The Whitelist » Email marketing tools

Marco Marini Joins Voices of Email, EEC’s Email Marketing Blog

Clickmail Marketing — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:00:42 +0000

What do you get when you cross email marketing expertise with a leading email marketing council? A blog worth reading. And now ClickMail Marketing has been recognized for our role as an email solutions provider by becoming the EEC’s newest blogger.

Starting this week, ClickMail CEO Marco Marini is blogging semimonthly for the Email Experience Council’s (EEC’s) blog, joining other leaders of the email marketing industry as one of the voices of email. Look for slightly longer content here from us in the EEC blog, as we delve a little into email marketing tools and best practices than we do in our own email marketing blog.

It’s one more way for this email solutions provider to provide useful, practical content to help you maximize your email marketing ROI!

See the EEC email marketing blog by clicking here.

Email Marketing and Social Media: Making Connections That Lead To Conversions

Clickmail Marketing — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:36:52 +0000

Some email marketers scratch their heads wondering how email fits into the Web 2.0 world. And they cringe to think the age of email might be over with the popularity of Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. But they should sleep well, because email marketing can be an integral part of social media.

Chad White has a great article on leveraging email marketing to get more from social media to engage customers and start conversations that lead to conversions.

We preach relevance a lot in this email marketing blog. And relevance is a key part of Chad’s message. As he says, it’s not enough anymore to just sell pet care products. You must offer pet care advice and tips, and give your customers an opportunity to contribute their own thoughts and ideas.

That’s social media. And email marketing can both start that conversation and keep it going. An email newsletter can offer advice and link back to a site where customers can contribute, for example. Chad offers great examples in his article, but we’re taking it one step farther to remind you that you can drive customers to these Web 2.0 tools using email marketing, and you can also use them to grow your in-house email list.

Blogging, where people can comment but you can also solicit email signups
Facebook, where people can because fans or members and post comments…and where you can also solicit email signups
Forums (or wikis), where customers can post entire articles or comment, and you can (you guess it), solicit email signups

Even Twitter can be used to get people to subscribe to your emails!

Web 2.0, social media, social networking: We have a few names for these new marketing tools, but they all have one thing in common no matter what we call them. They can all be integrated into your email marketing program to deepen your conservations, strengthen your relationships, and increase your conversions. Maybe we should stop thinking of them as different, and simply consider them additional email marketing tools?

Click here to read Chad’s article

New Email Marketing Measurement Proposed: The Render Rate

Clickmail Marketing — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:00:52 +0000

The Measurement Accuracy Roundtable of the Email Experience Council (EEC) is proposing a new metric be used in the email marketing industry: The Render Rate. The render rate is designed to be a more accurate measurement of a recipient’s engagement with an email as compared to just the open rate. The Roundtable has come up with definitions and standards for different scenarios, including unique and total render rate, unique and total actions that include clicks even when the email doesn’t render, etc.

The EEC and the roundtable want your input on this new measurement as a proposed industry standard. Read the proposed definitions and next steps, then make your comments on the EEC blog.

As an email marketing vendor, we’re mulling over this proposed measurement. We agree that the open rate is a difficult measurement to rely on because it lacks consistency in definition and use through the email marketing industry. As the proposal says:

“We believe that the render rate is a superior term that more accurately describes the actions that the open rate was intended to measure. But more importantly, adoption of this new set of metrics gives the industry an opportunity to finally speak one language when it comes to measuring email engagement.”

We applaud the EEC for proposing an alternative, because email marketing ROI is best achieved when you have the best email marketing tools to work with…including tools for measuring and communicating with each other.

Also, read the Email Insider article on the render rate project by clicking here.

And we always welcome your comments at this email marketing blog forum as well. Either comment directly below, or email us at blog@clickmailmarketing.com.

Common Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Clickmail Marketing — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Think you might be making mistakes in your email marketing efforts? You’re not alone, everyone does. But there are a few that you can easily address. Read about them in the newest issue of our email newsletter, now available on the ClickMail Marketing Web site.

Looking around as the year came to a close, we as an email marketing vendor saw all kinds of advice online about tips for improving your email marketing. So we decided to take a different approach: We put together a list of the email marketing mistakes we most often see, and addressed those instead. Because sometimes you need to fix what’s broken before you start taking on new email marketing tools and tips!

Video Email: Should You Add It To Your Email Marketing Tools?

Clickmail Marketing — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:00:44 +0000

Email marketing is a funny thing, a mix of art and science, and part of that science is the technology behind it. Without the technology, we wouldn’t be able to measure email delivery, track open rates, or test how our email design renders. But not all technology makes sense all the time. Sometimes a new technology comes along and we as an email marketing company must ask: Is this something we should be encouraging our clients to do?

Video email is one of those new technologies that might or might not make sense for your email marketing initiatives. Video has become easier to do and easier to disseminate. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

We turned to our own email design guru to ask what email marketers should consider when exploring video email. Cameron gave us the following points to consider:

Video email makes sense if you have a complicated product. It also makes sense if you can tailor your video to the person watching it, as opposed to doing batch and blast, which is sadly still a rampant email marketing practice. Yes, there are ways to segment even your video email content! When personalized, video email response rates increase.

Similar to including alt text to make up for blocked images, use text to describe your video, including a call to action to get people to click through and watch it. Write it as a mini sales pitch, not just a description. It doesn’t work to put any rich media inside the email, including video. Your recipients will have to open the email and click through to watch it. Encourage them to do so.

Video email might involve follow up to make it work. Cameron calls it high tech followed by high touch: You have a mechanism to alert you when someone has viewed the video, then that person gets a follow up email or phone call from your sales team.

Make sure it works seamlessly, because unless you’re offering “can’t miss” content, your customers won’t wait for a slow video to load, or sit through a clunky one that’s painful to watch.

As with all email marketing campaigns, make sure your video email is relevant to the target audience. And, as always, test, test, test to make sure it’s worth your effort and your customer’s time to include the video in the first place!

P.S. Email Marketing Reports just posted some new information about video email, and the pros and cons of different ways of putting video into email. It’s definitely worth a look.

If you need some help exploring video email, feel free to contact us at blog@clickmailmarketing.com.

Grow Your Email Marketing ROI When You Grow Your In-House Email List

Clickmail Marketing — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:13:26 +0000

In direct mail, they say success depends on three things: your offer, your creative and your list. The same is true of email marketing. And the best email list is your in-house one. That’s because it’s permission-based email marketing. Those people have some kind of relationship with you already and are more receptive to your emails as a result.

But building that in-house list takes time! It’s tempting to go out and rent a list of 50,000 rather than slowly build a quality list of 500!

But as long as you’re consistently doing little things to add qualified names to your list, over time it will grow into one of your most valued email marketing resources. As an email marketing company, we have lots of suggestions for easy steps you can take to start growing your email list. Here are the first six:

1.   Make sure the email content is relevant and useful
2.   Include a forward-to-a-friend link in every email
3.   Include a button/link to the email signup page on every page of your Web site
4.   Include two subscription buttons/links on your home page
5.   Make sure you have a signup page on your Web site that these link to. Don’t just have a signup box, with no reason for signing up
6.   Sell the idea of signing up for the newsletter on the email signup page. Tell them the frequency, what they can expect to get, the benefits of signing up, etc.

Watch for the next six tips on Wednesday!

Giving the Gift of Knowledge to ClickMail Blog Readers

Clickmail Marketing — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:00:24 +0000

As an email marketing vendor, our gift to you email marketers this holiday season is advice: During the next couple of weeks, we’re occasionally focusing our email marketing blog on email marketing tools and resources you can use in the coming year to increase your email marketing ROI.

Another email marketing tool we’ve recently discovered is the Email Marketer’s Club Wiki. Don’t worry, you don’t have to belong to the club to benefit from the plentiful resources on this wiki.

Articles and posts cover topics like deliverability, email service providers, metrics, news, spam and legislation, studies and research. And many of these topics have dropdown lists with more granular options.

The wiki also offers links to tests you can run on your own email marketing, and even an RFP template for email provider selection. (Although we as an email marketing vendor would encourage you to use us for that help vs. the time-consuming RFP process!)

Take a look. You might be surprised at how comprehensive it is. I know we were!

Email Marketing Tools: Boost Your Email Marketing ROI with These Resources

Clickmail Marketing — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:00:29 +0000

Now that we’re in the holiday season, you’re likely busy with your holiday email marketing campaign (if you’re B2C) or understaffed with people taking time off. We don’t want to throw a lot of new information your way this time of year, rather we want to get you in a good place for a successful 2009, one with a higher email marketing ROI. Therefore our gift to you over the next couple of weeks, will be blogs on email marketing tools and resources you can learn from in the coming months.

If you haven’t yet tapped into MarketingSherpa as an email marketing tool, it’s time you did. Put it on your task list for 2009. You don’t have to subscribe to their email newsletter to benefit from their email marketing case studies and research. In fact, you don’t even have to be a paid member, although membership gives you access to over 880 case studies.

You can access all of the following email marketing resources (for free):

· Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2009 – Executive Summary

· Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008 – Executive Summary (PDF download, includes data charts)

· 2008 Dirty Dozen Email Newsletter Mistakes (PDF download)

· Sherpa’s Annual Email Marketing Study Results Teleconference Sherpa’s Email Marketing Presentation 2008: Top 10 Research Findings & Practical Ways to Lift Results (presentation, PDF, MP3 and transcript)

· Email Summit 2007 Wrap-Up Report

· Sign-up form – Free brochure & news on Email Summit 2008

· How to Improve Your Customer Service Email Responses (author interview)

· Top 10 Email Newsletter Mistakes

As an email marketing vendor, it’s our job at ClickMail Marketing to stay on top of changes in the email marketing industry, from regulations to consumer expectations. MarketingSherpa is one of the most valuable email marketing tools we’ve found.

Cyber Monday: Perfect Day to Reflect on Affordability of Email Marketing

Clickmail Marketing — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:20:46 +0000

It’s Cyber Monday, the email marketing equivalent of Black Friday, and the perfect day to remind ourselves why email is so cost-effective, especially in a tougher economic climate like we’re experiencing right now. Off the top of my head, I can think of seven reasons our clients appreciate email marketing:

1. Email marketing costs less than direct mail. You create one email message and design and send it to as few or as many people as appropriate, only incrementally increasing your costs. (The price you pay to your email service provider is literally pennies compared to what you’d pay for printing and postage of a direct mail piece!)

2. Email marketing tools are reusable. For example, you design an email template, then you can use it over and over.

3. Email marketing is cheaper to test than direct mail. With direct mail, the cost of printing a smaller quantity makes testing a financial challenge.

4. Email marketing can react within a day. A direct mail campaign can take weeks or even months to get from concept to finished and mailed piece. Reacting right away can have a huge impact on your marketing ROI.

5. Email marketing can be one-on-one yet still less expensive than telemarketing.

6. Email marketing is easier to track than any other marketing medium, allowing you to adjust and increase your response rates, and therefore email marketing ROI.

7. Email marketing is easier to defend. Reporting gives you hard facts to present to your boss.

Here’s wishing you a profitable Cyber Monday and holiday season!