For all the talk of email is dead and social media is the new marketing marvel, there’s one way email is still a far better marketing tool than social: the ability to measure ROI! Try searching for information on how to measure social media ROI and your head will spin. First you have to be clear on what you mean by social media. Facebook? YouTube? Blogs? Then try and sort out the ROI and it’s hard! […]

The CEO of our email marketing vendor company ClickMail is now a Focus Expert! Marco Marini, ClickMail CEO, will soon be posting email marketing and email deliverability expertise articles on the Focus.com website as well as answering email marketing and online marketing related questions. Focus exists as a resource for professional business people who need one place to go for expertise, whether the topic is customer service, finance, marketing, software or a number of other topics. […]

I just read an article on SWYN adoption, asking is it as widespread among retailers as people think it is (and the answer was “no”), but we might have missed the point here. If you have a Share With Your Network function in your email, but your email isn’t worth sharing, does the function matter? Even if 99% of retailers added some kind of SWYN feature like a Share link for Facebook, does that mean consumers […]

Have you believed the buzz that “best time to send” is now a non-issue? Then our latest contribution to the Email Experience Council (EEC) blog should make you stop and think…or rethink. Rather than remove the issue from your list of email marketing best practices, rethink it. But also move beyond what the case studies and reports tell you. As Marco says in this post, “The fact is, the industry doesn’t determine your best time to […]

With so many marketers caught up in social media initiatives and the rapidity with which the email marketing landscape can change, it’s easy to lose sight of the basics. ClickMail’s Director of Sales & Business Development Michael Kelly recently summed up some back to basics core information we need to remember as email marketers: the 40/40/20 rule. Despite all the integration and technological innovation and newness of social media, email marketing best practices still adhere to the […]

This is a blog topic that might raise your eyebrows but it raises a great point! Mike May argues, in his post titled “To Improve Email’s Effectiveness, Lower Its ROI,” that making email more effective means making it more expensive. You’re probably thinking, “What?!” But he makes a great point. Email is relatively inexpensive, which is one reason why it has the highest ROI of any other marketing channel. However, that combination of low barrier to […]

So often companies think an email signup box on their website home page is all that’s required to grow an in-house email list by leaps and bounds. If only that were true! If only that was a simple email marketing best practice that one could implement once then forget about! But it’s not true. People must be sold on signing up for your emails just like they need to be sold on your products or services. […]

Out of sight, out of mind. Far too many companies take this approach to their online marketing. They put up web pages that become obsolete. They start a blog and let it founder. And they send emails to people who just don’t care. We’re talking about the non-responders, the names on your in-house email list that you continue to send emails to, despite the fact that they never, ever open or interact with your emails, let […]

You’re testing, testing, testing, right? And measuring? Just making sure you’re heeding our email marketing best practice advice! When you’re measuring, and you’re seeing an improvement in email delivery but a decline in open rates, you might have something other than email deliverability problems. You might have an infliction that can strike any email marketer, no matter how well they adhere to email marketing best practices: You might be boring.

Email marketing best practices alone don’t ensure email marketing success. But sometimes we get so caught up in making sure we learn them and implement them, we forget to think bigger and more creatively. Let’s change that up a little. Here’s an idea: Take some of the focus off of getting new subscribers and put a little more focus on rewarding the subscribers you do have. It’s a common mindset in marketing: Go after the new […]