: "Increasing Revenues by Optimizing Emailing Practices with Online Buyers." You can download it now.
We bought merchandise from 45 retailers to see ...
Tell me moreCategories: Response
Mar
18
By Bonnie Malone
Director, Strategic Services
Industry news provider, Marketing Vox, recently published an article featuring the results of the newly released "View From the Inbox 2009" study conducted by Merkle. A number of interesting engagement factors were highlighted and the report serves as an important reminder for the marketer to maintain their diligence during these difficult revenue-generating times.
In the current economic environment, many companies are focusing their marketing efforts more heavily in online avenues due to the agility and low cost of the channel. Email, being one of the highest ROI generators, is often an easy communication medium for companies to leverage. And for executives looking to cut costs and drive more revenue, the temptation is high to send more email, in bulk, more frequently.
According to the Merkle report ...
Categories: Response
Mar
11
By Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting
I'm proud to announce the launch of a new study on email experience: Increasing Revenues by Optimizing Emailing Practices with Online Buyers. You can download it now and also sign up for our March 19 webinar.
For this study the Professional Services Group bought merchandise from 45 retailers to see what type of promotional email they would send to us as buyers. Then we also signed up for the same retailer email programs using a different email address and not making a purchase. This allowed us to compare the first promotional message sent to a buyer with the first promotional message sent to a prospect - would it be different? Would the retailer use purchase and demographic data to target the buyer promotion and make it more relevant, or would buyers and non-buyer be treated the same?
In most cases we found that the email wasn't different and wasn't targeted based on that initial purchase. The study also reveals interesting findings about ...
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Mar
05
What: Prominent email sign-up
Who: BabyCenter
Why we love it: The BabyCenter homepage is designed to convert new visitors to email subscribers. Besides being amazingly prominent, the process is super-easy: it only requires...
Categories: Response
Earlier this year the Email Experience Council submitted a request to the email marketing community to review their proposal to replace the term "open rate" with "render rate" and to begin using a new metric called the Unique Email Action Rate. The EEC proposes that render rate more accurately reflects what is actually taking place in a subscriber's email client: an email is considered rendered when a tracking pixel is downloaded in an email, either in a fully opened email or in the preview pane. The Unique Email Action Rate takes opens and clicks into account to measure the overall success of the message in its ability to engage readers. The formula is as follows ...
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By Bonnie Malone
Director, Strategic Services
I disagree with the EEC's efforts to redefine the methods marketers - and the industry as a whole - use to track email marketing behaviors. While changing the terminology from "open rate" to "render rate" may be a more accurate reflection of the measurement, a new name is simply a distraction from the real issue: accurate measurement of the impact of the email channel.
There are a number of challenges email marketers face every day to compile any sort of reporting on the performance of their program, including:
These challenges not only make it difficult ...
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