Be Relevant! Email Marketing Blog

What do you want to learn more about?

I am looking for some inspiration for content for this blog, so I figured I'd just ask you what you would like to read about:) 

What are the main questions that you struggle with when it comes to email marketing? What do you want to learn more about?

I will use your answers to create content for this blog, so every question that you ask in the below form will get answered. That's a promise!

(if you read this post in your RSS reader or in my newsletter: you need to go to my blog to view the form and enter your questions).

Thanks a lot for your help!

Please take this short survey

I would really appreciate it if you could take a couple of minutes to complete this short reader survey.

Video: Introducing the Email Marketer's Club

I spent some time this afternoon playing around with screenr.com and decided to create this short video about the Email Marketer's Club.

   

Are you looking for a place to hang out with other email marketers or do you have a question about email marketing that you need an answer on? Then I invite you the join the Email Marketer's Club!

  

Message for my Dutch speaking blog readers

At the risk of sounding very exotic to most of my readers, I am going to post this message in Dutch ;-)

Beste nederlandstalige lezers, ik wil jullie via deze weg even laten weten dat ik sinds een tijdje ook een nederlandstalig blog over e-mailmarketing heb genaamd Inbox 2.0. Ben benieuwd wat jullie ervan vinden!

Oh ja, als je zin hebt om mee te bloggen op mijn nederlandstalig blog, laat het me dan even weten!

The Email Marketer's Club is Growing!

Back in 2007 I started a community for email marketers, called the Email Marketer's Club. My main goal was to give my blog readers an opportunity to meet, network and share knowledge with each other in an independent environment.

Today the Email Marketer's Club has over 2,550 members from all around the world and it grows every day!

I would like to thank Matt Vernhout for his invaluable help in running the Email Marketer's Club and I would also like to thank all our members that are active daily on our forum! 

Here's an overview of some of our most recent discussions:

• Tips for sending bilinqual e-mails
• Bought Lists are better than Organic Lists
• Erroneous Yahoo! Bounces
• Delivered Emails ... Never Received
• Should ESPs talk to each other?
• Header/Body Tags
• ESP link tracking - max length?
• Email Preference Center Best Practices

For the second half of 2009 we have some exciting new stuff coming up on the Email Marketer's Club, including educational webinars, regular calls and more. So make sure to join the Email Marketer's Club if you're not a member yet!

If you are a member already, make sure to sign up for weekly updates that contain an overview of new forum posts in that week.

25 Reasons Why I Don't Follow You on Twitter (Loren McDonald)

Loren McDonald just posted 25 reasons on his brandnew blog on why he doesn't follow you on Twitter. These are my favorites:

4. You are following 1,243 people and 47 are following you. (Hmm, have you considered using deodorant?)
7. I scan your last 20 or so Tweets and they all involve phrases like: anyone got any RedBull, I think I might be drunk, can someone Tweet me a cab, whoa I’m really f**ked up, just saw this really hot babe; how did I end up here. (I have nothing against being 24, single and living life to its fullest – well, oh maybe I do, as following you would be just too painful for this card-carrying member of the AARP.)
11. Your Twitter handle is: @bigstick. (OK, well I’m happy for your being rewarded at birth, but remember size isn’t everything.)
14. Your Bio says: Nothing, it is blank. (Sorry, you FAILed Twitter 101.)
19. You are a company I could be interested in, but ALL of your posts are links to press releases or requests to vote for you in the Shorty (or similar) Awards. (Show me you can contribute to the conversation, and I’ll reconsider.)

Read the rest here.

I'll add in a couple as well:

1. You don't link to your blog or website, so I don't know who you are.
2. You don't use your real name, so I don't know who you are.
3. I'm just too busy at the moment I receive the email and I don't recognize your name immediately.

However, even if I don't follow you and you send me an @reply I will do my best to answer it. I will even take the time to check out your profile. Heck, I might even decide to follow you (if you deliver on the above 3 rules) :-)

Welcome to my blog!

Hi, my name is Tamara Gielen and I am an independent email marketing consultant based out of Belgium that has been passionately involved with email marketing for close to 10 years now. 

 I read practically every article/blog post that is published about email marketing and I summarize/post the ones that I found especially interesting on this blog. If you have any questions about email marketing, feel free to contact me, I'd be happy to help you. Welcome to my blog! 

My Last Days as an Employee...

You may have noticed the reduced frequency of postings on this blog. There's a reason for that: I've been VERY busy setting up my own business. That's right: I'm leaving Ogilvy end of this week to start my own business as an independent email and social marketing consultant :-)

It was not an easy decision to make and those that know me a bit better, know that it's something that has been on my mind for quite a while now.

As an independent consultant I will help my clients to figure out how to make the best use of social media and email marketing. The services that I will be offering as from January include giving advice, coaching and conducting in-house workshops, brainstorming and training sessions on topics such as:

• Getting started with email marketing
• Getting smarter about email marketing
• Choosing the right email marketing platform
• Creating effective email marketing strategies
• Designing email templates
• Email coding best practices
• Growing your email list
• Making sure your emails arrive in the inbox
• Integrating email into the marketing mix
• How to use/engage with social media and social networking in a business environment
• and lots more...

What does this mean for this blog? Nothing really. I will continue to read email marketing articles and I will continue to post the best and most interesting bits and pieces on my blog, like I have been doing for nearly 4 years now. Wish me luck! And if you want to hire me, let me know :-)

Submit Your B2B Email Marketing Tips!

I am writing a paper on using email marketing in B2B and I would like to quote tips from others in this paper. Please share your tips here (basic and advanced). I will send a copy of the paper to everyone that submits a tip!

New Blogger on BeRelevant: Loren McDonald

Please join me in welcoming Loren McDonald as a new blogger on BeRelevant!

I am very proud to have Loren on board because he has been a real source of inspiration for me ever since I got into email marketing 7 years ago.

Here a short introduction:

Loren McDonald (VP, Industry Relations at Silverpop) has 24 years of experience in marketing, consulting and strategic planning. Prior to Silverpop, he was vice president of corporate communications at Lyris, Inc., and had served as vice president of marketing at EmailLabs. McDonald was founder and president of Intevation, an e-marketing services firm specializing in email and search engine marketing services. He's held executive marketing positions at companies including USWeb/CKS, NetStruxr and Arthur Andersen.

An acknowledged email marketing industry thought leader, McDonald is a columnist for the Media Post Email Insider column, MarketingProfs' GetToThePoint newsletter, contributes regularly to DM News, Silverpop's Digital Marketer and Connections newsletters and various blogs including 'Deliverability.com,' 'Tales from the Marketing Execution Suite,' 'Demand Generation,' and of course BeRelevant.

He is a frequent speaker at major industry conferences and events and is co-chair of the DMA's eec Email Measurement & Accuracy committee. In 2005, he was selected Marketing Executive of the Year by the American Business Awards (the Stevie's). An industry email newsletter he launched in 2003 won seven awards including Best B2B e-newsletter from both MarketingSherpa and the ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards.

Welcome Loren! I look forward to some inspiring and at times provocative posts! :-)

Blog Olympics - Passing On the Stick

This blog was recently selected by a Belgian blog called "Communicatiemannen" as one of their favorite blogs. I feel very honored and want to pass on the "stick" by naming 7 blogs that I enjoy reading most.

It wasn't easy to select only 7 blogs. I really did my best to cut down the list but couldn't get it down to less than 12 :-)  So here's the list of my 12 favorite blogs:

• DMA Email Marketing blog
• Deliverability.com
• Email Experience blog
• No man is an iland
• The MineThatData Blog
• Denise Cox's blog
• Smith-Harmon EDM Review
• The Thinking Inbox
• EmailKarma
• The Bronto blog
• The Email Wars
• Email Marketing Water Cooler

So how does this work? The blogs that I listed are now expected to pass on the stick and list their 7 favorite blogs (they don't have to be email marketing blogs).

The rules are that you have to link back to the blog that passed on the stick to you but you can't add it to the list of your 7 favorite blogs.

Update: the blogs are listed in random order!

BeRelevant Goes Mobile

I just wanted to let you know that I created a mobile version of this blog over the weekend. You can find it at www.berelevant.mobi.

At this location you can find the lastest posts on this blog, an overview of links posted to my del.icio.us account, as well as the latest posts from the Email Marketing Experts network.

For those of you who are interested to know how I did this, check out Mofuse.

Have fun with it, and feel free to let me know how I can make this even more useful to you.

How Did I Add The Twitter Feed to the Sidebar?

Lots of folks have asked me how I added the Twitter feed to the sidebar of this blog, so I thought I'd post it here. Let me start by saying it is super easy to do :-)

Sign in to your Twitter account, go to http://twitter.com/badges/which_badge, and select "Flash, with friends" other. You can style the widget any way you want by changing colors and font sizes and then you copy the code to your website. It's as simple as that...

In this case I created a separate Twitter account called "emailexperts" and with this account I'm following a bunch of email professionals. The feed shows all the people that I follow with this account. Want to be added? Just follow @emailexperts on Twitter and I'll follow you back :-)

Come on folks, it's time to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. You'll love it, I promise! :-)

Introducing Kelly Rusk

Please join me in welcoming Kelly Rusk as our newest co-blogger on BeRelevant!

Kelly Rusk offers a fresh, yet insightful look into the email marketing world. She began her email career as communications manager for cardcommunications, an email marketing professional services firm based out of Ottawa, Canada, where she managed the company newsletter and blog while helping clients devise smart email strategies and analyze reporting metrics.

In 2006, she led an initiative to be the first Canadian company publishing email trends report, which she oversaw until the company was acquired. She was also a contributor to Chris Baggott's book "Email Marketing by the Numbers."

While at Sitebrand (which acquired cardcommunications) her focus shifted to email marketing clients in the online retail sector. Now Kelly has a broadened professional focus as a communications officer in the public sector, however she still keeps her mouse on the pulse of email marketing through the BeRelevant blog and other industry resources. She also blogs about using social media for PR and marketing at web2dotwhat.com.

I am very excited about having her onboard! You can read her first post here:

• 5 Smart Marketing Lessons Learned From Email

Are you interested in becoming a regular blogger on BeRelevant as well? Let me know!

Follow Me or this Blog on Twitter

Are you using Twitter already? I've become hooked since Dylan Boyd re-introduced me to it. I had signed up for a Twitter account months ago, but couldn't really see the value. But once you start following people that you know and whose opinion you value, Twitter quickly becomes your best friend.

No idea what Twitter is about? View a short video here.

If you're interested in what I have to say on Twitter, you can follow me here. If you just want to receive my lastest blog posts on Twitter, follow this blog's Twitter account here.

Introducing Kath Pay

I would like to officially welcome Kath Pay as a co-blogger on this blog. Here's her bio:

Kath Pay founded Ezemail, a global Email Service Provider, in 2001. She is Managing Director of both their UK and Australian entities and they have offices in Sydney, Australia and Canterbury, England.

She's an Aussie but has been living in England for the past 4 years. With having over 7 years experience in the Email Marketing Industry she has seen many changes and has participated in the evolvement of email marketing so that it is now, not just an accepted channel for marketing, but a necessary channel for integrated online marketing.

She is on the UK DMA's Email Marketing Council. She sits on the Events and Communications Hub and is editor of the council's monthly newsletter, Infobox. Infobox is available for both members and non-members of the UK DMA and contains insightful articles from industry thought leaders as well as news, events and blog items.

She also write articles for Ezemail's monthly newsletter EzeNews, and maintains the company blog; http://blog.ezemail.com. In addition to all of the above she also speaks at conferences and seminars including the IDMF and DMA email marketing events.

She's already posted a couple of posts and I look forward to many more great contributions:

• Are we conditioning our non responders?
• UK DMA Email Marketing Council's New Look Newsletter
• Can a campaign be too targeted?

Please join me in welcoming her!

Are you interested in becoming a regular blogger on BeRelevant as well? Let me know!

Blog Redesign and Sponsoring Opportunities on BeRelevant!

BeRelevant! is viewed by thousands of readers every month and is almost exclusively read by email marketers. As a result it represents a unique opportunity for those wanting to promote their product or service to this very targeted audience of email marketing professionals.

That's why I spent most of my evening and this morning redesigning my blog to be able to offer a selected number of premium sponsorship ad units, served in the right sidebar of every blog page, starting today.

Ad unit specifications:

• Accepted formats: non-animated gif, jpg, or png
• Banner size: 125 x 125 pixels
• All ads will be approved by me before they will be posted

Pricing will be on a per month basis only.

Learn more here.

Interested in advertising on this blog? Contact me for more details.

If There's One Thing You Wanted To Know About Me, What Would It Be?

Okay, I admit: that's a dangerous question to ask so I will commit only to answer questions that are related to blogging about email marketing ;-) But let me give you some context as to why I'm inviting you to ask questions:

At the eec's Email Evolution Conference in San Diego next month, I'll be sitting on a panel with fellow email marketing bloggers Dylan Boyd (The Email Wars), Chad White (Retail Email Blog/EEC Blog) and Maddy Hubbard of Blue Hornet.

We'll be talking about why we blog, how we keep up with it, and lots of other aspects of our blogging. In this session we'll be answering questions from the moderator and the audience -- but we also wanted to give our readers a chance to chime in and ask us questions. So if you have burning questions for me or any of my co-panelists, please let me know via email or by commenting on this post.

Looking Back at 2007

At the start of a new year, it's always interesting to look back to the previous year and see what we've accomplished. And things are looking good!

Site statistics:

• In 2007 this blog had 42,798 visits from 142 countries, versus 16,866 visits from 119 countries in 2006
• Top 10 regions in terms of visits: 
  1. Northern America: 26,431 visits 
  2. Western Europe: 4,902 visits 
  3. Northern Europe: 4,756 visits 
  4. Australia and New Zealand: 1,283 visits 
  5. Southern Asia: 1,158 visits 
  6. Southern Europe: 891 visits 
  7. Eastern Asia: 602 visits 
  8. South America: 568 visits 
  9. South-Eastern Asia: 556 visits 
  10. Eastern Europe: 489 visits
• Total number of pageviews in 2007: 72,239 (30% = homepage) 
• Average time spent on the homepage in 2007: 3 minutes and 19 seconds (site average: 1 minute and 49 seconds).

Traffic Sources:

Feed Statistics:

In December this blog had 1,331 RSS subscribers on average, while the highest number of RSS subscribers in December was 1464.

Top 20 Most Visited Pages:

1. Homepage 23,029 pageviews 
2. Tips For Your Goodbye Email 1,783 pageviews 
3. About Me 1,157 pageviews 
4. Design & Layout (category page) 1,097 pageviews 
5. Deliverability (category page) 715 pageviews 
6. 20 HTML Email Design Tips 592 pageviews 
7. Email Service Providers (category page) 541 pageviews 
8. Free HTML Email Templates & Email Design Guide 518 pageviews 
9. Improve Email Deliverability: 15 Tips 450 pageviews 
10. Guide for Creating HTML Emails: Technical and Design Best Practices 425 pageviews 
11. Tracking Email Campaigns with Google Analytics? 425 pageviews 
12. Bounce Handling Best Practices 396 pageviews 
13. The Best Christmas Emails Of 2005 382 pageviews 
14. Strategy (category page) 367 pageviews 
15. Copywriting (category page) 362 pageviews 
16. Some Less Obvious Spammy Words to Avoid 345 pageviews 
17. Case Studies (category page) 324 pageviews 
18. Archives 315 pageviews 
19. Basic Email Marketing Metrics Explained 309 pageviews 
20. Better B2B Email Deliverability in 6 Steps 302 pageviews

Top 5 Pages in December:

1. BeRelevant: Email Marketing Best Practices Blog 
2. 10 Creative Holiday Email Card Ideas 
3. Just Meeting CAN-SPAM regulations is No Longer Enough! 
4. Email Marketing Benchmark Guide: an Interview with Stefan Tornquist 
5. Survey Reveals Email as Sales Marketing Cinderella Story

Email Marketer's Club Stats:

• Launched on May 24, 2007. 
• Purpose: give email marketers a place to network and share knowledge with each other. 
• Members: 612 members from all over the world. 
• Goal for 2008: reach 2,000 members by the end of the year and increase interactions between members. 
• According to a recent member survey, the most appreciated areas on the network are the forum and the resources area. 
• Recently added features are a chatroom, a wiki and jobboard. 
• The Club also has a fanpage on Facebook.

What Have I Been Up To Lately?

My newsletter subscribers already got this message, but since the bulk of my readers are RSS subscribers, I thought I'd post it here as well:

I've been wanting to move into email marketing consultancy for quite some time now, so when Jeanniey Mullen asked me if I wanted to join OgilvyOne Worldwide it didn't take me long to say yes!

I started working for OgilvyOne in Brussels about 3 weeks ago and I'm loving every minute of it! Moving from the corporate side to the agency side of things is much like moving to a foreign country. The mentality is different, the way people think is different and yes, sometimes it's like they speak a foreign language as well :)

The job is also totally different from what I have been doing in the past. Instead of actually being in charge of an email marketing program, I am now consulting with large corporate clients to help them develop an email marketing plan and/or increase the ROI of their email program.

As I expected though, I haven't had much time to update my blog in the last couple of weeks with "real" blog posts. I'm trying to make up for it by adding the "links for [date]" type of posts via my del.icio.us account, but I know that's not what you expect from me. Bear with me, it's only temporary.