What's new on B2BEmailMarketing.com:
I moved this blog to a new platform. These are the 10 newest blog posts on www.b2bemailmarketing.com (click on a link to read the post):
You'll find more email marketing articles and resources in these categories:
- Case Studies
- Copywriting
- Deliverability
- Design & Layout
- Email Service Providers
- Events & Seminars
- Fun stuff
- Getting started
- Landing Pages
- List Management
- Messaging
- Metrics
- RSS
- Spam & Legislation
- Strategy
- Studies & Research
- Targeting
- Terms & Definitions
- Testing
- Trends
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Moving To Another URL
I've decided to move my blog from Blogger to Typepad, mainly (but not only) because it offers the functionality to archive my posts in categories. This is the url: http://emailmarketing.typepad.com/bestpractices/. Bookmark it and visit it regularly for new updates. I'm moving my Blogger posts over one by one. I hope to have finished doing that in the next couple of days. If you are subscribed to my mailinglist or my RSS feed, don't worry: you won't notice anything - I've switched everything over to the new url. In case you do find anything unusual, please let me know!.:: posted by Tamara | Permalink
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Saturday, November 19, 2005
Six Tips to Make HTML Email Look Right
Wendy Roth, training manager for Lyris Technologies, offers a couple of tips to make your email messages look right in the different email clients:- Use inline styles or HTML tags
- Keep background colors light and text dark
- Validate your HTML
- Put scripts, forms or flash on your website, not in your email
- Put critical information in text, not images
- Put (almost) everything in an image
.:: posted by Tamara | Permalink
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Friday, November 18, 2005
Personalize Your Emails For The Specific Needs Of Your Customers
iMedia Connection is featuring a series of articles on "Marketing and the 2005 Holiday Season". One of the articles is wrtten by Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey: The Secret to Holiday Email Marketing. According to Nussey the secret to holiday email marketing is to give preferences, for which you shall receive conversions. "A solid, robust preference center program can help drive sales and expand brand value. Preferences aren't only important during the holidays, but it's particularly during this joyous-yet-stressful season that caring for your customers translates to increased enthusiasm for and loyalty to your brand. Preferences allow you to personalize communications for the specific needs of your customers. They are the ultimate way to steer your campaign from appearing only to benefit you, the sender, toward helping the recipient see the importance and relevance of the campaign." Read the full article and find out which are the elements that make up the perfect preference page. Source: iMedia Connection.:: posted by Tamara | Permalink
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Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Q3'05 eROI Email Statistics by List Size
eROI did an interesting study on the effect list size had on read and click statistics in Q3. They found that the middle of the week is the low point and Sunday and Friday are noticeabe high points in the week for both stats. Sending volume is thus inversely related to how reads and clicks are going to react, with the exception of Saturday. This quarter eROI decided to take a different look at day of the week stats, namely by adding list size to the equasion. They broke down lists into:- <500
- 500-999
- 1,000-4,999
- 5,000-9,999
- 10,000-24,999
- 25,000-49,999
- 50,000-99,999
- 100,000-199,999
- 200,000 and higher
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Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Better Than Email Marketing? RSS Demystified [web seminar]
On November 17th, MarketingProfs.com is hosting a web seminar called "Better Than Email Marketing? RSS Demystified". During this virtual seminar you will learn all you need to know to get started with RSS marketing, whether you're only interested in a quick under-an-hour and no cost implementation or long-term strategic integration of RSS in to your marketing mix. For a modest investment, RSS can fire up your marketing mix, from direct marketing, PR, e-commerce, internal communications and online publishing to SEO, traffic generation and customer relationship management. In this crash course, you will find out exactly how your organization can profit from implementing this new technology. You will learn:- The 7 steps to RSS marketing success: a step-by-step system, designed to provide you with a roadmap to achieving RSS marketing results
- How to make the business case for RSS
- How to integrate RSS in your marketing mix
- Advanced RSS marketing tactics, such as autoresponder RSS feeds and RSS customization and personalization
- The details you need to use RSS for increased traffic
- How to best promote your RSS feeds, generate subscriptions via RSS and collect user data
- The truth about RSS metrics and what you really can measure
- A quick primer on podcasting and videocasting, the two "technologies" bringing your closer to your customers online than ever.
.:: posted by Tamara | Permalink
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The Right Offer At The Right Time
iMedia Connection is featuring an interesting article by Accucast CEO Michael Pridemore called "Fine Tuning Your Email Strategy". In this article Michael Pridemore suggests optimizing email marketing strategies by focusing on three things: frequency, timing and audience. This is not new of course, but he does offer some very good tips and examples. It comes down to this:- Audience: analyze your email reports to determine which are your most responsive customers and base your marketing message on how customers have responded in the past
- Timing: this depends of course on your target audience. If you're targeting a B2B audience you better not send emails at night or in the weekends because that's not when they read their emails. However, if you're targeting a B2C audience, sending emails in the evening or during weekends might be a good idea, because that's when your target audience is reading emails.
- Frequency: To determine what is the best frequency for your target audience, you need to test and keep a close ey on open & unsubscribe rates. There are 2 things to keep in mind: only send relevant messages & it's better to send too little than too many.
.:: posted by Tamara | Permalink
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Monday, November 07, 2005
Intelligent Email Marketing [event]
On December 7th, Brand Republic is hosting a one day, senior-level conference titled "Intelligence Email Marketing" at The Waldorf in London. On the agenda are topics such as new technologies, deliverability, data management and tracking, etc. Find out more..:: posted by Tamara | Permalink
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Preview-Pane Survey Findings
In a September survey of The Intevation Report readers, the question was asked whether their email client has preview-pane and/or image-blocking features. They also asked whether and how they use either or both of these functions. Here is what they found (click links to view graphs of results):- More than 9 of 10 email users have access to a preview pane, and 7 of 10 say they frequently or always use it.
- More than half of those who read email in a business-oriented client such as Outlook or Lotus Notes do not see images in email because their clients block them.
- However, 3 of 10 readers have manually changed their email settings to allow downloading of images and graphics.
- Sixty percent of survey respondents read messages in either Outlook 2003 or Lotus Notes, the two clients that block or mangle images by default. Add in the earlier versions of Outlook, which have the preview pane but lack image blocking, and the market share for B2B readers rises to 87%.
- 75% of email readers who use the preview pane use it in a horizontal format and most often see either 4-5 inches deep of content (44%) or 2 to 3 inches (41%).
- Vertical-pane users see more content, but there are fewer of them (25% of all preview-pane users). Pane widths used most often by this group are 4-5 inches (46.9%) and 6+ inches (26.5%).
- Nearly half of email readers look at just the first few lines they see in the preview pane to decide if they want to continue reading the message, but 32.9% will read the whole message, even if they have to scroll through it.
- The sender's name and/or address remains the most important factor readers look for in the preview pane when deciding whether to read further or open the email (60%), followed by the subject line (54.3%), the headline (53%) and any teaser copy (30.3%).
- Preview-pane users are less likely to download blocked images and graphics when reading an email in the pane. Half of those who open email messages said they always download blocked images, but only 34% do in the preview pane.
- Email users are most likely to download blocked images in order to make the email easier to read (80%) or to view images, charts and graphics than to view advertisements (10.1%).
- Only 31% of email users say they always or frequently add the B2B newsletters they asked to receive to their safe-senders list or address books in order to avoid losing them in bulk or junk folders.
.:: posted by Tamara | Permalink
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Turning Visitors to Customers with Email Marketing [webinar]
Attend the latest Webinar in Topica's Educational Series to learn the best strategies to use email marketing to turn more visitors into customers. V2C: Turning Visitors to Customers with Email Marketing Thursday, November 10th at 10 a.m. PDT Learn how to use email marketing to grow your prospect base, build relationships with potential customers and turn more visitors into customers. The agenda includes:- Customer acquisition with email marketing
- Automated database segmentation
- Behavior based automated email campaigns
