Good Read: Drake Morton

3 Tips for Delivering the

Content Your Audience Wants

By Loren McDonald, Vice President of Industry Relations

What’s most important to your email marketing and lead-nurturing efforts? It’s probably some combination of building relationships, increasingly loyalty, moving buyers through the sales cycle and, of course, turning your messages into revenue. Delivering the right message–content that educates, engages and entices recipients to perform the action you want–is essential to all of these goals.

With carefully planned strategy and the correct tools, you can improve the likelihood of providing the content your contacts are looking for–especially if you nail the right timing for your message. Here are a few tips for building your content so you deliver messaging that resonates strongly. (more…)

Good Read: Drake Morton

Email Delivery Up, Open Down

According to the Harte-Hanks Postfuture Index 2009-2010, email open rates declined to an average of 17% last year, down from 26% in 2009. The report examined metrics for over 2.8 billion email messages sent by about 100 companies in nine vertical industries. The company says that “… changing patterns in use of text and imagery… is having an impact on open rates, without necessarily having an impact on response.”
The study indicates that:

• Delivery rates increased to 95% last year, up from 93% in 2009
• Click rates were steady at 3%
• Unsubscribe rates dropped from 0.32% to 0.19%
• Bounce rates declined from 7% to 5%
(more…)

You should know: Drake Morton

Tomorrowland: The Future Of Inbox Deliverability

At Top Webmail Providers

by George Bilbrey, Wednesday, July 6, 2011

My company recently released a new study on sender reputation and the factors that influence inbox placement rates. The report showed that complaint rate, spam trap hit rate and unknown user rate are the biggest factors in determining whether or not your emails get delivered to the inbox. It’s always great to have more validation for what we’ve been saying for years, and information like this is very powerful in helping marketers to implement best practices.

That’s the world of reputation today. What does the reputation and deliverability world look like tomorrow?  As expected, I have a few thoughts.
(more…)

You need to do this: Drake Morton

Testing eMail Elements

  (more…)

Interesting Read: Drake Morton

The Last ‘Best Time to Send?’ Article

by Loren McDonald, Thursday, August 12, 2010

Just when I thought the email-marketing industry had put the “What is the best time to send email?” question behind us, I noticed a couple more blog posts on the topic this past week.

Like similar questions such as “What is the average open rate,” either these questions are fundamentally unanswerable, or pursuing the answer does not lead you to a meaningful conclusion or action.
(more…)

Very Good Read: Drake Morton

Transactional Emails 2.0: Think Beyond The Purchase

by Loren McDonald, Thursday, July 15, 2010

We marketers tend to think about the transactional email in its most literal sense, relating to a specific transaction as defined by the CAN-SPAM Act and by conventional wisdom.

But transactional emails can become a potent force in your email program when you broaden your vision and look for ways they can enrich your customer relationships, from pre- to post-transaction and beyond.

These triggered messages, based on abandonment, recent purchase and CRM data, enable additional touch points that provide further value to customers and additional revenue and customer data for your company.

Four Categories of Purchase-Related Email Message
(more…)

Excellent Read: Drake Morton

Are Your Emails Anticipated & Appreciated?

by Ryan Deutsch, Thursday, July 8, 2010

As with many of you, I have been in the marketing technology space for a little while. During that time, I have heard (and certainly spoken) my share of buzzwords. In fact, I could probably throw together 500 words on email marketing buzzwords — stay tuned for that blog post in the coming weeks! Anyway, two words I do not hear often enough in relation to email are “anticipated” and “appreciated.” There are two interesting trends occurring in the email marketing space that make these particularly relevant: the flash sale and localized marketing.

Link to vMail / video email

(more…)

Good Read: Drake Morton

Three Rules For Email List Growth

by Morgan Stewart, Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The first email program I worked on in 1999 attracted over 4 million subscribers in the first year. Getting people to sign up for email promotions and newsletters used to be easy. Start with a Web site, add some decent content, a “Sign up for our free newsletter” banner, and a form — and  voila! Subscribers!

Things have changed. It’s gotten more difficult. Still, many brands are driving considerable growth in the channel and consumers report using email more and more despite recurring speculation about email’s looming demise by misinformed pundits. It’s simply that the bar is always rising. Consumers understand how to play the email game. They know that brands can deliver really good content tailored to their personal interests, and they seek out those programs.
(more…)

Good Read: Drake Morton

The ‘Cadillac’ of Online Video Advertising

by Alex Rowland , Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Most online video advertising today sucks. It essentially comes in two main flavors: annoying (pre-rolls) and distracting (auto-play banners and overlays). And if you look at where money is being spent in online video advertising today, it is weighted heavily toward the annoying end of the spectrum.

The good news is that brands are evolving their approach to online video and experimenting more aggressively with longer-form videos that can stand on their own. In response, a new standard is taking shape that prescribes best practices to both the creation and distribution of these videos. You could call this standard the “Cadillac” of online video advertising.

  (more…)

Get it right: Drake Morton

It’s Holiday Season.

What If Your Emails Don’t Care?

by Mike May , Wednesday, November 18, 2009

If you thought inboxes were already cluttered, just wait until this year’s holiday season ramps up to full speed. Retail business are struggling to recover, while at the same time cutting ad and direct mail spending, and focusing more resources on ROI-heavy programs like email. It’s a perfect storm headed straight towards inboxes. (more…)