As we’ve cautioned before in this email marketing blog, we as an email marketing vendor would prefer to see you focus on getting your email marketing program nearly perfect before investing time and money (i.e. payroll) in Twitter. Nonetheless, companies will Twitter rather than fall behind the social media curve.

So it’s our goal to give you an objective view on Twitter, especially from an email marketing perspective. (As we’ve said before, 80% of the population uses email. Less than 8% of those use Twitter. We’re just trying to keep your priorities straight based on these numbers.)

In Mark Brownlow’s Email Marketing Reports, Mark recently wrote a great comparison article on email vs. Twitter, comparing factors like:

• Response rates
• Relationship building
• Analytics and data
• Costs
• Acquisition
• Risk

As he points out, you don’t drop one for the sake of the other. But from where we sit as the email marketing experts, we’d still rather see you get email right…before you start the Twitter fight.

Read Mark’s article by clicking here.

Marco Marini, our CEO, and Michael Kelly, our Director of Strategic Alliances, will present the in-depth and groundbreaking information released earlier this year in our email marketing whitepaper “Choosing the Right Email Service Provider: The top 20 factors to consider when shopping for a top tier ESP.” Presented Wednesday, September 16 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, the webinar is useful whether you’re shopping for a new email service provider or want to compare your current ESP to other email vendors.

As an email marketing vendor that represents a multitude of email service providers, ClickMail Marketing is in the unique and objective position to help you take a critical look at the over 100 ESPs out there, ensuring you find the one that’s the best fit for your company. We do that by covering the 20 factors you need to consider, and helping you determine which factors matter the most for your company to improve its email marketing results. We’ll teach you how to evaluate the ESPs and even provide you with a scoring sheet.

Find out more by clicking here. Especially if a new ESP is on your to-do list for the coming year!

You can also download the email marketing whitepaper either before or after the webinar at our email marketing library: click here.

Marco is an acknowledged expert in e-marketing with over 15 years of experience in the field. Before helping to found ClickMail, he held key marketing positions with CyberSource, eHealthInsurance, DoveBid and IBM Canada. Marco’s strengths and experience are varied, including demand generation via direct marketing, email marketing, and database marketing.

Marco, with co founders Russ Cerminaro and Michael Kelly, started ClickMail back in 2000, with a vision to turn ClickMail into an email marketing vendor  that offers the nation’s largest selection of email service providers. They have succeeded with that plan! Now Marco is at the helm of this rapidly growing company, guiding ClickMail through growth to become a key player in the email marketing industry. Somehow he also finds time to contribute to the ClickMail email marketing blog and to leading publications such as DMNews.

Immensely proud of his Italian heritage, Marco loves Italian cars (especially Ferraris) and is fluent in English, Italian, French and working on his Portuguese.

And in June, Marco finally married the beautiful Cida. Need we say more?

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.

It’s not an easy question to answer because it depends on your business, industry and more. But eMarketer’s Monday report on email marketing and click-through rates helps, so take a look and maybe even keep a copy so you can benchmark against these industry standards.

The data is drawn from Epsilon’s “Q1 2009 Email Trends and Benchmarks” report. You can see how email delivery, open and click-through rates are faring over time. But more importantly, you can drill down to see open and click-through rates for your industry specifically.

As we’ve mentioned before in this email marketing blog and in our email marketing newsletter, metrics matter but only if you’re measuring the right data the right way. If you’re in the retail apparel business, you’ll only be discouraged to know general financial services has a hefty open rate of 31.4%. But seeing that average email marketing result for your industry is only 14.3% gives you a more realistic metric to benchmark against.

Your email marketing metrics can go through constant refinement, just like your email marketing techniques. This eMarketer report will help.

And if you have questions about your metrics, how to measure better and improve your results, always feel free to contact us at blog@clickmailmarketing.com!

Dion’s direct marketing training and expertise spans over 10 years. A former US Army Special Operations Veteran in Psychological Operations, Dion later went on to become an events marketing manager, project manager and lead generation specialist. His career path led him to managing email marketing projects for numerous B2B and B2C campaigns.

His current role as Technical Product Service Manager for email marketing vendor ClickMail means he helps the sales team get new email marketing clients up to speed, addressing each new clients’ specific issues and allowing for a seamless transition from the sales team to the account management team. Dion also serves as an ongoing resource for our email marketing clients in email design and consulting, as well as platform training and problem troubleshooting. Dion enjoys email design and looking for new techniques to achieve the requested look and feel without compromising the overall email marketing message.

Dion is intimately familiar with the major ESP platforms, including:

• LyrisHQ
• Silverpop – Engage
• Bluehornet
• ExactTarget

It is with in this capacity that Dion’s expertise has been utilized for companies such as Apple, Borland, Contiki, Data Domain, PetSmart, SNOCAP / imeem, SEMA and Wind River.

Put Dion’s experience to work for your email marketing results. Make ClickMail your email marketing vendor.

That’s because email marketing serves up plenty of numbers, whether you’re doing a good job or a poor one. And as with politics, these numbers can be skewed if you’re not sure what you’re measuring and why.

For the best email marketing ROI, you must get a handle on the metrics that matter! The latest email newsletter from ClickMail Marketing will help. In it, we have some reminders about why it’s so important to measure accurately, what to measure (hint: there’s more to metrics than open rates!), and the challenges to measuring your email marketing results.

Take a look at the email marketing newsletter, and if you think you could use some help with your company’s email marketing metrics, just give us an email marketing holler at blog@clickmailmarketing.com. We’ll help you make sure your metrics measure up!

That’s not opt in. It’s not even legal. But it’s so very tempting!

But there are plenty of ways to collect email addresses from people that do want to opt in. You might not get the same quantity as the fishbowl at the trade show, but the quality will far surpass those names. And when it comes to in-house email lists, quality beats quantity every time…especially when it means your behavior is legal.

As an email marketing vendor, we’ve seen our email marketing clients use all kinds of different methods for collecting permission-based email addresses that can improve their email marketing results. Here are a few of our favorites, some obvious but maybe overlooked, some not so obvious but a good idea:

• Email signature blocks: Every employee in your company should have a standard, branded email signature that includes a link to your signup page. (Note: Every employee should have a standard, branded email signature even if it doesn’t include a link to your signup page!)
• Facebook: Include a link to your signup page on your company’s Fan page.
• Direct mail: Sure it’s offline, but there’s no reason you can’t encourage people to go online and subscribe. Try using an incentive, like a discount if they do.
• Trade shows: Yes, we were just mocking companies that collect email addresses en masse at trade shows via business cards, but you can legitimately get people to opt in. You can even eliminate the data entry (and possible errors of) by letting people sign up right there on a computer at your booth. This is another great place for an incentive, something you’ll give them right then and there after they do subscribe.
• Landing pages: Include a link to your signup page on any landing pages used with pay-per-click ads or other offers. Even if they don’t convert once at the landing page, they might still say yes to hearing from you in the future by subscribing to your email marketing or email newsletter.

Even if you only get a handful of email addresses via each different method, over time, those handfuls will add up to big numbers. This is where quantity does matter: The more places and ways you can get people to opt in to your email marketing, the faster your in-house email list will grow with quality names!

And remember in each case that people won’t subscribe just because you offer the option. You still have to sell the benefits of signing up in the first place!