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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?

Think email marketing is only to inform your leads and customers about your products and services? Think again! Email marketing, apart from being one of the most effective forms of communicating online, can be used to suit as many occasions as you can think of. Here are some of the ways you can use the same old email technique to connect with your customers: 

Email Newsletter: Email newsletters come in the form of direct mails that are sent regularly to a list of subscribers or customers. They contain information about the company, its product and services, free or discounted offers for customers, latest news in the industry, etc. A newsletter should contain valuable and interesting content in an easy to read format and have catchy subject lines. This is the most common format used by email marketers. 

Catalog Email Marketing: The primary goal of a catalog email is to entice customers to purchase. It lists particular products and their rates and often, offers for the week. Catalog emails are like hard copy catalogs; the only difference is they are sent through email. 

Press Releases: Press releases are used to divulge your company's latest achievements. You can use press releases to announce the addition of a new product or service in your company or to announce a particular event or a change in leadership. You can send press releases to the media or to a dedicated group of customers and subscribers.

Survey emails: Surveys help you track down the challenges or problems your customers may have. By encouraging their feedback, your customers will feel you genuinely care about their problems and are interested in finding a solution. 

Invitation emails: Thank you emails help you show gratitude to your loyal customers and are a way to ensure they stay connected with you. Thank you emails are sent to customers who have already used your products and services. These can convey your pleasure in having them as your customer. You can include current and future offers to them and even offer a discount towards their next purchase as a token of gratitude. 

Different types of email marketing strategies work for different businesses. If you want a craft one which is just right for you, call the email marketing experts at Delivra. 

Although email marketing has proven effective across a wide range of different industries, the strategy has recently shown especially notable promise in the restaurant industry in particular. This promise is evidenced partially by a recent study that revealed a 20 percent open rate of all emails sent by restaurants in 2010. This may not sound like an impressive statistic by itself, but when compared with other industries surveyed, it ranks considerably higher. For example, the entertainment industry came in at just a 16 percent open rate, followed even further behind by the medical, dental and healthcare industries, which have a 13 percent open rate.

What Email Offers

Again you might be thinking: What's the big deal if customers are opening more of their emails from restaurant companies? According to Forrester Research, this open rate increase is complemented by a 17 percent revenue increase from each customer in this population. This inference is based on a study conducted by Forrester Research, which revealed that there is a 17 percent increase in purchase value of email subscribers versus non-subscribers. Although opening an email may not necessarily solidify a sale right then and there, it can still have an influence on the customer in the future. A reported 87 percent of consumers in the same Forrester Research study claimed email marketing impacted their future purchasing decisions.

The Proof isn't in the Pudding—it's in the ROI

Investing in managed email marketing is something both small and large restaurants truly can't afford to miss out on because of its proven efficacy in generating more business. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generates ROI of $57.25 for each dollar spent on the service. Compared with alternative options for online marketing, such as social media marketing, the ROI for email marketing is 150 percent greater. Looking at it from a purely objective point of view, it's difficult to argue with an investment generating such a substantial return.

A Recipe for Success

If the proven efficiency of hiring an email marketing consultant isn't enough of a motive to take advantage of this highly lucrative service, consider the fact that many other restaurants in the industry are already following this recent trend. According to a study by National Restaurant News, an average of seven out of ten restaurants in the industry are actively pursuing an email marketing agency for their own campaigns. This statistic indicates that restaurants which don't incorporate professional email marketing may lose customers to restaurants which are more accessible, and thus could be left behind by the competition.

Intuition Matters

The success seen in the restaurant industry is likely due to the widespread popularity of using Internet resources to find information about a particular restaurant. Studies show that 89 percent of customers always research information about a restaurant online before dining there. The benefit of email marketing is it can bring this information directly to the customer, which increases the customer's convenience and improves the chances they will choose that particular restaurant over another requiring an active search to acquire the same information.

With the prevalence of Internet usage today, it's increasingly important for all kinds of businesses to maintain a presence in the same spheres consumers frequent. Since email is a primary form of communication among so many people, and because of the proven potential of email marketing, the benefits restaurants can enjoy from following this trend are immense.

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.

My blog last week extolled the benefits of sending traditional holiday cards instead of email. 

On the heels of that post, I read a report today that said, "Fifty percent of U.S. consumers prefer direct mail to email, according to a study released by marketing services from Epsilon on Dec. 1. Of the 2,226 U. S. consumers surveyed for the third Consumer Channel Preference Study, 60% said they enjoy checking their physical mailboxes, highlighting what the study refers to as an "emotional connection" to postal mail." 

Now you might expect the founder of a leading email company to ignore this startling information. Or more likely try to rationalize the data with conflicting arguments. 

But no. What this tells me is there is more than one channel we marketers should be focusing on. Matter of fact, history tells us multichannel efforts consistently out-perform single channel. 

Point-in-fact, Delivra has a client whose business matches the delivery time of a complimentary postal and email message to a single day. The results are impressive. 

We will be airing a webinar in late January to explore the opportunities here. 

I'll announce the date in a couple of weeks. 

The winds kicked up out of the south last week, bringing spring temperatures to most of the United States. The earth started its annual rebirth as flowers started peeking through the ground and people once again ventured outside.

Marketing seems to be going through a rebirth of its own, and the season is called mobile. The mobile season has marketers donning bonnets of marketing ideas and gathering baskets of cell phone numbers.

It's not surprising. Research shows that mobile marketing will play an increasingly important role for companies wanting to get messages out to consumers. More than 250 million Americans carry a cell phone today, and more than half of those phones have Internet access. The Direct Marketing Association believes that mobile will be the fastest growing app over the next five years.

Most marketers understand that they can no longer count on email as the only channel for communicating with a diverse customer base. Sure, customers may be able to read emails on their phones, but they are increasingly using Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Message Service (MMS) to send and receive information.

According to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA), Americans sent approximately 1.8 trillion text messages in 2010. Another 56 billion multimedia messages were sent. So how can email marketers capitalize on this trend?

Start by designing mobile campaigns that respect the customer. Unlike other marketing channels, mobile marketing demands customer attention almost immediately. Annoying customers by sending unwanted messages that interrupt their lives is a quick route to losing customers.

To find out what initial steps email marketers can take to ensure a good user experience, please click here to read the rest of the this Media Post article.

Recently,  MediaPost Email Insider published an article by Morgan Stewart. In the article, Stewart discusses some ways in which companies currently "juice their numbers", meaning  they are guilty of reporting more robust email statistics than those actually occurring.  One example Stewart  gave as a way companies juice their numbers is by holding on to dead weight.

When dealing with email marketing, it is important to clean your list of those subscribers not active with your campaigns. Some companies choose not to do this because they don't want to shrink their list.

The Morgan Stewart article includes a quote from Nicole Delma, Chief Data Officer for RCRD LBL, she states she would like to see a service that would audit open rates.

A service which holds marketers accountable in this regard may not be so far off.

All things considered, wouldn't it be more beneficial for you to be tracking and reporting information about an engaged audience?  As an email marketer, make sure you take the appropriate steps to maintain your email list so then you can report on the most telling indicators of success...engagement, activity, and results.

To read more about this service and  accountability issue,  please click here to be directed to the MediaPost article.

Lavon Temple | Marketing

Thanks to my friends over at Slingshot SEO, I learned of a really cool new service offering inspiration and insight to email marketers everywhere.  Recently released in a beta version, Emailium is a really cool web-based application that provides a database of email samples.  Check it out here!

After learning about Emailium, I immediately signed up for the beta trial they are offering.  I was very impressed with the service and how you can virtually search on a number of things...email color theme, industry, sender, and much more!  It's such a great resource, I have already shared it here at Delivra with our team.  Check out this screenshot of the application...I searched for email with the color RED.  How cool is that?

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting the founder James Paden in person!  He visited Delivra to learn more about our services, but also to hear direct feedback on Emailium from some local users.  We were thrilled to meet him and to hear about some exciting developments already under way for the application.  James was kind enough to even come bearing gifts!  We now are sporting our very own Emailium tees around the office.

If you haven't already visited the site or signed up, don't miss out!  This is a must-have resource for any email marketer.  No time to design your emails?  Not to worry, Delivra's Design team is here to help!  Contact us today to get started...

Carissa Newton | Marketing 

Today, we unveiled our Text-to-Subscribe feature, allowing marketers to quickly grow their email lists and giving subscribers a new and convenient way to sign up for emails.

The feature enables subscribers to join an email list by texting a keyword to a short code. Subscribers then receive a text message asking for their email address, along with a confirmation email, making the sign-up a double opt-in process.

"We are excited to use Delivra's new Text-to-Subscribe functionality. We see this as a tremendous resource to help anyone grow their list quickly, efficiently and the right way," said Kristen Bassick, Piece of Cake Social Media. "Delivra's responsiveness and ability to get my client up and running quickly have been excellent."

Click here to be directed to the official press release for more information regarding the Text-to-Subscribe feature.

Click here to be directed to the homepage where you can download a mobile marketing whitepaper.

More business, increasing sales, better prospecting and higher conversion rates are frequently discussed business issues facing our clients and many businesses in today's marketplace. It's a topic occupying many business owners' minds today. Do you find you have a list of prospects that you've reached out to - but for some reason or another, they weren't ready to buy?  They liked what you had to offer, acknowledge that there is opportunity down the road, but the timing wasn't quite right?

I have found for Element Three's clients and for our own organization, many times we let these conversations go silent.  We forget to follow-up and get so caught up in the busy-ness of every day that we overlook the opportunities of working with these companies; 6 months, 12 months, even 24 months down the road.

What if you have a systematic way of keeping in front of these prospective companies? What if you could ensure they were communicated with at consistent intervals with a pertinent message about what your organization could do for them? And, you don't have to  think about it EVERY day!

Let me introduce you to an email drip-marketing program.

For those unfamiliar with the term "drip-marketing", it's basically a not-so-fancy word that marketers use when talking about a campaign that has been scheduled to go out at pre-defined intervals where you 'drip' very focused snippets of information to clients or prospects. Think about when you water a flower. If you dump a huge bucket of water on it at once, it is going to be very limited in the amount of water it can actually take in and a lot is going to slide off and be wasted in the process.  Conversely, if you put that same flower on an irrigation system where water can be slowly 'dripped' in -- the flower will be able to absorb nearly all of the water it is given.

Same concept applies to marketing.  If I send a 10-page brochure to a client - chances are (if I'm lucky) they'll skim it and then throw it away. I've gotten only one chance to talk to them and most of the message has been 'wasted'. But, what if I sent that same prospect just one main point off of each page in the brochure over a period of 10 months? Your chances of the recipient being able to digest and retain the information relevant to their business are much greater. That's drip marketing.

Use the methodology identified above, use HTML email to deploy the message and you've just set up an email drip marketing program. Drip marketing can be done via mail and email. However, email is cheaper than print, targeted, customizable, you can easily update content and you can track engagement!

4 Steps to Setting Up your Email Drip Marketing Program:

1) Ask Permission

Spam laws/rules apply to drip marketing too. Be sure to get verbal approval before adding prospects to your drip marketing campaign. We recommend only using drip marketing with those folks you've already had some type of engagement with - either a face-to-face meeting or a phone call. Getting their email address does not constitute permission. Ask them!

Also, use an HTML email service provider like Delivra that will keep you CAN-SPAM compliant with the ability to opt-out and the appropriate sender contact information included in every send.

2) Sorry, it's not about YOU.

Don't turn into a "me monster" just because you've got a captive audience. Don't just talk about what you do, the features on your product or how much experience you have. Unless the recipient is your mother - they really don't care. What they care about is what you can DO for them, not how special you are. Talk about what they GET. Talk about your abilities, features and offers only though the context of how they APPLY to the people to who you're sending communications.

3) Check the Stats.

You can wait for them to call you. But keep in mind, they rarely do. Watch the stats - who is opening the emails, engaging in the content and forwarding to others in their company? Follow up with them.

4) Follow-up

Which brings me to the 4th point. Follow up. And not with another email, but with a phone call. Follow-up with those folks who are engaging in your content, downloading your white papers and taking your assessments. Fish where the fish are.

If you're unsure of where to start, how to outline the campaign or struggling with the message; give us a call at Element Three. We'd love to help you. I'm confident this will make a big impact in your top line.

Guest Blogger | Tiffany Sauder

Tiffany Sauder is the President of Element Three. Tiffany brings a bright, fresh approach to a very familiar business: marketing and branding. Through Tiffany's eyes, its sole purpose is to improve the bottom line. She firmly believes that all marketing and branding engagements are a direct result of a business issue or opportunity - and that business, branding and creativity can't be separated if they're going to succeed.

Tiffany's acumen at process thinking can help you find more customers, find the right kind of customers, bring products to market profitably or create awareness, among other things. Strap yourself in. She's likely to start charting our potential approaches, ball parking an array of financial strategies or imagining successful business options as soon as you start talking.

To learn more about Tiffany, visit her blog.

Delivra, one of the original email service providers, announced it's integration with Adobe SiteCatalyst®, powered by Omniture®. The integration enables marketers to send email messages to specific list segments based on the online activity of customers. By tying email marketing and web analytics together, marketers can optimize conversion of online transactions and increase revenue.

"The integration of Delivra and Adobe automatically merges email and analytics data and is providing additional insight to help us understand how our email recipients utilize our website and how our email affects other sources of web traffic," said Rob Schmalz, of Central Restaurant Products. "I am equally impressed with the ability to create custom segments within Adobe SiteCatalyst that trigger timely and relevant emails in Delivra to target specific behaviors."

For more information about the Delivra and Omniture integration, click here to be directed to the press release.

Mainstyle Flooring services residential and commercial flooring projects to Indianapolis and the surrounding areas. They are dedicated to customer service and helping their clients to find the best flooring at competitive prices because they order straight from the manufacturers.

For several years, Mainstyle Flooring has been using direct mail in order to reach and communicate with their clients and potential prospects. They signed up for the Delivra Extreme Email Makeover in hopes of starting an email campaign.

Find out how their first mailing with Delivra went by reading their case study!

Lavon Temple | Marketing

Delivra, one of the original email service providers, recently integrated with Omniture SiteCatalyst, an industry leading product that provides marketers with one place to measure, analyze, and optimize integrated data from all online initiatives across multiple channels. Omniture SiteCatalyst provides marketers with actionable, real-time information about their online strategies and marketing initiatives, in order to quickly identify the most profitable paths through their website, determine where visitors are navigating away from their site, and identify critical success metrics for their online marketing campaigns. SiteCatalyst is part of the Adobe Online Marketing Suite of applications for online business optimizations.

Delivra is opening up the Omniture Beta Program to marketers that are already using Omniture SiteCatalyst. For more information, please click here to be directed to a Delivra press release. If you'd like to sign up to be a part of the beta program, click below.

Recently I have been working with organizations that have many administrators in different departments or branches sending out email. Implementing an email marketing plan with different departments/branches/locations that all have different opinions about email marketing and technical skill sets can be challenging. Here are five tips I have learned along the way that may help you if you are in the same boat.

1. Maintain consistent branding— Provide departments with templates that maintain your brand and messaging while allowing them to change and edit their own content.

2. Listen to your subscribers (and unsubscribers)— It’s important to give your subscribers a way to manage their preferences. Remember, to them you are one organization and not multiple departments. If it is possible for one subscriber to be a part of multiple lists, then they should be able to unsubscribe from multiple lists in one place.

3. Create an email calendar— Be careful not to inundate your email subscribers with email. If departments have overlapping subscribers try to not send out email simultaneously. Use an email calendar to manage when emails are going out. Better yet, create a marketing calendar that reviews all marketing efforts (changes to the website, direct mail, tradeshows, postings to social media…etc) so all of your marketing efforts are working together.

4. Help the administrators with best practices— Have a meeting to share best practices and tips. If you have a dedicated account manager with your email service provider see if they could also attend. Even if this meeting happened once a year it would be worth it to share the knowledge that everyone is gaining. This is also a good time for your account manager to review any new features or refresher training.

5. Have departments or administrators establish goals— Maybe it’s an improvement in clickthrough rate or an increase in subscribers or an attendance increase at an event due to email marketing. Setting these goals will help them and you understand what it is the organization is getting out of email marketing and creating a plan to get it done.

There is a lot to consider when implementing any change or new program across multiple departments. Have questions about adding email marketing to your mix of marketing efforts (whether you have 1 department/branch/location or 100), give us a call—1-866-915-9465 or contact us at info@delivra.com. That's what we're here for.

Rachel Rewerts | Account Management

As any parent knows, sending a child off to college is fraught with worry. Today parents are more likely to worry about a student's job prospects after graduation than whether the new college student will get along with roommates or do laundry.

One beacon of hope for new graduates is the email marketing industry. According to Forrester Research, the industry is expected to grow to $2 billion by the year 2014, the year the newest crop of college freshmen graduate.

I am an accountant and often wonder how I ended up launching an email service provider. I have an entrepreneurial streak, and could have opened my own CPA practice. Instead I am busy counseling companies about ways to make their email marketing more effective.

This got me thinking: What kind of undergraduate degree would produce a great email marketer? While a degree in marketing is a logical choice, I think there are other degrees that would lend themselves to the job. Some suggestions include:

Sociology. A grad with an undergraduate degree in sociology has studied what makes groups of people tick. Social researchers are familiar with research methods that fuse direct observation and statistical analysis, methods that marketers rely on for marketing research. Their knowledge would provide insights to better target messages to audiences.

To read more of this MediaPost article and find out the other suggestions, click here.

For further information on email service providers and email marketing, contact Delivra today.

Neil Berman | President & CEO

Consumer email open rates are holding steady according to an analysis of email marketing trends by the Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council.

Open rates held firm at 22.1% during the second quarter of the year.

The study also showed that service messages had the highest open rates at 42.5%.

It's challenging to break through the volume of email people receive and get them to open your messages.  As the numbers above show, recipients are much more likely to read messages that contain relevant content based on their past behavior and preferences.

For more information regarding open rates, visit these past Delivra blog posts and other resources:

Just a Suggestion

How to Improve Your Email Newsletter Open Rates

Five Ways to Improve Your Open and Click Through Rates

Need an assist to get your behavior-based email marketing started? Call me at 317.348.3178 or send an email.

Neil Berman | President & CEO

I often hear from marketers asking  how to protect various aspects of their recipient lists(s) from others in their organization who are looking to do something they know isn't right.  The questions normally come on the acquisition end ("They're convinced buying a list is a good idea, what should I say?") but sometimes, it goes the other direction, and the marketer is dealing with higher-ups who think it is a good idea to sell their list to a third party.

These requests for help are full of exasperation as the marketer can't seem to overcome the "but they'll pay us a lot of money" argument that they're getting from the other side.

One such conversation recently came from a marketer that has been running a very successful, yet small mailing list of dedicated subscribers.  His superiors had been approached by someone wanting to market their list.  He knew this was a bad idea.  He knew that it was a betrayal of the trust he had worked to build. He knew it could have repercussions, but didn't know specifically how.

Every time he objected to the idea, it was met with a "but this is like free money" response.  The executives gung-ho about it had been approached by a third party interested in marketing to their audience.  They saw it as an opportunity to take an asset of theirs (their list of email addresses) and turn it into a revenue source.

"So, this company wants you to send out ads for them?" I asked.

"No, they would buy the list and send the mailings out themselves." was the reply.

And that instantly put a bad taste in my mouth.  At that point, I asked some questions about how the list was grown, what expectations were set at the time of opt-in, what this third party is sending, what's to keep them from selling them to others...

"Yeah," he said "I've gone over all of that with them. It's directly in conflict with what our subscribers agreed to when they signed up.  We told them we'd only be sending updates about our products and services, but the executives aren't concerned with that.  They say that this  third party will make sure no one would know the addresses came from us."

I've heard that before and I'd sure like to see the guarantee that goes along with that statement.  As we talked, I mentioned the possibility of subscribers who have created unique addresses.  Suddenly, he perked up.  "You mean someone might have an address that they only use to receive emails from us?" You betcha.  And if they suddenly start receiving email at that address from others, they're not going to be very pleased with you.  In the recipients eyes, either you sold them out, or you didn't secure the information they gave you. Either way, you ruin your relationship with them and potentially generate some really bad publicity for your company.

I'd like to think that people will do the right thing regardless of whether they think they'll get caught, but sometimes they can get distracted.  I was glad I was able to help this marketer make the case not to sell and he was glad to know someone had his back.

Kris Dougherty | Director of Operations

Someone not involved with email marketing recently asked me if the anti-spam positions taken by Delivra and other email service providers aren't hypocritical.  "After all," he reasoned, "if spam weren't a problem for the ISPs, then there wouldn't be a need for spam filters, and therefore your clients wouldn't need an email service provider to help get their mail delivered.  Seems to me that you need there to be spammers for your service to have value."

There's at least some truth in that statement.  Yes, ESPs "benefit" from the problem of spam in the same way that police officers, judges and jailers benefit from the problem of crime.  As long as there are criminals, those professions will enjoy a certain measure of job security.  Similarly, as long as there are spammers, ESPs will be needed to help legitimate marketers send opt-in email campaigns in ways that won't be mistaken for spam.

Further, I guess you could technically argue that, occasionally, ESPs profit directly from sending spam.   We've had to terminate clients for violating our terms of service by sending unsolicited email.  But when we fire them, it's not as if we're also refunding their payment for services already used.   There are costs involved in sending as much mail as we do (and abuse only drives those costs higher).

But believe me when I say that we at Delivra would rather live in a world without spam.  For one thing, we're email users ourselves; unsolicited emails in my inbox annoy me as much as the next person.

Second, the problem of spam complicates our sales process.  In most other industries, "qualifying prospects" refers to making sure they have the appropriate budget, decision-making authority, and reasonable timeframe for making a choice to purchase.  For ESPs, there's an added dimension of "making sure we trust the prospect's opt-in practices enough that we feel comfortable accepting the actual money they're prepared to pay us."  Someone who meets all the other criteria of a "qualified" prospect can still be someone with whom we decide we shouldn't do business.

But most importantly, if there were no spam, we wouldn't have to spend time dealing with deliverability concerns, because there would be no need for filters.  Then we could give even more attention to the other services we provide.  Even in a world without spam, marketers would still need tools for managing their mailing lists; creating attractive content; segmenting their recipients and targeting them with most relevant message possible; monitoring mailing results to know what techniques do and don't work with their constituents; and integrating email marketing with other critical systems.

Anyone who sees the role of the ESP as limited to preventing spam filtering would have good reason to fire their ESP in a world without spam.  But the smarter marketer also values the other services of an ESP--those that actually help them make money or retain subscribers.

A world without spam is pure fantasy of course, just like a world without crime.   Spam is part of our reality, but it's not the whole reality.  If you think email marketing is all about avoiding spam filters, I know some people who would be glad to help you broaden your view of what's possible.

Chris Broshears | Product Development

Driving to work the other day, I noticed a billboard advertisement for a local law firm.  The ad gave the name of the firm and also included the predictable picture of the attorneys, a couple of nondescript, middle-age guys in suits.   In other words, it was mostly unremarkable.

But what made this billboard unusual were the other words that appeared under the firm's name.  There was no address or phone number given.  There was no catchy slogan, like "Tell them you mean business" or "Don't get hurt twice."  The only inscription was...

"Back Cover of the Phone Book"

Now, there's nothing wrong with billboards as part of a marketing plan.  Outdoor advertising will be around as long as there is automobile traffic.  (And when we finally get our flying cars, billboards won't go away, they'll probably just be higher!)

But a billboard ad campaign based on the phone book?  Really??

Sure, there was a time when there was only one Yellow Pages for every community, and every household had one.   Directing passers-by to look for their ad on the back of the phone book might have been a clever marketing strategy in, say, 1983, when the phone book was both indispensable and everywhere.

But now, there's more than just one publisher dropping off directories on our doorsteps.  And increasingly, consumers are dumping them straight in the recycle bin, because we have this thing called "the Internet" now.   Anyone with a computer or cell phone can use Google to find an attorney.  And with reviews and recommendations from other consumers being published online,  shoppers are relying on more than just advertising when choosing a service provider.

As a result, the phone book industry is hurting.  When your product makes a list of "Top 25 Things Vanishing from America"--along with VCRs, the milkman, film cameras, and outhouses--that's never a good sign.  So I have trouble believing that the law firm got their money's worth out of that advertising--both  the billboard and the phone book cover.

So what does this have to do with email?  For one, email is more like the billboard than the phone book; it's not going away anytime soon.  But if you've been using email in your marketing for some time now, it's important to understand how email is changing.

Just like society used to have a place for the Yellow Pages, there might once have been a role for "email blasts," but both recipients and network operators have higher expectations now.   We've been writing here about some of the trends: personalization, behavioral targeting, integration with social networking, and video are among the most prominent.

So avoid being like the lawyers on the sign, and don't assume that all the practices of yesterday will give you the same results today.  Stay in step with the times, and invest in what your audience is looking for now.

Chris Broshears | Product Development

At last month’s MarketingSherpa Email Summit, Bob Johnson, VP and Principal Analyst, IDG Connect, presented new research into B2B technology buyers’ email opinions and habits.

Topics included factors that influence buyers to opt-in and open vendor email, and how specific content and offers affect subsequent actions, such as pass-along and clickthrough.

Insight #1. Buyers rely on email more than marketers think

- 32% of buyers said email was their favored method for receiving product/services information

- Only 12% of buyers said social networks were their favored method of receiving information.

Insight #2. Provide offers that direct readers to take the next step

- 60% of buyers said offers were not compelling

- 56%  of buyers said content was not relevant

Insight #3. Personalized sender information can increase engagement

- 45% said that knowing the sender influences opening an email

- 25% said that the subject topic influences opening an email

Insight #4. Appeal to buyers’ personal, not just organizational, motivations

- 63% said they would agree to receive additional emails if it helped with their job

- 66% said they would agree to receive more emails if fresh insight and ideas were included

My takeaway is: Get the opt-in permission right. Get your branding right. Get the offers and content right. Get to work.

Neil Berman | President & CEO