Spending On Email, Social And Search Rising

Posted by on Feb 14, 2010 in Blog, E-mail Marketing, Interactive Marketing | No Comments

ExactTarget released a study last week which indicates marketers plan to increase spending related to email, social media, and other non-traditional outbound channels this year.

The study of 1,000-plus marketers shows 54% of marketers said they will boost budgets for email marketing, and about 66% in social media (even though about 80% of those acknowledged the difficulty in tracking ROI in the medium).

Delving deeper into the report, the research showed social networking is the “fastest growing digital marketing channel.” More than 70% plan to increase spending on  “off-site” social media offerings such as Facebook and Twitter, and about 65% in “on-site” areas such as “blogs or ratings and reviews.”

Small Biz: Big Hikes in Email, SocNet Spending for 2010

Posted by on Nov 20, 2009 in Advertising, Blog, E-mail Marketing, Research | No Comments

A recent study from VerticalResponse found that a vast majority of small US business plan to increase their use of both email marketing and social media in 2010, while more than half won’t be buying banner ads and a fourth won’t spend any money on search engine marketing (SEM). The study, based on a survey of 831 individuals at businesses with less than 500 employees also found that 74% plan to increase email marketing and 68% will increase their use of social media marketing.

Chart: Primary Online Communication Tools

Posted by on Sep 29, 2009 in Blog, E-mail Marketing, Research | No Comments

Epsilon’s Global Consumer Email Study (PDF) finds that e-mail is still cited by an overwhelming majority of individuals as their primary online communication tool, however it is becoming ever more difficult for marketers to break through in-box clutter.

Powerful E-mail Marketing Stats

Posted by on Sep 17, 2009 in Blog, E-mail Marketing, Research | No Comments

Jeanniey Mullen, using data gathered by the Email Marketing Council, has written a short article for ClickZ that is a must read.

  • Every year an average of 30 percent of the people who signed up for your e-mail marketing list will not get your e-mails because their ISP will incorrectly block them.
  • 85 percent of the people on your e-mail list will stop reading your e-mails (without unsubscribing) after the third message your company sends to them (yes, company, not just your group inside the company).
  • 25 percent of the people on your list who receive your e-mails and never open them will be among the top 10 percent of your best customers.
  • An average of 39 percent of your current year subscribers will either unsubscribe, or stop reading/engaging with your e-mails by the end of the year.
  • Over 10 percent of people who initially read your e-mail on their handheld device will file it away, intending to take action, but never doing so.
  • About 15 percent of your list will read your e-mails and look to a social network like Facebook or Twitter to see if others are buzzing about the message or offer before taking action.
  • Over 49 percent of people who are happy with their recent purchase from your company will open future e-mails seven times faster than those who have not made a purchase in over three months.

These stats taken as a whole highlight just how much planning and effort needs to be utilized to keep your subscribers engaged. On a side note, the data point I find most interesting is that a quarter of your best customers will never open your messages. I’d love to know the reason behind this, cause when I was the VP of Marketing for a high-end e-mail service provider we saw this happen all the time and we could never understand the dynamics at work.

5 More E-Mail Subject Line Tips

Posted by on Jun 7, 2009 in Blog, E-mail Marketing | No Comments

Talk to any e-mail marketing professional and they will all tell you deliverability is primary key to success. If your message, no matter how important and/or relevant doesn’t make it to your prospects in-box, it has zero chance to be successful. It is just that stupid simple.

However, once delivered the message has to cut through all the other clutter and noise in person’s in-box to have a chance to be read. But how exactly do you do that? Write an effective subject line, which is the single most important variable related to open rates.

1. Keep It Simple. Don’t try and over engineer or over think your subject line. Take either your offer or single most important message and convey it in under 10 words (five is better) and 50 characters. Also, never use all caps and avoid any unnecessary punctuation.

2. Think relationship, not message. With e-mail marketing you should be trying to build relationships with your readers, not just generate leads or sales. Therefore each message you send should try build and strengthen that relationship and reaffirm why subscribers signed up in the first place. Each message should not be an isolated communication but instead should be somehow related to previous/future e-mails.

3. Be specific, descriptive. Let subscribers know exactly what they can expect to gain if they open your e-mail. If your content is truly relevant to your audience a descriptive subject line will improve your open rates. Example: “Use Google Analytics To Track Landing Pages” is better than “How To Track Leads.”

4. Have someone write the subject line that did not write the copy. This may sound counter intuitive. However, often the copywriter can’t see the “forest for the tree” cause they are too close to the content. Therefore have a few folks read the message and sum up the key points. These use these points as your starting point and then write the subject line with one thought in mind: “why is this important to my audience and how will they benefit”.

5. Test, test and test. Not all people are the same so don’t treat your e-mail audience as if they were. Different people will react to different messages. Segment your list a test different subject lines with each campaign and see which perform the best.

5. Audience segmentation. Just as all people are not the same, neither are all audiences. Prospects will respond to different subject lines than clients, former clients, or partners. Of course it is easier to just write on e-mail and subject line and “blast” it out to everybody, but your results will suffer.

Give these straightforward and simple Subject Line tips a try and watch your open rates increase.

Most Popular E-mail Apps Feb-09

Posted by on Mar 27, 2009 in Blog, E-mail Marketing, Research | No Comments

Campaign Monitor analyzed six months of data covering more than 250 million opens. The result—a detailed analysis of e-mail client popularity and usage trends over time. I still find it stunning that only 6.1% are using Outlook ’07. You can review the entire analysis with a lot of valuable information and charts here.

Some Pithy E-mail Marketing Tips

Posted by on Jan 9, 2009 in Blog, E-mail Marketing | No Comments

Just a few things to think about this Friday morning and before you send out your next campaign.

  1. Success is all about making your message relevant to your subscribers. Be relevant. Don’t be self-serving.
  2. Keep it short and to the point so subscribers read the e-mail immediately. The “I’ll get to it later” mindset is the kiss of death.
  3. Put a teaser in the e-mail and get them to your site as quickly as possible. That is where you should engage folks in more detail, not in the e-mail.
  4. Don’t revert to your “corporate speak” voice when composing the e-mail. You’ve got a personality, show it. Talk to subscribers like they are humans with emotions, cause they in fact are just that.
  5. More links are better than less links. They’re trackable so you can easily figure out what’s working and what’s not.
  6. Avoid subscriber e-mail fatigue like the plague. A frequency of around once a month is about the right level for most small businesses. Maybe bi-monthly for current clients or larger firms.
  7. Two things get your e-mail opened: the “From” and “Subject” line. Period. Never forget this.
  8. And most important of all, use some empathy. Put yourself in the “shoes” of your subscribers! Before you hit “send” always ask yourself if you got the message how would you react? What would your take away be? Would you even care or just hit delete?