E-mail

Historically, many e-mail marketers have gotten by with poor metrics and suboptimal business practices because e-mail marketing was seen as a cheap communication channel where it was easy to make a profit. But in the current economic climate, every cost is under scrutiny. Are you simply looking at ways to lower costs or e-mail more people? That’s exactly the wrong thing to be doing. Now is the time to act like a sharp businessperson and consolidate your own standing in the process. Focus on Real Business Metrics Smart businesspeople focus on profit and loss (P&L) and return on investment (ROI), not just cost. Clearly

The number of marketing e-mails being sent to consumers continues to increase, finds a recent survey. U.S. retailers and wholesalers will send 158 billion marketing e-mails this year, a number likely to grow 63 percent to 258 billion in 2013, Forrester Research predicts. But the increase in volume hasn’t translated into an increased reliance on testing. According to Internet Retailer’s survey of 174 Web-only retailers, chain retailers, catalogers and consumer brand manufacturers, conducted last month with e-mail marketing and survey firm Knowledge Marketing, 52.9 percent of respondents do not test their e-mail campaigns. Here’s a look at some more of the survey’s findings.

I’ve always believed you put dollars in the bank, not percentages. For example, it’s not the percent of net income that’s important, but the total dollars of profit achieved. To maximize dollars, manage the income statement by the ratios as a percentage of net sales — the dollars will take care of themselves. This month, I’ll review the key ratios of a typical profit and loss (P&L) statement for a B-to-B and a B-to-C catalog company and discuss how these ratios are different today than just a few short years ago. If your company’s experience has been similar to others, sales are

This month, I thought I’d share some of my favorite e-mails and explain why they’re tops in my book. As you read them, think about how you might incorporate these tactics in your own e-mail programs. Orvis and Customer Reviews Many catalogers include customer product reviews on their sites. It’s a great way to take advantage of Web 2.0 by integrating customer content online. Plus, shoppers place great value on reviews in the shopping process — this user-generated content should increase sales. If you have customer reviews on your site, make sure the members of your e-mail list are aware of this feature. Orvis

In a session I presented at the DMA08 annual conference and exhibition last week in Las Vegas, I provided several tips to help marketers better prepare their e-mail communication strategies. In particular, I focused on a couple of areas: the building blocks needed to get an e-mail campaign up and running, and how to make your e-mails more relevant to your customers. Here’s a rundown of what I went over. 1. Learn from tests conducted by major marketers. If you include an offer in your e-mail, for example, is it more powerful to present that offer as dollars off or a percentage discount? Changing

In one of the final sessions from last month’s NEMOA conference in Burlington, Vt., e-mail marketing consultant Jeanne Jennings touched on myriad topics related to her stock-in-trade. Here are four of her most notable and implementable takeaway points from that session. 1. On e-mail registrations: * spark people with engaging e-mail descriptions; * don’t make registrations too long — keep them to five to seven items; * ask for postal addresses, though she added that asking for them could turn off some prospects, so “don’t force it; tread lightly”; and * get help from your IT pros. 2. Key deliverability factors: * confirm your

A recent whitepaper from the e-mail marketing firm StrongMail, called Mastering Your Email Reputation: Seven Strategies for Improving Deliverability, provides tips to multichannel marketers looking to improve the effectiveness of their e-mail campaigns. Among others, the whitepaper lays out best practices to improve sender reputation to protect against e-mails being filtered or blocked by Internet service providers (ISPs), preventing them from reaching consumers’ inboxes. Here’s a look at the whitepaper’s seven strategies. 1. Maintain a clean list. Sending to bad addresses not only skews response rates, it’s a core metric ISPs use to determine sender reputation, the whitepaper notes. To maintain a clean list,

E-mail’s potential and complexities are seemingly endless, according to Morgan Stewart, director of strategic services for the e-mail marketing firm ExactTarget. In a presentation he gave at last week’s eTail East 2008 conference in Washington, D.C., Stewart offered a number of pointers on how to make e-mail work in real time as a marketing tool. Here are the seven most noteworthy takeaway tips. 1. Use e-mail to turn a potentially negative out-of-stock experience into a positive. Include a callout when you’re out of stock for a particular product to have customers notified via e-mail when the item is back in stock. This helps accomplish

Holiday Growth Tactics 2008 A successful holiday season starts now, particularly in this tough economy! This informative report by Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group and MarketLive explores proven tactics for growing holiday sales in key areas: Gifting, Promotions, eMail, Customer Service, and more.

It may be hot outside, but savvy merchants are already contemplating sleighs and snowflakes. With the holiday season comprising fully a third of all online sales, according to Forrester Research, now’s the time to begin building the strategies that will propel year-end success. But we’re not only talking holiday season here. Half of all online buying is for other people at any time of the year, according to Forrester. So multichannel merchants should adapt successful holiday gifting tactics for year-round use during seasonal peaks and special events. To be successful, your gifting strategy must be carefully planned and woven into the fabric of