More Email Marketing Resources Than Google!

Just updated my blog to reflect the single largest repository of email marketing related websites ever! Ok maybe not. Any ways check out my home page for a list of my email marketing resources.

eINFO - a collection of the single largest repositories of email marketing related websites.

Web Analytics Improve Results From Targeted Email Campaigns

InternetRetailer.com has a brief article on JupiterResearch's findings that analytics can play a key role in personalized email campaigns. Here are some of their findings on targeted email campaigns:

• Produced 33% open rate compared to average of 20% for mass mailing
• Produced 14% click-through rates compared to average of 9.5% for mass mailing
• Produced 3.9% conversion rate compared to average of 1.1% for mass mailing

This article also notes that when factoring in the labor costs involved in using web analytics in email campaigns, the average cost per message totals $4.50!

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

Categories: web analytics, email, email marketing, email marketing blog, eINFO

Why RSS Is Poised To Trump Email...

SilverPop commissioned JupiterResearch to write a research paper on why we should be heading towards RSS in the email marketing age. The paper goes on to outline several factors that are affecting emails ability to market to consumers. The paper states the typical barriers that email is facing and what RSS can overcome. This study comes with SilverPops marketing ad for their new product RSSDirect.

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

Categories: rss, email, email marketing, email marketing blog, eINFO

Unlock Hidden Value In Transactional Email

David Kearney, Boomerang, released an article on DMNews.com titled, “DM News Essential Guide to Email Marketing: Unlock Hidden Value in Transactional Email”. The article outlines the process on how to include a promotional offer in your transactional emails.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Categories: transactional marketing, email, email marketing, email marekting blog, eINFO,

Don’t Panic! Blocks Happen.

Wendy Roth, Lyris, wrote an article on IMedia Connection titled “Six Steps for Email Optimization”. Wendy provides six steps to help you get your email delivered again after getting blocked.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Categories: deliverability, email, email_marketing, email marketing blog, eINFO

JupiterResearch: Email Marketing Buyer’s Guide, 2005

JupiterResearch released its latest guide to email service providers.

“The JupiterResearch e-mail service provider (ESP) evaluation details the offerings of 30 vendors. JupiterResearch bases their overall value, suitability, and breadth on the distinct needs of six types of marketers—small-business, service-oriented, low-volume promotional, low-volume newsletter, high-volume promotional, and high-volume newsletter.”

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Categories: email marketing guide, email, email marketing, eINFO

Are You Sure Your HTML Email Renders Correctly?

SliverPop found that big companies are not always on the cutting edge of email marketing. MarketingSherpa reported on this study and notes how HTML emails will break in various email applications (open access to article until Oct 23, 2005). MarketingSherpa gives three quick tips to help solve your HTML email rendering issues.

• Add a link at the top of your email to a online version of your newsletter.
• Remind recipients to “Add” your email address to their address book or safe sender list. (Also do not forget to provide instructions on how to add your from address to their address book or safe sender list when your recipient signs up.)
• Get several sample email accounts (Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL,..) so you can see how your HTML email renders in each of the top email applications.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Categories: email design, email marketing, email marketing blog, eINFO

21% of Permission Emails Not Delivered

eMarketer released an article, Many Permission E-mails Still Don’t Get Through (open access until Oct 25, 2005), that takes a look at the recent ReturnPath study on permission email delivery.

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

DM News Interview with JupiterResearch, David Daniels

DM News released an interview with JupiterResearch’s, David Daniels on the topics of email marketing issues and best practices. David gives a great statement in one of his responses…

“…we focus too much on the 5 percent that may be responding and not enough time looking at the 95 percent that are not.”

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

SpamAssassin Checks Habeas Safelist

Habeas announced that the latest version of Apache’s SpamAssassin now checks the Habeas Safelist. If the message originated from a Habeas-certified sender; it subtracts points from the overall spam score.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Choosing an Email Vendor Based on Deliverability Performance

Justin Foster, WhatCounts, provides some insightful ranting and raving about how to sift through those marketing messages from Email Service Providers who proclaim that their email deliverability rates are the highest.


Also check out Matt Blumberg's (ReturnPath) "Response to a Deliverability Rant" reply about this.

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

Report: Lyris Quarterly Email Deliverability

DM News received exclusive access to Lyris' latest Email Deliverability report. Here are some of the findings noted in the article:

• Hotmail's false positive rate rose from 5.6 % to 9.4% in the third quarter.
• Gmail's false positive rate rose from 4.1% to 7.17% in the third quarter.

Hotmail's increase may be attributed to their Sender ID implementation. Gmail's increase may be due to the fact that the Google engineers are still tweaking the filters. My personal experience I have 1 out of 100 legitament emails a week get labeled as SPAM.

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

Report: Email Blocking and Filtering First Half of 2005

ReturnPath released a new report, Email Blocking and Filtering Report First Half of 2005. The report notes:

• 21% of permission-based email did not get delivered to the Inbox as intended during the first half of 2005.
• Gmail and Excite blocked the most permission-based email, at 39% each.

The report also provides 10 keys to help improve better email deliverability.

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

RSS Eclipsing Email?

The Alex Barnett Blog posted a link to the whitepaper, “RSS – Crossing into the Mainstream” (authored by Ipsos Insight and Yahoo!).

In the study they found that “very few users (4%) knowingly uses RSS, over one quarter of Internet users (27%) enjoy the benefits of RSS without knowing it. These ‘Unaware RSS Users’ are similar demographically to the average Internet user, suggesting that RSS is not just for the tech-savvy few.”

Alex points out that this study found that 31% of Internet users are RSS users. This represents 72.8 million in the US and UK and 275.4 million in the World!

Rok Hrastnik, MarketingStudies.net, cites from the latest Pheedo study that RSS feed click-through rates range from 7-11%. Compare this to DoubleClick’s statement that the average email CTR is only 8.3%.

Rok also mentions that the site Lockergnome.com is seeing a ratio of 5:1 of RSS subscribers against email subscribers. Rok goes on to state that this site is seeing a 500% better CTR with RSS than with email.

To add a little more fuel to the fire, The New York Times has seen page views stemming from RSS feeds increase 342% from March 2004 to March 2005, with no special effort to market RSS (link).

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Ignore This Post

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster feedster:616b37b4a7565c8acdfb2dba27930f1a

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

Guidelines For Your Text Email Template

Matt Blumberg, Michael Mayor, Tami Monahan & Stephanie A. Miller released an article, “Why Text-Only E-Zines are Hot”. They provide some guidelines for creating your text template.

• Use the “from” address and subject line to identify yourself clearly.
• Use short URLs. Even look at using shorter redirecting URLs to your landing page.
• Do not put URLs in mid-copy
• Do not waste space at the top of the email with copy that never changes.
• Make sure your place visual breaks between and around blocks of copy.
• Try to limit line length to 60 characters.
• Limit paragraph length to four or fewer.
• Do not use punctuation marks or symbols for emphasis.
• Use a fixed-space typeface (Courier or Courier New).

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Managing Email Bounces…How Hard Can It Be?

550 Sorry, no mailbox here by that name
550 Service unavailable
550 Administrative prohibition

Derek Harding released an article, “E-mail Bounce Management, Simplified”. Derek gives a simplified email bounce management practice.

“Try the address three times over at least 15 days. If your messages are refused every time, treat the address as dead.”

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

Silverpop Looks At Branding In Their Latest Email Study

Silverpop released some of it findings from their “2005 Retail Email Marketing Study”. They noted:

• 8% of the emails showed an email address in the “from” field instead of text showing the company’s name.
• 9% of the emails did not position the company logo in a prominent, above-the-fold position.
• 43% of retailers used a postcard style format.
• 17% added columns or rows below a single pane of images
• 14% used a long column of product photos and text.
• Those companies that sent more than one email during the course of a month, 56% changed formats. Silverpop notes that consistent layout designs can reinforce branding.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

How Bad Do These Subject Line Suck?

The subject line is the second biggest motivator (behind “from” line) for recipients to open your email. Combine that with only having three seconds and six words to grab the attention of the recipient. This is recipe for your email to tank. Karon Thackson, Copywritingcourse.com, provides three types of subject lines that have been proven to be successful.

• Make a offer
• State a benefit
• Evoke curiosity.

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.

What Do I Put In My Email Footer?

Elaine O’Gorman, Silverpop, wrote an article in BtoB E-Mail Marketer Insight covering what to include in your enewsletter’s footer (besides the legally required physical address and opt-out information).

• Explain why your recipient is receiving this message. “This message was sent to you because you asked for new product announcements from Company X.”
• Customer service contact. Do not forget to include a local number as well as a toll-free number.
• Privacy statement
• Copyright statement
• Trademark

eINFO – a collection of articles and studies about email marketing.