An Inventor's Shocking Forecasts for Marketing Technology
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Renowned futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil shares his bold predictions on virtual environments for marketing, the effects of an accelerated technological pace, and how information will transform communications.
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Lessons in Landing Pages
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You spend hours working on the design and copy of your email marketing campaigns, but how much time do you devote to your landing pages? If you’re like many marketers, the answer is simple: not enough. “It’s definitely one of the lesser-thought-about things,” said Jim Wehmann, senior VP-global marketing with Digital River, a provider of e-commerce and marketing solutions. “It’s too much of an afterthought, which is one of the biggest mistakes that a marketer can make.”
7 Simple Ways to Freshen Up Your Direct Marketing
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As the snows begin to melt here in the Northeast, many of us start to think about spring cleaning, the domestic ritual of blowing away cobwebs, rearranging those things put asunder by a hard winter, and just plain throwing out old junk.
Why spring? Spring represents a time of renewal -- blooming flowers, hatching eggs, and sprouting seeds. Also, it comes after the all-important holiday season, when most marketers had little time to think beyond the next send date.
A Three-Step Plan for Continual Email-List Growth and Engagement (Part 1 of 3)
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Since the infancy of direct-response marketing, a targeted and captive audience has been the key to success. It didn't take long for "the list" to become king.
Though your list may remain the most powerful pillar of your direct-response effort, you also need strong, motivating offers and spot-on creative to go with it. Still, without the ability to reach the right people, the most enticing offers and the most exceptional creative take you nowhere.
Auto-Responders With Personality
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I went ice-climbing a few weeks ago. I did what most other business professionals do and set up an out-of-office auto-responder informing people where I was, how long I'd be out, and what they could expect as far as a reply. Standard procedure, right?
In January, I blogged about how an auto-responder email I received from Conde Nast missed the mark in three critical areas. The good news is, my example today is quite the opposite.
GroupCard's Auto-Responder Has Spunk!
Using Email To Remarket To Customers
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Email is a superior channel to drive sales, but it can also help you capture the next sale, the sale after that -- and even the sale that didn't happen.
Remarketing to customers is one of the benefits that email delivers once you begin to use the channel for more than sending yet another untargeted discount or free-shipping offer.
The emails you send in a remarketing program are highly personalized messages, which generate significantly higher response and conversion rates than broadcast emails.
Set the Alarm Clock on Your Sleeping Subscribers
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Once you decide to invest time and budget resources to upgrade your list quality, one of your first targets should be winning back the segment of your mailing list that has gone inactive.
That could be pretty sizable, given that half or more of a typical B2C (define) list can be inactive. (I explain why you should either win back inactives or move them off your mailing list in this column.)
How Word-of-Mouth Fuels Email Campaigns
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Customer reviews and other forms of word of mouth make great fodder for email campaigns. When measured against identical campaigns that don't include word of mouth, they generally drive higher click-through rates and sales. Two key benefits of email and user-generated content include driving community participation and using trusted words of customers to market products.
Email encourages consumers to engage with your site – and your brand.
Tips for Email Marketing Bliss
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Bliss may be too strong a word when it comes to anything marketing-related, but according to the Direct Marketing Association, every dollar spent on email marketing generates $43.62 in revenue. That, of course, is the average. Follow these rules and get better results from your email campaigns.
Person-to-Person
We are communicating with people so always remember this essential point when you write your messages. Stay away from marketing speak and use language that connects on a person-to-person level.
Political Parties Fail on Email Marketing
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Email sign ups
I signed up for emails from the Labour Party, Conservatives and Lib Dems. All three have sign up options on their homepages, but some are clearer than others.
Labour places the email sign up link in a prominent position, on the right of the homepage, just under the main navigation bar, with a clear call to action:
The Liberal Democrats come second for me; the sign up option is in a less prominent position on the page, but is still clearly visible:
Mobile Email: It Ain't What It Used To Be!
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Over the past two years we've been asked by almost every client, "Do we need a mobile version of our emails?" As an interim solution, most major brands host a text version of their email -- and occasionally you'll see some light html formatting or a thumbnail of the email creative, like this.
Email Is The Condensed Soup Of Marketing
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How much time do people spend reading an email? Not much. They spend a second or two deciding whether to keep or delete an email, and usually just a few seconds reading the ones they keep. This means the pressure's on the creative team -- the writer and designer -- to communicate the maximum amount of meaning in the least amount of time.
Six Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing Campaigns
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There is always room for improvement in even the most optimized and efficient email marketing campaigns. From edited body messages to different marketing tactics, email marketing is a progressive and ever-changing phenomenon. If you are satisfied with your email marketing success but want that little bit more from your subscriber list, here are some general tips. 1) Split content and marketing somewhere between 70:30 and 80:20. Too much marketing content and your campaigns will fail before they have started. Too little and you will build a very valuable audience without business results.
Sending Survey Emails? Learn From Orbitz’ Example
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Orbitz has been my online travel site of choice for years – I’ve strayed occasionally, but they always seem to be where I end up booking.
Most recently, I booked a hotel room in Philadelphia through them for New Year’s Eve. The day I checked out, this email arrived in my inbox:
Triggered survey emails like this are a nice touchpoint that can help a brand learn more about its customers and create a better experience for them in the future.
The challenge, of course, is getting people to:
EMAIL-VILLE: Social Gaming Companies Set to Take Plunge into Email CRM
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Tired of getting notifications about lost black sheep from distant cousins and ex-girlfriends from high school on Facebook? Don’t even trip. All notifications will be going away (both app-to-user and user-to-user) within the next month as Facebook revamps its platform.
