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Posts Tagged ‘Email marketing’



Max Fose

11/30/2009

Kelly Watson Joins IWS
04:36 pm by Max Fose

We are excited to welcome Kelly Watson to IWS. 

Kelly joins the IWS account team and brings with her a great knowledge of email best practices and campaign execution. With IWS delivering over 150 million emails a year her experience will serve our clients well!

Previous to IWS, Kelly worked as an Account Executive at Fishbowl, an Alexandria, VA based agency and email marketing provider to the restaurant industry. In her role she managed loyalty marketing and frequency-based email programs for a variety of national restaurant chains.  

Kelly holds a B.A. in Communication Studies from Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame.  She is originally from outside Philadelphia, PA and now resides in Alexandria, VA with her recently wedded husband, Brian. 

When asked what she does when not working she replied “cheering for her beloved Philly sports teams or picking out paint colors for her new home.” 

Kelly can be reached at Kelly@workwithiws.com. 

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Maura DeBartoli

11/10/2009

Break Me Off A Piece! Your Social-Email Strategy
06:07 pm by Maura DeBartoli

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You can stay married to your current strategic development plan if you want the last bone. Unless the content in your emails, provided to subscribers is share-worthy, it’s probable that the content won’t leave that inbox.

Why you post information to social sites, the content within, and how frequently you engage in social media participation, all have to do with the motivation behind it. If you can apply those motivations to your audience, and provide material that perks their little ears, you’ve got yourself a social-email strategy.

The ruling motivators for social engagement include self-interest, self-expression or status-achievement. “What’s in it for me?” Include promotions, advice or interesting facts and media sources – no one will post Company XYZ’s mission statement and boring ongoing rates to their Facebook Page. Make me want to “tell 5 friends”.

Give your subscribers a way of self-expression. A brief example of this could be providing a link to a social site (Facebook is best for applications) that would allow for the creation of a personalized profile graphic to show off, and show support.

In the online world, it isn’t the brand of your shoes, or the model of your car that symbolizes your status. It’s numbers. Your audience—and people in general—want to feel like they have authority, reason to brag or just own a feeling of accomplishment. How can your brand capitalize on that motivation? Do something like this, for example… Whenever a subscriber shares the email content with someone in their social network, they get a point… or two. The more people that they share that information with, they more “points” they get. This could in turn, be used for pulling in subscribers for special events, all while raising awareness and creating a social-email strategy.

So get sharing!

Tip: Do your research. Recognizing what exactly motivates your subscriber base will help you develop email content that is share-worthy.

image: Back in the Pack

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Sarah Trees

11/06/2009

Simple Email Marketing Tips



05:13 pm by Sarah Trees

According to Forrester Research, by the year 2014 interactive marketing, will hit almost $55 billion in the US. It’s expected to grow from 12% of overall ad spend in 2009 to 21% over the next five years. What does this mean? More and more companies are adjusting their ad budget to spend less on traditional advertising, like print ads and billboards, and going online to market their company. One simple way to do this is through email marketing. Here are 6 questions you should be asking yourself when starting an email-marketing program:

1. What is the primary purpose of the emails that your company sends?

If your company is using emails to send out monthly newsletters consider expanding your message to action-oriented emails. Poll your readers to find out what messages and/or offers they would be interested in learning more about.

2. How are your company’s emails deployed?

Sending emails out manually through your Outlook or any individual email account can make you and your company look like amateurs, not to mention that you could even be sending your customers viruses. Use a third party online marketing tool specifically designed to send emails, such as Lyris, Activate Direct, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor. These systems offer features to track open rates, click throughs, and can even integrate other applications your company may be using like a customer relationship manager (CRM).

3. How does your company design and manage email assets?

Designing emails from scratch each time you want to deploy an email can be very time-consuming, utilize a template approach. Users may lose interest if you continue to use the same template over time so design a series of templates for your email campaign.

4. Does your company utilize landing pages for your email campaigns?

There is a balance of marketers that feel implementing individual landing pages is far too time consuming, but they could not be more wrong. Directing all traffic to one specific place eliminates the ability to effectively traffic the success of your campaign. It can also be frustrating for your user if they get to a page and the page is not specific to the email they received. The most effective landing page uses a combination of the offer, making the user feel the offer is unique to them and include a call to action.

5. Does your company test offers, lists, subject lines or creative?

Your company should constantly be testing email communications to your readers. This will allow you to refine your message(s) and get rid of poor performing campaigns or programs along with segmenting your list of users. Select a percentage of your database like 10-20% and test a two different messages or offers, even test the subject line within these messages.

6. Does your company test to optimize deliverability, as well as frequency, and days in which email deployment is most effective?

Deliverability is important information for every successful email program. The time and frequency of email deployment can also be a factor in the success of your deliverability. What works for one company may not work for yours. The only way to truly know what works for you is to test, after all isn’t email marketing a game of “trial and error”? Having conclusive results will help you refine your email campaign and build a more effective outcome.

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Maura DeBartoli

10/15/2009

Predicted Social Network Users By 2013: 114.6 Million
07:56 pm by Maura DeBartoli

It seems that everyone keeps raising the question, “Is social media replacing Email? Is it? What is the next step?” Social media may be changing they way we use the medium, but we’ll still be logging into Flickr and Facebook with our work and school email addresses. Plus, Gmail, for instance, is continuously improving the features that are offered. New ways to organize, get unlimited storage, and receive Push email notifications directly to your mobile device. We’ve spoken about the value in Email Marketing before, but just as a reminder to you, it is still the most popular channel for consumers today, according to eMarketer.

The bottom line is that in an industry where new digital communications make it easier to send a variety of messages, it’s imperative that marketers not only send the right message, to the right person, at the right time, but that they use the right channel as well.

For any business people that don’t see the ROI in social media, there are tools like Radian6, that have the ability to take all the information out there that is being said about a company’s brand, and put all of it on a platform that let’s you “listen, share, learn, and engage”. Just as you would test any other marketing tool, test different social media venues and see what works best, and decide what the healthiest community is for your brand identity. Be flexible and hopefully soon you will be “suggesting friends” to your old friends and co-workers who were afraid of a “fad”. You won’t be the one scratching your head.

This YouTube video (originally published by the popular social media site, Mashable) features Virgin America’s Vice President of Marketing, Porter Gale.  She discusses how she finds social media to be a great engagement strategy and brand-builder.  Let us know your own thoughts in the comments.

Virgin America Interview

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Maura DeBartoli

10/01/2009

A Digital Trend
07:22 pm by Maura DeBartoli

According to eMarketer, social networking is one of the most important – in addition to popular – activities, both online and off. The only activity that could one-up social media was email, still. Both categories ranked above chatting and just plain web browsing. Email marketing, old and wise, done well means offline dollars for you.

Unsurprisingly, the number one activity on social networking sites was posting photos. People love it – they’re really getting engaged, with 81% of respondents taking part. People link, “like”, watch, share and love to spend their time consuming content– So no, Facebook photos aren’t solely an enabling form of voyeurism.

More over, the second highest ranked activity users take part in, is responding to other content people post. Ah yes, two, three and four-way communication.

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Maura DeBartoli

09/30/2009

All The More Reason: Integrate Social Media & Email Marketing Campaigns
06:20 pm by Maura DeBartoli

As it turns out, Twitter is more like email than we think. According to a recent article published by AdAge, when viewed in context, the leverage that Twitter needs is to study exactly what it was that made email so successful. In turn, these practices will ensure that the little bird stays put…for a while.  Because Twitter groups, like Twibes, are made up of people with a high interest, make note of them, for they are your community with intent.

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“Many email-like capabilities would be valuable to Twitter advertisers – the ability to segment audiences, access dynamic reporting, test and optimize campaigns in real time, conduct A/B creative tests and port newly acquired consumers directly into the Twitter engagement stream. “

You may be surprised, however, to find that the more time people spend on social networks, the more time they will also spend on email, according to Nielsen. You’d think the latter but the more time people spend online, allowing push email notifications, receiving email notifications for their many social sites and updates, the more they’ll be married to their email. How novel.

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Jen Cieslak

07/24/2009

Staying relevant to boost offline dollars
02:56 pm by Jen Cieslak

We’ve all gotten our fair share of those “batch-and-blast” e-mail messages from charities or politicians, sports teams or pharmaceutical companies. And a new study by US Email Trends and Benchmarks says we’ve all deleted our fair share.

These batch-and-blast messages are pushing some new content or project or promotion you don’t care about. They’re filling your inbox too frequently. And they’re failing to reach a huge percentage of their core audience because of it.

“Today’s consumer has limited tolerance for irrelevant messages, so targeted campaigns are clearly more successful than the batch-and-blast approach,” the study says.

The trends also show that when e-mail marketing is done well, the campaign will mean offline dollars for your company. A related Global Consumer Email study found that more than half of North American consumers made an offline purchase because of an email message. Numbers were slightly down in Europe at 39 percent, but almost two thirds of consumers polled in the Asia Pacific region made an offline purchase because of an email.

“While batch-and-blast messaging may seem appealing,” says Meghan Keane at econsultancy.com, “being sensitive to consumer preferences can pay off in spades, even if those messages go out to fewer people.”

E-mail marketing has the ability to harness a massive group of consumers, but you need to do it smartly.

According to US Email Trends and Benchmarks: “To effectively execute a permission-based email marketing program, it is important to incorporate consumer preferences such as frequency of communication, channel of communication and format as well as behavioral and other consumer data.”

Quick tip: Research finds that messages delivered between 10AM and 2PM convert more often.

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Brian Michael

06/16/2009

Email main communication channel worldwide with IM and SMS well behind
03:59 pm by Brian Michael

Media Post recently reported that

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:

Banks (40%)
 Promotional postal mail (38%)
 Telemarketing (34%)
 Offline coupons (14%)
 Telemarketing (28%)

PBEs (permission-based email) are more likely to elicit actions from APAC respondents including clicking on a website, signing up for more information, watching a video clip, clicking on an advertised link or purchasing on or off-line. APAC also leads in reported usage of a PDA or Smartphone for email with 32%, significantly more than North America (9%) and Europe (7%).

59% of APAC consumers report making an offline purchase as a result of email communications, followed by North America (53%) and EMEA (37%). Half of APAC respondents feel that “subject” lines are the most compelling feature to open a permission-based email; over two-thirds of North American and European respondents select the “from” line. Discount offers, free product offers, familiar brand names and personalization of subject lines increase the likelihood of opening among all respondents.

Other key findings from the study include:

Respondents cite security and lack of attractive offers/promotions as the primary reasons why they do not interact with the emails they receive.
 North American respondents are the most likely to unsubscribe.
 Irrelevant content and frequency are cited as the two most likely reasons for un-subscription.
 Eight in ten North American respondents have added PBE addresses to safe sender lists; overall, more than half of respondents have added PBE addresses to safe sender lists.
 Respondents are most concerned about viruses, identity theft, phishing, and scams. Concerns about phishing and pharming have increased significantly from 2005 to 2009 for US respondents.

Kevin Mabley, SVP of Strategic Services at Epsilon,  ”… these findings reinforce the need for marketers to speak to consumers in a two-way dialogue… respecting… (consumer) preferences and past interactions… knowledge of local marketplace trends is crucial and testing each strategy and program will provide confirmation of what’s working.”

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