On Tuesday. February 16th, I have the pleasure of co-hosting a webinar that will tackle the problem of shopping cart abandonment. The webinar is titled, “The 7 Secrets to Recovering Abandoned Shopping Carts,” and will cover the strategy and technology required to implement an effective shopping cart abandonment solution. 
Keynoting Email Evolution 2010 is Brian Harniman, EVP of Marketing and Distribution at Kayak. Harniman will offer a visionary look at the Kayak.com customer experience today and tomorrow with a focus on the role of email in relation to other channels.
If you want to see two outstanding examples of how brands are successfully using Email + Social Media + Mobile to attract and retain customers, plan to attend my session on Tuesday afternoon. I’ll be joined by Renee Middleton of Taco John’s and Kip Edwardson of The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. 
Keynoting Email Summit ‘10 will be Joseph Jaffe, bestselling author of "Join the Conversation" and "Life After the 30-Second Spot." 
As a special bonus, ExactTarget has arranged for each attendee of Email Summit ’10 to receive a copy of Joseph Jaffe’s new book “Flip the Funnel.”
Recently, ExactTarget partnered with MarketingExperiments to explore how marketers can use data to make smarter email creative decisions. Researchers from both companies developed experiments to test the most effective creative executions as part of a special ExactTarget email redesign competition.
There are plenty of reasons I like to attend MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit, but the single best reason is the speakers. The line-up of speakers for the upcoming Email Summit ‘10 in January is no exception.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If you sell through sales agents or dealers, one of the smartest things you can do to boost email response is to personalize the email by sending it “on behalf” of the customer’s sales rep or account manager.
GLS Companies sends personalized email on behalf of each sales agent to people they meet at trade shows. The Integrated Communication Solutions (SM) company also uses personalized email to nurture leads. 
I’m really excited about the upcoming 2009 NCDM conference which kicks off Monday, December 7th in Las Vegas.
Thinking about using mobile coupons? If you are, here are 5 things you absolutely must know about planning and managing a successful mobile coupon strategy.
I am really honored to have been nominated as one of the Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management in 2009 and would sincerely appreciate your vote.
Proving that personalized product recommendations work, Motorcycle Superstore saw a 21.7% revenue increase in the first week after launching an email campaign on September 21st that incorporated personalized product recommendations. 
Mike’s Express Carwash is a chain of 37 carwashes located across Indiana and Ohio. They recently announced that their email marketing program had enabled the company to boost online sales in June by more than 60 percent over June 2008 totals.
Email gives us a way to reward our loyal customers,” said Sally Grant, marketing director of Mike’s Express Carwash. “We’ve also been able to build a great list of highly-engaged customers and send them special offers and discounts to thank them for their loyalty and drive increased sales.”
What I really like about Mike’s is how they invite the customer to become an email subscriber.
Customers are invited to participate in the email campaign when they purchase a car wash. Every receipt includes a unique offer code and provides a link to the survey site (www.talktomikes.com). Customers log on to the Website, enter the unique receipt code and their email address and then complete a two-question survey. Once the survey is submitted, the data is immediately sent to ExactTarget’s Application Program Interface (API) which automatically triggers an email to the customer that includes a bar-coded coupon for a free car wash. To prevent multiple uses of the same coupon, the company uses ExactTarget’s Live Content feature to automatically generate a new bar-code for every coupon. Data from each coupon barcode is automatically uploaded to Mike’s Express’ point of sale system to ensure the code is only recognized once.
Does this email opt-in strategy work? You bet it does!
In August, Mike’s Car Wash ran a “Back To School” campaign that offered customers a free carwash in exchange for completing an online customer satisfaction survey and subscribing to its email marketing program. The 10-day campaign added more than 40,000 new customers to the company’s email subscriber list!
You Can Be Like Mike
Whether it’s implementing Triggered Email Promotions based on POS Customer Data Capture, or using SMS text messaging to capture new email subscribers, marketers like Mike’s Car Wash are proving that email marketing is smart. And successful email marketing begins with a well-planned subscriber acquisition strategy.
If you want to be like Mike, gives us a call. We'll be happy to help.
Online advertising has shifted from a “blast” and “broadcast” approach to an engagement focused strategy. And the emphasis has switched from CPM to Cost Per Lead to generate higher ROI.At the recent ANA/BtoB Magazine conference in Chicago, Paul Dunay, Global Managing Director for services marketing at Avaya, and Jason Ferrara, VP Corporate Marketing at CareerBuilder.com presented a terrific session titled "How B-to-B Marketers Are Using New Media," in which they discussed how they have increased spending on new media, especially in the past year.
"We do search, email marketing and social media. That's the holy trinity of online marketing," said Dunay. He also noted that – with no new money in the marketing budget – he has paid for his new media efforts by decreasing spending on print, TV, radio and other traditional media. Ferrara has done the same at CareerBuilder.com
Avaya and CareerBuilder.com are not alone in embracing new media. According to a recent survey conducted by the Association of National Advertisers and BtoB Magazine, 20% of b-to-b marketers used social media in 2007. This year, 66% of b-to-b marketers are using social media.
My Take
I think it’s becoming more and more clear that email + social media is an effective strategy for business development. And there are three reasons:
1. Attracting Email Subscribers. One of the biggest benefits to social media is the ability to attract new email subscribers. Brands that provide a compelling reason for members of social networking sites to subscribe to their email communications are finding that these sites are an ideal venue for list growth. And as these people become new email subscribers and use Social Forward to share email content with those in their online social networks, they become powerful influencers.
2. Professional Networking. With more than 45 million users representing 150 industries around the world, LinkedIn is the biggest networking watering hole for business professionals. It’s just as effective for attracting talent as it is for generating referrals and product recommendations. But be on the lookout for WSJ Connect from The Wall Street Journal, a new networking site that’s in the works. It will also be aimed at professionals and its being billed as the “LinkedIn killer.”
3. Lead Generation. Social networking sites provide a natural gathering location for people who are passionate about a particular brand or interest. Engaging these individuals with offers that are relevant is proving to be smart business. An excellent study from OneUpWeb shows that ads on social networking sites work. As the report states in its summary, “Repeated exposure through the synergy of sponsored ads and search results increases familiarity with the brand. This is vital for generating sales both online and offline.” And once these leads are generated, email provides the most effective tactic for lead nurturing and aiding the buyer’s decision-making process.
According to an exclusive survey of B-to-B and B-to-C marketing professionals conducted by BtoB Magazine and the Association of National Advertisers, more B-to-B marketers are getting on the social media bus. Here are some highlights:
How B-to-B Marketers are Leveraging Social Media
Tactically speaking, Social Media Marketing (SMM) is primarily a public relations tool, but it is fast becoming very effective for generating new business leads, either directly or through referral. While Facebook is the dominant social networking site for B-to-C marketers, LinkedIn – as the study revealed – is the preferred watering hole among B-to-B marketers.
Another big way in which marketers are leveraging social media is for email list growth. According to the recent ExactTarget 2009 Email List Growth Study, Social Forwarding is projected to be the most frequently adopted new list growth tactic in 2009. Social Forwarding uses ShareThis 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.
Are you LinkedIn?
If you want to learn how to best leverage the networking and lead generating potential of LinkedIn, my friend and social media expert extraordinaire, Jason Baer, of Convince and Convert, has a great presentation on using LinkedIn to build your reputation and generate leads.
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.
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