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Elevate your digital marketing through AB and multivariate testing
March 10 2013,
by Chris Winter
With increasing complexity in the digital space marketers should rely more heavily on the channels that resonate with their consumers and have a proven ROI. Learn how email marketing, through its processes of testing and optimization can provide marketers with the smart data they need for improved targeting and improved campaign metrics.
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Don't lose email readers: Go scalable now
Is mobile still an afterthought in your email marketing plans? Watch out. The numbers of opens on mobile devices are changing fast and you definitely don't want to alienate all those people. Luckily, switching to scalable email can be easy and effective, as this example shows.
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8 ways to bore your audience
Are you losing too many subscribers, fans or followers? Maybe you're boring them. Check out these 8 ways to bore your digital marketing audience (and why you shouldn't be doing them).
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Conversational copywriting: 4 simple tricks
You can add a touch of conversational style to your digital marketing copy, even in B to B or serious sectors like finance or pharmaceuticals. Here's how.
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How To Write Effective Subject Lines
That old maxim "You never get a second chance to make a first impression" is never more apt than when applied to email marketing.
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Mobile-friendly email: You can do it
Are you concerned that your email marketing messages may not be rendering properly on mobile devices? Here are a few key points for creating mobile-friendly messages.
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Why Are Email Open Rates on a Declining Trend?
If you've been noticing declining email open rates (OR), you're not alone. From 2008-2011, Inbox Marketer aggregated client data shows North American client open rates are on a declining trend.
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What gets measured, gets done
It can take digital marketers years to build a permission based email list, but attrition can quickly erode it. Here are a few tips on how you can proactively manage your opt-in list and keep an eye on attrition.
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5 reasons to go dynamic
Did you know irrelevant content is the number one reason recipients unsubscribe or stop reading emails? Read how personalizing content can strengthen your email campaigns and your relationships.
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Measuring Email Marketing Success
Measuring topline email marketing data isn't enough. To uncover key insights, marketers need to apply more advanced email measurement. Here's how.
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What will HTML 5 mean for email marketers?
The latest version of HTML does hold some exciting potential for email. But it's still largely potential.
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8 ways to give your emails higher priority
Tools like Google Priority Inbox are only making it harder for your email messages to achieve priority status. Here are some practical tips to get your emails noticed and keep them on top
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5 rules for intros that grab email readers
Apply these simple tips for creating compelling copy that will keep your readers' attention and encourage them to click.
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Cost efficiency metrics provide valuable insights
On the surface, email metrics track campaign performance. But, dig a little deeper and they can reveal efficiencies to drive down marketing costs.
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Email welcomes: Get 'em while they're hot
The good news is, someone just signed up for your email program. The bad news is, if you don't jump carefully on this opportunity, you could lose a hot prospect or even make an enemy
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The Truth Behind Inactives
Between 30%-50% of subscribers can stop opening and clicking on your email messages. Find out how to "reactivate" these "inactives" before you lose them completely.
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Customer Data: What to ask; when to ask it
You get more opt-ins when you ask fewer mandatory questions, but there is less you can do with them. Where's the happy median?
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Setting up your Emarketing database
Try having a conversation with anyone - about anything - without your memory. A good Emarketing database protects you from committing online faux pas.
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The importance of customer data
Collecting customer data comes down to asking yourself two questions: What do I need to know from new subscribers; and when do I need to know it?
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7 Deadly Sins of Email Marketing
We know by now that you're familiar with the basic do's and don'ts of email marketing, but to take your program to the next level, you need to avoid the following devilish blunders.
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Prioritize, Organize, and Optimize
February 25 2010,
by Lauren Amundsen
Now is the perfect time to optimize your email strategy. Read on for Inbox Marketer's 4 hottest tips for optimization.
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Refreshing and Reactivating Inactives
January 19 2010,
by Lauren Amundsen
In our Holiday 2009 issue we defined your inactive subscribers. In this issue, Part 2 offers three ways to get them back in action.
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Oops! How to Fix Email Gaffes
January 19 2010,
by Lauren Amundsen
Everyone makes mistakes, but Inbox Marketer wants you to handle them correctly. Here are three Dos and three Don'ts of making that delicate but crucial email apology.
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Keep Your Friends Close, and Your Inactives Closer: Defining and Reactivating Subscribers: Part 1
December 1 2009,
by Lauren Amundsen
As we celebrate the holiday season, let's take a look back at the best practices that grabbed e-marketing headlines in 2009, and the surefire attention-getters of 2010.
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What 2009 Taught Us About 2010
December 2 2009,
by Lauren Amundsen
As we celebrate the holiday season, let's take a look back at the best practices that grabbed e-marketing headlines in 2009, and the surefire attention-getters of 2010.
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When is the "Right" Time to Send Emails?
We get this question so often that it is worth having another discussion. Is there really a "magic" hour or day to send?
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New Canadian Email Metrics
July 20 2009,
by Jennifer Soule
At a time when our inboxes are inundated with emails, Canadians are opening messages and clicking at an increasing pace. These new metrics are a cumulation of Inbox Marketer click stream data.
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Can-Spam For Canucks
Like Can-Spam, the Electronic Commerce Protection Act (ECPA) will require email marketers to provide working opt-out links, show clearly marked postal addresses in the message body and identify whom the email is being sent by.
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How To Get Inactives Off Their #%&!!
Every email list has its inactive component (people no longer opening and clicking). The trick is to make sure they don't stay that way, and the secret boils down to a single phrase: treat them differently.
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The Future of Newspapers
Contrary to what is increasingly popular opinion, city newspapers will see rebirth, not extinction. Digital will take the "paper" out of newspapers, but certainly not the "news".
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Subject Lines Revisited
The poor neglected subject line may be the Rodney Dangerfield of email marketing, but it's still your best shot at getting messages opened and read. Here are 6 ways to make this happen
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Is Email A Recession Buster?
The only thing for sure about this recession is that it's here to stay. That's why marketers want to inject as much certainty in their campaigns as possible. ROI anyone? Advantage email
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Can-Spam 2.0. Are you ready?
The US Federal Trade Commission's CAN-SPAM changes go into effect July 2008 in a move that will make it easier for email recipients to opt out of unwanted messages. Here is a summary of those changes and how they affect email marketers
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What Works In B2B Email?
Sending email to consumers and B2B contacts can be very different exercises, requiring distinct approaches on copy, tone and content. A good place to start is recognizing that more and more business people read their email on text-only devices such as BlackBerries. Here are our top 5 optimization tips for bringing relevance and resonance to your B2B messages
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Random Learning From "The Summit"
At Marketing Sherpa's recent email summit, it was often the small tidbits of information that proved the most interesting and useful. Like this one: You know the links at the end of email newsletter blurbs that ask you to click to see the entire article? Even the wording of these makes a difference. For this and other tidbits..
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Email's State of The Union
Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated, quipped Mark Twain. Email could well quip the same with each ominous prediction that users will move on to the next new things such as social networks and text messaging. Not so says the latest research
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Email Sclerosis
Does your email conversion funnel narrow and clog prematurely? Is it wide at the brim and then quickly constricts with low open, click and conversion rates? If yes, then you have email sclerosis. Here's the cure.
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Those Difficult To Engage Inactives
It is hard enough to build email lists without big portions of subscribers going inactive every year. Here are the five most important things you can do about it
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Measure & Optimize
Sticking with what works can be the biggest killer of email performance. New anti-spam techniques and changing consumer preferences all conspire to blunt the efficiency of your programs the longer you keep them. Solution? Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but do commit to a process of continuous improvement
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Delivery is The Whole Journey
It is tempting to view email deployment as only a delivery problem, solved purely by precautions such as spam checks and white listing. It helps to view this more holistically - a message isn't "delivered" until it resides in the cerebral cortex of your recipient's brain.
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Word Of Mouth Email
Otherwise known as viral email marketing, the quest is the same. How do you get people to tell their friends about you and your amazing offer or email newsletter? The answer is a proper blend of art and science.
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Perfect Landings
Don't make the last link in your email campaign the weakest - landing pages are too important to neglect. The reason? Think of it as where you typically close the deal. Here's five ways to pilot perfect landings.
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How To Be Relevant
If there was a major trend in the past year, it was recognition that message "relevance" is the prime driver of email marketing success. And although many marketers would like to be trendsetters, few actually commit to the necessary discipline and processes that make this possible
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The truth behind declining Email Metrics
No bragging, the newsletter you are now reading experiences very high open and click rates versus industry averages. But even these have declined over time, right along with those industry averages all across the board. Here are some reasons behind this phenomenon and things you can do about it
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The State of Email Marketing in Canada
A new survey commissioned by Inbox Marketer shows Canadian companies dedicating larger shares of their overall marketing budgets to email marketing and using more sophisticated techniques.
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Permission: No need to beg
'Growing the list' is right up there on the hierarchy of needs of most email marketers, but there is always that initial obstacle of obtaining explicit opt-in permission. No need to beg! Permission is what distinguishes email from all other marketing media and there are many effective ways to get it.
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Singin' Like A One-Note Comedian?
If your emails all have the same purpose, look, feel and - notably - promotional hype to them, chances are you should expand the repertoire. Email customer communications should be as multi-faceted as the relationship itself. Triggered Messaging is an ideal tool to help you achieve this in an automated yet intimate manner
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Why 'Above the Fold'?
The term originated with newspapers, typically folded in half to fit vendor newsstands and coin boxes, and then it entered the direct marketing lexicon. Inbox conducted some recent tests on various client e-newsletters to determine how big an impact article and banner location has on click rates. If the findings are at all surprising, it is their consistency.
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How To Control Hard Bounces
ISPs increasingly view the way you manage invalid email addresses (hard bounces) as an indicator of spamming. Mail twice to the same invalid address and you risk all future communications being blocked by that ISP. Best practice is for your email system to make this an impossibility.
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Eight Ways To Reduce Unsubscribes
If you're experiencing list burnout it could be your subscribers saying they want more choice. Keep your email marketing contacts coming back for more with these simple tips to prevent them from clicking on "unsubscribe".
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Five ways to grow
Build it and they will come doesn't cut it anymore. You've produced a newsletter that engages your audience and provides tons of value, now you want it to reach more people. What are the best ways to opt them in?
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Email and Search Engine Marketing
As the fastest-growing segments in online marketing, email and search engines are natural partners for lead generation and follow-up. Here's how to use them to best advantage
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3 Counter measures for image blocking
Perhaps you have noticed some of the effects already in the form of lower open rates, fewer clicks on ads, or a general lack of responsiveness in campaigns that previously got people very engaged. If so, there are several courses of action to take, and you should take them simultaneously
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Image Blocking
This is becoming all too commonplace among email clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Gmail, as well as major ISPs such as AOL. Although most commercial email traffic is HTML, expect images to take a back seat to well written text.
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When to send
Does it really matter what day of the week or hour of the day to send your message? According to a Return Path survey, it's not so much choosing the really good times, as avoiding the really bad
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Subject line survival training
Before writing that next email subject line, think of the gauntlet of obstacles it will run between leaving your server and entering your reader's consciousness. Here's how to write them.
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New Kid on the Block
Goggle is introducing a new email offering that will significantly impact the way you use this marketing medium. Although great for consumers, it potentially gives competitors a shot at each other's best customers
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Go Postal or Go Email?
In the early days of email, marketers borrowed techniques from years of experience with postal mail. But as the industry matures, distinct differences are emerging. A report from the The Direct Marketing Association shows how the two mail streams are diverging
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Newsletter Design
Don't discard any time-honored techniques you may have learned in the print world. As newspaper and magazine publishers can attest, the best way to maximize ad performance is to have them play second fiddle to your real content.
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Message to Direct Marketers
Some recent North American surveys ranked the annoyance levels consumers have with various forms of marketing - electronic and otherwise. No surprise that telemarketing, pop ups and spam top the list. But permission email proves quite palatable
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Message blocking a growing concern
If you've watched email delivery rates head south in recent months, join the party. It used to be just major ISPs that did the blocking. Now you can also thank an increasingly sophisticated email user, angered enough by unwanted messaging to educate themselves on filters and how to use them
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Beyond the Click
The familiar mantra - 'faster, better, cheaper' - is also email marketing's worst enemy. These very qualities tempt a cavalier approach marketers wouldn't think of applying to other media. Successful email marketing begins with the commitment to measure.
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Email at the crossroads
More and more legitimate email messages disappear without a trace. Blame hyperactive spam filtering and over zealous IT departments. The marketer's challenge is to understand the nature of this problem, how filtering works and what can be done to counteract.
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Don't forget Best Practices
Privacy law tends to be minimum standards to avoid prosecution. You should go considerably further to meet best practices recommended by marketing organizations such as the DMA.
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Data mining - not as difficult as you think
June 9 2003,
by Larry Filler
Mention the term "data mining" to most marketers, and you'll see the fear appear in their eyes, as visions of capital expenditures and endless meetings with IT personnel come into view.
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Getting personal
Personalization usually begins with putting the recipient's first name in the salutation, but can go much deeper depending on the quality of the contact database. Do you know what your customers buy, when they buy and how much?
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How to make it viral
You know you're doing something right in an email campaign when the number of people who open a message exceeds the number in the mailing list because of the sheer volume being forwarded to friends.
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Don't forget the Creative Brief
Effective marketing campaigns begin with a creative brief, and this is especially important with email. This simple document crystallizes the communication goals of a campaign and can mean the difference between unfocused messaging and creative that is relevant and motivating.
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Subject lines that Get Through!
Email subject lines face a new challenge in spam filters, which hunt for words and phrases commonly used in unsolicited messages. Here are some helpful hints to keep your subject lines fresh, interesting and undeleted!
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The Growth of Data Mining
May 5 2003,
by Richard Boire
CRM and data mining have become well established marketing buzz words in the past five years but, as disciplines, they are still in their infancy. The reality is, the principles of successful direct marketing are really what these two are all about.
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What is proper 'permission' - really?
How important is permission in email marketing? It's what separates you from the scourge of the industry - spam. As permission standards tighten, the consequences can be severe if you're not acquainted with the various types.
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Why e-newsletters will be king
Helpful, unobtrusive, relevant, customized and requested - everything that spam is not. As the unsolicited email crisis worsens, the simple, opt-in email newsletter has become the vehicle of choice for readers and marketers alike
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How MGI went direct
MGI decided to use its growing stream of online registrations to diversify from low-margin retail sales. The solution lay in selling direct and the path was email marketing.
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Mastering the Subject Line
More than a few email marketing campaigns have found a well written and compelling subject line to be the single biggest determinant of response.
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Seven steps to strategic email marketing
Email is easy; marketing isn't. You can triple your results by adhering to some tried and true principles of email marketing, all derived from industry best practices
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