Responsive Email Design

Responsive email design is a very hot topic right now. Don't miss this amazing guide from Campaign Monitor on how to manage responsive design correctly: 

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/guides/mobile/

~ Stephanie

Great Email Marketing Resources

We all do it. We all get to a point in our projects, our mailings, or our day to day when we feel like we need a change. It may come naturally, or it may be helped along by an event. The good news is that there are amazing guides out there available to us to help us evolve our email marketing.

Here are a few of my fav's:

1. Mail Chimp's Resource Library: Ton's of easy to read, well written white papers on every top email topic. http://mailchimp.com/resources/guides/

2. Epsilon's Email Institute: Packed with great trending news updates and quarterly design "look books". http://www.emailinstitute.com/best-practices/email-marketing

3. The Email Experience Council: Fantastic content from in the know email marketers across a variety of industries. http://www.emailexperience.org/email-resources

Do you have a few that you follow that are not listed here? Post them in the comments to share!

~ Stephanie

Top 5 Things You Should Focus on in 2013

Top 5 Things You Should Focus on in 2013

1. Data: At the soul of every email marketers plan should be the data you have about your subscribers. Who they are, what are their likes/dislikes, and how they interact with not only your company but also your industry.

2. "Other" Email: Are there other departments or branches of your company that send bulk email? If so, are those emails branded and maximized to their full potential? Do a little digging and be sure you have a handle on everything that your brand sends out.

3. Automation: Do you currently have automated email campaigns in place? If not, maybe try starting with a birthday, or anniversary of sign up campaign. Have fun with these and ease some of the burden of constantly composing manual mailings.

4. Testing: There are always new things to try out in our ever developing space of email. Run a series of A/B tests to see how some of the latest tricks might work or not work for your subscribers. Characters in subject lines, mobile dedicated versions, animated gif's, etc. all make for great tests.

5. Optimization: How do your emails look across email clients? What about mobile? There are many rendering tools available out there to make proofing and tweaking your designs easier. Make sure you always take a look as a subscriber would, at least in your lists top 3/4 ESP's.

Email Marketing and your Customer Lifecycle

As an active digital consumer myself I receive a lot of email. Most of the time in my limited personal time, I find myself browsing through at a rapid pace looking for those few emails that are exactly for me and not whatever group the sending company placed me into.

It makes me wonder how prevalent is behavioral marketing or life cycle mapping in most email marketers tool chests today? Because even as much as I have read about it in the email community for years, it still seems that its not yet the commonplace.

Take this diagram for example, published by Strongmail all the way back in early 2011:

 How much are you as an email marketer tailoring your knowledge and products to the needs and life cycles of your consumers? If you are not doing it now, in what ways could you grow your programs to listen more and offer things only when its right for that customer? Email is personal- so why don't we all market like it is?

The future of digital is all about 1:1. We live in an on-demand society. Are you adapting and advancing or simply growing stale? The choice is up to you.

What's the value of email in your marketing mix?

That's the golden question every company wants to know! Is email dead? What's your true channel ROI? How does email compare to social in terms of size and effectiveness?

Take a look at this awesome infographic from SmarterTools:

16 Things People Really Hate About Your Email Marketing

Over on the Hubspot blog, Cory Eridon talks about these "16 Things People Really Hate About Your Email Marketing":

1. Emailing People Who Didn't Opt In
2. Making Unsubscribing Difficult  
3. Not Honoring Unsubscribes
4. Writing a Vague Subject Line  
5. Not Indicating How We Know Each Other  
6. Speaking With Forced Sincerity 
7. Providing Irrelevant Content  
8. Bombarding Recipients With Email  
9. Sending Emails Once in a Blue Moon
10. Including Broken Dynamic Content  
11. Not Including a Call-to-Action
12. Sending Emails That Aren't Mobile Optimized
13. You're Overdesigning Your Emails
14. Not Optimized for Plain Text and HTML
15. You're Not Proofing Your Email Before Sending  
16. Not Providing a Real Address to Reply To

Read the full article here (it contains a ton of examples of what not to do!)

Animated GIF's in Gmail: Love it or hate it?

Recently, I have been seeing more and more retailers utilizing animated gif's in their emails to add a fun or intriguing addition to their creative.

As an avid user of Gmail, I think it's pretty cool. I wonder though how many other email clients allow it to rotate? It certainly seems worthwhile if your list is predominately Gmail users.

Here are some recent examples I've seen:

Clinique: Summertime Rotating Hammock: click here
American Eagle: Front/Back Rotating Models: click here
Piperlime: Rotating Free Shipping Call Out: click here

Have any of you tried this yet? Please comment below with your thoughts and results!

Happy Emailing-

Stephanie

History of Marketing Infographic

Thank you to HubSpot Marketing Software for providing us Digital Marketers with this amazing infographic on the history of marketing!

You HAVE to check this out:
http://blog.hubspot.com/Portals/249/images/the-history-of-marketing-HUBSPOT-resized-600.jpg
(once you click, hover over the image, and click again to magnify!) 

Spam collection inboxes

As I logged into my Yahoo email that I've had since, cough, 1997, I was overwhelmed to see 4700 new messages.

It got me thinking, I wonder how many people have more than one email account? One for personal, one for spam, and one for work?

As an email marketer, I spend tons of time and money trying to deliver successful, dynamic email. But what if my lists are full of spam inboxes? How would I know and what could I do about it?

I think the answer lies in list hygiene. Know your audience engagement and baseline metrics, and if they stink, re-engage them. Drop the dead subscribers and move forward delivering craveable content to an active list.

To often people focus on quantity. Email is about quality. Quality in what you send, who you send to, and quality in yourself as a sender.

How to Think and Act like a Strategist

This morning, I would like to share something that came from one of the leadership blogs I follow, "Leadership in Action". This post really resonated with me and fortified my instincts for this type of thinking...

Think And Act Like A Strategist
Brought to you by The Center for Management and Organizational Effectiveness

"Today, many of us face incredible pressures to deliver immediate results, to do more with less, and to manage an ever-increasing workload.  The pace and urgency of daily demands can make it difficult to look even one step ahead.  Successful leaders are different; they learn to look ahead and not just think about today, but also tomorrow.  Thinking and acting like a strategist is nothing more than the capacity to anticipate, and the discipline to evaluate, prepare, and position yourself for the future.

As humans, we have the capacity to think broadly, if we choose.  Being a strategist means having the courage to think deliberately and deeply about what you want to create and achieve.  Strategic thinking is about creativity, intuition and planning to help you reach your business and personal goals.  In essence, strategic people think and act before they are forced to take up a reactive position.  We must realize that everyone is the leader of his or her own job, projects, assignments, and customers.  Effective leadership means being prepared for what happens in the future, as well as being responsible for what happens today.

The problem we face in becoming more strategic in our thinking and planning is our tendency to be addicted to “short term” thinking and the routine activity trap.  As a consequence, we continue to do what we’ve always done, though changing conditions may make old solutions irrelevant to today’s problems.  We simply overlook options or opportunities to see our situation from a strategic perspective.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to pay attention to the daily operational issues.  We are frequently rewarded for it and job security often depends upon it.  But, we must learn to look to the horizon and identify the signals that indicate coming changes in our own area of responsibility that will lead to effective solutions and impact tomorrow’s success.  You have to shift gears and focus your mind with discipline and skill so you satisfy both the tactical and strategic demands of your job.  When you develop the discipline to set aside the urgencies of the day and concentrate on the horizon, you create enormous advantages for yourself and the business.

Your contribution will increase if you master the principles and skills of personal strategic thinking.  You will have to develop patience and balance operational issues as you give your mind a chance to think, reflect, and contemplate.  You will have to resist constant pressure for instant results, quick fixes, and fast solutions to every challenge or dilemma.  In short, you will have to be courageous and bold as you try to bring more balance and a strategic perspective into your life.

You can be more successful strategist if you think ahead, determine what it will take to make a difference, and make a greater contribution.  When you adopt an innovative and proactive mindset, you will be more prepared for the tough decisions, realities, and opportunities that come your way."

http://www.cmoe.com/blog/think-and-act-like-a-strategist.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cmoe+%28Leadership+In+Action%29