E-mail Marketing Round-up
Posted by Universal Ad at Monday, December 24, 2007 12:44 AM and is filed under Marketing,ROI,E-Mail 
As usual, too many articles, not enough days in the year (nor hours in a day, especially during the holidays, especially on Christmas, although you can be sure I wrote this post ahead of time...) so this will be another quick round-up, although if you're interested in this subject, it may take you a while to get through all these articles!
Posted by Universal Ad
- Consumers Lack Trust in E-mail But Still Use It Daily - While e-mail is one of the popular solutions (74% of consumers
use it everyday & 96% use it every work day) consumers are not
entirely trusting of it. Respondents cited inconvenience and
safety/privacy concerns, as well as a perceived lack of trusted e-mail
service measures in place to protect them.
- E-conundrum - Call it the e-mail paradox. E-mail to a
house file is far and away merchants' most cost effective
sales tool. Yet the money most companies spend on it is barely a
rounding error in terms of their marketing budgets.
- E-Mail ROI High, Response Rates Low - E-mail produces the highest
response rate for lead generation of
direct mail methods (especially for house campaigns) and it is also the lowest-cost way to run a campaign. Sometimes the response rate isn’t so great, but the cost is so
low that it is part of most campaigns.
- E-mail ROI Still a Stunner, But Diminishing - As most marketers devote tiny amounts of their budgets to their
e-mail efforts, the channel continues to deliver insane returns on
every dollar spent. However, e-mail’s ROI has dropped significantly in the last year and will continue to do so.
- Getting More Mileage from E-Mail Metrics - Nearly all e-mail marketers measure their campaigns, but many do not use the results to support their budgeting goals. More than one-half of respondents
said they measured results 24 to 48 hours after deployment. However,
fewer than one-fifth said they measured their annual results.
- E-mail Spurs Purchase in 50% of Consumers - Half of all consumers surveyed have made a purchase as a result of an
e-mail solicitation and 16% did so from
messages found in their spam folders. Over 40% of the respondents cited "a good offer or deal" as the most
important factor in their decision to make an online purchase. One
quarter was most drawn to buy because the product offering was of
interest to them.
- So You Want to Reach the Inbox? - In the constantly changing world of e-mail marketing, reaching the
in-box has become a lot more complicated than just pressing “send.” For
most marketers, sending successful e-mail campaigns has become a
tedious process with numerous hoops to jump through. More than 20 percent of
permission-based e-mails go undelivered. This accounts for billions of
dollars in lost revenue. The rules keep changing and marketers need to
adapt, or it’s going to hurt their pocket books.
- The Hunt for E-mail Relevance - The secret to relevant e-mail marketing
is no secret at all: It begins with understanding your customer through
the data you have gathered. And
the most valuable data of all may be the activity information you
gather every time you send an e-mail. But are you doing this? Many
marketers don’t, despite the fact that this information is immediately
actionable and is readily available with every campaign. Here are some tips on how to start.
- The Opportunities and Threats of Transactional E-mails - As a growing number of marketers take advantage of the opportunities
presented in transactional e-mails, one expert is sounding a note of
caution. There are rules governing the use of sales
pitches in transactional e-mails and marketers who over-sell in them
run the risk of drawing the attention of the FTC. If an e-mail’s
primary purpose is determined to be commercial, then it falls under Can
Spam and requires the sender to give the receiver an opt-out mechanism.
- Some E-mails Miss the Mark - The week
surrounding Cyber Monday was particularly heavy for e-mail. Which
marketers rated a clickthrough—and possibly a sale—and which hit the
delete bin quicker than last year's fruitcake? Let's take a look at a
few of the e-missives I received in the 10 days surrounding
Thanksgiving.
- Your Unsubscribe Handling is Probably Lame - While 96% of e-mail marketers include an unsubscribe function in their
promotional e-mails as required by federal law, almost two thirds said
they use methods to discourage opt outs, such as putting unsubscribe
language in tiny type or hiding it. However opt-out requests present an opportunity to reinforce
the brand and get information from subscribers that few marketers are
taking advantage of.
- Higher E-Mail Ad Spending Hits Hurdles - US spending on e-mail advertising will grow to $2 billion by 2012 from $1.2 billion in 2007.JupiterResearch estimated that about one-quarter of e-mail delivered to users' main inboxes is now opt-in. More than one-half
of those surveyed stopped subscribing to opt-in e-mails because the content was no longer relevant, and 40% said they were getting
too many offers.
- (and now for something completely different...) Animation in E-mail - With the abundance of promotional messages cluttering inboxes today, it is becoming more and more important to grab the user’s eyes while maintaining an optimized, e-mail friendly template. In addition to standard color and image use, many e-mail marketers are turning to the aesthetic and visual appeal of animation.
Posted by Universal Ad
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