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I love testing. I love finding out what works and what doesn't. It's amazing the things you learn by watching how your recipients interact with your content.

The problem? Not enough email marketers try it. Even within my own client base at Delivra, only a handful have chosen to run valuable test scenarios with actual takeaways. This just blows my mind: why are marketers so hesitant to start? It does take time and effort. You will need to be dedicated to your email marketing strategy to run valuable tests. But the rewards are worth it!

So what can you do to get those gears grinding? Below are 3 tips to get started:

1. Get brainstorming on improvements you can make to your email marketing content.
   Know what your competition is doing. Subscribe to other email lists and pay attention to what they're sending. Would aspects of their email newsletters be relevant to your own audience? What is it about your own content that is not living up to your competitor's? This is a great starting point to brainstorm on - what you could, or should, be changing in your emails.
    
2. Have a plan.
   It's not worth your time to blindly test different aspects of your content with no goal in mind. Know the different ways to test your content with multivariate or email AB split testing, and figure out what aspects of your content would benefit from a change.
   
   Let's say you're testing out 2 different subject lines: Don't simply split your list and send one subject line to each half. Where's the benefit in that? Instead, know why your subject lines are different and set up a test group beforehand. Say you send each subject line to 10% of your list. Give yourself enough time (I usually advise 3 days minimum) to review the email analytics and send the 'winning' subject line to the remaining 80%. Using this information, you'll see a much better response to your email campaigns.
    
3. Don't be afraid.
   Yes, there is a chance your recipients will not respond well to change within your content. But if you don't test it out, how will you know what you're sending now is the best content possible? No email marketer wants a negative result, but even knowing what doesn't work for your recipients is valuable information.

What have you learned about your audience through testing? If you haven't tried testing your content, why not? Comment and let us know!

Email analytics help you to understand how successful your email marketing campaign has been. 

It goes beyond the basic email tracking of reporting the number of times your email has been opened, bounced or clicked through. It helps you ascertain your customer's individual behavior including browsing and purchase habits. Armed with such information you can create specific, targeted, and personal campaigns. In short, relevant to your customer.

Here are some basic ways email analytics can help you track your emails:

• Add Social Sharing Links: By adding links to social networks in your email you can use email analytics to track who is sharing your email. By ascertaining the number of “likes”, “followings” or “shares”, you get to know the success rate of your email.

• Adding Video Links: This is not much different from adding social links to your emails. Here you can use email analytics to determine which video links work and which do not with your email.

• Adding 'Calls To Action': Keep varying the calls to action in your emails. Use email analytics to track which calls to action works best with your target audience.

• Adding Relevant Content: Content matters - always! Be interesting and creative with your content to produce maximum impact in your reader's minds. Email analytics help you find out what type of content works best with your audience.

• Adding Successful Subject Lines: Your subject line should grab attention. It is the first thing your readers see. By tracking which emails has the most success rate you can decide if your subject line needs tweaking to make it more inviting or aggressive.

By identifying each users behavior, it becomes easy and profitable for you to tweak your email campaigns to suit their needs. With effective email analytics in place, you can quickly customize your email content to create highly relevant emails.

http://www.listguy.com/email-analytics/

http://www.stratigent.com/community/websight-newsletters/email-analytics

http://www.benchmarkemail.com/blogs/detail/5-metrics-to-track-with-your-email-analytics

In a world increasingly tech dependent, consumers still respond to seeing a friendly face. One of the best ways to show your clients the human side of your business is to include video in to your marketing efforts. We've talked before about how video and email marketing go together like bread and butter, but here are some tips on how to best integrate video into your e-newsletters and email marketing campaigns. 

Don't bury the lead: 

Studies show videos lose consumers' interests within 60 seconds. If you have something important to say, do it fast. Lead with the most important information and let the rest fall into place naturally. If you're announcing a new product line, don't tease it with a 30 second intro, go ahead and say what it is you're focusing on and then go into more depth on it. Don't worry about being flashy or artistic, a simple video of a person standing in front of a plain backdrop can be just as effective as a Flash-filled animation. 

Fill it with facts: 

Consumers will devote more time to a video when it gives them actual information instead of just wasting their time with unimportant details. Unlike traditional e-newsletters, consumers can't skim through and pick out the parts important to them. With a video, they can either listen to everything you have to say, or click away. There's no equivalent to subheads in a video, so save the minute descriptions for a different format, or at least put it at the end. Once you start going into product dimensions, you're likely to lose viewers. Remember - you only have 60 seconds, and each second matters! 

Take a shot: 

You don't need thousands of dollars worth of equipment just to try out video email marketing. If you have a laptop with a webcam and a decent microphone, you can easily film it yourself. Just look directly at the camera and speak in a natural voice. Be confident in what you're saying, but not so confident you begin channeling Billy Mays. Once you're satisfied with the quality of your video, consider where it's going to live on the Internet. Having a dedicated landing page will let you see how many people are coming to your site exclusively because of the video. It will also let consumers follow a logical path from their first moment of engagement to their final conversion. 

Video email marketing can be a powerful tool in your arsenal. It's important to remember that, like with any tool, it can't stand alone. Using a variety of approaches in e-newsletters can keep your content fresh and exciting for consumers. 

On April 19, 2012 from 10:00AM - 4:00PM (ET), Delivra will be exhibiting and participating in the Retail Marketing Virtual Conference & Expo presented by Retail Online Integration. During the show, participants will get up-to-date, essential information about the hottest retail marketing topics for 2012. The show provides sessions throughout the day on key best practices and trends, straight from the experts. For more information about the show, the agenda for the day, or how to register - visit this website. 

Delivra plans on exhibiting at the show - sharing information about our company and email marketing tools to the attendees. We will have several of our Delivra resources, such as success stories & whitepapers available throughout the show.  Our Delivra email marketing experts will be manning the booth to answer questions and share their email marketing knowledge. So if you attend the show, be sure to pop by and say "Hi"! 

Focusing on email marketing may initially seem obsolete when considering how many different forms of media available to businesses as a means of communicating with consumers in the modern digital age. From social media to mobile applications, the consumer base can be accessed with a wide array of media strategies. So, why choose email marketing? One of the best (and most obvious) reasons to stick with the strategy of hiring an email marketing agency is because it has shown incredible success across a wide range of different industries. As a testament to this fact, consider what the travel industry in particular is gaining from this fruitful marketing strategy.

Reaching Out

It may seem elementary, but just being able to get your foot in the door with your consumer base can be a feat in and of itself. To determine the efficiency of email effectiveness, data is collected and analyzed regularly to ensure all emails have been properly sent without error. Measurement of this data is known as the company's "bounce rate," or "non-bounce rate" if the rate of successful delivery is exceptionally high. A 2011 study shows the travel industry has a non-bounce rate of 98.1 percent, with an open rate of 70.7 percent—the latter of which indicates how many email recipients actually open the email. Since the average open rate across several industries is approximately 20.3 percent, this indicates a significant advantage for the travel industry in particular.

Gaining Attention

The real statistic an experienced email marketing consultant would specifically look for is the company's click-through rate in the email marketing campaign. A click-through rate indicates how often a consumer feels compelled to click the link provided in the email they received. Essentially, this rate indicates the appeal of the product or promotion the company is highlighting in the email. Studies have shown the travel industry has a measured click-through rate of 6.4 percent, which is higher than many other leading industries, including the retail apparel industry at 3.5 percent and the consumer services industry at 4.1 percent.

Generating Profit

Let's face it: the bottom line of any professional email marketing campaign is to make money, which is why this is the most important factor in determining the success of email marketing. According to Ken Magill of the Magill Report, the return on investment (ROI) for email marketing in 2011 was $40.56 for every dollar invested. This exceptionally high figure is predicted to drop slightly for the year 2012, with an estimated ROI of $39.40 for every dollar invested. Overall, email marketing is predicted to generate $67.8 billion in sales for the year 2012, indicating businesses involved in the travel industry can expect big gains for the year 2012 by implementing email marketing into their campaigns.

With excellent consumer response to current email marketing strategies implemented by the travel industry, companies who have yet to adapt to these trends or would like to capitalize on the success of the strategy can benefit greatly by utilizing the services of an experienced and well-trained email marketing agency. Integrating managed email marketing not only ensures maximum appeal and outreach to the consumer, but also ensures a substantial profit considering the projected promise of the industry.

I hadn't flown Southwest for a long time. As this was the best choice for scheduling from Indy to Seattle, I boarded the two-leg 6-hour flight. 

As the beverage and snack service came by, I grabbed a bag of peanuts and noticed the call to action, "Find out about our next BIG Sale with click 'n save emails. Text your email to 83793." (See Photo)

Delivra staff routinely get asked how to build an opt-in email list. Our answer, simply put, is to ask for them at every customer touch point. Southwest Airlines is not a client, but they have certainly got the message.

Of course, I texted my email and received the following acknowledgement,

Thanks for signing up for 
SWA Click 'n Save. You'll
never miss another deal in 
your inbox!

Want to try text to subscribe to acquire email addresses for your organization? Contact the email marketing experts at Delivra and we'll show you how. 

Extra thought: Read the book Lead with LUV written by Ken Blanchard and SWA president Colleen Barrett. In it, you will discover more secrets of success. 

Many companies often wonder if email marketing is something they should add to their marketing mix. The questions they are most likely wanting answers to are as simple as this: What is email marketing? How will email marketing benefit me? Will email marketing increase my revenue? What is the cost?

Delivra is sponsoring All About eMail Live! - a one-day event for email marketers. This intensive workshop will allow you to join your peers and collaborate with an all-star lineup of industry leaders who will discuss the hottest email marketing trends, including best practices and strategies, acquisition, data management, email and social, rendering, and more. 

It's being held at: 

New York Marriott 

http://live.emarketingandcommerce.com/agenda/

I'm moderating a roundtable at 1:30pm entitled: 2012 Email Marketing Best Practices. 

We will be discussing the top trends and best practies for 2012 such as: data integration, relevant list building, content, content, content, mobile (design and messaging), testing and analysis and much more!

Look me up if you plan to attend...

Recently, I had to call the pharmacy to make sure they had been able to refill a prescription for me. The lady was very nice and said it was ready. In addition, she asked if I would be interested in signing up to receive a text message when my prescriptions were ready in the future. 

Of course!

How convenient to be able to get a text message when my prescriptions are ready for pick-up. CVS also allows you to sign up to receive emails to better manage your prescriptions, receive health information, and receive special offers throughout the store. And that's just one example! They're taking advantage of several different types of marketing channels to make their program more efficient for customers. Many email marketing firms are encouraging their clients to expand into other channels to increase their reach to audiences. 

Only working in one channel right now? Pairing with an email marketing agency, like Delivra, can help you implement other programs in addition to your email campaigns. It might make sense to set up an SMS program (outbound test messages) as a way to communicate with you audience. Or they might be able to help set up a text to subscribe program as well. Text to subscribe refers to having people text you their email address to join your email marketing list. It's a great way to build your email list without much effort on your part. 

For the best email marketing results, incorporate it with other channels, whether that's mobile marketing, social media marketing, blogging, or all of them!

I'm looking forward to receiving my first update from CVS via text and email (now that's I'm signed up for it). Want to learn more about managing your email marketing and incorporating some additional channels? Reach out the email marketing consultants at Delivra today! 

For the second year in a row, Delivra, an email marketing agency has been recognized as a Best Place to Work in Indiana. Companies on the list are determined through employer reports and comprehensive employee surveys. 

There are a total of 70 companies included.These companies will find out their actual rankings at an awards dinner on May 3rd, 2012. Delivra is exctied to be on the list with such good company, like Slingshot SEO, Fusion Alliance, Indiana CPA Society, and many more! 

For more information about Best Places to Work in Indiana, please click here.

Looking for email marketing consultants to help with your email marketing needs who are as dedicated to their employees as they are to their clients? Check out Delivra today! 

Gosh, it has been a while since my last post... but things have been a little busy at Delivra. And, there's one thing in particular making us smile.

For the past couple of months, we've been focusing on our own email marketing program. As a best practice, we believe it's very important to do a data clean-up every year, as well as evaluate all email content being sent. What was a relevant email schedule last year (or even last month) may not be so relevant anymore, and this is exactly what we found.

To ensure our data was clean, we did a re-engagement email campaign to our subscribers. This consisted of a few emails over the course of three weeks which asked email subscribers to update their preferences.




Once we had the data in place, we were ready to start drafting content and send schedules. One of our goals for this process was to do a better job incorporating highly relevant and personalized content in our emails.

Delivra's email marketing software has a feature called Conditional Content. What this feature allows us to do is create one email and swap out pieces of content or images based on data unique to the recipient.

For our own emails, we decided to use this feature to swap out Account Owner information. Many of our retail clients use this feature to swap out product information based on things like region, buying behavior, age, interests, occupation...the sky is the limit! Here's an example of what our email looked like:



Overall, the email "felt" good but ultimately, it's up to the data to let us know how we performed.  Some of the basic metrics we look at:

• Open Rate
• Click-through Rate
• Engagement Score
• Unsubscribes

We look at these metrics compared to data collected from previous mailings, we call these baseline metrics. Having these metrics are super important when you change any aspect of your strategy.

Finally, we can't forget the ultimate intent of the email. Our goal for this particular email was to raise awareness about new software features and gauge interest among our client base. In order to collect this data, we created a unique form-submit landing page that funneled info into Salesforce, our CRM. As the clients filled out the form, they were immediately put in the appropriate campaign and their Account Owner was notified.

Such a simple user experience, and yet, it allowed us to gather feature interest and another layer of data to determine the success of the mailing.

So, what were the results of our efforts?

• 14% increase in Open Rate
• Doubled our Click-through Rate
• 5% Conversion Rate for people interested in new features.

All of this goes to show that with a little effort and a lot of thought, you can take an existing list and re-invent results.

With all the Super Bowl craziness going on in Naptown this week, it's a little hard to catch your breath! As an email marketer though, you probably know the feeling. This week's madness is really no different than what you normally deal with on a regular basis at the office while trying to send out immaculate email campaigns to your subscribers. 

Do you feel overwhelmed sending out emails because you alone are the entire email marketing team or because you only have a handful of burned out help? It might be a good idea to look into an email marketing agency to help manage your email marketing program who offers more than just the software. An email marketing company can act more like your email marketing partner and offer services to help ease some of the pressure and stress from your team.  Some of those services at Delivra include: 

Consulting. Who wouldn't appreciate an email marketing pro offering advice on how to make your email marketing program the best it can be and boosts your long-term results? 

Design. We have a design team at Delivra who is dedicated to making client email campaigns look professional and get them results. 

Account Management. Each Delivra customer has a dedicated account manager who is paired with them to answer questions, provide email marketing insight, and assist in long-term goals and objectives. 

To find out what else Delivra can help you with, click here: http://www.delivra.com/managed-email-marketing/.

As a marketer, we would love for everyone to actually subscribe to our email updates so we can reach out to them every week to keep our brand in our consumers' minds. However, email is one of the most prominent aspects of our daily working lives, where we are inundated by work emails, social media updates, and email advertising campaigns. Therefore, getting someone to actually subscribe to your email can be tough. 

Instead of immediately asking someone to subscribe to your email updates, my suggestion is to ease them into the process to give them exposure to the types of emails you are sending out. Here are 2 ways to do this: 

1. Use social media to promote your email. 

Every email has a link associated with it, generally located in the header or footer of the email. Use this link to share your most recent email via social media. Mention the most important content of the email, and make sure to ask people to subscribe to your updates. Think of the most important content in your emails as almost a blog post - if people like what's being said, they will most likely subscribe to your blog, or in this case, to your email.

2. Have an email archive widget/page on your site. 

One of the best ways to let more people read your emails is to have them on your site. My suggestion is to have an archive widget on  your site, either located on the sidebar, or having a page specifically dedicated to your email archive. I would organize this by month, week, or whatever works best for your email campaign. You can create an RSS feed for your emails so they automatically show up in these sections. 

I know some brands might be skeptical doing these things since it might decrease email conversions, but they of it this way: if visitors like what you're saying, they will want more. Why wouldn't they want to subscribe to your email updates if the only other option is to continually go back to your site or social media networks every week to read your newest email? 

Email marketing is permission-based marketing at its core. Giving your potential consumers an idea of what content you are providing will allow them to make a more educated decision when subscribing to your email updates. As a result, you will have more dedicated subscribers and less unsubscribes.  

Guest Blogger | Jenn Lisak 

Jenn is a relationship manager with DK New Media. Jenn consults and manages marketing strategies for clients and speaks and writes on marketing and social media. 

The other day, I went to the store and purchased exactly 3 items.  What I received in return was a receipt that was 3 feet long.  It got me thinking, when you get an email, how far down are you willing to scroll.  I don't know what the email marketing best practices are for the maximum length of an email, but I know how far I'm willing to scroll - NONE!  A lot of Delivra's customers use landing pages they have created in our system or anchor links to jump down to the relevant content.  

Utilizing just these 2 things will increase your overall email clicks.  After all, we are trying to get the best email engagement and at the same time prevent your recipients from getting carpal tunnel. 

Here is a picture of some holiday puppies I found on the internet!

Today's post is from Robby Slaughter of Slaughter Development, a business process improvement consulting firm here in Indianapolis.

Email marketing is absolutely crucial to your business. I get it. And it's the holidays, and you feel the need to use your email marketing platform to reach out to customers with a greeting.

That's great. I feel you. But for the love of pete, please stop the holiday card madness!

You know what I'm talking about: the generic messages that just read "Happy Holidays from ABC Corporation!" Do you have any idea how many of those I'm going to receive today?

Answer: A half dozen or more.

Here's what I think when I receive a "seasons greetings" email from you that says little more than just "seasons greetings":

• You've got email marketing software, but you don't know how to use it
• You don't know what to say, so you're just copying everyone else
• You count every email open as a "win", no matter how instantaneous the deletion.

Okay, that's a little brutal. Maybe I need to calm down a bit.

This is not a case of the bah-humbugs. I do like the holiday season. And I want to hear stories about what your company is up to. Maybe you are raising money for some important cause. Maybe your employees are taking some interesting vacations. Really, telling me anything beyond just general well-wishes is going to be interesting.

In fact: being interesting is the secret to email engagement. You can pique my interest in many different ways. Maybe it's a special offer. Perhaps it's a distinctive story. No matter what you choose to do, if you're different than every other message in my inbox, I'm more likely to read it.

If I could sum up all email marketing best practices in just one word, I'd choose "unique." If your message could only have been sent from your company, it's got a good chance of real engagement. Keep this in mind, not just for the season, but for your email marketing strategy year-round.

Happy Holidays!

Who would have ever thought that clever email marketing could be destructive? By many estimates, last year saw more than 200 million spear-phishing email attacks. Worse, marketers are now a primary target of these attacks. Essentially, clever criminals are using YOUR email brand awareness and even the compelling calls to action that you painstakingly created in your email marketing campaigns to steal information and money from your customers.

Simple economics promises this problem isn't going away: on average, it costs about two bucks for a criminal to host a sophisticated, targeted, and successful spear-phishing campaign against your email list. Since we're stuck with this reality, it's time we view phishing as more than a technology problem: a customer who loses data as a result of a phishing attack associated with your brand is 75% more likely to never do business with your company again!

Safe and secure messaging is your only option. Delivra is fortunate to partner with the Online Trust Alliance (OTA): Your organization should too. Are you staying current with important security initiatives and helping to shape information policy in your organization? There isn't a need to bother with the technical details, but what about the critical "marketing operational" details? What elements of your brand identity are critical to maintain and protect? If you aren't telling your tech teams to watch those elements - who is?

Message Systems (another Delivra partner) teamed up with the OTA and produced a fantastic White Paper on Safe and Secure Messaging (check it out, it's worth the five minute read). This isn't a security white paper directed to technical folks - it's designed with email marketers in mind. Both the OTA and Message Systems focus on email marketing best practices, just like Delivra.

We take the trust you place in us seriously. Take the time to show your customers you value them by being careful with your own messages and security practices. Need help or more ideas about safe and secure messaging - or any other email best practice: just ask. Delivra values our relationship with you!

Recently Ally posted a blog about an amazing customer service experience she received. She explained how well the situation was handled by the company and how they kept her best interest as a customer in mind. The story I'm about to share is the exact opposite of that.

I have been shopping at a well known nationwide video game retail establishment for years. I have never run into any significant problems until recently. Last year about this time, they implemented power up cards for an annual fee of 15 dollars. These cards consist of a way to earn points by trading in games, buying games, etc... These points can be used to receive discounts when you make purchases as well. I purchased one of the cards.

Towards the end of the year, after my purchase, I started to become inundated with emails on a daily basis from this retailer. At first, I figured it'd just be easy enough to delete them each day and be done with it. A couple weeks later I got tired of dealing with it so I decided to unsubscribe from their mailings. The first thing that should be noted is nowhere in their mailings does it give you the option to unsubscribe. The only option it provides is to change your preferences. Working in e-mail marketing on a daily basis, this immediately threw up a red flag. I clicked on the preferences link but found no option to completely unsubscribe from their mailings. After digging a little deeper into the preferences, I finally found an option to fully unsubscribe. When I selected this option, I received a message stating it will more than likely take up to 2 weeks to fully unsubscribe me. I'm was not happy with this response but at least the mailings would stop.

The time comes when my card expires and I'm asked if I want to renew by the store manager. I decided to go ahead and renew because I think everything is fine until I go to use the renewed card. I'm told by the in store manager my card is not being accepted by their system. They provide me with a customer service number to call and tell me it should be an easy fix and they probably just have some incorrect information in their computers.

I call the customer service line and after waiting almost 45 minutes, I get through to a representative and tell him what is going on. He proceeds to put me on hold for another 15 minutes and then comes back to tell me he realizes what happened. He tells me I chose to unsubscribe from all of their mailings which in turn apparently cancelled my card...a card which I paid for and has absolutely nothing to do with the mailings they send me. I don't agree with the situation but tell him to opt me back in so my card can be reactivated. He says that's not an option and the only way I can activate my card is to purchase a new one. WHAT?! I ask nicely to speak with a manager and he lets me know none are available at this time so I was sent to a voicemail where I left my number...no call back.

After all this has taken place, I decide to go to the retail store and talk to the manager who I've known for many years. He is shocked by what I've been told and is kind of enough to give me a card for free and also took the time to call customer service while I was in the store(they have a direct line with no wait time.) The customer service rep relays the same information to the manager and informs him that even though they have activated a new card for me, I've lost ALL my points I have earned over the years, and they had no way of getting them back. The manager assured me he will be emailing their district manager about my situation, but I have no faith anything positive will come out of it.

I am extremely grateful for the extra steps the store manager took. He went above and beyond his responsibilities to assist me in any way possible. From a corporate standpoint however, never in my life have I felt so insignificant or helpless as a customer. I will never purchase anything from this company again. Had they just handled this situation in a professional manner, I wouldn't be writing this blog and they wouldn't be losing business from a faithful customer who has been purchasing from them for years.

At Delivra we strive to provide the best customer service possible to our clients. We will always take into account the issues you are experiencing and will do our best to go above and beyond to satisfy your needs and provide you with a prompt and satisfactory resolution. And if you're looking for help with issues such as setting the right expectations, monitoring engagement/complaints for burn-out, or providing recipients with an easy and friendly method of controlling their email preferences, just let us know. We're glad to help.

The holidays are quickly approaching!  We want to help you prepare your email marketing campaign to get it in tip-top shape for the season.  Check out this inforgraphic produced by Delivra and The Marketing Technology Blog for email best practices, appropriate open rates, and additional insight into segmenting and testing your emails for the best results.    

I attended the eMarketing Association Conference last week in Providence, RI and was excited to see such a strong turnout. Not only was it great to see some familiar faces, but I was able to catch the impressive keynote Clara Shih, Author of The Facebook Era and CEO and Founder of Hearsay Social. 

The subject matter was divided into three tracks: social marketing, search marketing and email marketing. The format was two days of intensive workships headed by panels of industry experts. 

No surprise that I was on the email panels. But, I was surprised the questions from attendees were mostly for basic issues that never seem to go away. How do I build an email list? How do I improve click-through rates on email? How often should I send marketing emails? 

The takeaway for me was that behavioral marketing is the single best way to lift results. That means tracking engagement activity and using those metrics to intelligently send relevant messaging. What's so exciting about this is it's doable with a little help from your email partner. 
 

Delivra is excited to announce that we are the Email Marketing sponsor for the Marketing Technology blog. The Marketing Technology blog works hard to provide the best resources and advice on marketing in new media. The Marketing Technology blog is accompanied with a weekly newsletter that offers unique content, monthly spotlight videos on Marketing Technology companies, a Twitter account, and a Facebook page. 

In the next few weeks, Delivra will be offering guest blogs highlighting email marketing tips and best practices. Delivra will also be highlighted on the Marketing Technology Radio Show on November 4th from 3:00pm to 4:30pm. Be sure to tune in!