Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Great Demographic To Syndicate Your eNewsletter To

Before I created this blog I came across an interesting tip to syndicate enewsletters via RSS. Through my own research I found that there are less barriers for enewsletters to be successfully sent out via RSS than traditional email methods.

In my research there was some correlation of people who receive RSS feeds and people who read blogs. Since there are not alot of ways to track RSS statistics (as of yet), the profile of a blogger can give you an idea of who may be reading your RSS feed.

There was a resent study, by blogads.com, that had a profile of blog readers. The study estimated that 69.3% of blog readers are aged 29-50, and that 40% of this audience are people who have household incomes greater than $90,000.

Forrester Research released a report called "Blogging: Bubble or Big Deal?", and found that most blog readers are more likely to be male, affluent, and broadband-connected.

ClickZ had an article that referenced Pew Internet & American Life Project that estimates that about 11 million (approximately 50 million) of Internet users are regular blog readers.

If you have not thought about syndicating your enewsletter via RSS you should think about doing this as soon as possible!

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Monday, November 22, 2004

How Marketers Reduce Spam Clutter

A recent study by TrueFire, Reveries determined that marketing professionals reduce spam by:
  • 35% use sam filters
  • 27% unsubscribe from unsoliciated email messages

DoubleClick reports most consumers reduce spam by:

  • 72% simply delete spam without reading it
  • 20% try to unsubscribe

This eMarketer article also mentioned 11 roadblocks facing permission e-mail marketing:

  1. ISP Blocking
  2. Blacklisting
  3. Creative limitations
  4. Image, link and HTML stripping
  5. E-mail reader compatability
  6. Rich Media being not compatiable with email
  7. Abuse Management
  8. Inaccurate bounced logs
  9. Best guess reporting
  10. Delivery delays
  11. Anti-spam compliance

Friday, November 19, 2004

Email/AdWords Require a Coordinated Marketing Effort

Here is a great tip that I recently picked up at a local DMA luncheon. Jay Schwedelson, Worldata, mentioned that you should coordinate your email marketing campaign with your AdSense campaign when targeting your Gmail users. Adsense keywords will need to be selected based on the copy within your planned email message.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Gmail - Swicthing back after the Buzz

Recent blog posting about the number of people joining and leaving Gmail based on a stats from a large provider of email forwarding and email change of address. Here are some stats to chew on:

  • July - 375 people join Gmail

  • August - 802

  • September - 2396


  • Gmail is stealing sharesfrom Hotmail and Yahoo twice as rapidly from Hotmail as from Yahoo -- and twice as rapidly from Yahoo as from AOL

In September this company recorded 2396 new Gmail users, but they also recorded 741 people leaving Gmail in the same month. The author believes that people are just trying to see what all of the buzz is about and making a quick switch back to their previous email provider.


Mother Using Email

There was a recent report by eMarketer concening the best way to target mothers in the US. Here are some interesting statistics by AOL on this:
  • 96% of mothers use e-mail
  • 67% go online to do product research
  • 55% look for coupoms or discounts online.

AOL surveyed 1600 mothers in May 2004.

eINFo - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

7 Tips to Build Your In-House List

An article posted recently on BtoB Online concerning tips to build your in-house list. BtoB Online talked to Chris Baggott, co-founder and CMO of ExactTarget. Here are Chris' seven steps:

  • Make it easy for people to opt-in to your newsletter

  • Acquire through your own call center or send direct mail that touts your message and opt-in link

  • Use an append service.

  • Refer-A-Friend programs

  • Let your sales force sell your email marketing program

  • Find sponsorship opportunities

  • Make your message catchy



eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing


Monday, November 15, 2004

EarthLink & Yahoo to Test DomainKeys

EarthLink Inc. and Yahoo Inc. said today they would begin tests of new anti-spam technology, Yahoo's DomainKeys. DomainKeys embeds outgoing messages with an encrypted digital signature matched to a signature on the server computer that sends the message. Google Inc.'s Gmail has already begun to use DomainKeys.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Check GMail via Outlook

Google is adding POP, or post office protocol, access to Gmail for all users over the next couple of weeks. The move will allow Gmail users to download a copy of their messages through other e-mail programs and devices, such as mobile phones, that support POP.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Friday, November 12, 2004

Adding a Respone Form Onto Your Email Preference Page

I came across a cool feature that could help email marketers understand why someone is unsubscribing from their email newsletters. The AMA offers a simple form field that asks, "Please provide a detailed response on why you wish to unsubscribe along with any suggestions you might have.". You could possibly learn that the content is not relevant, your email newsletter frequency is too often, or even suggestions to improve the look and feel of the email newsletter. Here is AMA eNewsletter Preference page.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies about email marketing

Send Postcard to Your Dead Email Addresses

EmailUniverse published a Ezine-Tip recently. The tip suggested that instead of writing off email addresses that return hard bounces, try and send your recipient a postcard to update their email address or re-subscribe to your newsletter. The article mentions that it takes a lot less effort and investment to capture an existing member who left than it is to capture brand new members.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies concerning email marketing.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Email Marketing Use and Trends Report: H1 2004

A recent study was released on email preformance by MailerMailer. The study looked at 70+ million email messages sent by MailierMailer customers in the first half of 2004.

  • 80% of emails that would be opened were opened within 48-hours after delivery
  • 95% of all emails that would be opened were opened by the sixth day
  • Average click through rates (CTR) for all industries was 4.27%
  • Emails with personlaized subject lines were opned more often (32.49% compared to 26.65%) and received higher click rates (8.45% compared to 4.27%) than emails with personlaized messages only or no personalization.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies concerning email marketing.


Email Appending and ECOA Match Rates

A recent study on Email Appending and ECOA Match Rates was recently released by FreshAddress, Inc. Here are some of their findings:

  • Average email append match rate for commercial clients was 15.1% with a range from 9.5% to 24.3%
  • The average email append match rate for nonprofits was 10.3%, with a range from 5.5% to 15.4%
  • The average ECOA update rate for bounced lists for both commercial clients and nonprofits was 10.2%. with a range from 5.7% to 24.2%

After doing some research and talking to people in the email industry there seems to be a gray area about email appending. One valid point was that if your customer has not given you their email address previously then maybe they do not consider the email channel the best way for you to communicate with them. I have seen that those customer who had their email addresses appending have low click through rates (CTR) in newsletters. You may consider this service if you are starting your email marketing endeavor to grow your list initially.

eINFO - a collection of articles and studies concerning email marketing.