The place to start when you need to improve email delivery—after making sure you have the right ESP for you, that is—is with your in-house email list. To impact your email marketing deliverability in a positive way, your in-house email list must be two things: 1) permission-based through your sign-up process, and 2) clean, with hard bounces and unsubscribes removed on a regular basis. It can be hard to say goodbye to those bad addresses though, […]

It’s funny. It seems like for every hot new topic that hits the marketing world, there’s a crucial place for email, most recently with social media and content marketing. You can be talking about blogging and I can be telling you how email integrates with and supports it. You can be talking Facebook and I’ll tell you the same thing. Content marketing? That too. What makes email a critical part of all these new marketing methods? […]

Whether you’re searching for a new ESP or you’ve already found one, you’re going to be making the Big Move at some point: the move from one ESP to another. I have two words to help you with what can be a challenging transition: patience and preparation. If you’re patient and you’re prepared, the move to a new ESP will go faster and smoother than if you’re in a hurry and not really ready. Be patient. […]

As email marketers, we might find the sexiness of HTML email too alluring to pay much mind to SMS as a form of mobile marketing. However, now that 90% of the U.S. population owns a cell phone, you should take the time to see if mobile marketing via SMS should be part of your overall plan. Among the trends we’re seeing in SMS mobile marketing is location-based marketing. If, for example, you know your customer just […]

Everyone loves drama (hence the popularity of reality TV!), so I don’t think the cries of email’s demise are going to end any time soon. Therefore it will remain our job as email marketing vendor to watch for the signs that prove otherwise. eMarketer just published more numbers that disprove the naysayers who keep sounding the death knell for email. Although web-based email use might have declined, that doesn’t mean email use itself has declined. Keep […]

Inline with advice in our newly updated guide to choosing a top tier ESP, this email marketing blog post titled “Don’t Put Your B2B Email In a Box” by Ardath Albee gives a great illustration of what we’re cautioning against. Although she’s making great points about different channels beyond email and being cognizant of what is happening outside of your email marketing program, the same case can be made for knowing what is happening within your […]

When was the last time you heard an email marketer say everything was perfect? Never? I hope that’s your answer, because with all the ins and outs, nuts and bolts, and constantly changing parts of email marketing, I don’t know how anyone would ever get to the point where they could honestly say they had zero problems. Nada. Zilch. None. For one thing, no one has a 100% email deliverability rate. OK, an email from me […]