Read the full story here, as reproduced in the Journal’s blog on lobbying and advocacy, Under the Influence.

But even if you aren’t sending out those first “think of us for gifts” type email marketing messages, there’s plenty of prep work you can do right now to make your holiday email marketing campaign more effective so you achieve better email marketing results.

Smith Harmon’s Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season has practical suggestions for gearing up, both by collecting more information about what subscribers want to get in their emails from you, and by having excuses to reach out to them, helping you be top of mind without starting the holiday shopping message too early.

Their email marketing suggestions include:

• Having subscriber update their preferences so you can increase your relevancy during the holidays, using a preference center
• Or get the same insight via surveys
• Update your Web site and improve the functionality, then email your list to publicize the improvements
• Request product reviews during the summer and fall so you can use them as part of your holiday email marketing campaign. Hint: You’ll want to offer an incentive too to increase the likelihood that people will contribute reviews
• Encourage subscribers to buy now to earn a discount during the holidays
• Promote your credit card or loyalty program

All of these suggestions are either good ideas or simply email best practices, and none are overly complicated. Too early for holiday email marketing? Maybe, but it’s never too early to prepare for it!

Download the full report here

And that leads to slightly more aggressive approaches to garner more names that might grow your list but not positively impact your email marketing ROI due to poor quality names.

MarketingSherpa recently published some email best practices useful for anyone growing their email marketing list using tactics such as sweepstakes, co-registration and email list rentals. The article is definitely a must-read to make sure the names you do add to your list are more prospects than props.

Also included in the email best practice article is a caveat about continuing to qualify those names even after you have them through a series of welcome emails.

Read the article by clicking here, but hurry, it’s only open access until August 20th!

“…37.1% of US e-mail marketers did not test their e-mail campaigns at all.”

That’s more than a third. That’s a scary thought. Is that because email is just so easy to do, and to do poorly, that email marketers tend to ignore email best practices? At their peril!

“…the most common reason was that they simply did not know how (nearly 33%).”

One third of those in email marketing do not know how to test, a critical email best practice. How can that be? If they don’t know how to test, why are they in charge of email marketing? If they don’t know not to test, why not bring in an email marketing consultant to teach them?

“Another 27.4% reported not having enough time to do so.”

This is akin to saying you don’t have time to get the oil changed in your car, or getting your teeth cleaned. It’s something you have to make time for, no matter how unpleasant, or suffer the consequences later.

“A few (8.5%) said they did not actually see the value in testing.”

I’m relieved that this number is less than 10% but still surprised that it’s as high as it is. Testing is such a vital email best practice, it is just something you have to do.  Are these email marketers also spamming because they don’t see the value in permission-based email marketing, or being legal?

“More than 85% of those marketers who tested their e-mail campaigns scrutinized subject lines. Far fewer (54.8%) tested calls to action, and around one-half made efforts to optimize design and body copy.”

This is telling because it indicates that the email marketing folks are more interested in getting the emails opened and far less interested in converting. That might help your open rates look good, but it won’t do much for your email marketing ROI.

Studies like this are a chance to look in the mirror and see if we as an email marketing industry are really committed to email best practices or not. Based on these numbers, I’d say we have a ways to go.

See the eMarketer article by clicking here.

But it occurred to us lately that maybe we’ve focused too much on making sure they’re similar to avoid a disconnect between your email and your landing page. Maybe we haven’t done a good job of spelling out the differences between the email someone gets and the landing page that email drives them to.

Why should this matter? A landing page is a Web page and that gives you much more flexibility. With email marketing, you have to worry about rendering and email delivery and open rates and calls to action and click throughs. And you have a limited toolbox as a result.

But your landing page isn’t limited by sender ID or ISPs or spam complaints. Your landing page is independent of the constraints on your email marketing. And that means you can and should use that to your advantage to try and drive that conversion.

Consider what you can do with in a landing page compared to an email:

• Images: They will show, unlike in email where they’ll likely be blocked. Use them to your advantage!
• Calls to action: You can have more than one! Yes, you drove the prospect to that landing page for one particular offer, but you can below or next to that offer either lead them to other places on your Web site, or offer them other products or services.
• Loads of info: You don’t want your email to overwhelm, but your landing page can be wordier. You’d likely want to do this below the fold, and below your call to action, but you can make it available…or offer links to more information.
• Flash and video: Although these are easier to offer in email than they used to be, that doesn’t yet mean they work in email marketing. But you can use them on your landing page without worry.

Yes make the email to landing page transition a smooth one. Make sure the design and message are in alignment. But then take advantage of the potential of your landing page to do much more than your email could ever do.

As an email marketing vendor, we work hard to help educate email marketers through this blog, our newsletter, our participation in email marketing conferences and webinars, our email marketing library, and by simply paying attention to opportunities to learn, especially those that require a little less commitment, whether financial or time. That’s one reason whitepapers are so popular: You can read them when you want to. It’s a little harder with webinars and other scheduled events that require you to set aside a particular time.

That’s why we’re glad to turn you on to a webcast that’s free to attend in two ways: no money required, no time commitment required.

Lyris HQ (formerly EmailLabs) is offering an on-demand webcast on the future of email marketing. Featuring Jeanniey Mullen of the EEC, Cathi O’Sullivan of Lyris, and Anna Maria Virzi, of The ClickZ Network, the webcast addresses how email marketing has changed and what you need to know in order to be successful.

To view and learn from the webcast… at your convenience.

I just read the Silverpop whitepaper* added recently to our email marketing library, on “6 Fixes to Dramatically Boost Email Marketing Results.” Each of the six fixes has numerous parts to it, and I was struck by how many of these are email best practices, best practices we’ve blogged on and written about in our email marketing newsletter.

Silverpop’s email marketing whitepaper is divided into six common email marketing mistakes:

1.    No preference center
2.    Not managing expectations
3.    Mailing too frequently – or too infrequently
4.    Ignoring subscriber feedback
5.    Relying on process metrics to measure and communicate email performance
6.    Getting the timing wrong

These are all broad topics, but as I mentioned above, each has plenty of specific advice and email best practices described to help you overcome the common mistake.

Once again it reminds me that our world, the world of email marketing, is made up of possibly countless moving parts. Maybe it’s more of a galaxy than a world! But that’s why it’s so important to keep reading blogs, newsletters and whitepapers, and to attend webinars and email marketing conferences. And then tweak and tweak and tweak, constantly improving your email marketing campaigns so you can constantly improve your email marketing results.

*For this whitepaper click here and look for the Silverpop whitepaper title “Discoveries and Opportunities: Fixes to Dramatically Boost Email Marketing Results.”

It’s not a new concept. I once read that the idea of Christmas in July came from Victorian times, when women would start making gifts in July, giving them several months to get their projects done. (Makes you wonder what they’d think of our Christmas shopping these days, on the Internet on December 20th, shelling out an extra $25 for rush shipping charges to guarantee delivery by Christmas Eve!) But it translates wonderfully from needlepoint on a pillowcase to email marketing campaigns because they both take planning and time, and the more you have of both, the better your results.

With that in mind, this email marketing vendor is going to (surprisingly) abstain from dishing out yet more holiday email marketing advice and instead point you to reliable resources as we become aware of them. And who better to guide you through the coming months than Mark Brownlow with his own constantly updated post on this very topic? See Mark’s start by clicking here and check back often for new links to new resources.

Now is the time to be focused on email best practices and your email marketing budget and making sure you’re making the most of both for the best possible email marketing ROI.

It has been an uncertain year for many in email marketing. Let’s get and stay on top of the holiday season, just like those Victorian ladies, only without all the thread and needles.

So it’s not that we’re anti-Twitter. It’s just that we want to make sure the walls are up before we start painting the house.

According to eMarketer, only 7.4% of the U.S. population over age 18 is using Twitter. And you only have to use it once a month to count as a “user.”

Compare that to 80% of Americans using email.

That means less than one-tenth of the email users are using Twitter. Knowing that, where do you think you should invest your time and money?

Our advice to you as an email solutions provider: Make sure your email best practices are up to speed before you jump on the Twitterwagon. Below are some resources to help:

• This email marketing blog
• Our email marketing library of whitepapers and reports
• Our email marketing newsletter
• Our email marketing consultants

Tap into these resources and make sure your email best practices are the best. Then you can use Twitter to support your email marketing campaigns!

• How to avoid email marketing spam filters
• The most recent laws and email best practices to keep your email marketing legal
• Making sure your email marketing gets delivered to your intended recipients
• An examination of the email delivery landscape, including email best practices to use and pitfalls to avoid
• Real-world examples of what works and what doesn’t work in email delivery

Moderated by Dianna Dilworth, Associate Editor, DMNews, the panelists are:

• Michael Kelly, Director, Strategic Alliances, ClickMail Marketing
• Craig Spiezle, Chairman & Founder, Online Trust Alliance (OTA), Managing Director, AgeLight LLC
• David Fowler, Director of Email Strategy, Deliverability and Privacy Compliance, Lyris Technologies

Make sure you maximize your email delivery and therefore your email marketing results by joining us on Tuesday, July 14 starting at 1:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. PT). To register click here.