There’s been a new trend cropping up lately in inboxes – maybe
you’ve seen it? It’s full of love. Sometimes it points you in the
right direction. Other times, it’s simply breaking up the
information overload.
What’s the trend? It’s icons in subject lines, and marketers in
every vertical are finding ways to use this eye-catching new tool
to snag more opens on their emails.
It’s actually not that new. Since a fourteen year old
first learned to text her friends, they’ve been putting the <
together with a number 3 to create a heart. (It looks like this:
<3 See it?)
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
(CRTC) released the final form of its regulations on March 5, 2012.
You can see them for yourself in the Canada Gazette (Canada’s version of the United States’
Federal Register). They are printed in the March 28, 2012
edition. This version is not a call for comments, but rather the
release of the actual rules after considering the comments made in
response to their prior “Call for comments on draft Electronic
Commerce Protection Regulations” which was
released last July.
These regulations are not much different than the...
Posted by: Greg Murphy Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Here it is:
your big chance. Next month the company will be co-sponsoring the
industry’s largest trade show. Due to scheduling conflicts, your
boss is unable to attend and you will be attending in his place.
Your responsibility is to oversee all company events and booths in
order to walk away with a hard list of qualified leads.
As you consider your next steps, you inevitably look to your
right and see the crippling pile of business cards gathered from
the last trade show your company attended. Of the 500+ cards
collected, approximately 20 (being generous) belonged to
individuals who even...
Recent
legislation passed in Brazil could result in employers being required
to pay overtime to employees checking email or taking phone calls
after work hours. This law seems to follow some global employers'
efforts to limit the time spent on email while not at work--going
to such extremes as shutting off email servers during non-work
hours. You can read more of the original Mobiledia article that
reported this data here.
Since much of the non-work email checking takes place on
smartphones, this news feels like a potentail speedbump in the
global acceleration path of mobile email--with many...Read More »
In
her recent DM News article titled, "Restaurants
Drive Consumers to Dine Out with Calculated Email Coupons,"
Diana Dilworth reports restaurant chains are having huge success
using email to attract new and repeat customers. What’s noteworthy,
I think, is that restaurant chains like Pei Wei Asian Diner and
Taco John’s International have
learned that the key to successful email marketing is using other
channels like social media, in-store signage and mobile to invite
consumers to become email subscribers.
To introduce its new Caramel Chicken entrée, Pei Wei used a
cross-channel marketing...Read More »
You’re busy, I’m busy, everyone is
unbelievably busy these days. And that’s why NOBODY has time
to sift through an email packed full of 5-10 news articles written
straight into the message. However, you probably DO have an
interested list of folks who want to hear from you. Want to
increase engagement and performance right away?
Here are a few steps you can take
using ExactTarget
Landing Pages to improve design and content and increase open
and click-through rates, highlighted by Barbara Ryan and Church
Pension Group (CPG):
1.Scale back the content in each news article, so the email...
Posted by: Gina Mueller Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Michael J Becker, with the Mobile Marketing Association,
recently presented The Power of
Mobile in a Burst Session at Connections 2011. He
shared his fascinating perception into the rapidly expanding world
of mobile and its growing impact on digital marketing.
10 Eye-Opening Mobile Statistics from Becker's
Presentation
There are actually more people using mobile devices than
toothbrushes.
More people will access the internet via mobile than wire line
broadband by 2015.
Over 6 billion text messages are exchanged every day in the
US.
In May, 2003 the entire U.S. sent 300 million texts.
Today...
Each Thursday
at 11am EDT, marketers from around the world join
theExactTarget
Nexus partner ecosystemon Twitter for
a conversation about trends and campaign ideas across the
interactive marketing industry. We call the virtual coffee
chat theNexus
Café.
During a recent
#NexusCafe chat, we hosted our friends at Digital Evolution
Group,ourReseller of the
Yearfor2011. The chat
topic was Retail Holiday Marketing Campaigns,and weexploredhow
marketers are called upon for last minute changes and real-time
campaign management. Our guests were email marketing practice
director, Cara Olson,@emailg...Read More »
In the last post of our series, we’ll explore the vast array of
message types and the formats they take on. View my previous posts
to learn more about
Contact Strategy Development and
Message Personalities.
MESSAGE TYPES
A successful contact strategy will be a thoughtful combination of
the message types needed to meet unique business goals and
subscriber needs. Which make sense for your brand?
Connections
2011 was all about the “Power of One,” and Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer and co-author of
Digital Impact: The Two Secrets of Online Marketing Success
lit up his keynote session with a witty and insightful presentation
full of real world examples and great cross-channel marketing
strategies.
Here are four key strategies for
digital marketers that Geoff recommends.
1.Personalize your media
Studies show the No. 1 priority of
marketing executives for this year has been to improve segmentation
and targeting efforts. Email is among the best medium for
personalizing messages, generating the...
Posted by: Amanda Berkey Thursday, September 29, 2011
Each Thursday at 11am EDT, marketers from around the world join the
ExactTarget Nexus
partner ecosystem on Twitter for a conversation about trends and
campaign ideas across the interactive marketing industry. We
call the virtual coffee chat the Nexus Café.
Our guest for the #NexusCafe Twitter chat was Jeff Rohrs, VP of Marketing at
ExactTarget and the coauthor of the ExactTarget
Subscribers, Fans, and Followers research series. He joined us
to share how digital marketers can leverage mobile in their overall
campaign mix. Participants shared their insights and experiences
with mobile as a...Read More »
Text Messaging is unlike any channel before it. For most, it
is reserved for our inner circle of friends and family. It’s
for important updates and requests: ETA? / On way / Pick up milk
please. It’s for inside jokes, wry asides and
late-night musings. While many time-honored marketing
principles apply, we must appreciate this unique channel in the
context of human behavior. These basic practices lay a solid
foundation.
1.Start with the Value
Proposition. We should be asking, first and
foremost, “What value can I provide to my customers that is
important enough to warrant inclusion in...
You've got your subscriber list and communication strategy, but
before you start creating your emails consider these tips for
designing a more effective campaign:
CreateBrand Synergy. Utilize your current brand
elements to create a cohesive online brand experience.
Watch your Image and Text ratio. Images may
look aesthetically pleasing, but too many divert attention from
your message and may cause your email to be too large for and
blocked from some email clients. Images should balance and
complement your text content.
Use Tables. For consistent display and better
control of your email layout,...
Each week, marketers from around
the world join the
ExactTarget Nexus partner ecosystem on Twitter for a
conversation about trends and best practices in the interactive
marketing industry. We call the virtual coffee chat the
Nexus
Café.
Last week we had the opportunity to chat with Jay Jhun (@emailrocks), Director of
Email Services at Engauge, an
ExactTargetpartner. With 16% of smartphone users saying they’ve made a
purchase as the result of a marketing message they received on
their phone, we wanted to discuss how to capture that momentum to
drive purchase behavior through innovative...Read More »
Landing Pages have always been an
important aspect of marketing strategies – the place where you
drive your traffic, gather new leads, and drive conversions from
your customers and prospects. With the continued growth and
emergence of more and more digital ways to interact with consumers,
landing page optimization (LPO) is more critical than ever.
As the number of traffic sources
grows, opportunities for lead generation and targeted conversions
expand. What’s more important is the change in consumer
expectations – you may be driving registrations for one event from
email, text messages, blogs,...
Are
you getting dirty looks (or worse) from your significant other
because your phone is permanently affixed to your hand? Finding
yourself more interested in your text conversation than the live
one taking place around you? Waking up throughout the night to
check your email?
You’re not alone. You’ve experienced your own personal “Mobile
Dependence Day”—that single, defining moment when your smartphone
became a necessity, not just a convenience. And once you’ve crossed
that line, it seems there’s no going back.
The smartphone has become a modern day Swiss Army knife—people rely
on it for web...Read More »
Do you
think the only testing that should be involved with smartphones is
to determine whether your Angry Bird is following the right
trajectory to knock out the most pigs in one launch?
Not so, email marketing friends. At any given moment, your
subscribers are accessing email on their mobile device of choice.
And while
Google and Apple are fighting for the hearts and minds of
consumers and developers, the latest ComScore report shows there
are a wide variety of phones on the market (although Google’s
Android platform is now leading U.S. market share at 34.7
percent).
In any email communication, it’s important to deliver a clear
message, letting the subscriber know exactly what you’d like them
to do. The average time spent reading an email is mere seconds, so
you have a small window of opportunity to grab their attention.
Using a good call-to-action is a critical part of any performance-driven design, and
should be created mindfully so that the subscriber isn’t left
guessing.
Call-to-Action Recommendations
To get a desired action from a subscriber, we’ve compiled some
simple recommendations on formatting and design.
This is going to be a rather audacious post. The
reason? I hope to introduce a new term into the marketing
lexicon and prompt some discussion about our app-driven
future. Here goes:
apptrophy
(app-trō-phee): a wasting away of a smartphone, tablet or
other mobile application due to disuse or abandonment. Most
commonly experienced by those apps pushed beyond the fourth screen
on my iPhone.
If you're currently a smartphone user, I suspect that this new term
will be met with some head-nodding and smiles. Loading up
your first smartphone with tons of useful (Shazam), social
(Facebook),...Read More »
By now the stack of case studies showing how social media can
cause huge disruptions for companies is fairly large. Yesterday it
seemed like yet another example would be added to the list.
At 11:30am a well established 'mommy blogger,' @crissy, tweeted
a post from her blog, Dear
Crissy, calling out Toyota for a shady email pitch she
received.
The email came from MommyNetworks.org and it offered
bloggers a chance to "score" a $10.00 Amazon gift card for helping
to spread positive news about Toyota. The email provided links to
positive content about Toyota and asked the bloggers to rate, share
or...
Here it is:
your big chance. Next month the company will be co-sponsoring the
industry’s largest trade show. Due to scheduling conflicts, your
boss is unable to attend and you will be attending in his place.
Your responsibility is to oversee all company events and booths in
order to walk away with a hard list of qualified leads.
Recent
legislation passed in 
In
her recent DM News article titled, "
Connections
2011 was all about the “Power of One,” and Geoff Ramsey of 
Each week, marketers from around
the world join the 
Are
you getting dirty looks (or worse) from your significant other
because your phone is permanently affixed to your hand? Finding
yourself more interested in your text conversation than the live
one taking place around you? Waking up throughout the night to
check your email?
Do you
think the only testing that should be involved with smartphones is
to determine whether your Angry Bird is following the right
trajectory to knock out the most pigs in one launch?
If you're currently a smartphone user, I suspect that this new term
will be met with some head-nodding and smiles. Loading up
your first smartphone with tons of useful (Shazam), social
(Facebook),...
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