Never assume that when someone comes to your site that they want to receive your email. It’s always best to ask for their permission.
I will be at the Email Evolution Conference this week in Miami. Plan to do a ton of tweeting and blogging. Watch out.
Make absolutely positive that nothing in your email program violates Can-Spam. Sometimes its the little stuff that can help take a program down.
Changing the look and feel of your emails is not about what your marketing department wants….its about what your users are telling you through interacting with your creative.
Take the time to educate those in your organization. Once they understand that email marketing is much complicated than pushing a button, program demands/requests will seem easier to do.
Here is a great little article over at Style Campaign about the Top 14 Animated emails in 2009 as well as some of the blunders. Great read
Take the time to sit down with your ESP and share your goals for the year. They may offer up suggestions or easier ways to accomplish them.
Transactional email belongs on separate IP and it needs to be in HTML.
Don’t call yourself an email strategist if you have never run an email program or have spent enough time with a customer to understand the business. Become a strategist by doing instead of just reading and regurgitating.
Deep Thoughts #6:
Someone told me the other day that email marketing wasn’t the solution to everything. I then signed him up for as much affiliate email as I could…take that email hater.
Don’t make an email marketer go to 3 different places to see their list attrition.
Take the time to do content and link map analysis. Know what your subscribers are clicking on and then adjust your templates accordingly.
Deep Thought #5
Wouldn’t it be cool if someone could authenticate their email address/domain with their own fingerprint.
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Deep Thought #4
If Santa were an email marketer would you really opt out of his emails?
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Deep Thought #3
Do spammers have business cards and if so do they put their email address on them?
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Deep Thought #2
If I sign up for your email program and you send me a welcome with a “do not reply” address, does this mean that I am not really welcome?
Tip #429
The best way to understand your subscriber is to become one first…experience it, then work with it.
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Deep thought # 1:
I would be curious to see if porn sites send really good email, but am afraid to sign up…in case my wife actually sees my inbox.
Tip #347: Want to disengage your audience really quick? Send them an email every day for 45 days straight when they are use to getting 1 a week.
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I heard a comment the other day from someone who I thought was interesting. This comment came as a result of an email 101 session I held with a few people which went over the basics of email marketing with them.
The comment was “Wow…I never knew email marketing was so complicated”.
Whether people realize it or not, I think email marketing is one of the most misunderstood and confusing areas of marketing in general, yet it is probably one of the most profitable.
Email marketing is like driving a car. Sure..anyone can do it..but in order to drive on the Formula 1 or Nascar circuit it takes dedication and years of practice. I am not perfect and never will be when it comes to this chosen profession. I am and will always be a student in email marketing,
Yes Johnny…..email marketing it complicated. However it is fun, addictive and the email community at large is extremely helpful and supportive.
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This past week, I had the good fortune attending the Media Post Email Insider Summit in Park City UT. This small and intimate gathering of at 8600 feet of some of the greatest email minds in world has given me a sense of renewal in my chosen profession.
While I was not able to attend the entire conference, I had a chance to meet some of my virtual colleagues in person and it made me think of how grateful and honored I am to know these fine folks. We stayed up late debating email marketing and college sports and I got the sense that not matter who you are or what you do everyone has a opinion on something and whether you agree or disagree with their philosophies you have to respect them, which I do.
As I sit on the plane home writing up this blog post, I am truly grateful for the wisdom of these people and their willingness to share it with me. I left this conference with renewed confidence but cautious expectations of where our industry is going. Clearly we have a long way to go in certain areas, but I love challenges and I know all of the people I met enjoy them too.
I was inspired, invigorated and renewed and I hope you were too.
Long live email marketing.
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Kohls gives new meaning to putting % off in their subject lines. Granted, I know that this is their brand, but why not just make it easy and say that pretty much everything is on sale each and every time.
If I wait long enough, will I see 90%?
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Take a look at my inbox on Williams Sonoma…..nothing..nada…zilch..zero emails from them over the biggest shopping weekend in the history of shopping weekends…what happened?
(for the record, I do interact with their emails…could it have been my account?)
Did someone receive any holiday emails from Williams Sonoma?
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Lets play where in the world is the email sign up on the front page of Best Buy’s website. If you can spot it..then I will buy you a drink the next time we meet.
Look hard…..
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There IS such a thing as too much pre-header and I think Pottery Barn has officially taken the pre-header to new heights in terms of putting too much information in there.
There are 4 links, 6 lines, 206 characters, All CAPS, small caps, punctuation, dashes, arrows, underlines and soooo much more.
Too much pre-header is like going to a party and having all the appetizers shoved in front of your face all at once. It’s just too overwhelming.
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I love it. Here is a great example of setting the tone for email acquisition even before the customer gets inside the door. By doing this, you have already set the expectation with the customer that they are going to be asked for their email. This is good stuff.
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This is my favorite part of the email marketing year. If there were a calendar made for us email marketing geeks, these next 2 months would be prime real estate for the pictures to be shown. If you have already noticed, your inbox has been slowly filling up with all these great email offers leading up to what I would call the big money week. There are pre-black Friday email sales, midnight madness pre-Holiday sales and better sales now that EVER before sales being touted in email.
However, what the next 12 days will bring in terms of innovation and sheer inbox madness amongst retailer will even astound me. I cannot wait folks…its gonna be a wild 12 days and then an even wilder Holiday season in email marketing. Are you ready? Am I ready? Heck ya…bring it on retailers, eTailers and all tailers in between. I am ready for the inbox assault.
Let the games begin.
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My mom says she reads my blog which is awesome. The funny thing is that she always tells me that she has no idea what the hell I am talking about 1/2 the time on this thing…but here is a post that I know she will get.
Today is my Mom’s birthday and I wanted to wish her a very Happy Birthday publicly. This is not a milestone birthday for her, just another year added on….but that is the coolest thing…my Mom doesn’t get old…she just keeps getting more and more adventurous every year. It was evidenced this past couple of months when she ended up spending 4 weeks in Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet doing crazy things I would not do.
So with that…to my only other woman in my life who is awesome and incredible….Happy Birthday!!! Make it a good one Mom..I love you and will see you this weekend to help you blow out your candles.
Your Son.
Open Rates…you are “living on a prayer” baby.
I have engaged in many debates centered around the use of open rates as a viable metric for success in email marketing and to be honest, I am done debating the issue. You see, I think open rates have some merit, but nothing that I would base my entire email program’s success or failure on. You see…email open rates are like 80’s music. It was once great stuff to listen too. as it was fresh and cool and the beat was good. We judged our lives and happiness around the next cool Depeche Mode, Poison or Motley Crue song and loved it. 80’s music had its purpose and still does today, but in a much different way.
I still break out some old 80’s tunes and jam in my car but somehow the songs lose their appeal to me in a pretty fast way. This is how I feel about open rates. We gladly have that column in our tracking metrics reserved for open rates and they are nice to look at (like a good Def Leppard or OMD album cover/song, but to me its old school.
Right about now open rates are saying things like “Don’t forget about me”, because “Time after time” when people debate on whether “Should I stay or should I go” people find out that a high open rate can contribute to more “Mony mony”. However, we in the email community are watching “Every breath you take”
Those of you in the email community who think open rates are still alive, prosperous and add gobs of value to organizations..I encourage you to not “Take on me” because it will be “When Doves cry” before you can convince me that open rates are the “eternal flame” in email.
“Don’t stop believing” my fellow email marketers…open rates are here to stay like all of the 80’s stations out there. And for better or worse we need to show our “true colors.” Open rates are like a good 80’s song…great to have in your music collection..just not something I would like to listen too on a regular basis for entertainment.
*** I assure you that no “red red wine” contributed to this post……….ok I am done now***
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At some organizations, the email person is often looked at as a second class citizen. Most people think email marketing folks are people who could not hack it in the real world of marketing and so they chose to sit behind the computer and push a button all day to send out emails for the company.
No matter how much you read or know about email marketing, some folks within the organization look at email marketing as a necessary thing and that there really isnt all that much to think about. People don’t get that it’s an art and a science and therefore despite the big revenue numbers that email can produce, email folks tend to be on the lower end of the marketing pay scale.
Despite all of this, its time to be a hero. It’s time for you to come out from behind your office or cube and take a risk that you know will benefit your program and your organization. Do the right thing for your subscriber and try something that through testing you know will work. Be a hero to your subscriber. Be a hero to your organization and be a hero to yourself.
Do it now and beg for forgiveness later. Some of the greatest hero’s in history went against what was popular to accomplish great things.
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