Elizabeth Victor says, “Spam is the scourge of the Internet. From phishing messages to malicious attachments and links to viruses, spam affects billions of email users each year. Although spam messages are at a 12-year low, nearly half of email sent is spam.If you’re running an email marketing campaign, and your emails are mistakenly flagged as spam, you’ll lose conversions as well as revenue.This article will outline how a small business or email marketer can avoid the spam folder by following the CAN-SPAM law, using email best-practices, and testing regularly.Follow the lawThe... [...]

Ryan Phelan says, “I’ve been in the email marketing industry for fifteen years, and have seen firsthandwhat works and even what doesn’t work in email testing and optimization programs.So here are some tips and tactics from my email marketing experience to help you in your testing efforts.Headlines, headlines, headlinesSubject lines are always popular email items to test and for good reason – the subject line and the From field are the first two things an email recipient will see with your email send.There’s plenty of information and misinformation out there on what... [...]

Amy Gesenhues says, “Going on last year’s campaign results, Yesmail says retailers are waiting too late to send their Black Friday-themed emails and Facebook posts.According to a report from the email marketing provider, open rates for Black Friday emails were the highest on the Monday and Tuesday preceding Black Friday, but the majority of email campaigns — 33 percent — were sent on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.Yesmail notes the Monday prior to Black Friday also saw the highest deletion rates: “While Monday before Black Friday saw the highest open rates for Black Friday-themed... [...]

Heather R. Morgan says, “Are you guilty of reaching out to your prospects with tired, uninspiring sales emails?You’re probably committing at least one of these three sales email mistakes.Your prospects’ inboxes are full of messages that use the same generic “are you the right person to speak with?” approach. The problem with this type of email is that it’s highly impersonal and doesn’t do anything to engage your buyer in a meaningful conversation about their business.The truth is, most people aren’t interested in connecting you to the right person. Buyers crave thoughtful... [...]

Steve Dille says, “It’s right there, glowing on the horizon: the promise of delivering behaviorally triggered messages to consumers — contextually aware engagement that’s tailored and relevant to each and every individual.Yet, as we’ve discussed in a previous post, 70 percent of brands have admittedthey’ve failed to personalize email messages at all, let alone used behavioral data for triggering.In fact, according to a 2014 study by Razorfish:A whopping 76 percent of marketers haven’t yet used behavioral data for segmentation analysis and targeting in any channel, let alone... [...]

Siobhan O’Rorke says, “It’s a tough world out there for small businesses, and making your name known to other people and industry influencers can feel like an uphill battle.Well-crafted networking emails can help you make those valuable connections. The only problem is that everyone knows that—influential people can receive hundreds of networking mails per week (or even per day), and they won’t have time to reply to everyone.The key is to stand out, but without being pushy. You want to build a genuine working relationship, so forget any notions of standardized robotic emails. They... [...]

Jessica Lorenz says, “Email marketers know that the subject line plays a vital role in the open and clickthrough rates of an email. Subject lines are the first micro-yes that a subscriber agrees to in order to continue up the sales funnel. For many, writing a powerful subject line with value-packed words and a sense of urgency will single-handedly increase open rates and lead to higher clickthrough.However, with marketing emails rendering differently across different email clients — such as Gmail or Outlook — content and images often get corrupted from the marketer’s initial concept... [...]

Verónica Maria Jarski says, “Want to scare up some business? Use the following tips to bewitch your email contacts and gain brand awareness.“Don’t fall for one of the biggest misconceptions of email marketing misconceptions; there is no one best time of the day to send emails,” suggests Campaigner. “Cater to your specific audiences’ schedules.”Also, prevent your campaign from turning into a nightmare and use segmentation tools to send messages that will resonate most to certain groups.“Give big offers to your top contacts as well as those who... [...]

Shelley Kessler says, “The first hot sheet of the holiday season looks at email by the numbers. Volume in the first two weeks is up 25.5 percent year-over-year across all industries. With this large increase, it’s not surprising that performance metrics have been slightly lower.Marketers need to work smarter, not harder.Analyzing and understanding the data from last year can help make the holiday season bright for your customers. We know this is a busy season, so we’ve done (and in this Holiday Hot Sheet series will continue to do) the work for you.The best days to send email to increase... [...]

Jim Kelley says, “More than half of all email opens and 38 percent of clicks occur on a mobile device, which is why it’s crucial to mobile optimize your emails. Responsive design is the “buzz term” that solves this problem, and marketers want it now.As a solution guy, the first thing I’ll communicate is that responsive email is not your typical slice and dice, get-it-out-the-door coding project. It requires a bit of planning, a new design methodology and a potential change in workflow. Why?Classic responsive designIn what I like to call “classic responsive design,” a new email... [...]