The Simple Reason Your E-Mail Marketing Fails

Posted by: Neil James // May 17th, 2011

The Simple Reason Your E-Mail Marketing Fails

Sure, you spent hours agonizing over just the right font, just the right headline and just the right call-to-action. No matter how many coats of gloss you treat these e-mail components with, however, you haven’t solved your primary problem according to Ben Settle in a podcast for Copyblogger: you’re boring. The fact is, Settle argues, there is so much content out there that the only possible way your e-mail can stand out is to be exciting and fun. One of the reasons so much e-mail is boring, Settle says, is that too many marketers just don’t have fun doing what they do. According to Settle, having fun and, more importantly, being legitimately passionate about what you’re doing as a marketer is the biggest key to entertaining your reader and ensuring your next e-mail gets opened.

@NeilAndrewJames

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5 Tips for Harmonizing Your Blogging and E-Mail Marketing Efforts

Posted by: Neil James // January 4th, 2011

Simon and Garfunkel. Hall and Oates. Sonny and Cher. Each vocalists fully capable as individuals, but culturally transcendent as a duet. Music is not the only product where the whole exceeds the sum of the parts. In a recent article for Marketing Conversation, Robin Pangilinan discusses how marketers can harmonize the oft-disparate tactics of blogging and e-mail marketing into a finely tuned duo. Unlike musical duos, however, the effectiveness of combining elements isn’t a matter of opinion; consumers exposed to a company’s message through blogs and social media are three times more likely to engage with e-mail content and search for a company’s brand. Included in Pangilinan’s tips for combining blogging and e-mail marketing to make sweet music: use your web analytics to determine which content was most popular, and augment your top content with further commentary, counterpoints or industry research.

@NeilAndrewJames

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The Four Keys to Mobile E-Mail Marketing

Posted by: Neil James // October 12th, 2010

With each day, mobile phones inch closer to becoming an individual’s total and complete communications hub. And it’s not just Facebook, text messaging and phone calls. According to Pew Research, 34 percent of cell phone owners in 2010 used their phone to send or receive e-mails – up from 25 percent in 2009. If you’re an e-mail marketer, what do you need to do to ensure your campaign is optimized for this increasingly mobile age? Marketing Pilgrim offers four great tips in its new article, Mobile E-Mail Marketing Pitfalls: How Do Your Messages Measure Up? Marketing Pilgrim reminds marketers to ensure that logos, calls-to-action and compelling content are located above the fold. In addition, Marketing Pilgrim says marketers need to account for the “shrinking” entailed by smaller screens when creating content.

@NeilAndrewJames

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Why Integration Means E-Mail Marketing is More Than Electronic Junk Mail

Posted by: Neil James // October 7th, 2010

Even the strictest adherence to best practices and genius-level creative can’t obscure one of direct mail’s faults: if it ends up in the trash, it’s a total failure. And by definition, there is a lot of failure. Does a digital trashcan mean that e-mail marketing, direct mail’s younger sibling, is destined for a similar fate? Not likely says Adam Sutton in an article for Marketing Sherpa, E-mail Marketing Trends Towards Integration. According to Sutton, emerging technologies are extracting e-mail marketing from the silo that traps direct mail. By leveraging people’s increased proclivity to share content on social networks, read messages on mobile phones, e-mail marketers are able to connect with their audience in ways beyond the all-or-nothing conversion. In the future, Sutton predicts behavioral targeting, sophisticated automation and an emphasis on strategy over tactics will add value to e-mail marketing as a marketing channel.

@NeilAndrewJames

Image Credit – Wall Street Journal

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