Gmail Is At It Again…
As the year comes to an end, it looks like Gmail just had to make one more, very effective change to its interface. Back in May, Gmail rolled out the tabbed inbox. Just as marketers and industry experts started to figure out the best and most efficient way to navigate throughout the new inbox look […]
Write Winning Email Subject Lines: Learn How In Under 40 Minutes
Let’s get one thing abundantly clear: Readers are rarely eager to open and read your emails. It’s actually just the opposite. What readers – including you and me – ARE eager to do is hit “delete” to as many emails as possible. Call it self-preservation. Time management. Information (infiltration) overload. But it’s precisely what we […]
How Holiday Email Sending Could Trash Your Email Reputation
Hear that sound? Holiday and seasonal ads on the radio, carols playing on the Muzak… yes, we’re officially in the holiday season – and the biggest time of year to meet and complete your 2013 business objectives and numbers. In order to do this, many marketers will increase their email outreach in an effort to […]
Email Deliverability: You Are the Master of Your Own Fate
“Deliverability” is the measure, usually expressed as a percentage, of how many of the emails you send actually make it into the inbox. To create highly deliverable email campaigns, you must first understand the landscape and the challenges to be overcome in order to place a message in an individual’s email inbox. Because each receiving […]
10 Steps to Great Email Marketing
Creating an email campaign is a foundational marketing skill. Over time all kinds of fancy and complicated email marketing ideas usually find their way into the toolbox, so once in a while it’s a good idea to review the basics to make sure your plan is sound and your execution optimal. After all…remember the 80-20 […]
Microsoft Office 365 Throws Email Marketers A Curve Ball
Marketers doing email campaigns are struggling with a serious issue: Communications with Outlook users have become problematic, often going straight to the junk folder or being quarantined. If you use Outlook yourself, you’ve probably noticed your marketing emails are being classified as spam. If you don’t use Outlook yourself but email to small and mid-sized […]
Emailing to the U.K.? Marketing Consent Just Got Specific
If you’re a direct marketer in the United Kingdom, your legal obligations just got clearer … and possibly more complicated. Last week, the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued a new guidance that further clarifies direct marketing dos and don’ts under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 […]
5 Keys to Email Inbox Delivery
Over the years, many changes to email inbox delivery have been made by ISPs such as Gmail and third party filters such as Barracuda. Every serious email marketer tries to keep up with the changes and figure out ways to get their emails opened and clicked on, and deliverability professionals continually update their toolkits. Trust […]
Customer Acquisition Via Email Has Quadrupled Over the Last 4 Years
Recently, Custora released “E-Commerce Customer Acquisition Snapshot, Q2 2013,” the first in what will become a series of reports examining emergent e-commerce customer acquisition trends. Custora looked at numbers spanning 72 million customers from 86 U.S. retailers across 14 industries, and came up with some verrrrrrry interesting data about customer acquisition and customer lifetime value. […]
The New Gmail Inbox Tabs: It’s Too Soon to Worry (But Do Watch)
Last May I wrote a blog post on the new tabbed Gmail inbox about how email recipients might use it. Since that time, it seems there’s a lot of fear that this new inbox structure could impact senders’ open rates and return on investment, since the email might be directed to the Promotions tab instead […]
Marketing to Kids? Mind the New Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Provisions
If you run a website designed for kids or have a website geared to a general audience but collect information from someone you know is under 13*, you must comply with the Federal Trade Commission’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act ( COPPA). New provisions came into effect on July 1, 2013 that provide additional protections […]
Yahoo! Update: Account Deactivation and Your Call to Action
Yahoo! started spring cleaning some time ago, removing older products with few users and security problems. The company’s next mission is to retire inactive email accounts, starting July 15. This means that Yahoo! subscribers who do not respond to a message will be unsubscribed, and their accounts will become available for use to new subscribers. […]
Typography Matters
Marketers use all kinds of art elements, color schemes and graphics to convey mood, emotion, and character on websites, in emails, in signage, and in all kinds of collateral. Unless you have a designer on staff or on call, typography is one opportunity to get it right (or wrong) that’s often overlooked. When someone opens […]
Email Marketing Alert: New Gmail Inbox On The Way!
Gmail just announced some big changes to the look and function of the inbox, which could impact a sender’s email metrics. This will affect primarily B2B senders that focus on small business, and B2C senders. As of May 29, 2013, Gmail is rolling out an update that will group recipients’ email into categories which will […]