• How to write a valuable email newsletter

  Do you find yourself struggling for content that’s relevant, timely, targeted, and valuable? Here’s a recipe for finding out exactly what people want you to write about.

  tags: tg content

• Lifecycle Email Marketing Lessons: FootSmart

  tags: cases tg lifecycle

• What to watch for when choosing an Email marketing provider

  tags: tg vendor-selection

• Bvckup blog | Please confirm your email address

  simply changing the subject line on the confirmation increased the number of completed subscriptions from 51% to 82% for this sender.

  tags: cases confirmation double-opt-in list-growth tg

• Putting Your Best Site Forward: A/B Testing Webinar Recap

  tags: tg testing landingpages

• Where Transactional Emails Often Fall Short

  a few areas where many transactional emails fall short

  tags: tg transactional

• Call it what you want, it’s the future of email marketing

  an introduction to behavioral email

  tags: tg behavioral triggered lifecycle

• Call to Action Buttons Part 2: Placement

  tags: cta tg landingpages

• Call To Action Buttons and the Psychology of Color

  tags: cta tg landingpages

• Call to Action Buttons Part 3: Shape and Size

  tags: cta tg

• 76% of Businesses Use Email for Event Marketing [New Data]

  tags: study tg stats

• What Do Teens Really Think Of Email?

  Most of the students (57%) agreed that email is good for business communication. Others pointed out that an email address is required for many sites, and that social media and email pair well together to cover informal and formal communication needs.

  tags: study tg

• Reactivation – 9 Tips to re-engage with your email list

  The reasons that consumers churn according to Marketing Sherpa range from lack of relevance & too much email at the top through to change of circumstances. The varying reasons will require slightly different tactics to deal with. So here are some top tips in creating a successful reactivation program

  tags: reactivation list-management tg

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Creating An Engagement Index

  30 percent of consumers changed or created a new email address in the past year. Developing key performance indicators and using them to build an engagement index is a necessary tool to determine how many of these address churning subscribers are on your list. Here's how to do it.

  tags: analysis metrics blog

• Social Media Killed The Email Star

  Four years is an awfully long time to sound the death bells for a medium that’s used daily by billions of people across the globe, especially since you can’t even register for social media service like Google+, Facebook or Twitter without a valid email address—proof that social media didn’t kill the email star; it just rode its coattails to fame.

  tags: industry social_media blog

• The Value of Email [Infographic]

  while Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus all get tons of interest, email is quietly chugging away as the workhorse of the connected world. Email, even after discounting the volume that's spam, is used far more than Facebook and Twitter combined. How much more? Daily activity for Facebook is pegged at 60 million upates. Twitter sees about 140 million tweets per day. Email? 188 billion messages.

  tags: industry blog study social_media

• A Marketer’s Field Guide to AOL Inboxes

  tags: deliverability blog AOL

• A Marketer’s Field Guide to Yahoo! Inboxes

  tags: deliverability blog yahoo

• A Marketer’s Field Guide to Microsoft Hotmail Email Inboxes

  tags: deliverability Hotmail blog

• A Marketer’s Field Guide to Gmail Inboxes

  tags: deliverability gmail blog

• Why using a no-reply address is an email marketing no-no - Blog - Campaign Monitor

  It astounds me that in 2011, startups and companies are sending out automated emails with no-reply email addresses. It basically says to the recipient: “I’m not interested in hearing from you by email, regardless of whether email is better or easier for you. I just don’t respect you enough to take the risk that a dozen people might reply and insult me.”

  tags: tactics strategy blog

• Optimizing HTML email for mobile using progressive disclosure

  a cool trick to show/hide content in the mobile version of your emails

  tags: coding blog css

• From Monitor To Mobile: Optimizing Email Newsletters With CSS

  After reading this article, you will hopefully come away with a few ideas on how to start coding email designs with improved readability and usability when viewed in Web, mobile and email desktop clients alike. Also included are a variety of resources to get you on the right path with using CSS in email.

  tags: coding blog

• Five Essential Resources for Coding HTML Email

  a list of some of our favourite resources to help you get through the html build process as smoothly as possible

  tags: coding blog

• Why Your Email List Isn’t Growing

  Something that surprises me about so many of the Internet Retailer 500 is that their e-mail sign up calls to action can be so hard to find. In fact, many of them are so far below the fold, it makes you wonder whether the care about growing their e-mail program.

  tags: list_growth blog

• Email Metrics: Wee Hour Postings Pay Off

  emails are typically opened during the morning hours between 7 am and 10 am which supports the data discussed in the section Open And Click Rates By Time Scheduled. During this time email open rates maintain a steady climb until noon, at which point open rates begin to slowly decline.

  tags: study blog

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Generally the use of behavioural email is steadily increasing across all sectors (e-retail, insurance, gambling). 
• Gambling companies seem to be implementing the majority of triggers, with an average 70% using behavioural email across the triggers monitored. Statistically e-retailers are next in line, with an average 46% of e-retailers using behavioural email. The insurance sector is now lagging behind with an average of just 34% implementing behavioural email. 
• The number of behavioural email triggers implemented within the e-retail sector has increased across all emails monitored. 
• The welcome email is the most commonly used email, implemented by 90% of gambling companies and 64% of e-retailers. However, 25% of e-retailers do not even offer pre-purchase registration, meaning a welcome email cannot be sent. 
• Despite a slight increase in use since March 2011, abandoned basket email is still the least used behavioural email. This is unfortunate as based on conversion it can be viewed as the most successful email trigger used by retail clients. 
• On average retailers receive the highest CTR from using behavioural email. 
• Based on conversion the single most successful behavioural email trigger implemented by RedEye clients is the abandoned basket email, this is followed by the saved quote follow up email used by insurance companies.

Download the Behavioural Email Benchmark study here

1. Blatant Lack of Permission
Companies still try to get around the permission issues in search for the quick buck. That’s a big mistake.  

2. Utterly Deficient Segmentation 
Content relevancy is the number one issue for the email marketer. Without segmentation, you have no real relevancy.

3. Lame ‘Welcome’ Messages
We still receive far too many lame welcome messages. What a wasted marketing opportunity.

4. Frequency Decisions Made for the Wrong Reason 
Marketers are in a constant battle on the matter of frequency.

5. Institution-to-One Messaging 
The debate on how to personalize company emails is ongoing. It’s all about testing.

6. No Real Interactivity 
Interactivity is not only for social media. Email was once the relationship building medium, and it still can be.

7. Deliverability: Content, Formatting & Lack of Self-Advocacy 
If anything, deliverability is even a bigger issue than it was two years ago.

8. Designing Images That Appear as Red Xs 
Getting HTML images to appear for those who have images turned off still requires that they turn the images on. It’s the text vs. HTML debate.

9. Disregarding Your BlackBerry and Mobile Readers 
The number of mobile readers has exploded since 2008. Thank you Iphone and Android. It’s more important than ever to make your email mobile reader friendly.

10. Repeating Ad Types 
Banner blindness in email newsletters is more prevalent than ever. 

11. Collecting Bad Response Rates
You need good analysis to determine the effectiveness of your email. That’s always been the case. 

12. Relying on Email Only 
This last mistake of relying on email only was written during the dawn of the social media revolution. It’s the only one that feels a bit dated, but it’s still worth noting that relying on just one tactic alone is never a good plan. 

Source: MarketingSherpa report "Dirty Dozen: Email Newsletter Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes"

On the EmailVision blog, Tim Watson explains why you shouldn't worry too much about the best time to send an email.  

The answer as to why timing is not so sensitive lies in how people engage and process their email inbox.

In a small poll the folks over at EmailVision ran, 94% of people said that when returning to their inbox they scan ALL new or recent unread emails. This means your position in the inbox is relatively unimportant.

Your email will be scanned for a delete or read decision regardless of whether it's the top email or number 25. Your email will live and die by much stronger factors than time of day such as:

• Subject line and from name 
• Content relevance 
• Previous experience of your emails 
• Brand loyalty and engagement

Trying to time an email to a 2 to 5 hour slot is relatively unimportant. Your email will be deleted based on the above factors and not whether it was first seen at 10am or 2pm.

More important than time of day timing, is timing with regard to the customer lifecycle. Right message, right person, right time is often quoted. However, time doesn't mean 9am or 10am.

Perfect timing is reaching the customer when they are actively:

• Identifying a need 
• Researching options to fulfil a need 
• Deciding which offer to choose.

Read more here: Campaign send time isn't important 

Neil Berman lists these 8 Steps To Good Mobile Email Design in his recent Email Insider column:

1. Send your emails in MIME Multipart Format so they are readable on mobile devices that can display only the text version of your email.  
2. Keep subject lines to 15 or fewer characters or front-load it so your key message is in the first 15 characters.  
3. Make the most of pre-header text. iPhones allow about 140 characters in vertical view, so keep the text short and persuasive. 
4. For the best display on both mobile devices and the desktop, code your emails between 480 and 600 pixels.  
5. Keep the layout simple and stack information in one column. 
6. Take it easy on the images. 
7. Code all links and buttons with a target area of at least 44 x 44 pixels.  
8. Test your design regularly on various devices to make sure your emails continue to render as you intended.

Source: Mediapost

I don't usually post announcements like these, but since this is something that involves me and it's kind of important and I'm really excited about this, I thought I should let my readers know.

Kath and I have been good friends for years now. We speak at the same conferences, we go to the same events and we share the same passion for email marketing. We often just call each other to talk about our jobs, our boyfriends and other important stuff :-)

A couple of weeks ago, Kath came to visit me here in Belgium and at one point we starting talking about how lonely it can be running our own business, because you don't have anyone you can brainstorm ideas with, talk to when you aren't sure how to tackle a certain problem or project etc.

In the past we'd talked about joining forces but we never really pursued it. Until today.

Today is the day that Kath and I officially join forces. This means that going forward, Kath and I will be offering our services under the same brand name: Plan to Engage. Check out the website at www.PlanToEngage.com

Read the official press release here

• Report: Viral & Community Links in Email

  Retailers are more focused on using their email programs to promote their social communities and less focused on email for social sharing, according to the findings of Responsys’ latest report, Viral & Community Links in Emails.

  tags: study blog social_sharing

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.