The Whitelist

Five Signs It’s Time for a New ESP

Business relationships differ from personal ones in a very big way: Sometimes it’s just time to move on.

Case in point: Your marriage might be for life and your kids are around for good, but your ESP could be a temporary relationship. As much as you might like your ESP, as long as you’ve been doing business with them, there still might come a time when staying with the ESP you know so well could mean a lower email marketing ROI.

If you’ve been with the same email service provider for more than a year, consider these five signs that it’s time for a new ESP:

1. Your in-house email list has grown.

With over 100 ESPs to choose from, you’re going to find that capabilities differ among them. This includes scaling to meet your needs as your volume of email grows.

2. Your email deliverability has shrunk.

As strange as it sounds, the email deliverability rate you’ll get with one ESP is not the same as you’ll get with another. As an email marketing agency, we test different ESPs with the same list and we get markedly varied results. When even half a percentage point in improvement means more email ROI, having the highest possible email delivery rate is imperative. It could be your ESP isn’t keeping up with your needs, and that’s affecting your bottom line.

3. You’re ready to automate.

Triggered, event-based email marketing is the way to achieve the most targeted, relevant messages possible. If you’re ready to go that route and your ESP isn’t, it’s time to move on…not get left behind.

4. You’re ready to integrate.

Web analytics, CRM systems, social media, SMS…there are so many sources of customer insight and possible contact points that all need to be working in tandem for maximum results. Email marketing best practices alone will only get you so far. Integrating with other marketing channels is imperative. If your ESP is limited in integration capabilities, it might be time to shop for a new one.

5. You need some strategy.

In today’s economy especially, marketing budgets can be tight and staffs small. If you’re resources are enough to get the job done but not enough to add a strategic element to your email marketing program, you might need an ESP with consulting services available.

If you’re thinking maybe it’s time to move on to a new ESP, here are three ways to jumpstart your search:

• Plug your requirements into the online ESP selection tool, the ESPinator
• Download the 2011 guide to choosing a new ESP
• Head to booth #39 at MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit in Las Vegas this week to visit with email marketing agency ClickMail

Whether you do one, two or all three, you’ll be well on the way to moving on to the right ESP for your newly evolved needs.

What Happens in Vegas…Will Stick With You in a Very Good Way!

This is one time when what happens in Vegas need not stay in Vegas: MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit 2012. This time, we hope what happens in Vegas sticks with you in a very good way.

Taking place February 7^th through 10^th, the summit promises to be overflowing with email marketing expertise, experience and education…all designed to head back to your office with you, to be implemented in the coming months as you improve your email marketing program…and your email marketing ROI.

And if MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit 2012 doesn’t already promise enough new knowledge to tempt you, consider these three reasons, from ClickMail, your email marketing agency:

1. Get One-on-One Coaching!

Three of the email marketing industry’s best and brightest—ClickMail’s own Cameron Kane, Michael Kelly and Grant Johnson—will be on hand offering coaching and one-on-one consultation. That’s right. During this Las Vegas event, the real show stoppers will be the 12 different topics you can choose from when you want an expert’s undivided attention and advice. (Get the details and sign up for your private session.)

2. Get a Discount!

Register with our special email marketing agency promotion code, and you’ll save $700! To get your discount, enter priority code 185-ST-1003 at check out when you register for the Email Summit.

3. Get Connected!

Most important of all during this email event is meeting up with the folks from our email marketing agency. Be sure to stop by booth #39 during the Email Summit. While at the booth, plug your email marketing needs into our ESPinator to see which ESP gets recommended for you…and to be entered to win free prizes.

What’s not to love about three days in Vegas, especially when it all goes home with you?

Email: The Foundation of all Online Marketing

Although we’re an email marketing agency, we’ll be glad to see this month—and all of the 2012 predictions that came with it—come to an end. We must stay on top of the changes in the email marketing industry and the predictions help us to do so, but we are ready to get down to the business of email marketing ROI once again.

Why? Because one constant remains throughout all those predictions: Email is the foundation upon which your online marketing program is built, no matter if you’re switching from an ESP to marketing automation provider or putting extra resources into your social media campaigns. Email is the enabler to it all.

And that’s something we can all bank on by keeping our focus where our focus should be: constantly optimizing our email marketing best practices and programs, and further integrating our email with our web analytics and social media marketing.

Email is the starting point, the foundation, the enabler and even the glue. It’s also the preferred medium of your customers. According to ExactTarget, “56% of US Internet users interact with brands only via marketing emails, compared to 1.3% who interact only via Twitter and 0.7% by Facebook.” [ExactTarget, "Subscribers, Fans, and Followers: The Social Profile" (2010), emphasis added]

Emails not going away, and it needs your attention to make sure it’s doing all it can for you. The other stuff might be shiny and new but without the solidity of a well-functioning, optimized email marketing program, your other online and social media marketing efforts will fall short.

You’re already taking action to keep your email optimized: You’re reading this blog! For other resources that will educate you and strengthen your email marketing foundation, subscribe to our email marketing newsletter and definitely be sure to visit our booth at MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit 2012 next week.

Or just reach out to this friendly email marketing agency for some one-on-one email marketing consultation. We’ll help you lay that foundation brick by brick.

The Power of an Apology: Four Tips for Making Things Right Again

Driving through town the other day, I saw the following on the sign outside a church:

“If you have to have the last word, make it ’sorry’.”

That simple word little five-letter word might seem overly humble at times and might even be hard to say when you’re feeling you’re right, but that same simple word packs a lot of punch. It smoothes over hard feelings, heals hurts and makes things okay again.

It’s a word you want to use with your spouse, your family, your boss…and even your email marketing customers. Because chances are you’ve made some mistakes in all those areas. After all, you’re human!

We won’t dish out marital advice here, or ways to navigate the interpersonal relationships of the workplace. But we can as an email marketing agency that has seen a lot of email in our 10 plus years advise you on one of the most important emails you might ever send during your career: the apology email.

Mistakes will happen. Apologies will have to be made. Be ready to eat crow and please people when you follow this four tips:

1) Be real. Send your apology email from a real person. Depending on the severity of the mistake, choose appropriately. A huge mistake warrants an apology from the tog dog. Someone lower down the totem pole could send the “I’m sorry” for a lesser error.

2) Make things right. Maybe you can’t sell that product for the super low price you accidentally offered. But can you offer a partial discount? Or some other special? Think of the husband that shows up with flowers as he makes up with his wife. What can you show up with?

3) Manage the other communication channels too. It could your email made the mistake, but the repercussions show up on your Facebook page or all over Twitter. Keep the lines of communication open every way you can. Respond to email replies to your apology, be an active participant in the social media dialog.

4) Do not blame. Just admit to the mistake regardless of how it happened or who—or what—messed up. Your customers don’t care how the mistake happened. They only care that you’re making things right.

We’d like to tell you the apology email could be avoided altogether, but all we can promise is you can minimize the chance of errors through email best practices. So be prepared for the inevitable mistake and the necessary “I’m sorry” to make things right again as fast as you can.

Three Easy Ways to Prevent Being Flagged as Spam

Consumers are in a hurry and think nothing of flagging your legitimate email as spam, hurting your sending reputation despite your adherence to email marketing best practices. What’s an email marketer to do?

Everything in your power to minimize the use of that Spam button, that’s what!

The latest ClickMail Marketer has three easy tips for making spam reports fewer in number and keeping your email delivery rate high as can be:

1) Manage expectations from the start

2) Get through the first three hurdles

3) Make the Unsubscribe easy to find and do

Learn more about each, how it protects you, and how to implement it by giving the newsletter a quick read.

As an email marketing agency, we predict the Spam button will remain a threat to legitimate email marketers, and maybe even become more of a threat as inboxes get ever more cluttered. Follow these three tips, and protect yourself and your sending reputation by diminishing the use of the Spam button.

Read our latest email marketing newsletter here.

When a Dirty In-House Email List Costs the ISPs Money, It’s Time to Clean Up!

If your in-house email list hasn’t had a good scrubbing lately, it’s time to clean house. A clean list has always ranked high among email marketing best practices, but now even more so as ISPs crack down on email marketers who waste their time…and their money.

As an email marketing agency focused on numbers and deliverability, we understand that it’s hard to see the size of your list shrink when bad or dormant email addresses get removed. It’s worth it though. Remember, your goal is a quality list, not a quantity one. You’re far better off with 5,000 names that respond to your content than 15,000 that don’t.

Scrubbing your in-house email list might mean fewer names, but it also means higher ROI from your email marketing because you’re marketing to a more responsive audience. In addition, you’re improving your email delivery rate by improving your sending reputation. And you’re pleasing the ISPs, who are the ultimate gatekeepers between you and your prospects.

ISPs still see emailing to bad and inactive addresses as sloppy and careless on the part of the marketer, and they will be more likely to flag your emails as spam if you continue to do so. But now we’re seeing the major ISPs thinking of these unnecessary emails as an expense too. If you’re already annoying an ISP because you’re carelessly sending to people who haven’t responded to your emails in over a year—showing an obvious lack of interest in your content—imagine how annoyed they’ll be when they think of those wasted emails as costing them money to boot?

The answer was and still is good list hygiene. Start with email marketing best practices that require an opt-in. Use a Preference Center to give subscribers control. Then keep your list squeaky clean with regular scrubbings.

Your list will be clean, your subscribers responsive and the ISPs pleased. What more could you ask for?

Get tips for scrubbing your in-house email list.

As if MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit 2012 didn’t offer enough quality information and learning resources to tempt you to Las Vegas from February 10th to 12th, consider this: You’ll be able to get one-on-one coaching too.

That’s right. In addition to the sessions and speakers–plus networking with your email marketing peers—you’ll be able to delve deep into your organization’s own individual email marketing challenges by sitting down with an expert to discuss one of 12 different topics:

1. Email Design and Creative

2. Email Deliverability

3. Measurement

4. B2B Email Marketing

5. Mobile Marketing

6. Social Media and Email Marketing

7. Landing Page Optimization

8. Advanced Email Marketing Strategy

9. B2B Lead Optimization

10.  Search Engine Optimization

11. Email Content Creation

12. Email Marketing Value Propositions

Best of all, three of our email marketing agency team will be among the email marketing experts doing the coaching: Cameron Kane, Michael Kelly and Grant Johnson. These are three of the smartest guys in the industry, with decades of hands-on, in-the-field experience.

Learn more about the topics above and the experts doing the coaching. You’ll see bios and photos for Cameron, Michael and Grant, so you’ll know what kind of insight they’ll offer.

Then get your email marketing consulting scheduled. To book your one-on-one coaching time, click the link to schedule an appointment online. You will be able to schedule online at the registration desk during the Summit as well, but we recommend scheduling ahead of time because appointments are taken on a first-come, first-served basis.

Now for the close, if you’re still on the fence about the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012: What if you could save $700 on the registration fee?

If the sessions don’t hook you, the experts don’t sway you, and the personal coaching can’t convince you, then maybe a $700 discount will. Yes, $700, courtesy of email marketing agency ClickMail. To get your discount, register for the Email Summit and enter priority code 185-ST-1003 at check out. That’s it.

Oh, and get your coaching scheduled. A.S.A.P. Before all the slots are filled and all the expert advice goes to your competitors instead.

Email Marketing in 2012: A Few (More) Predictions for the Upcoming Year

One thing about being an email marketing agency: One must always have a finger on the pulse of and an eye on the blogs of the industry! Email is blessed with so many knowledgeable, insightful people who can look at the big picture and help guide our everyday strategic and tactical decisions. ClickZ is a wonderful resource for this kind of insight. In particular, ClickZ’s latest blog by David Daniels has some predictions for you for 2012, a few of which intrigued us enough to expand upon here.

We like David’s statement about behavioral segmentation. As an email marketing agency, we’ve been pushing segmentation as an email marketing best practice for years. Why? Relevance. Segmenting means targeting. Targeting means relevance. Relevance means increased email delivery rates and higher conversion rates. As David describes it, behavioral segmentation is even more useful because it is based not only on demographics, but on a customer’s past behavior, making it a predictor of future behavior too:

“The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior and the marketer’s ability to digitally understand customer’s desires and actions begins with segmenting audiences based on click-based engagement.”

As this becomes a standard email marketing best practice in 2012, it will also become a competitive advantage. Make sure behavioral segmentation is something your email marketing team is at least considering in the very near future.

David is also the bearer of good news, predicting businesses will pay a little less attention to the glitz and glamour of social media marketing campaigns and get back to measuring concrete results: “the focus will rightly turn to the return on investment of those social efforts.” David expects the kinds of reporting and analytical features we’ve come to expect from email marketing solutions will be adapted to measure results across channels. That kind of insight will only improve our tactics and techniques as email marketers, resulting in deeper knowledge about the effectiveness and inter-relatedness of each marketing channel and—ultimately—a higher ROI.

David also predicts security, breaches, and legislation will increase in 2012, a scary thought and something to consider as you plan out your year. He is also optimistic, saying marketers will understand the penalty of emailing to dormant addresses, a topic near and dear to our email marketing hearts because emailing to dormant addresses can have a negative impact on your email delivery rate. (Get tips on scrubbing your in-house email list for improved email deliverability.)

Let’s close with where David starts his post, about the longevity of email. As we keep saying, email is still alive and well and David concurs. So let’s just make that a given. Email will continue to offer the best ROI, to be the glue that holds other marketing channels together, and to be the foundation upon which countless marketing campaigns will be built…through 2012 and beyond. Long live email!

Christmas Cookies and Email: Lessons to Be Learned!

Here at ClickMail, we might be gearing up for a busy year as an email marketing agency, but we take the time to enjoy Christmas cookies! Baking and eating the seasonal delights got us thinking—as usual—about a mouth-watering analogy, how we can learn from Christmas cookies and baking and apply those lessons in 2012.

The symptom: Missing ingredients

If you’ve ever been halfway through baking cookies and realized you would need to run to the store—again—you can sympathize. It’s hard to make butter cookies without butter, gingerbread without molasses, and macaroons without coconut. In fact, it’s impossible. Knowing what you need ahead of time means a successful result.

The lesson: Have all the pieces in place.

When you’re shopping for an ESP or digital marketing services, you want to be sure you’re buying all of the functionality you want now…and those features you’ll want in the future. In the age of engagement, capabilities like integration move beyond extra to expected. Be sure you have all of the ingredients in place before cooking up your new email program.

The symptom: Uneaten cookies

Is every cookie gobbled up, each type as popular as the other? Or do some cookies sit for weeks in a red-and-green container, ignored and stale, until finally tossed at Easter?

Until recently—this year, to be honest—we’ve been making the same cookies at our house every year, year after year, whether they were eaten or not. The sugar cookies and the snowballs would disappear before we even had a chance to toast the new year. But the gingerbread men and cinnamon stars languished untouched. Despite the effort put into making the dough, then rolling out, cutting out and baking the cookies, they were unappreciated and uneaten. We kept making them because we were too tradition-bound to be sensible.

The lesson: Do what works now, not what worked then.

In email, we avoid the uneaten cookie when we test, stay fresh and stay up-to-speed with the latest trends, tools and technologies. The trick is not to do something because that’s the way we’ve always done it, like baking cookies destined for the waste bin. Keep up with the trends, then test, test and test again to be sure you’re delivering tasty morsels of email to your subscribers.

The symptom: Weight gain, oh no!

Too many cookies = too many pounds. I’m sure we’ve all noticed there’s a direct correlation between the number of lemon bars consumed and the snugness of one’s jeans!

The lesson: Email is often as works, no more.

Eating too many cookies is bad for you. Eating too often is as well. The first will gain you pounds, the latter will lose you subscribers. We lack a hard and fast rule about email frequency, however, just like I can’t tell you how many cookies is too many. That’s because, like the cookies, it depends. A 200-pound teenage boy can consume far more spritz than a 90-pound grandma.

Your subscribers differ in tolerance as well. Some will welcome the semi-weekly email from you while others prefer a monthly contact. Make everyone happy with a preference center that gives the subscriber the control. Who knows? They might gobble up your email messages and want to hear from you as often as possible.

That’s the Christmas cookie lesson from this email marketing agency. Take a look and put these three lessons to work for a successful 2012.

Oh, and has anyone seen the last rumball cookie? I had dibs.

Oldies but Goodies: Top Email Advice From Past Posts

It’s that time of year, one of looking forward to what’s to come while looking back and taking stock of what’s been. It’s with this retrospective thinking that we took another look at the many posts our CEO has written for the Email Experience Council (EEC).

Over the past two years, Marco has contributed invaluable information to the esteemed EEC blog, information still valid and useful on the eve of 2012. Below you’ll find a list of the posts, linked to the content. Take a look and find the email advice you just might need to put into play during the year ahead.

• Four Common-Sense Tips for Using Social Tools in Email Marketing

• Make It a Mobile Mentality

• What Are the Standard Features Any Email Marketing System Should Have? It Depends

• Build vs. Buy: The real cost of building an email solution

• Relate to Customers With a Relational Database

• Triggered Emails Are on Target for B2B Email Marketing

• Save Time and Money by Integrating Your Email and Blog

• Pull the Trigger for Targeted Messages and Higher ROI

• Will ESPs Evolve Into Marketing Automation Solutions?

• Five Steps to Building a Preference Center

• How Social Networking Can Magnify the Power of Your Email Campaign

• Key Email Marketing Trends to Act on in 2010

• Your Preheader Text Could Be the Most Important Part of the Body of Your Email

• Introducing the new ROI: Return on Interaction

• Managed Email Marketing: The Benefits of Outsourcing Your Email Marketing

• Is Email Video Ready for Prime Time Viewing? Or Still Just a Pilot Program?

• Suggestion: Real World Common Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

If you didn’t find the content you needed here, then maybe a callout to ClickMail should be on your list for 2012. Call on ClickMail any time, for your most successful year yet.