Business Information Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Email marketing’

Read the Email Marketing Studies.

There Are Countless resources on the web to teach you Everything You Need to Know about Email marketing. Studies Have Shown That Consumers Are Getting an average of 35 emails a day and business an average of 100 recipients. With That Much Email for your subscribers to wade through, You Need to make sure yours gets to Them at the best possible time. Opinions Vary regarding What day of the week or hour of the day is best. However, in general MOST Agree That If You Are B2B Email sending, send marketing pieces So They arrive around 11 a.m. or 4 PM, and on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. If You are sending B2C Email Marketing, Then weekends are your best bet for Higher Email Open rates and Should arrive around 9 PM or 11 PM If You Have the Ability to do so, Recent Studies Have Shown to many high engagement rate Can Be Achieved if you get mail to your subscribers on the Same day of the week and time of the day That They subscribed.

Your Email Message Is Readable?

After your recipient gets the message, can they read it? The Email Experience Council reports 21% of Emails That They reviewed images Appeared Were Completely blank When Turned Off. Guess what? That Also Means That That people like me get mail on a Smart Phone, Will Not much see your work over, beautiful piece Either marketing. If Allows your system, create a message Botha That sends text and HTML formatted version at the Same Time. This Allows the device and software readers to decide. Otherwise, create two Separate lists and allow your subscribers an option to choose one or the Other. When using HTML code to a minimum keep spam filters as tendon to choke on it.

Personalized Email Campaigns.

If your process Allows, You Should Consider definitely Personalizing Some aspect of your Email marketing. However, the statistics show That Personalizing the subject line and nothing else will DECREASE Actually your open and click-through rates by about a percent. One study by Eichmann That just Including the company name in the subject line INCREASED the 30-60% open rate.

Email Subscribers Are Misinformed

Joe Does not Know (or Does not Care) That There is a legal definition for “spam.” Joe Thinks Any email I want is not does spam. Joe Believe That “mark as spam” is the Same thing as “I just do not want this anymore.” From Joe’s perspective, it is the Same. He clicks the button, the mail stops showing up in historical mailbox. Problem solver.

Joe Does not Realize That a lot of those “mark as spam” buttons all over the world Are connected to mysterious back-end systems monitor and track That the Companies That send the emails people like Joe call spam. He Also Does not Know That When enough people click the buttons Those companys sending out emails Are Those flagged as spammers, Not just for him – Potentially But for millions of people.

No matter how great you think your content is or how you Closely follow the can-spam rules, if Consumers Do not Want it – IT IS SPAM.

Now That the company has-been flagged, good luck getting people to buy the matching belt and fedora to go With their new sweater.

Joe That Did not INTEND to cripple company’s email campaign, I Was Just sick of getting emails from Them. Joe is lazy, remember?

So what can you as email marketers do to help this? Figure Out What Joe Wants and Expects From You, and Give it to him. Format your messages in a Way That When the Time Comes That Joe No Longer Wants to hear from you, He Knows What to do and Despit historical laziness, resists the urge to click the spam button.

Email Marketers Are Naive, Lazy and Misinformed

It Seems That Perhaps Joe is Not the only one at fault. The email marketers of the world Need Not Be so naive to about What Actually Our subscribers expect from us, We Need to Be Not so lazy about Determining What We send and to who etc and we Need to help Educate Our subscribers about how to unsubscribe when to They want to.

What Would You Do to Improve email marketing? Let me know in the comments.

It’s true, research has proven That Actually email marketers Are Dumber Than Previously Thought events WAS possible. In the Interest of fairness and full disclosure, I Have to tell you I am an email marketer. Although, Sometimes When I Meet someone new I lie and say I’ma garbage collector. Most people like garbage collectors What do for a living.

It’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean.

The crew at returnpath.net recently Concluded a 19 month study Into how email marketers handle non-responsive addresses . I Do not Know What the Researchers Expected to uncover, pero Were the results shocking, at least to me anyway.

I’ve Told You Before, it’s a good idea to purge addresses from your mailing lists if you know people Those That Have Never, Ever Open or clicked on your messages. I mean, why make your math more and lower your results Complicated Because A Few People Do not want (or never see) what you send Them?

I think I’m safe in Saying That if left up to the people That Actually push the “send” button, mailing lists Would Be as lean and clean as possible. Unfortunately, Many Are That stuck with bosses believe when it comes to mailing lists (and Probably Other Things), size matters – and bigger is better.

Which Brings us to the first Finding of the study, 73% of the 40 companies Studios continues to send email to Completely non-responsive email addresses for the full 19 months of the study. SEVENTY-THREE PERCENT! Come on – are you serious? I can UNDERSTAND Almost Not Wanting to mess with your math DURING the current campaign year, But why not start the year with a nice clean, fresh, VALID mailing list? Let’s Get Those lists clean up, you can do it, just call it spring cleaning – or maybe a little fib and tell your boss it’s a can-spam Requirement and you Have to do it, I promise I will not tell.

OK, so 73% is Surprising, But Not in the big picture terribly Harmful to anything in the long run, right? Wrong. There is a chance average Better Than That the reason the emails Are Not Being Opened Because They’ve Been is tagged as spam. If that’s the case, each additional message you send is Another nail in the coffin of your email marketing program as your reputation gets Worse and Worse and you get added to more and more of the spam blacklists.

What I found shocking MOST research in the Return Path Was the sheer volume of email That Were These companies sending. These companies sat on average 10 emails a month. Means That Every three days an email. Think that’s bad? It’s Almost tolerable Compared to the two top Offenders.

Neiman Marcus sat an average of one email a day over the 19 months. Every day? Really?

However, the worst offender Was a company named “Bluefly” which from looking at you website Their Might Be Fooled Into thinking they “get it”. You’d Be Wrong – at least as far as email marketing is concerned. Bluefly started the test with an average of 30 emails a month and ended it with 54 to month. Yep, two messages a day. Can you imagine if Other retailers did this? That You Might Have That pimple-faced kid from McDonalds at your door a couple times a day … “What do you mean you’re not hungry? You Bought A Big-Mac from us two months ago, how can you Not want an apple pie – or a delicious shake? “

I wonder if the e-marketers and executives at Bluefly Tolerate That Behavior as Consumers. I suspect not. So why do they do it as a company? Do Unto Others But Not Unto Me? Do as I Say, Not As I Do?

How many of the “real” people That Get All Those messages get so frustrated from Bluefly They drop out, or Worse – tag as spam Them?

NOTE: I Reach Out to Bluefly via twitter to see if They Would mind Answering Some Questions about Their Techniques, if I get anything from Them I’ll post an update.

What’s the right way to do email marketing?

If you’re an e-marketer, how do you handle non-responsive addresses, let me know in the comments.

If you’re a consumer, What do you Consider the right frequency for companies to send you email, let me know in the comments.