Shelley Kessler says, “The first hot sheet of the holiday season looks at email by the numbers. Volume in the first two weeks is up 25.5 percent year-over-year across all industries. With this large increase, it’s not surprising that performance metrics have been slightly lower. Marketers need to work smarter, not harder. Analyzing and understanding the data from last year can help make the holiday season bright for your customers. We know this is a busy season, so we’ve done (and in this Holiday Hot Sheet series will continue to do) the work for you. The best days to send email to increase... [...]

Jim Kelley says, “More than half of all email opens and 38 percent of clicks occur on a mobile device, which is why it’s crucial to mobile optimize your emails. Responsive design is the “buzz term” that solves this problem, and marketers want it now. As a solution guy, the first thing I’ll communicate is that responsive email is not your typical slice and dice, get-it-out-the-door coding project. It requires a bit of planning, a new design methodology and a potential change in workflow. Why? Classic responsive design In what I like to call “classic responsive design,” a new email... [...]

Courtney Eckerle says, “There are so many different vendors in email marketing — how do you know that you’ve selected the right one for your technology needs? In this blog post, we will cover how to begin justifying the investment to others, and choosing the right technology for your company. Watch the full video to dive deep into three additional topics: shopping tips, questions to ask and problems an ESP won’t fix. The panel covers these pain points, and features the perspectives of Preston Wily, President, Sewell, and Diana Primeau, Director of Member Services, CNET, alongside Charles... [...]

Daniel Faggella says, “How can e-commerce marketers get a serious leg up on the competition? By “framing” their customers for the perfect sale in their emails and marketing automation systems. There are two main parts to this article: the Pre-Frame (everything that happens before the opt-in) and the Post-Frame (everything that happens after the opt-in). Smart marketers place high importance on attention to detail in both cases (not just before, not just after), and they figure out ways to use the two in tandem—creating in prospects both the appetite for their product and the... [...]

Mike O’Brien says, “”Perfect” is subjective, but new data shows the optimal number of words in a subject header and what kind of language to use in a promotion, among other traits that make the ideal email. Because so many things go into marketing emails – when to send them, how often to send them, what to write, what to highlight – how do you make one perfect? Though it’s a subjective question, Retention Science, a retention marketing company from Los Angeles, did research in order to quantify email traits, such as exactly how many words a subject line... [...]

Aaron Agius says, ““It’s obvious email marketing is dead.” “The days when AOL advertised ‘You’ve got mail!’ are long over.” It’s hard to argue that receiving email is now often met with a groan. The reason? We’re inundated with emails. The average person gets 121 a day. The human race as a whole gets 193.3 billion. Business emails account for 108.7 billion. These are big numbers. Perhaps, we overdid it — too much of a good thing. But, wait a minute, there must be a good reason why that much email is circling the globe, and if so, that’d mean that claims... [...]

Andrea Johnson says, “If you ask anything of a customer you must make it worth it for them to give it to you. This applies to every step in the sales process, right from the very beginning. This is the conclusion that MECLABS, the parent company of MarketingExperiments, came to after studying more than 20,000 sales paths over 15 years. Of those sales paths, the latest MarketingExperiments Web clinic reviewed nine that focused on email capture. Here’s what we discovered: small changes that help customers perceive that it’s worth their time, effort and risk to provide you their information... [...]

Elizabeth Marsten says, “Now that Amazon Text Ads are obsolete and the holiday shopping season is just weeks away, PPC marketers need to regroup and consider alternative platforms for their ad campaigns. Just two months ago I wrote an article for Search Engine Watch titled, Amazon Text Ads: To Do or Not To Do? This post is now a shining example of just how things move fast in the digital marketing industry, as Amazon Text Ads have already been rendered obsolete. At least this time it’s not because six other features and a newly skinned UI have been launched. Instead, it’s for a less progressive... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Only 79% of legitimate marketing messages sent by brands are arriving in consumers’ inboxes, with the rest ending up in spam folders or getting lost, according to a recent report from Return Path. The report was based on an analysis of 357 million marketing messages sent by recognized brands to subscribers. Inbox placement statistics were based on performance across more than 150 mailbox providers in North America, South America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. This year’s 79% email deliverability rate is down from 83% in 2014, the analysis found“. Email... [...]

Cynthia Jones says, “Is email marketing dead? The consensus among business leaders and so-called cutting-edge marketers who’ve gone all in on social media, YouTube videos, podcasting, and other forms of digital communication would be, “yes.” However, that is not the case. In reality, the humble email hasn’t gone anywhere. Quite the opposite in fact. Smartphone habits of consumers indicate that reading email comes second only to making phone calls. Moreover, email is still responsible for at least twice as many online conversions than social media. The confluence of email... [...]