Ramon Ray says, “Have you ever received an email claiming to be from a specific brand or company, but it clearly wasn’t? Well, you’re not alone. And to prevent these type of “phishy” emails from reaching your inbox, email authentication standards have been put in place. That’s where Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) comes into play. I’ve asked Jacob Hansen, Deliverability Consultant, at SendGrid to help us better understand DMARC. What is DMARC? DMARC is an email protocol that uses SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “More retail marketers sent holiday-themed emails in 2015 than in 2014, but those more recent campaigns generally had lower levels of engagement, according to recent research from Yesmail. The report was based on data for 30 major retailers collected between June 1 and December 31 in 2014 and 2015. The researchers searched for terms such as “Halloween,” “Thanksgiving,” “Black Friday,” “holiday,” and “Christmas” in campaigns to identify emails with specific themes. Some 13.4% more brands deployed holiday-themed messages... [...]

Tom Tate says, “Last week, our Director of Deliverability Mohammed Ahmed wrote a fantastic post on why email engagement is more important than ever for email deliverability. It’s not something marketers always evaluate before every send, but email engagement is an important factor to consider when optimizing your email deliverability and inbox placement. Check out this podcast episode to learn three tips to help boost your engagement! There’s no doubt that internet service providers (ISPs) and email providers like Gmail, and Hotmail are looking at subscriber behavior and engagement to... [...]

Dean Mannix says, “Do you struggle to write effective sales and marketing emails? That’s not good. Your writing can make or break a deal, so it’s important to make your sales emails as persuasive as possible. And you don’t have to be a professional copywriter to do it. Here are five easy tips you should implement to make your email campaigns more successful right now. 1) Humanize the language. It’s 2016 and you’re dealing with real people. A salutation like “Dear <Name>” in an email creates a sense of formality and a personal distance in the communication. You... [...]

Kristen Graminga says, “Email marketing allows you to reach a highly targeted audience at a low cost. In fact, experts at Campaign Monitor, an email marketing company, estimate that an effective email marketing message has the potential to result in $38 in revenue, for just $1 of marketing investment. Here are some email marketing conversion tips all small businesses can use: 1. Include descriptive tags with your images. Online publication MarketingCharts cites data revealing that the average person receives more than 400 commercial emails a month. Emails that include images can help... [...]

Olivia Dello Buono says, “Each day, millions of people share posts on Twitter. So why not attract some of those social media users to your brand? Before you can get started, it’s important to acknowledge that Twitter users want to interact with authentic, engaging companies that they can relate to. Creating content gets people to connect with your brand doesn’t just bode well for them; people who feel more engaged with your brand are more likely to end up on your email list as well. And what better way to connect than through storytelling? How to tell your brand story There are lots... [...]

Spencer Kollas says, “As many folks within the email eco-system probably know by now, Spamhaus, an organization known for compiling several widely used anti-spam lists, has been extremely active this week. Over the past week, Spamhaus has listed a number of potentially hazardous IP addresses used by some of the world’s largest email service providers due to the way their newsletters signups are set up. According to most of the listings, Spamhaus has stated: Unfortunately, the said newsletter service is not verifying the email address of new subscribers. Due to this, the service can be... [...]

Sam Hollis says, “So your email list is starting to grow, but you really want to really get the ball rolling. Have you considered Twitter as an opportunity to get even more email subscribers? Today, forty-two percent of people learn about products and services via Twitter, and forty-one percent provide their opinions. According to Convince and Convert, Twitter is ubiquitous. You’re already using it but are you getting the most out of your efforts? There’s no better way to make an impression on your followers than giving them a sneak peek at the engaging and relevant content you’re... [...]

Andrew Choco says, “Most people view email marketing and social advertising as two separate entities, and I’ll be honest, I used to think that as well. However, I’ve discovered that combining multiple different avenues for a coherent marketing campaign yields some pretty impressive results. We’ve tried this tactic before at Directive Consulting, combining SEO and PPC; but in this blog post, I’m going to break down a few ways to combine email and social advertising for multi-channel success. More specifically, you’ll learn: How to create custom and lookalike audiences on Facebook... [...]

Jose Cebrian says, “In the world of email marketing, deliverability is a core issue. It’s commonly known that when you send an email, it doesn’t always reach the intended recipient. Between the sender and the recipient are intermediaries, namely the internet service providers (ISPs) and email service providers (ESPs), which use a mix of internal algorithms and outside filtering technologies that combine to make a decision on each message that comes into their mail servers. Their job is to protect their customers from unwanted mail, phishing attempts and other scams, which are real worldwide... [...]