Email Design Best Practice

If you’ve mastered marketing automation 101, and even tackled our 9 steps to go beyond the marketing automation basics, then you’re ready for a few of our expert tips. At this point, you should be delivering highly relevant and dynamic email content, sending out drip emails to nurture prospects over time, and managing your social profiles using real-time and scheduled posts.

Sound about right? If so, then read on to find out how you can continue to improve your marketing automation efforts with these 8 steps, inspired by the Mastering the Art of Marketing Automation eBook:

1. Don’t get lazy. At...

Marketing automation is the intersection of many useful features and functions. It's a proven fact that marketing automation software gives marketers full visibility into aspects of the sales cycle that were previously a mystery. But the sheer number of buttons and tools can seem daunting if they're not old-hat to you just yet.

As you begin to build an effective marketing automation program, you can begin to gain a holistic view of your marketing activities. From there, you can streamline traditionally manual processes (like customer segmentation, email marketing, and campaign management).

Start ...

Join Kristina Huffman, Design Practice Lead, as she discusses and answers seven common questions about responsive email design:

What is responsive email?
Responsive design is a set of techniques in web design and development used to adapt a website to be readable on any screen and/or platform on which it's displayed. These techniques are being repurposed for emails. A responsive layout uses a piece of CSS3 code called a media query to detect the pixel size of the screen on which that email is opened. Based on the screen size detected, multiple stylesheets may be triggered to alter the layout and...

October 2012 was an exciting time for ExactTarget’s partner ecosystem. Not only was the Orange Partner Network program launched at Connections, but also in front of the 4,000+ attendees, ExactTarget was excited to present the Power of ONE Reseller Partner of the Year award to our Platinum partner, C.TRAC.

C.TRAC has taken ExactTarget’s passion and unwavering commitment to client success and worked it into their own daily business practices by truly embodying ExactTarget's core values. Combined with their innovative strategy, design, integration, database management, reporting services, and...

The Marketing Sherpa Email Summit is heavily focused on providing attendees with takeaways to apply in your marketing as soon as you get back to the office--or even before.

The conference provided best practices and real-life examples for the lifecycle of your email campaigns, starting with list acquisition. Matt Byrd of WeddingWire used his presentation to highlight a topic that is extremely helpful, but also stressful for marketers: removing unengaged subscribers from your lists. This topic was recently highlighted by Al Iverson but I wanted to share Matt's experiences as he took on this...

About 18 months ago, I blogged about some impending changes to cookie laws in the EU, and potential ramifications for marketers. As it turns out, those laws didn't cause the world to end, some Governmental sites weren't even compliant, and to this date I do not believe the legislation has been truly enforced on any individual or organisation.

That being said, the latest proposed updates to the EU Data Protection Regulations have potentially much more widespread impact for all marketing, and indeed any company which handles or processes customer data.

If the legislation were to be passed in its...

Email subscribers stop engaging for a number of reasons: message volume, frequency, irrelevancy, etc. But many companies fail to adjust their programs to re-engage these subscribers.

This week, I had an opportunity to visit with our 3sixty Live group in Dallas for a lively discussion on re-engagement campaigns.The group shared examples of successful re-engagement programs, including a great success story from Half Price Books. Last month they were looking for a solution to improve deliverability, open, and click through rates. After reviewing the data of their current subscriber list, they...

Over the next several weeks, we will be sharing predictions on the future of marketing from 25 industry thought leaders. These predictions have been compiled in our new whitepaper, Inspired Marketing Predictions for 2013. Today, ExactTarget’s own Kristina Huffman shares her thoughts.

Email Flexibility Unlocks True Creativity

In 2013, designers will stop redesigning the wheel with every email send and set up flexible email templates so they can increase production efficiencies and spend more time coming up with new ideas. Ideation and openness to change are innate to a designer’s nature and...

In its “Online Holiday Shopping Forecast and Trends” issued in September, eMarketer predicted that 25 percent of e-commerce sales will happen during the 2012 holiday season.

Without question, retailers are using traditional advertising tactics including radio and television commercials, direct mail and print ads to drive customers to stores. And many will use social media, online video, and in-store promotions.  But the biggest catalyst for holiday sales this year will be mobile.

New research Prosper Mobile Insights reveals why mobile devices are fueling holiday retail sales:

• 66 percent of...

Each Thursday at 11am EST, marketers from around the world join the ExactTarget user community on Twitter for a conversation about trends and campaign ideas across the interactive marketing industry. We call this virtual coffee chat the ExactTarget Café. 

Each Thursday at 11am EST, marketers from around the world join the ExactTarget user community on Twitter for a conversation about trends and campaign ideas across the interactive marketing industry.  We call the virtual coffee chat the ExactTarget Café. 

The email marketing scene is more competitive than ever. So how do you cut through the clutter and make your messages stand out in the inbox? The first step is with great email design.

Strategic planning and testing are crucial components of great design. Your design should make it easy for readers to understand and act on your call-to-action, ultimately resulting in the highest conversion rate for your marketing campaigns.

Here are a few ways to maximize your subscriber response with design:

1. Design for mobile.ExactTarget research has shown that more than half of consumers (53%) use a...

Looking for a few quick email marketing wins? If you’re like most marketers, you’re constantly searching for a greater return on your email efforts.

You need easy ways to:

• Gain email subscribers
• Improve deliverability
• Design for clicks
• Drive engagement
• Use automation

So how can you grow your email list organically?

1. Make a list of your five most common customer touchpoints and audit each to ensure you’re providing every opportunity to opt in to your email communications. Consider your website pages, printed receipts, on-location signage, the online purchase process, events, or tradeshows.
2. Test a few...

Each Thursday at 11 a.m. 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 a recent #NexusCafe chat was  Joanna Milliken, Director Product Management for ExactTarget Email.  Joanna was one of ExactTarget's first employees and has contributed to building the organization and has served many roles throughout her tenure. She is passionate about email marketing and working with clients.  In the chat...

The ExactTarget Nexus team invites you to participate in our #NexusCafe Twitter chat this Thursday  and every Thursday from 11am-12pm ET, where we discuss emerging topics and trends from across the interactive marketing world. The virtual coffee chat is hosted directly on Twitter, hosted by @ETNexus. Follow the #NexusCafe hashtag and be sure and add the hashtag to your tweet to participate. The person with the best tweets wins a Starbucks gift card!

Our guest for the #NexusCafe chat this week is Nate Riggs, director Social Business at The Karcher Group, a digital marketing agency that bought...