Exclusive offers: How exclusive are they, really? Be careful with the word. Be careful with the offers. You want your offer to mean something, not nothing. Here are three reasons for keeping exclusive offers elusive. Offering deals in exchange for email addresses is standard email marketing best practices. You can’t expect something for nothing, and an email address has value. You must offer something of value in exchange for it. Hence, the email best practices around […]

In a recent article, David Baker lists M-Email as one of the five fundamentals he’s talking about. Not that his five fundamentals aren’t, well, fundamental, but what really caught my eye was just that: M-Email. My eyes read it as Me-Mail. And it all clicked. All of the email marketing best practices we talk about in this email marketing blog suddenly had a whole new meaning. Email has become—or is fast becoming—me-mail. Me meaning me and […]

As an email marketing vendor, we see a lot of email marketing best practices being used…and plenty more neglected due to lack of understanding. The A/B split test may help optimize your email marketing campaigns, but is often an email best practice misunderstood by email marketers, so here’s a little refresher on how, why and when to do it… An A/B split test, is comprised of 2 (or more) versions of an email where one thing […]

Here’s a fun way to evaluate how well you’re adhering to email marketing best practices: Take this quick quiz by Bluehornet http://www.bluehornet.com/articles/full/email-deliverability-quiz. This Email Deliverability Quiz will test your level of respect for your subscribers with five questions, each with three possible answers. With easy questions that take no time to answer like how many clicks does it take to unsubscribe and how you determine frequency of email marketing, you’ll wiz through the quiz. Then see […]

Earlier, I blogged on a useful article BlueHornet published on dealing with the issue of Gmail’s Priority Inbox. It’s a great article with great email marketing best practices for mastering the filtering of Gmail. (URL here for earlier post) What I’m not sure about is how much of an “issue” Gmail’s Priority Inbox really is. After literally years of using Outlook, I started using Gmail in March so I’d have a better understanding of how it […]

Is getting through to your Gmail users a challenge for your organization? Then you’ll be glad to know BlueHornet has published a handy article on email marketing best practices for Gmail. It’s a useful article for marketers seeking out email marketing best practices to work around the Priority Inbox issue. The advice is spot on. Two pieces of advice in particular stood out to me as email marketing best practices to adopt. BlueHornet points out that […]

Starting out with a new email service provider (ESP) will likely mean some growing pains as you make the transition. To prepare you for the move, be prepared for the switch to a new IP address too. As with the switch to the new ESP, the new IP address will require some ramping up as well. Remember that this isn’t an overnight event. Unfortunately, you don’t get to flip a switch and have all the ISPs […]

You know the drip drip drip of the leaky faucet that keeps people up at night in comedy shows? Sometimes it’s not the faucet, it’s the email marketing drip campaign that’s keeping someone awake…usually a marketer! Beyond the challenges of the offer, email design and email copywriting that all must be figured out (and tested!) for a successful email marketing drip campaign is the drip. Er, I mean the frequency. How many emails how often? The […]