The Whitelist

Tips for Successful Email Campaigns During the Holidays and Year-Round

It’s that time of year again…when the stores sparkle with holiday lights, people start making a list (and checking it twice), and email inboxes become even more flooded with email marketing messages. As an email marketer, you’re probably wondering how to maximize your email marketing ROI during this busy time of year, and how to ensure your email marketing messages stand out from the rest.

In the latest issue of the ClickMail Marketer we summarize five easy-to-implement tips to ensure that your holiday email marketing campaign is, much like Santa’s sleigh, a flying success. And the beauty of these tips is that each one of these can (and should) become part of your email marketing toolbox the entire year round.

Even though spending is down a bit in the current economy, following typical annual trends, total holiday sales are estimated to pick up through December. Different this year is the increase in online purchasing: nearly half (46.7%) of the polled respondents said they will buy online, up from 43.9% last year. These internet shoppers will also spend about 22% more than in-store shoppers. In addition, the rise of mobile shopping is increasing dramatically in 2011. About half of those who own a smartphone said they will use their device to research and purchase holiday gifts and items.

As an email marketer, you can probably guess where we’re going with these numbers. The first tip on our list is Optimize your email marketing campaigns for mobile viewing! 2011 has seen a massive rise in smartphone and tablet use, and the numbers are only going to increase. This is the year of mobile email marketing and the time to capitalize on it is now. We also talk about the importance of Analyzing your subscribers’ behavior, Testing, and more.

If you’d like more details on these and other effective and easy-to-use email marketing best practices, check out the December issue of the ClickMail Marketer. And if you need more information about any of these tips, give ClickMail a call. Taking some time around the holidays to implement these email marketing best practices for a great start to your 2012 email marketing program. Find out how to get started in the December ClickMail Marketer.

ClickMail is proud to announce that the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal has ranked ClickMail Marketing as one of the top 50 fastest growing private companies in Silicon Valley. This is the second time ClickMail’s growth has been recognized by a major publication in recent weeks. Previously, Inc. Magazine ranked the email marketing vendor 2,109 on a list of the 5,000 fastest growing companies. ClickMail will be recognized by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal at a private awards event on October 13th in Mountain View, CA.

“We are continue to build our reputation in the email marketing industry as the vendor-agnostic ESP alternative, helping clients to gain more ROI from their email marketing programs,” said ClickMail CEO Marco Marini. “This additional recognition by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal is a welcome validation of the effort we are putting forth and the need clients have for our type of end-to-end email marketing services. Without the clients, we wouldn’t have this explosive growth.”

ClickMail is growing rapidly by bringing the latest in new services and email technology to our clients, who are also benefiting by increased growth and success in their email marketing campaigns. From building an online tool for selecting a new ESP to acquiring the Bay Area’s Strategic Design Group, we have been creating new tools and offering new services that help our clients keep pace in the fast-moving email marketing industry. With over a dozen ESP systems in our portfolio, we offer the nation’s largest selection of ESPs so that we can ensure the best match is made for every client. We also pride ourselves on our excellent support team that works with our clients on fulfilling their specific email marketing needs, from increasing email deliverability to achieving maximum ROI.

Let ClickMail Marketing help you with all of your email marketing needs: contact us today!

After years of thought and planning, The ESPinator is now live.

What is the ESPinator?  Thank you for asking.  The ESPinator is an online system, used to choose the Email Service Provider that best suits the needs of a particular company.

Why did we build it?  Here at Clickmail Marketing, we’ve noticed the trend of most ESPs using the samed buzzwords, making similar claims, and generally dazzling the audience with MarketingSpeak.  It is neigh impossible for most people to separate the many ESP marketing promises from their functional realities.

By way of example, just about every ESP claims they can integrate everything seemlessly, but some do it much better than others.  One ESP may have built an elegant connector to a CRM system whereas another requires the use of a technical sledgehammer to make it ‘fit’.  For an email marketer to make a sound decision, a lengthy RFP process has been necessary.  No longer.

Clickmail used its in-depth knowledge of ESPs, stripped off the many layers of marketing lacquer, and judged each ESP on an apples-to-apples basis.  Over 200 questions and criteria were analyzed, weighed and rated.  The result is the ESPinator, a system designed to replace a long RFP process with an hour long questionnaire.

There are currently eight ESPs rated and loaded into the system: ExactTarget, BlueHornet, Acxiom, eDialogue, Responsys, Yesmail, WhatCounts, and Lyris; and we plan to add an additional 24 ESPs to the mix over the coming weeks.

Try it, you’ll like it.  Tell us what you think!

As part of our ongoing effort to introduce the world to our comprehensive (and ever-growing) ClickMail Marketing team, we bring you Kelly Aarons, a Senior Account Manager for email marketing vendor ClickMail Marketing.

Kelly assists ClickMail Marketing’s customers with all aspects of their email marketing program. From account setup to strategic and tactical planning, from message deployment to performance analysis, Kelly is the first point of contact for his accounts and serves as the liaison between customers and their Email Service Provider (ESP). He works closely with the ClickMail Marketing sales, marketing, business development and technology departments to ensure his customers are running efficient and successful online marketing programs. He has experience with both B2B and B2C clients.
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ClickMail CEO Marco Marini’s latest DMNews feature is up: Relevancy Will Make Or Break Your E-mail Strategy.  Look for his insightful analysis on a regular basis over at DMNews.