Let's be honest. You get a lot of email. That's true of almost everybody these days, not just people looking for email marketing advice or those who work for an email marketing firm. 

That means that you're probably fairly aggressive when it comes to judging other people's email campaigns. It's likely that when you see a piece that isn't too impressive, you hit the delete button. Or worse, you unsusbcribe.

If great email design makes a difference to you as an end user, then you or your email...

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Hey you. 

Do you have customers? Prospects? Or just fans of your organization?

If you can name two people who might fit into any of these categories, you probably need to put list management as your number one task in your managed email marketing efforts.

If "list management" sounds boring, that's okay. Your email marketing pro won't care if we change the name. Instead of list management, let's call it sales prediction. Because the better you handle your lists, the better you understand how...

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Email marketing experts agree that an essential part of your email campaign is timing. You want to make your messages go out on exactly the right day at exactly the right hour.

Unfortunately, there isn't much agreement on when that should be. Copyblogger reports many expert email markterers prefer different times. Rick Whittington notes there several studies all showing different data. Scott Stratten insists content is more important than the timing. Even Delivra's competitor (and other email...

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If you're doing email marketing, you should be thinking about your return on investment. 

This isn't particularly unique to email. It's not even unique to marketing. If you put money into some effort in your business, you want to figure out what that investment actually produces.

For example, we recently sent out a reactivation campaign for our ongoing business classes here in Indianapolis. (Is your email marketing agency doing reactivation campaigns?) Here's what it looked like:

This is a great...

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These last two weeks, I've spent considerable time working with three amazing not-for-profit organizations:

• Martin Luther King Community Center
• South East Neighborhood Development - SEND
• Mark2Ministries

One thing rings true with each of them - and many other not-for-profits - while they aren't out to make profit, they are very much running a business, with an importantmission. Just like the rest of us, they are struggling with resource constraints, project scope-creep, and spreading the word to...

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Since the advent of social media, Internet marketing has evolved at a rapid pace. These dramatic changes have caused many people to question whether professional email marketing is still a profitable component of the marketing campaign. It's true, email marketing has company in the Internet marketing sphere, but those who disregard its marketing potential will miss out on a consistently performing opportunity despite the increasing success of social media outlets. 

Although social media websites...

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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?...Read More » »

We all want to work with smart people and smart companies (not just smart marketing agencies!) In fact, separating the qualified from the clueless is much of what we do when we are deciding who to choose to be our vendor.

That's why email marketing can be a chance to prove you are smart. How do I know this is possible? Because companies often use email marketing to accidentally prove that they may not be so bright after all.

Consider this email which I received after viewing a cool webinar about...

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I know this is the Delivra blog, and it's supposed to be all about email marketing and email marketing service providers. It's true that the ability to automate, collate and manage email marketing campaigns is fantastic stuff. But sometimes, the best email marketing is not something you do through an ESP. Instead, it's what you do from your own email program.

Of course, you already send and receive a zillion messages a day that were written by hand. A professional emails about as often as an...

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