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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email, holiday email, email marketing, b2c email marketing, black friday email, cyber monday email

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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open rates, engagement rates, email metrics, email marketing, email best practices, email content, email humor, email program

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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email, email marketing, email best practices, email strategy

Don’t discard subtle changes in your email program. A tweak of the pre-header here or a change in the template there can add up to either big gains or losses.

Remember that email marketing is not based off hunches.  It is data driven and what YOU may think will be great for your customers will turn out to be something different unless you first test it out.  Sometimes the changes you make might go against what some experts may deem as best practices but again, its your program and your subscribers.

Don’t be afraid to make the subtle changes in your program, but make them data driven and not what others think or say might be the best.

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email marketing, email, best practices, testing, email testing, pre-header, deliverability

Attention all #emailsnob   Below you will find only a couple of T-Shirt Designs that I have put together. I welcome your input and thoughts and would be more than happy to get submissions from all of you. This is our T-Shirt and I would love to agree on a design.  I would be more than happy to get them printed and sell them at cost to all of you.

I built all of these T-Shirts at a great site called CustomInk.  They have a variety of choices for the shirts. I did the designs in white, but we can certainly look to do something else.

So without further adieu…

Design 1

Design 2

Design 3

Design 4

The other day I was told that I was an email guru.  For the record, I am not an email guru. I have never been a guru and will never be a guru.  I don’t preach to be a guru and don’t want to be a guru.

I am a student of this trade we call email marketing and so are you.  In fact, I may take the words email expert out of any of my bios, because I don’t want to be label.

You see, we are all students of email marketing and I can never do enough learning about it. This industry is changing all of the time and I dedicate hours and hours weekly to learn more and more about it.  I don’t do it because I have too, I do it because I want to.

Don’t preach to be an email  or a social media expert and never feel as if you are student or that the time to learn things is over.  Several weeks ago I reached out to a colleague with whom I would consider to be extremely knowledgable in delivery.  I  wanted to learn and get inside his head as he lives and breathes this stuff everyday. He took the time to explain things to me and I am grateful for his help.  You know who you are C.W. and I appreciate the time you took to educate me on a subject which I know is critical in the email industry.

The bottom line here is take the time for yourself to read or reach out a learn your trade and try to learn things beyond your immediate world. If your world is all about delivery, branch out and learn about content or mobile, but don’t think for a minute that you would not be called upon to do something else.

As for being a guru………I would rather just stick with being an email educator or influencer.

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email, email marketing, email expert, social media, email guru, email influencer, education, email strategy

Alt Text is so not new.  In fact, I did some research and it I can find some posts that are several years old about this very subject.  To me, “doing” Alt Text is not something that should be an option in your email program regardless of size.  I say this because most ESP platforms today make it easy for you to incorporate Alt Text into your images.

Spend the time to do the basics right everyone…you will be happy that you did.

Here is an email that I received from a retailer where the Alt Text says “top nav”  Some of you will argue that they did incorporate Alt Text into it, but I say no. Don’t make it so generic and inject some creativity into please.

As always, I welcome your thoughts.

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alt text, email, email marketing, email best practices, email engagement, HTML email

Do you see anywhere on this page where I can subscribe to email?  Yea…me neither.

Folks make the place for me to sign up for email easy……………

After further poking on the site, it looks like I have to create an account in order to sign up for their email..which to me is kinda of pain and not intuitive enough for the common person like me.  I think companies that make you create and entire account with a UN and PW along with not giving me an option at sign up to NOT receive email is a lost opportunity for them.  I welcome your thoughts.

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email acquisition, email marketing, barnesandnoble.com, email sign up

I love the analogy that Anton makes here about sending email and going out and trying to score with the ladies.

While the post is funny, it does have some real truth behind it.

Check it out below.

Email Ethics: Email marketing is like a night out in a club!

J.D. over at Return Path has a great educational post on the spam folder. I have lately been fascinated with delivery so I have been reading about it as much as I can.

There are some great resources out there to learn about this kinda of stuff and some great folks like J.D. and others that write great little articles such as this for public consumption.

The Spam Folder is Your Chance to Shine :: Return Path Blog

Al has some great advice on what to do if you are still getting emails from companies even after you already unsubscribed.

One of my goals is to become more and more educated on deliverability. I know enough about deliverability to be dangerous but like anything, I love to learn.

Al Iverson’s Spam Resource: Make it stop!

Shared via AddThis

I love simple designs and talbots.com has it nailed when I want to change my email or unsubscribe.

However, I think it would be wise of these guys to perhaps offer the user the ability to opt down from their email.

I think giving the customer a choice in frequency makes them feel in control. This is what email is all about right?

I welcome your thoughts.

Talbots.com

Jeanne Jennings has a great article over at ClickZ on 2 free email deliverability tools that people should be leveraging.

I can say that I have and will continue to leverage both of these. Both Return Path and EDS are top notch at what they do and these free tools are the tip of the iceberg.

My suggestion is that you look at both of these tools if you are concerned with deliverability and then really explore their other offerings to see the fit in your organization.

The link to the post is below.

Two Free E-mail Deliverability Tools – ClickZ

As a result of Michigan beating Notre Dame this weekend and “the bet” that I lost, I produced a video which should explain a few things.

@djwaldow this is for you.

I have tried 9 out of the 10. Some are good and some are well….not so good. Since I aggregate a ton of content, I find myself needed a powerhouse of client to keep with everything.

How many do you have/tried?

10 essential Twitter apps for marketers – iMediaConnection.com

I have a couple of questions centered around the email that I received from Biz Stone the other day.

1. Why is it only in plain text?
2. Did someone QA the content? There are fragmented sentances.
3. Why do they not have other social media integration?
4. Why was the email more than 140 characters?

Comments are welcome.

Chris Marriott over at iMedia talks about reactivation campaigns strategies and while basic in nature he does have some good point.

One of the things he fails to mention is that reactivation is tough and requires a tremendous amount of patience and testing in order to get it right.

I have often found that articles like this have a good message but fail to convey to the reader that this kind of stuff is really really hard work.

Also, not sure I dig the reference to calling subscribers the “living dead” as I prefer non-engaged, but since it was a Halloween reference post, I wont press that issue. Give it a read and let me know what you think.

Tactics for reviving dead email subscribers – iMediaConnection.com

Is Circuit City trying to sell me a laptop or coffee?  Sure its a woman looking at what appears to be a laptop, but to me its a really weird use of an image to push cheap laptops.

Your thoughts?

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weird email, email image, email marketing, email engagement, image based email, confusing email

Taking advantage of the 09/09/09 date today overstock does a great thing with their creative and 9% coupon.   Plus look at all their prices…. I love clever email marketing.

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overstock, email marketing, email, clever email, email engagement, good email, funny email