The Whitelist

Kara Trivunovic  – email strategist extraordinare — gave a great presentation at today’s MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Miami.  The subject: how to run an effective RFP when choosing an Email Service Provider.

After the jump,  her Top Ten list of things to keep in mind: (more…)

Another nugget from Merkle’s new email marketing whitepaper says that line of text asking recipients to add your company to their address book really does work!

As an email marketing advisor, we at ClickMail are firm believers in doing everything you can to improve your email delivery rate. As we’ve pointed out before in an earlier email marketing blog post, even a slight change in your email delivery rate can add up to significantly more email marketing ROI. That’s why we encourage our email marketing clients to do everything they can to improve their email delivery, even if that means switching their email service provider (ESP).
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Another nugget from Merkle’s new email marketing whitepaper says that line of text asking recipients to add your company to their address book really does work!

As an email marketing advisor, we at ClickMail are firm believers in doing everything you can to improve your email delivery rate. As we’ve pointed out before in an earlier email marketing blog post, even a slight change in your email delivery rate can add up to significantly more email marketing ROI. That’s why we encourage our email marketing clients to do everything they can to improve their email delivery, even if that means switching their email service provider (ESP).
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Here’s an email marketing topic we at this email marketing company hadn’t considered to any major extent before: Are your URLs negatively impacting your email marketing ROI?

Mark Brownlow makes a great point about the topic of long URLs. Your attractive, straightforward URLs are typically changed into something foreign when you use an ESP. He points out that he hasn’t seen evidence one way or the other, but he suspects the long, cryptic URLs that end up in your emails to enable you to track activity might put off recipients who don’t recognize the URL as yours. In an age when people are highly suspicious of phishing, this could work against you.
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Last week we sat in on ExactTarget’s email deliverability webinar, ‘Getting to the Inbox: Why “Send” Is Not the End and Reputation Is King.’

The webinar pointed out that as concerned as email marketers are with maximizing their email delivery rates, they still aren’t paying enough attention to reputation.

According to the webinar, actions taken by email marketers to improve email delivery in 2008 included:
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Hot off the press, Clickmail and ExactTarget declare their love and admiration for one another.  We’re proud to have reached Gold Status with ExactTarget; and they’re pretty darn happy, too.

Next week we’ll be in Scottsdale, AZ for the Email Evolution Conference put on by the DMA. This is a can’t miss event for any and all email marketers.

First you can boost your email marketing knowledge by attending the sessions on Strategy and Theory, Case Studies and Action Items, and Channel Effectiveness. Then visit the Experience Hall, where ClickMail Marketing will be one of the exhibiting state-of-the-art email solution providers. Stop by booth 201 to find out how we can help you implement what you’ve learned about email marketing.
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Although email marketing happens online, and no hammers or drills are required, it’s still a craft that calls for the right tools, knowledge, skills and dedication to create a great end product. As a reminder as the boy scouts would say—expect the best but prepare for the worst, make sure your email marketing toolbox is fully loaded with all of the following now…before you find yourself in a pinch, with no email hardware store to run to:
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Is your email marketing ROI everything you wish it was? If not, you might want to think about your email delivery platform. If you’re using an in-house email marketing solution or a lower-end email service provider, you could be sabotaging your own email marketing efforts.

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.
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McColo, the world’s largest spam factory, has been shut down, and no one could possibly be happier than us here at Clickmail.  

We’re in the business of sending email people want.  Spammers cost business and industry billions of dollars, a chunk of which is spent working to deliver mail to people who want to get it.  

Spam hurts our business.  Anyone working to clear out crooks so the postman can do his rounds and make sure every piece of mail gets delivered, is a Good Guy.   (more…)