Direct Email Marketing

7 Awesome Ways to Wow Your Customers Using Voice on Your eCommerce Site

Thursday, August 6, 2009 by Bob Ullery

Start with this:
Txt ecommerce to 38767

Let's face it. The internet is saturated with other eCommerce sites selling the exact same stuff that you do. Maybe yours is higher quality or less expensive than the ones the other guys are selling. But ultimately, it's the same stuff to the customer.

Even though your customers have a wide variety of competitors to purchase the same stuff from, why do they buy from you? Sure, price is a usual suspect, but as any eRetailer will tell you, repeat sales often boil down to customer loyalty and first time buying decisions are often generated from the customer's first impression of YOU, not your product.

So, how do you wow existing customers so that they become a champion of your company? How do you engage potential customers so their first impression is positive? One way is to communicate with them on a personal level, in the format they want. It's called 1 to 1 marketing. You could send email, even a txt message, shoot you could send a letter - but wouldn't it be way cool if you could just TALK to them? You can - with ExactTarget's Voice Marketing platform.

This article covers 7 awesome ways that eCommerce sites can leverage ExactTarget's Voice Technology into their marketing and customer communication strategies. Wow!

1. 'Voice-to-a-Friend'
Your customers have all seen the standard send-to-a-friend form on product pages that sends information about the product to their friend. These are all-good by themselves, but what if we could type in our friend's phone number and have someone TELL them about the product? We can!

'Hey Bob, your friend Rob wanted to let you know that we have this new cool widget for sale on our site ______.com.'

But who should deliver the message? Read on.

2. 'Celebrity Product Endorsements'
Who better to tell your customers about your own product than someone who has no idea what it is!? We all know the power of celebrity. How cool would it be as a customer to receive a voice message from someone that I admire talking about how great your product is?

'Hey Bob, This is Michael Jordan. Buy these shoes and I think you could beat me in HORSE.'

What if we don't have any endorsement deals with celebrities? You could deliver the message from someone the subscriber could relate to. With ExactTarget segmentation technology, you could have a different spokesperson deliver the message depending on who the subscriber is. If the subscriber is a woman, she could hear a message spoken by a woman. You could even further segment by dialect. Californians could hear 'Hey bro'; Indiana - 'Hey dude'; New York - 'Capeesh'..... Capeesh?

3. Promo Code Via Phone
ExactTarget offers the only live offer engine in the industry. We can generate bar codes on the fly, mark an offer code as redeemed via interactions with your online payment systems, and even issue a unique code for each of your subscribers that tie directly back to them. That's all good, but we're talking about voice here people. Why don't you take those SAME codes, use our Text-to-Speech technology and excite your customers about receiving an exclusive code by calling them and telling them about it!

'Hey Bob. Use code ________ next time you buy something. You'll get 10% off.'

4. Shipping Alerts
'Hey Bob, your widget has just been shipped, just wanted to let you know personally.' - Nuff said.

5. Product In-Stock Notifications
Talk about awesome. You could leverage your inventory data, segment against subscribers who want to be notified when a product is back in stock, and send an email, sms or a VOICE message reminding them that they already made the decision to buy it:

'Hey Bob, remember that widget that you wanted to buy but wasn't in stock? Well, it's back in stock, and if you use promo code ________ we'll give you an extra 10% off if you buy today.'

6. Subscription Renewal Reminders
Personally remind your subscribers why they chose to subscribe to your offering in the first place:

'Hey Bob, your subscription for my thing is expiring next month. Are you planning on renewing? We sent emails to all of our non awesome customers but wanted to call all of the awesome ones personally.'

7. SMS to Voice (using voice and ExactTarget's SMS Application)
Here's a cool technique for offline conversions: SMS-to-Voice.
Your customers can text a keyword to your ExactTarget short-code and get a voice message sent to them instantly. In the middle there, ExactTarget can store their information, and even request for them to provide more of it via additional Text messages.

Many eCommerce sites market themselves on offline channels, but how can you convert those interactions? Maybe you can't convert them instantly, but you can start the conversation that does.

ExactTarget also offers a robust SMS API for custom integrations.

Automation
Did I mention that all of this can be completely AUTOMATED? Set it and forget it. Integrationless integration. It's a beautiful thing.

GIVE IT A SHOT
Txt ecommerce to 38767

So those were 7 awesome ways to wow your customers using voice. Do you have any ideas? Post them in the comment area below

Email Use Continues to Dominate Online Activity. More Evidence of Why Email Marketing is the Backbone of One-to-One Marketing

Wednesday, August 5, 2009 by Joel Book

According to an article on Mashable.com by Adam Ostrow, a new report from Forrester Research shows the number of U.S. adults who use email on a monthly basis is pegged at 165.4 million.

By comparison, social networking users have doubled since 2007. There are 55.6 million adults (about 1/3rd of the U.S. population) that visit a social networking site at least once a month (up 15% from 2007 to 18% in 2009). 54.3 million adults use SMS for instant messaging (unchanged from 2008) and 37.1 million read blogs (unchanged from 2008).

What this Means for Marketers

While email has solidified its reputation as the backbone of one-to-one marketing, I see more and more brands like Dreamfields Pasta, Papa John’s, Carharrt, and Powell’s Books using Email + Social Media to build communities of vocal and influential “brand fans.” This integrated approach is enabling brands to leverage the combined power of social networking and direct marketing to develop and retain customers.

Using email marketing software to deliver relevant and useful information to customers is smart. But, using tools like Social Forward to make it easy for email subscribers to share email content directly with friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and many other online communities is one of the best things you can do to accelerate the performance of your email marketing program.

Email Design Tip of the Week: The Back of the Napkin

Wednesday, August 5, 2009 by Anna Meier

To add to the previous blog, Ideas from the Global Sales Meeting, Dan Roam also gave an inspiring presentation on Visual Thinking. The Design Team was privileged to hear Dan preach that “we can solve our problems with pictures”, a philosophy we were interested to hear.

Author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, Dan spoke about breaking down our problems into simple steps and questions. By answering direct questions and then drawing them with basic shapes and stick figures (on the back of a napkin), we can come to a better understanding of the problem and steps needed to come to a resolution.

In terms of email design, Dan’s philosophy reinforced the value of wireframing in our design process. Before ever creating content in ExactTarget, it is crucial to map your email in a wireframe, labeling each piece as it relates to the whole. This will allow you to analyze the visual hierarchy and make sure it makes sense and will allow you to meet your business goals. After completing this stage in your process, you’ll be ready to begin designing with a clear and purposeful content strategy. For more information on constructing your content strategy and wireframe, read the recent blog "Many Subscriber Preferences to Respect" by Melinda Baxter.

Thanks again, Dan, for driving home this important stage of email design and problem solving!

Email Design Tip of the Week: Understanding CSS Support for Email

Wednesday, July 29, 2009 by Justine Jordan

Creating a beautifully designed email that displays properly and consistently across email clients can be a stressful, headache-inducing experience, especially for those new to email. It doesn't have to be! You can plan ahead and anticipate display issues by designing and coding your email with this information in mind.

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a powerful language that was created to allow web developers the ability to separate content from presentation in web pages. While CSS is a modern standard for the web, it’s history and support in the email world has been rocky at best. There are three different ways that you can use CSS to style your email: External, Embedded (sometimes referred to as Internal), and Inline:

External CSS: External styles are listed on one page or sheet, and the email links to the separate file to reference the styles.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css">

Embedded (Internal) CSS: Embedded styles are listed in the same fashion as external styles. Rather than the email linking to a separate page to reference the styles, internal styles are listed in the header (or <head> tag) of the email.

<style type="text/css">
a:link {color: #000000}
a:visited {color: #CCCCCC}
a:hover {color: #333333}
a:active {color: #333333}
</style>

Inline CSS: Inline styles are used directly within HTML tags by adding the “style” attribute. The style attribute can contain any CSS property, and will only affect the tag they are applied to.

<a href="http://www.exacttarget.com" style="text-decoration: none;">

Which CSS technique is best for email? To date, the majority of email clients support inline CSS, along with most basic formatting styles. Be mindful that many web-supported CSS properties aren’t consistently supported in email. Among the properties that are well supported in email include: font-family, font-size, font-style, font-weight, color, padding and border.

Remember these tips:

CSS-based layouts are only successful in the most compliant of email clients. Your design will render more consistently when HTML tables are used for layout. The use of embedded or external styles is not recommended for consistent display across email clients (Gmail only supports inline styles).
Many CSS properties popular with web developers have poor support in email. These include (but are not limited to) margin, line-height, clear, list-style-image, position, z-index, background-image, background-position and background-repeat. Avoid the use of these properties, or test thoroughly to ensure your email is displaying as intended.
Small changes in how web-based email clients support CSS occur often and without much fanfare, making a case for frequent and continued testing.
Know your audience. If you have data showing that all of your subscribers use Thunderbird to view their email, you'll have more flexibility in the types of CSS you may use. On the other hand, if most of your audience is using Outlook 2007, you may want to take a more conservative approach.

For more tips on how to design and code for email, download our whitepaper, "Email Marketing Design & Rendering: The New Essentials."

How Richmond American Homes Uses Email Marketing to Sell Homes

Wednesday, July 29, 2009 by Joel Book

Think selling homes in today’s challenging economy is tough?

In today’s special ExactTarget webinar, you’ll learn how Richmond American Homes uses email marketing as the backbone of a direct marketing strategy that is delivering a 5000% ROI!

If you want to sell effectively in today’s market, you need to attract the right customers to your website, understand their needs and preferences, and use email to deliver relevant messages that aid the buyer’s decision-making process. Working with ClickMail Marketing, Richmond American Homes is using this approach to develop strong relationships with homebuyers and realtors.

In this webinar, you will learn the strategy, tools, and tactics that are enabling Richmond American Homes to achieve amazing results with its email marketing campaigns. Among the things we will discuss are:

• How to grow your email subscriber list

• Creating relevant email content that aids the buying process

• Using Email to support local agents

• Reporting tools that enable fast, easy assessment of email campaign performance

Joining me to share this incredible success story are:

• Tracy Ritterbusch of Richmond American Homes

• Michael Kelly and Cameron Kane of ClickMail Marketing

Simplified Landing Pages: Coming Soon to iLab at ExactTarget

Wednesday, July 29, 2009 by Jeff Cunning

Don't buy email marketing software, try the newest technology from ExactTarget for free with the Innovations Lab!

Simplified Landing Pages are the short and sweet answer for those seeking to develop professional-looking webpages without a hassle. With this feature, you can literally launch a landing page with two words and two clicks--although we do recommend a bit more creativity. Still, Simplified Landing Pages are great for one-page messages saying "Thank You" or "Welcome," coupon and discount offerings, extended information, and list growth--among much more.

Use Case of the Week: List Growth via SmartCapture
Growing your list of subscribers just became even easier. Create a Simplified Landing Page with a SmartCapture form so that interested web-surfers can opt in to your email campaign or provide you with additional personal information. Direct these potential subscribers to your landing page with links from your primary website, an email, or another prominent communicative feature.

Interested companies can log on to ExactTarget 3Sixty and sign up through iLab to use the software for free!

Consumers are not Always Online to Shop

Friday, July 24, 2009 by Kristeen Hudson

According to a recent study done by eMarketer.com people only go online 33% of the time to make purchases. This may seem like a significant number, however it is one of the least common activities that people do while online. Some of the top reasons why people are going online include passing time (100%), educating self (96%), and connecting with others (92%).

Only a third of the people going online are there to make a purchase, yet my inbox always has multiple emails that want me to purchase something, and everywhere I look online there are ads trying to get me to buy something online. Sometimes marketers are trying forcefully to make sure they are reaching that 33% of people who are actually making purchases.

There are other ways for marketers to go about marketing to these consumers. Why not interrogate your product within social media and reach the 92% of people who are going online to connect with others? Why not create an interactive marketing piece and reach the 82% of people who are going online to be entertained? Marketers can also deploy a targeted email marketing campaign. These are some less direct ways that can really help list growth, drive traffic to your site, and increase sales.

If you would like to know more about less forceful marketing tactics check out the webinar Retail & Email: Doing More with Less. This webinar will give you a look at how Gordmans uses personalized email communications to drive traffic and increase sales across 65 stores.

Facebook Sharing More Popular than Email Sharing?

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

I like mashable.com, but their post this week Sharing on Facebook Now More Popular than Sharing by Email is simply sensationism based on bad data. Clearly, we are fans of sharing through social networks as evidenced by our recent release of Social Forward and partnership with ShareThis!

The data referenced in the report comes from AddToAny, makers of a widget that allows people to share content through social networks and email and competitor with ShareThis! Based on their data 24 percent of content is shared through Facebook compared to only 11% that is shared through email.

Any study of this type is subject to the quality of the data it is evaluating. One need look no farther than comments posted on mashable.com to see the holes in this research.

Wei Zhu wrote, "As much as I like to see Facebook being listed as the most popular way for sharing, I suspect the method used by AddToAny grossly under counted sharing through email. Most people who share stories through email probably just copy the url and paste into their email directly, without using any widgets on the web page."

Correct. We definitely see more people sharing through Social Forward than we see sharing through email forward-to-a-friend. If people are going to share through email, they don't typically use forms, widgets, etc. They copy, paste, and send.

zackatoustra wrote, "The only thing we can conclude from that figures is that what is shared through AddToAny is mainly shared on Facebook. Nothing more."

Exactly, AddToAny's user base is not a representative sample of internet users. This data is specific to AddToAny's user base and not applicable to the general online population.

Finally, sensational data lends itself to sensational headlines and interpretations. Jason said it best, "Why didn't you give this the headline Digg Now Bigger Than Google? Would that have been any worse than the current headline?"

How Can You Use Dynamic Content in Your Email Campaigns?

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 by Dawn DeVirgilio

The best way to utilize Dynamic Content is to leverage the data you have obtained from your subscribers to produce highly personalized and relevant customer email based on specific profile attributes, preferences, online behavior and demographics. If you’re currently sending one email to all of your subscribers, adding Dynamic Content allows you to send one email with varied content based the data you select to target. This changes the email into a highly-targeted message that speaks directly to each individual subscriber with very little effort. The more data you have, the more effective your dynamic email becomes.

For example if you are a retailer that has collected the gender of your subscribers, you can use that information to target a men’s wear sale to male subscribers and a women’s wear sale to your female subscribers. If you have data regarding their last purchase, you can make similar suggestions for their next purchase. Let’s say I just purchased a swimsuit from your online store. Then you could use Dynamic Content to suggest sunglasses or a beach wrap to complete my ensemble. The possibilities are endless for leveraging Dynamic Content to deliver relevant, personalized emails.

Email Design Tip of the Week: Gmail takes two steps forward and one step back

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 by Tim Siukola

The benefits of continued testing should never be forgotten. While testing a number of email campaigns in Gmail we discovered that support has been recently added for the CSS background-repeat property and the HTML cellpadding and cellspacing attributes. While this doesn’t amount to a fundamental shift in standards support, it is still a step in the right direction. Sadly, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows since Gmail appears to be suffering from the same lack of support for paragraph tags that affects Yahoo Mail.

Let’s begin with the good news.

Support for the CSS background-repeat property arrives
Previously, any background images that were included in your email would always repeat (tile) in both the horizontal and vertical directions. This happened even if you used the CSS background-repeat property to restrict the image repetition in just the horizontal/vertical direction or specified the background image not to repeat at all.

Thankfully, support for the background-repeat property has been added. The previous workaround to combat this issue was to create background images that were much taller than their container elements. This resulted in increased file sizes for images and led you to hope that the content placed in your email would never exceed the height of the image and expose the repetition. The support for this property will allow you to be more efficient when cropping background images, reducing file size and unpredictability.

Please Note: The “background-image” CSS property is still not supported in Gmail, so the HTML “background” attribute must be used to assign a background image.

Code Sample
<td background=”bgimage.jpg” style=”background-repeat: no-repeat;”>
<td background=”bgimage.jpg” style=”background-repeat: repeat-x;”>
<td background=”bgimage.jpg” style=”background-repeat: repeat-y;”>

Support for HTML cellpadding and cellspacing returns
When the Newer version of Gmail was released, support for HTML cellpadding and cellspacing went out the window. While this change didn’t affect everyone, it still caused spacing problems for email marketers using these traditional HTML techniques. This situation has improved and the Newer version has joined the Older in supporting these foundational HTML attributes.

Now for the bad news…

Support for HTML paragraph tags is lacking
The Newer version of Gmail does not support the use of HTML paragraph tags <p>. Paragraph tags are used primarily to create space between sections of text. If two sections of text are each contained within paragraph tags the space that normally appears between the paragraphs will be removed. In order to avoid this, break tags <br> can be used. Two break tags in a row will create approximately the same amount of space between text sections as a paragraph tag.

Code Sample

This:
First section of text.<br><br>Second section of text.

Will produce the same result as this:
<p>First section of text.</p>
<p>Second section of text.</p>

This week Google officially removed the “beta” distinction from Gmail. While this may signal that Gmail is ready for prime time, don’t expect email rendering to stay the same. As time passes, support for various HTML attributes and CSS properties will constantly change. Remember to stay vigilant in your testing efforts. We promise to do the same and we’ll let you know when the next shift occurs in the email rendering landscape.

Looking for an efficient way in ExactTarget to test the display and rendering of your emails across a multitude of email clients?
Try Inbox Preview powered by Pivotal Veracity. This tool allows you to preview emails in multiple desktop, web, and mobile email clients prior to sending your message. Learn More.

Email Marketing ROI Higher than Expected

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 by Joel Book

I’ve often said that the total business impact of email marketing is much greater than what is actually measured. The reason is the “halo effect” that email marketing has in driving action at multiple points of contact.

Chad White’s article in today’s Email Insider provides compelling evidence that email marketing ROI is actually much higher than the $43.52 predicted by the DMA for 2009.

White, who is Research Director for email marketing agency Smith-Harmon, and editor of The Retail Email Blog, cites three reasons why email marketing ROI is understated:

Email marketing is nearly as effective at driving action offline as it is in driving action online. According to Forrester Research, 44% of all email subscribers are inspired to take action online versus 41% offline.
Even online, where it's easiest for email marketers to track the path of subscribers, email does not get credit for much of the action it drives. According to Epsilon, 33% of permission-based email recipients say they usually visit sites directly, instead of clicking on an email link. This means conversions may be undercounted by 50%.
Taking into consideration that email drives both offline and online sales, email marketing's ROI is probably closer to $130 -- about three times the DMA's estimate. And that's not counting email's ability to drive interest and actions in other channels like catalogs and social networks.

Email Usage Continues to Grow

In my June 18^th post, Email Solidifies its Reputation as the Backbone of Direct Marketing, I reported that spending on e-mail marketing in the U.S. will grow steadily to $2 billion by 2014, according to a new forecast by Forrester Research. It’s easy to see why.

When you stop and consider how email influences and improves the performance of other media -- both online and offline – why would you not use it to anchor your marketing campaign strategy?

Don't just advertise on social networks, interact on them!

Monday, July 13, 2009 by Teresa Becker

Social networks have become all the rage these days - from Facebook to Myspace, LinkedIn to Smaller Indiana, there are no shortages in social media sites and, chances are, you belong to at least one. So you've probably noticed those annoying advertisements that marketers throw at you. When I last logged into my Facebook account I was bombarded with a "Got Marketing Challenges" ad. Do I ever click on it? No, and I never will.

So how do you get past the challenges of marketing on social networks? We've come up with a few ways to effectively interact with your audience:

Increase list growth through customer opt-in captures
Allow "Social Forward" features such as "forward to a friend", "share this" integration, and "direct to social" to grow and optimize your email marketing efforts
Learn from Papa John's 1 to 1 marketing success with its Facebook Fan Group and Carmex's Kiss campaign in our social network whitepaper

So you want to connect with millions of highly-engaged individuals in a way you haven’t before? Social media is the newest and fastest growing market for companies that want to create real relationships – not just throw messages to the wind.

Consumer Perceptions of Marketing

Monday, July 13, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

Two weeks ago, members of the Catapult Rotational Program traveled throughout the Midwest to conduct customer interviews about their perceptions of marketing—from email marketing, to sms marketing, to social media and direct mail.

They did incredible—nearly 100 interviews in 2 days! While the goal was to have them capture video footage, there was another, perhaps more important byproduct—these new ExactTarget employees got a personal introduction to the core tenants of SubscribersRule!

Fresh off the road, we asked Catapult team members to share their thoughts about what they heard from consumers. Check out observations on the following topics based on the experiences Teresa Becker, Caitilin Landrigan, and Kristeen Hudson.

•   Part 1: Permission Makes All The Difference
•   Part 2: Consumers Still Don’t Know What CAN-SPAM Is
•   Part 3: Annoying Consumers with Too Many Emails
•   Part 4: When Marketing Becomes a Service

Top Independent Email Marketing Blogs

Monday, July 6, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

Following prior posts about the Top Resources for Email Marketing Education, we now get to the top independent blogs about email marketing. Blogs in this category are authored by people not directly affiliated with any particular ESP. While blogs were a more popular overall (as shown in the chart on the original post), there are simply more blogs on email marketing than there are publishers covering the space. As a result, these top blogs were not referenced as frequently as the publications were--the results were more distributed. To keep this list to a manageable number, we elected to recognize only the top 5--consistent with the top email marketing publications.

Here are the reults:

#1) Retail Email Blog **

Chad White was trained as a journalist and is the author and researcher behind the independent blog mentioned most frequently in our survey of go-to email marketing resources. Chad follows approximately 100 retailers at any time and looks at ALL of their email. Moreover, he has been doing this since 2006—he has definitely seen his fair share of email. His blog provides a virtual play-by-play of what retail email marketers are sending, from his “Subjectivity Scanner” posts where he recaps subject lines people are using, to who’s trying new stuff like embedded video or social media integration. If you are looking for examples with some insightful commentary, this is the place to go.

#2) Email Marketing Reports

Mark Brownlow is a writer and academic type. In his own words, “Email Marketing Reports entered life in November 2001 because I was tired of decent folk sending spam because nobody helped them learn the basics of legitimate email marketing.” His blog is dedicated to education. His articles consistently provide a balanced view of hot topics in the email industry and while he often references other sites, articles and studies, he can always be trusted to the appropriate context before sending readers off to another site

#3) BeRelevant! **

Tamara Gielen (collaborator on the study) is the author behind BeRelevant! Currently an independent email marketing consultant, Tamara has been a email practitioner for years having worked client side for Cognos and eBay, and agency side for OgilvyOne. Tamara started the blog as a tool for her to keep track of articles and topics she found useful in her own work and the blog has the same feel today. Most of her posts are lists of articles, tools, studies, and any other resources you could imagine on email marketing. Consider this blog a filter for articles worth reading.

#4) Convince & Convert

Jason Baer has been working in digital marketing since 1994 and was the founder of Mighty Interactive. The consummate entrepreneur, Jason is at it again as the founder of Convince & Convert, now a year old. Convince & Convert’s tagline is “social media and email consulting,” so while he focuses on social media first, don’t let that (nor his 6,000+ Twitter followers) lead you to believe he has moved on from email. His blog focuses on using technology to build community and he consistently provides sound advice on how to incorporate email into that process.

#5) Smith-Harmon

Smith-Harmon is an agency based in Seattle, WA dedicated to email marketing. They also happen to employ Chad White—so the Smith-Harmon crew is a deep well of expertise in email marketing. Their blog highlights different emails that catch their eye and typically focuses on the creative and aesthetic aspects of email. Even so, there is always an eye on the messages intent and execution. In short, the blog represents the personalities of the agencies founders, Lisa Harmon—the email industries queen of fashion, and Aaron Smith—the technical guy, but hardly a techie when it comes to style.

** Blogs by Chad White and Tamara Gielen have been noted as being potentially biased because their blogs were recruiting sources for this study. That said, they were asked to participate in recruitment because we know their blogs to be trusted email marketing resources. They both belong in your list of top 5 email marketing bloggers to follow (if they aren’t already). We’ll let them fight out their ranks respective to Mark, Jason, and Smith-Harmon if they feel so inclined, but I wouldn’t count on bloodshed, this is about the nicest group of folks you could imagine.

Disclaimer: ExactTarget is an advertiser, sponsor and/or partner of many of the sites listed in these survey results. Our affiliation with these sites did not play into their rankings—rankings were based solely on the responses of 351 respondents to an open-ended question contained in the survey fielded in March 2009 by ExactTarget and the Email Marketers Club.

Top Email Marketing Publishers

Monday, July 6, 2009 by Morgan Stewart

The following list contains the most frequently referenced publications about email marketing as determined through the 2009 Inside Email Marketing survey of 351 email marketers conducted in March 2009. Rankings are based on the number of times each publication was mentioned in response to an open-ended question asking, “Please provide the names of the three specific resources you reference most frequently to learn about email marketing?”

#1) MarketingSherpa

According to website traffic data from Alexa, Marketing Sherpa doesn’t generate the same traffic that ClickZ and Mediapost do. However, when it comes to a trusted source for information on email marketing, Sherpa tops the list. Sherpa’s latest Email Benchmark Guide is the 6th they have published. Their longstanding commitment to the email space along with their focus on independent research, benchmarks, and real world case studies has helped them become the ‘friendly native guides’ they aspire to be (hence the Sherpa name) to many email marketers.

#2) Email Experience Council

Better known as the EEC, the Email Experience Council is the email marketing arm of the Direct Marketing Association. This global professional organization strives to enhance the image of email marketing and communications, while celebrating and actively advocating its critical importance in business. Content is largely produced by its membership through member roundtables and advisory committees that consist of a virtual who’s who of industry professionals and email marketing companies (and yes, ExactTarget is a very active member).

#3 (tie) MediaPost Email Insider

Mediapost was founded in 1996 and has strong online and offline presences. Mediapost’s Email Insiders column features approximately 4 columns per week on email marketing distributed through daily newsletters and hosted on blog. Articles are written by industry experts, including the authors of two of the top 5 independent blogs identified in our survey and yours truly.

#3 (tie) ClickZ

ClickZ is has more than 12 years under its’ belt as a resource for online marketers. It. covers a number of topics from email to search, analytics, media buying, and online marketing trends. The publisher features approximately 3 columns per week on email marketing written by various industry experts broken into 5 categories: B2B Email Marketing, Delivery, General, Email Marketing Optimization, and Trends.

#5) MarketingProfs

MarketingProfs has evolved over the past 8 years from a site where ideas could be exchanged between marketing academics and professionals to a full-fledged online publisher of marketing insights covering topics from email to public relations and social media. About 1 how-to article per week is published on email and an email marketing case study is published about once per month. They also host several online seminars on email each year.

Disclaimer: ExactTarget is an advertiser, sponsor and/or partner of many of the sites listed in these survey results. Our affiliation with these sites did not play into their rankings—rankings were based solely on the responses of 351 respondents to an open-ended question contained in the survey fielded in March 2009 by ExactTarget and the Email Marketers Club.

“Open Your Textbook to Page…”

Monday, July 6, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

The common phrase, “open your textbooks and turn to page…” shared by teachers and professors for many years, is taking on a new look.

Some are going paperless.

No more backpacks full of three texts books that each way 10 pounds each. And, more importantly, no more cost of buying $100 textbooks.

The article titled “Professors Gone Paperless” gives another glimpse into a change in the mindset of Gen Y with the advancements in technology.

But, as good as this sounds, it is unlikely to see every professor move in this direction. Other professors are taking advantage of technology such as the online video website, YouTube.

What does this mean for businesses looking to market to Gen Y? You’ve got several new platforms where you can reach us, such as YouTube. But, please keep your information relevant; otherwise, we won’t pay attention.

Kyle Schroeder

Slingshot Summer Intern

Successful Marketing to Gen Y: Exclusivity

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Kyle Schroeder

Exclusivity in marketing to gen Y college students is important. Colleges students want to feel like they are important.

Exclusivity can be taken a lot of different directions. I think it has some positive outcomes and some negative ones as well. I think that overall, exclusivity means one thing in particular to gen Y college students:

“Make me feel like you are just marketing to me.”

In the midst of all the other sources of marketing out there, the gen Y crowd notices when the marketing is personalized. When you target specific campaigns toward their interests, you’ve grabbed their attention.

How do you go about doing this?

1. Allow them to opt-in to your communication channels.

2. Reach out to them on social network platforms like Facebook.

3. Send emails with content-specific material to the various groups of gen Y lists you have developed.

4. Don’t overdo it.

Exclusivity can be felt through effective email marketing campaigns and SMS marketing that is targeted directly to the individual. Allow them to opt in and chose what they want to receive and build a presence on social networking sites. Don’t forget that ExactTarget’s one to one messaging platform provides these capabilities.

Be exclusive.

Kyle Schroeder

Slingshot Summer Intern

SMS Marketing Term of the Day: Aggregator

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by Amanda Cross

ISPs may apply all sorts of sometimes-cryptic spam criteria to your email messages and refuse to deliver them. In the SMS world, SMSCs (short message service centers) are the approximate equivalent to the ISPs, holding on to your SMS messages and deciding when and whether to deliver them.

To send SMS messages, you have be concerned with each different SMSC in order to ensure that your SMS messages are delivered to all customer. If you were working directly with the SMSCs, you would need to negotiate a contract with each on individually, which is why early SMS marketing campaigns were sometimes only available to people with a certain carriers.

Enter the aggregator. The aggregator negotiates with each SMSC for you, giving you a single point of entry into the SMS delivery world.

You sign a contract with the aggregator and send your messages to it, and the aggregator then distributes the message to the appropriate SMSC for the subscriber to receive the message. Not only does working with an aggregator simplify the sending of your SMS marketing messages, but it also provide an avenue for technical support should you run into any problems.

The ExactTarget's SMS solution uses an aggregator to ensure the ability to deliver to subscribers, regardless of carrier. Read more about it on our SMS product page.

How to track opt-ins?

Friday, June 19, 2009 by Al Iverson

A client wrote me in response to a previous blog post on spam complaints, asking about the best way to track how people opt-in. That's a good, but complicated question. It might be too detailed for a blog post, but here are my thoughts on the topic. (Feel free to contact me if you have any specific questions.)

If you're using an online method of list signup, track all the variables you request from the person. Name, address, phone number, whatever. Also, make sure you track the IP address they signed up from. If you're really technology savvy, track browser information (Firefox on Linux, for example). All of this data will help prove to ExactTarget that the person opted-in, if there is ever a spam complaint issue.

If recipients opt-in to your mailings when ordering a product or service from you, the transaction details are important. Obviously we're not going to ask you to provide the person's credit card number, but the rest of the details (what was ordered and when, with details) helps to make the case. I used to work for an e-commerce service provider, and that data was always excellent protection against spam allegations.

If the signup method is an offline signup method like a paper form, record all that information obtained via the paper form. I'd recommend recording it in something like an Excel file or Access database. On the (unlikely) chance somebody would ever sue you for spam, you probably should keep those paper forms, too. Make sure you record the date that the form was filled out.

You don't have to actually upload all of this extra information into ExactTarget. It can amount to a lot of data, and if you're not actually using it for segmentation or personalization, I wouldn't bother. The important thing is that you keep this data somewhere that you can access, in the event that we contact you about a spam complaint. Keep it in an Excel file, an Access database, text file, your CRM system, or some place similar.

Keep in mind that we're going to ask you for this info only in unique situations. We're not asking you to pull this information and send it to us for every single spam complaint received back from an ISP, for example. We have a process wherein specific complaints are escalated when the potential for a broader spam issue is observed, and that's when we're going to reach out.

And thank you everyone who has helped us resolve a spam complaint issue by providing this information upon request. As I've mentioned before, there's a direct tie between resolving these issues and getting your mail delivered. I'm very appreciative of how helpful our clients are in working with us to ensure their deliverability isn't negatively impacted by a spam issue.

Email Solidifies It's Reputation as the Backbone of Direct Marketing

Thursday, June 18, 2009 by Joel Book

As reported by B-to-B Online today, spending on e-mail marketing in the U.S. will grow steadily to $2 billion by 2014, almost an 11% compound annual growth rate, according to a new forecast by Forrester Research.

Fueling the continuing reliance on e-mail as a direct marketing outreach are falling CPMs and high ROI, according to the Forrester report, “U.S. E-mail Marketing Forecast 2009 to 2014.”

Further, the report noted, the use of e-mail in social networks will be one of the biggest challenges for direct marketers, which face the need to bridge the gap between social and traditional inboxes with social sharing tools.

In October 2007, the DMA projected that in 2008, commercial email ROI would hit $45.65 for every dollar spent. In that same report, the DMA noted that “Email produces the highest response rate of all direct marketing methods we have studied."

Quite obviously, the DMA was right and we have continued to see email’s use expand in all facets of business – from Product Promotion to Customer Service. And through its integration with other customer-facing media like social networks and websites, we will continue to see more and more evidence of why email is no longer considered and option in the marketing mix – but an absolute necessity.

At a time when the average sales cycle has become 22% longer as buyers are taking longer to consider their decisions, email has become a key differentiating factor between companies that put themselves in a position to win by using email to provide information that aids the buyer’s decision-making process versus those who stand cold and clueless on the sidelines.

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