Kristeen Hudson provides these 10 tips for successful preheader text on the Exact Target blog:
Read the full post here: The ExactTarget Blog - 10 Tips for Successful Email Preheader Text .
MailChimp's Project Omnivore: Declassified | MailChimp Email Marketing Blog
In late 2008, MailChimp Labs began Project Omnivore. Our goal was to build a massively scalable tool for our abuse team that could predict bad behavior -- pretty impressive stuff!!
Is your list hosted at @iContact? It may have been stolen.
We're seeing reports at OtherInbox of spam emails sent to email lists that are hosted at iContact. Our users give each website a different email address so it's easy to see when they get abused. I received an email with the subject "Pharmacy Best Product Vicodin.Viagra!!!!!" to an email address that was only given to Shoeboxed.com (a great service that I love).
On February 23, 2010 at 8am PT (11am ET, 5pm CET, 4pm GMT) the Email Marketer's Club is hosting it's second online Email Strategy & Tactics Roundtable.
During this highly interactive, 60-minute session, 2-3 email marketers are invited to present one email marketing issue they are facing in a 10-minute presentation. Tamara Gielen will review the material in real-time and provide feedback on the matters at hand. All attendees are able to join in on the conversations via a live chat. Only 20 attendees allowed so sign up quickly!
Can't make it on February 23rd? Check out the other dates.
Too often, when marketers start focusing on growth, they're not asking, "How can I polish up my acquisition practices so my list attracts more qualified, engaged subscribers?" They're really saying, "How can I grow my list 50 percent this year?"
That second focus can lead to tactics like one retailer's recent e-mail, which greeted prospective customers with this message: "Check it out! We think you'll have a lot in common, so we added you to (our) e-mail list." This practice is so wrong!
You don't build a good mailing list by assuming your recipients will be interested, and you can't cover your actions by including an opt-out link. As with recovery or reactivation programs, you need an explicit opt-in. "No response" does not equal consent.
Prechecked boxes on opt-in forms with fuzzy language and rented lists with dicey permission are other ways marketers build lists fast but open themselves to spam complaints, unsubscribes, and inactivity in the bargain.
Continue reading here: How to Improve Your Process for Acquiring E-mail Subscribers - ClickZ.
"The days that emails were filtered based on content only are long gone. In the war against growing volumes of spam and fraudulent email such as phishing, ISPs and incoming spam filters are continuously using more and more techniques to filter the bad guys from the good guys. Since email is critical for most businesses, getting email into the inbox is valuable. Deliverability is not only an issue for bulk email, such as newsletters and smart campaigns, but also (and maybe even more important) for transactional email like order confirmations. In fact, it is an issue for all outbound emails"
Read the full post here: Email marketing and deliverability: an interview with Reputy.
This week Facebook will begin giving marketers the ability to collect email address from users of our Facebook applications. Currently, applications communicate with users through Facebook notifications - a constrained inbox with few opportunities for meaningful direct communications and limited opportunities for monetization.
After Wednesday, marketers will have the ability to make email permission optional, or a mandatory requirement of an application, and may no longer post notifications from applications. This development opens up an exciting new way for Facebook marketers to interact with and ultimately monetize social audiences.
Continue reading here
...reputation systems don't care about business models, protestations of opt-in, legitimacy, or urgency. They care about the response generated by a given stream of bulk mail. Whitelisting no longer provides bullet-proof protection from blocks; whitelisting is mostly dynamic and dependent on reputation.
Spam-foldering is also now largely driven by reputation. It's a much more fluid environment, wherein how mail is treated can change by the moment, and in which is it much, much easier to drive reputation down than it is to bring it back up.
Don't worry about what to tell the ISPs. If your mail isn't being treated the way you want it to be, look at the mail! Figure out what is causing the issue, and fix it.
Read the full post here: Polly wants a cracker!.
For emails, if split images, are not rendering properly (i.e. breaking) in Hotmail when using Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Add “display: block” to the style tag in the images’ code.
Read his blog post here.
Next week I will be on an expert panel at the Email Evolution Conference in Miami together with email industry thought leaders Loren McDonald, DJ Waldow and Stefan Pollard. We will be dissecting the attendees' email campaigns, breaking down the entire anatomy of the email from the subject line to the footer. It promises to be a very interactive session filled with practical tips and tricks!
The Email Evolution Conference is an email marketing conference you cannot afford to miss! For those of you who haven’t registered yet for the Email Evolution Conference in Miami next week, use discount code BEST to receive $200 off the current registration price! What are you waiting for?
The day before the conference I will be presenting an email marketing workshop together with Jeanne Jennings: What's working NOW in email marketing. Save $100 off the registration fee when you enter: CL100.
Are you planning to attend the conference and/or the workshop? Let me know because I'd love to meet up!
This very well documented article by Campaign Monitor's Mathew Patterson gives you the information you need to plan, design and build an HTML newsletter that renders well and is actually useful to recipients.
Definitely worth reading!
Check it out here: Design and Build Email Newsletters Without Losing Your Mind (and Soul).
The kick-off of this year's MarketingSherpa Email summit started with a pre-workshop hosted by MarketingExperiments. Keynote speaker was Dr. Flint McGlaughlin.
Here are five important reasons why a content strategy needs to be considered before integrating social media into your marketing plans.
Social media = I hear you + I'm listening to you + I understand. Now replace "social media" with "publishing" or "content strategy". Works, right?
Now try this...content strategy = I hear you + I'm listening to you + I understand + successful marketing goal and content measurement. This cements the fact that you are producing this content, not only to be shared by your customers and prospects, but to accomplish a significant marketing objective.
Read the full article here: Five Reasons why Content Strategy comes before Social Media.
"Big companies with large lists should focus on devising strong segmentation strategies. List hygiene is incredibly important: make sure to not only regularly remove bounced email addresses, but also look at who is engaged. If you have subscribers that never open, click or buy your offerings, it may not be worth keeping them on your list? You want a healthy, active file. Check in with your subscribers. Ask them what they like and don’t like and remember to focus on three key factors - permission, engagement and frequency"
Read the entire interview here: Email deliverability: an interview with Return Path’s Mario Marlisa
To do the basics well, you don’t need to be an email marketing or CRM expert, and you don’t need a big budget. To really increase performance, you just need a pinch of patience and some common sense.
Philip Storey explains how to do this with an example case study here: How to segment & target prospects to deliver great results if you have a small Email Marketing budget.
If you find brand & consistency obstacles in your path when testing calls to action, remember that your job is to try and interrupt someone that is reading through their inbox. Your job is more difficult than that of the website because of this, so try to positively challenge any resistance, ask for a small-scale test segment that will still give you a significant result and let the results speak for themselves.
Read the full post here: Change your calls to action & see your click-through rates soar.
Here are a few ways to integrate Twitter in your email strategy:
- automatically post your email as a tweet to your company’s Twitter account.
- include buttons in your email message which easily allows your subscribers to share your message.
- Start a #hashtag
- Post content on your company Twitter account: consider posting links, re-tweeting useful content and speaking with your followers.
- Put a link to your Twitter account on the footer of your email messages; could be a button or simple link.
Read the full article here: Email Design Tip of the Week: Integrating Twitter to Your Email Strategy.