Posts Tagged email

4 Tips for a High Converting Email Marketing Campaign

Looking to increase conversions in your email marketing campaign?  Whether you use an in house program or a web-based service to send out your newsletters, there are a few simple tips that can profoundly boost the number of opens, clicks and conversions you get from your subscribers.  These aren’t your standard “personalize the message” style email marketing tips, but rather proven steps anyone can take to make sure their message gets noticed by their target market.

1. Put the Opt-Out Link at the Top of the Email – “But won’t that increase the number of unsubscribers?” you might ask.  Not necessarily – since people who unsubscribe are most likely not your ideal client anyway.  Perhaps they purchased something from your website as a gift but have no particular interest in it themselves.  In this case, letting them unsubscribe immediately also reduces the likelihood of your message getting tagged as spam.

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eBrand Media Research Brief: Email is main communication channel worldwide – IM and SMS well behind

By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive

According to Epsilon’s Global Consumer Email Study, conducted by ROI Research, the survey of over 4000 consumers in 13 countries finds that Email remains a mainstay communication, showing that 87% of North American(and 74% of European respondents are more likely than their peers in APAC to use email as their primary online communications tool.

Instant messaging as the main channel for communication, is notably high in APAC with 28% of respondents, while text/SMS and social networking remain consistently low across all regions. While most consumers manage one primary inbox for the programs they subscribe to, mobile phones and PDAs are gaining popularity for time-sensitive alerts such as news, weather and finance/stock information.

Email is also replacing other channels of communication. Over one-third of respondents have replaced traditional (communication) channels in favor of email for communications from:

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eBrand Media Research Brief: E-commerce grows using SEM to acquire and e-mail to retain

By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive

According to the first installment of of Retailing Online 2009: Marketing Report from Forrester Research and Shop.org, e-commerce sales, including event and movie tickets, will grow about 11% to $156.1 billion this year from $141.3 billion in 2008. Online sales will account for 6% of total retail sales this year, up from 5% last year. Retailers report that their conversion rates continue to hover between 3% and 3.5%.

While Internet sales growth continues to outpace traditional retail sales, 54% of online retailers expect overall retail growth to slow during the next 12 months, and 57% acknowledge the economy is hurting their bottom line, according to the survey.

Although many retailers expect lower sales, however, four out of five surveyed online retailers think the web is better suited than other channels to withstand the recession and one-third say the downturn has helped them capture greater market share, the study found

Scott Silverman, Shop.org Executive Director, says “… Online retailers are trying to weather this economic storm by doing more with less, making smart spending decisions, and leveraging effective, affordable tactics like e-mail to grow their businesses.”

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The real culprit behind unsubscribes

By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
* SUMMARY: This week’s chart comes to you from the MarketingSherpa email summit. In the opening session, we spent some time looking at the challenges facing email marketing. Year after year in our email benchmark survey, the top challenge is identified as ‘Inbox clutter’ and its effect on all email communications.    
* “Delivering on the promise of relevance to our list” comes in a distant second (17% compared to 36% for clutter). So, marketers seem to agree, but are they right?
* The chart below paints a different picture. The top two answers both speak to the importance of the individual relationship between emailer and recipient. They identify relevance and campaign-level frequency as the top reasons for opting-out or simply ignoring a sender’s email. Only when we get to the third most popular response do we see overall frequency as the culprit.
Inbox Clutter Isn’t the Problem
Inbox Clutter Isn’t the Problem
* The bottom line is that people are able to observe and process an immense amount of content on a daily basis. They’re able to identify relevant quality content regardless of the white noise surrounding it. Don’t let the myth of email clutter lull your organization into a belief that a decline in email efficacy is beyond your control.

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eBrand Media uses seven proven strategies to heighten e-mail marketing efficiency

By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive

E-mail marketing is still one of the most powerful marketing, and relationship management, tools available. Even if you’re already inlcuding e-mail marketing as an important part of your media plan, I think, you’ll find the information contained in this blog to be of great interest.

SUMMARY: If your marketing team is forced to do more with less, consider tweaking your email strategy and expanding it into other areas. Below we’ve outlined 7 strategies that come directly from Case Studies and how-to articles.

Strategy #1: Use best practices and basic tests

In short — the basics work. Before expanding your emailing marketing to other areas, make sure that it is strong. Follow the industry’s best practices and test continually.

Applying the basics to an unrefined strategy can yield significant results. Erick Barney, VP Marketing, Motorcycle Superstore, related that sentiment after getting a reliable analytics system to measure and segment email.

Here are a few changes his team made:

o Scrubbing the list – removing names that bounced three consecutive emails increased deliverability by 30% after just five sends.

o Frequency – the team previously mailed once a month and tested more frequent sends, up to once a week. They eventually settled on a twice-a-month send, which boosted revenue over 100%.

o Day of week – the team found that the best days to send promotional emails were Mondays and Tuesdays to give them the most amount of time before hitting the Saturday brick wall.

o Subject lines – benefit-oriented subject lines worked best, and complimentary shipping outperformed the “lowest price guaranteed” phrasing.

o Segmenting the list – the team identified eight customer segments to whom they would send customized emails. Open rates doubled (38.6% from 18.5%), and clickthrough rates more than tripled (20.6% from 6.2%).

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