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.”

ESPs aren’t moving away from email. But they are responding to market demands, as our CEO Marco Marini points out in his article just published in DMNews.

“Email is the basis for the platform,” says Marco, “and all these other things tie in.”

As he points out in his article, ESPs will be the hub used to disseminate SMS, social media and the like. But that doesn’t mean the same rules apply to all mediums. What you do with email isn’t necessarily acceptable with Twitter, for example.

But all of these marketing means and how you use them share one common—and key—factor: relevance. Just as we’re constantly preaching the importance of relevance in email marketing, Marco makes great points about the importance of relevance in social media too.

Read Marco’s article click here.

After the jump,  her Top Ten list of things to keep in mind:

10.  Know your organizational strengths and limitations;

9.  Get the IT department and your code monkeys to give their input toward the RFP;

8.  Define why you’re looking for a new solution in the first place;

7.  When writing the RFP, ask open-ended questions (‘how’ and what’) rather leading ( ‘can you’ and ‘do you’) questions: make them explain;

6.  Set reasonable expectations: the RFP process typically takes between two and three months. (NB: We can run your RFP process to completion in three weeks);

5.  Thin out the crowd through external research: try to pick only a few likely vendors instead of 2 dozen ESPs across the board;

4.  Be transparent with both vendors and internal staff;

3.  Analyze the quality of the responses;

2.  Share feedback with all participants, the vendor who won the business and why they won, and those that didn’t and why they didn’t;

1.  Learn from the process: you’ll be doing another RFP some time in future!

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.

A top-tier email service provider (ESP) might cost a little more, but, as we’ve pointed out in another email marketing blog post, the increased revenue more than makes up for the increased cost.

Switching to a top-tier email service provider can increase your:

1. Deliverability: The top-tier ESPs tend to have better deliverability rates, and even a 1% improvement in your delivery rate matters.

2. Open rates, click-throughs and conversions: The more emails that get delivered, the more chances you have to get your emails opened and responded to.

Granted getting more emails delivered can also increase your unsubscribe rate, but remember, that’s a good thing. An unsubscribe is feedback you can use to improve.

For an actual example of the email marketing improvements that resulted from switching from an in—house email marketing solution to a top tier email service provider, see Jeanne Jennings Nov, 2007 article in ClickZ.

For advice on making the switch from an in-house email marketing solution or lower-end ESP to a top-tier email service provider, contact us at blog@clickmailmarketing.com . ClickMail is the largest purveyor of email service providers, and we can be completely objective for that very reason.

• Your CRM system has remarkable capabilities that let your sales people track minute details about their contacts with prospects and customers. By integrating your email marketing and CRM system, you can let them send email that seems to be a one-to-one email from the sales person to the recipient…and that email will be logged into the CRM system.
• Integrating your CRM system and email platform can give you the ability to communicate to your  prospects as they are added to your CRM.
• Having account owner knowledge from the CRM will allow you to have the email be from the rep.
• Having access to information like customer vs. prospect, products installed/purchased and open opportunities will allow you to automated cross-sell/up-sell campaigns that can help you scale you marketing efforts easily.

The caveat here is that some email service providers integrate with CRM systems better than others do. If you’re considering upgrading to an integrated setup, ClickMail can help you make a choice that works for you. We often talk to companies that have gone though costly, drawn out integrations that in the end never really delivered. Let us know what you’re thinking, and we’ll let you know what we think. Just email us at blog@clickmailmarketing.com.