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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. 

I get asked a lot if Delivra sells email addresses.  The short answer is NO.  We are a permission based email service provider - this means you can only send to opted-in email addresses through our system.  However, since I talk to thousands of people, some have experience with purchasing email addresses.  Allow me to share some of their wisdom:

If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.
I've heard prices ranging from pennies to several dollars per email address.  What seems consistent is the cheaper the price, the less effective the emails are.  

Ask, "how are you going to send to the recipients?"
Apparently, there are companies who will sell you the email addresses but won't send to them.  This should be a red flag in my book.  It probably means the company knows the email addresses are bogus.  They don't care though because by the time you figure this out, they have already cashed your check.

If the company is going to send to the recipients, how are they going to get in the inbox?
Just because a company will send to the recipients, doesn't mean your out of the woods.  Yes, typically the emails they are sending to are opted-in.  But they aren't opted-in to receive emails from you.   These are generally recipients who didn't check or uncheck the box that says "Please send me emails from your affiliates".  This opens the floodgates for the recipient to receive emails from ANYONE.  Once they receive your email, they won't know you, and will typically mark your message as spam.  This hurts not only you, but also the sender.  Their IP reputations are usually so shot, the message won't even get into the inbox.

My open rate is WHAT?!
We've all heard the industry average open rate is around 20%-25%.  That's when you are applying email best practices.  Purchasing a list is definitely not email best practice.  So what should the open rate be for these types of engagements?  I've heard numbers ranging from 0%-2%.  And even though they opened it, it doesn't mean the recipient is engaged...more like enraged - which will lead to that person marking your message as spam (see above).  

I understand that companies want to grow their list.  There are lots of good ways to do just that.  I just don't think purchasing a list is one of those ways.  If you'd like to find out how Delivra can help grow your list (the right way), give us a shout, we'll be glad to help!

Here's a picture of some puppies I found on the internet:

IBM recently unveiled another of their Five-in-Five series. If you've never heard of it, IBM makes an annual prediction of five trends or innovations that will alter the modern technological landscape within the next five years.

After predicting increased biometric security and actual mind reading powers, the last point in the series caught my eye: We're going to see the end of impersonal email.

Due to the amount of data that can be stored and analyzed quickly, every single mailing can, and will be, personalized not just to a recipient, but personalized towards what the recipient will find most relevant.

An article discussing the Five-in-Five series analyzed an opt-in procedure categorizing recipients' email request based on their driving, shopping, and eating schedules. Emails were specifically targeted to individuals based not only on their personal history, but also targeted based on when they were most likely to ‘need’ those emails, i.e. before leaving the house to go to the mall or deciding where they should meet with friends for lunch.

Delivra’s demographic fields allow our customers the ability to send email tailored personally to the recipient, and to the recipient’s interests. How much do you know about your recipients? How engaged are they? Are you utilizing all of the demographic fields available to better target your email campaigns?

This week, the Email Experience Council and Sponsor, StrongMail, released the results of its "2012 Marketing Trends" survey which provides insight into how businesses plan to budget and prioritize marketing dollars in the New Year. Conducted in November 2011, 938 business leaders participated in the global survey. 

The 2012 Marketing Trends Survey highlights: 

• 92% plan to increase or maintain marketing spend in 2012
• 60% plan to increase email marketing budget; 54% social media; 37% mobile/search (tied) 
• 45% cite data integration as primary email marketing challenge in 2012;
• 43% cite lack of resources/staff as primary email marketing challenge; 
• 40% cite content management as primary email marketing challenge; 
• 48% cite increasing subscriber engagement as top 2012 email marketing initiative; 
• 44% cite improving segmentation/targeting as a top initiative; 
• 32% cite growing opt-in email lists as a top initiative; 
• 68% plan to integrate email marketing with social media; 45% with mobile; 17% with search 

2012 is a new year but the survey, for me, merely reinforced what I hear regularly from staff, clients and prospects. 

• Dynamic Sequence- Create a drip campaign for certain interests. Maybe your recipients just want to see gift ideas for mom or a certain interest like running or reading or travel. Use dynamic content to send them one email with all of their choices rather than multiple emails.
• Themed Emails- 12 days of savings (make sure your members optin for this daily email). Need a special opt in? We can help. Contact us to learn more about profile and subscribe forms.
• Come back- Don't forget to set up shopping cart abandonment emails with an incentive to come back to complete the shopping process.
• Early Bird Campaign- Early shopping deals for "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" can stand out in the inbox if done well. Email graphic design has different rules than Web graphic design. Need some help figuring that out? Check out our design gallery for some ideas, thencontact us to learn more.
• Smart Phone Focus- Creating a special campaign for your smart phone users can increase sales and provide valuable information about where your members are reading your emails. Do some testing to make sure your in store check out process can scan the barcode from a smartphone. Need to know where to start? Check out our mobile design whitepaper.

• Provide a central hub for storing their email lists. 
• Give assistance in setting up the appropriate email opt-in for subscribers. 
• Receive templates, making the design of emails much easier. 

I've become a big fan of daily deal websites like Groupon, Living social, and many others. They offer such a great service to both businesses and consumers. For the business, it becomes a great way to build brand exposure and gain an influx of new business. For the consumer, it's a great way to try out new businesses at a steep discount. While their success has been explosive in certain circles, I've heard many a naysayer out there state that often the businesses lose money on these deals or they find it difficult to get return business. However, I have to disagree given my most recent experience. I received a daily deal for salon services and was thrilled at the discount. While this wasn't a business I frequented, I was willing to try it out in order to get the deal.

The day my appointment came along, I was excited to be able to redeem my reward. What came next was most unexpected, but one of the most clever methods I have seen employed by a business using a daily deal. As I was filling out my new customer information the business owner mention to me she would love to get my repeat business. She went on to tell me that she was offering the very same deal to return customers and I could purchase as many deals as I would like. She also went on to say if I signed up for her regular email program, I would receive regular offers similar to these on an ongoing basis. WOW! Clever way to retain me as a customer.

Now I am sure with this deal, she was able to realize a large influx for her business, but how clever to create her own follow-up offer and gain a subscriber and a new customer out of me. I believe many of these new methods to promote your business are ingenious and if done right, have the potential to provide a steady flow of business in circles you might not have otherwise reached. Try it out, but make sure you do some of these key things that made her offer so successful:

• Gather Information: Make sure you gather the customers information and ask them to opt-in to your email campaigns.
• Follow-up Deals: Offer follow-up deals to entice one-time customers to return.  Chances are, they return a time or two and you've won them as a long term customer.
• Referrals: While the business owner didn't do this, I believe this is another tactic you could use....offer a special discount to customers who refer business to you.

It's great to use new marketing tactics to promote your business and gain new customers, but make sure you are employing some of the more traditional methods along with them and I believe you will have not only an influx of new customers, but you will make the long-term fans of your business.  Need help?  Ask your Delivra team to help you build that strategy!  They work with these types of campaigns everyday.

Carissa Newton | Guest Blogger

About Carissa

You work hard to get people to sign up for your email messages because you want them to read the important things you have to share.  No one likes to see their subscribers leave them. However, if a subscriber decides to unsubscribe, you will want to make sure you follow email unsubscribe best practices (a couple listed below) to make it a peaceful separation. If not, they could always be hitting the SPAM button. (Ah!)

1. Unsubscribe Button Location. Make sure the subscriber is able to easily locate the unsubscribe button.  Don’t make them search for it because instead of going on the hunt, they are more likely to look for the easier option: mark as spam.
2. Easy Process. Don’t make it extremely complicated for someone to unsubscribe past the unsubscribe button.  The easier the process of unsubscribing, the more likely a subscriber will do it.
3. Offer Options. If subscribers have access to a preference center, they may change options rather than unsubscribe from a mailing altogether.  Give them the opportunity to opt-down instead of opt-out.
4. Pause Option. Instead of unsubscribing from your mailings, the subscriber may appreciate the option to pause your mailings for a brief period.  Adding this option to a preference center could decrease the number of people unsubscribing from the list.

What other unsubscribe best practices do you think are important?

Lavon Temple | Marketing

Email preference centers, also called subscription centers, were once an optional feature of an email marketing program. Now, they have become almost mandatory. Best practices, however, still lag.

"For many of the customers we're working with right now, it seems like preference centers are an afterthought," said George DiGuido, VP-marketing at digital agency Zeta Interactive.

These are missed opportunities, since research demonstrates that preference centers can boost the success rate of an email marketing program. For instance, an Email Experience Council white paper released in June 2010, "Manifesto for E-mail Marketers: Consumers Demand Relevance," found that those users who visit an email preference center are more tolerant of more frequent mailings. According to the white paper, when asked "When is the best time for companies to send e-mail?" about two-thirds (65%) of respondents who were interested in a more personalized preference-oriented experience answered, "Whenever the company has something important to say." The online survey, handled by Forrester Research, polled 1,033 adults in the U.S. and U.K.

"The punch line is, [buyers] demand preferences and preference center management, and there is a clear connection to buying behavior when it is delivered," said David Daniels, CEO of the Relevancy Group, an interactive marketing consultancy.

Gerry Widmer, general manager of BlueHornet, a business unit of e-commerce solution provider Digital River, said using preference centers can reduce the rate of opt-outs. "We've seen lots of studies that show the two reasons people opt out is because of frequency and irrelevant content," he said. "Preference centers address both of those concerns."

And yet marketers are still having trouble figuring out what to include in a preference center, how to get email subscribers to visit them, and how often they should be updated.

Bottom Line? Every marketer should make it a priority to build an email preference center. Click here to read the rest of the BtoB article by Karen Bannan that features our new Director of Marketing, Megan Glover!

For the Fourth of July weekend, I traveled up to East Lansing, MI to visit some friends.  They have a couple of great outdoor malls, so I splurged on the trip and went on a shopping spree.  One of the stores we browsed at was Old Navy, I didn't end up purchasing anything, but I observed as my friend checked out.

Nowadays, most stores will ask you if you want to sign up for their email programs. However, Old Navy took that a step further and when it was time for my friend to get their receipt after paying - they asked, "Would you like your receipt printed, emailed and printed, or just emailed to you?"

She opted to receive the printed version, but I was intrigued.  Upon returning home, I started searching on Google to see if this "paperless" concept had been happening for some time and I had just been severely out of the shopping loop. I mean - I had even worked in retail and hadn't heard of this yet.

Seems I started looking into it just in time, here's an article from the IndyStar talking about it.

What do you think of this?  Good idea or a gap in the opt-in process?

Lavon Temple | Marketing

It might seem kind of sad to have birthday presents that never get unwrapped. They pile up year after year in a closet and are totally ignored. That's what it is like to have a subscriber who never actually opens your marketing email.

Clearly, something is amiss. Maybe you have a bad address. Maybe your messages are being silently routed to spam. Maybe that person is too busy and deletes messages without reading them.

Non-openers should be taken off your main list. The main list database is for people who actually read your messages. Instead the non-responsive should be put into a special list of problem prospects. Either something went wrong during the process of getting these names or when they opted-in to your newsletter.

Good email marketing packages let you quickly and easily manage lists. But the most important step comes after you've built a pattern of routinely moving non-openers to their own list. You need to establish time in your schedule to figure out what went wrong. Can you pick up the phone and call the prospect? Can you determine which sales rep or online form produced the name? Can you check with your email service provider to see about deliverability issues?  These names in the "gray area" are perhaps the greatest possible customers. You know they want your stuff but haven't ever had the chance to get it!

Guest Blogger | Robby Slaughter

Robby Slaughter is a Principal with Slaughter Development, an Indianapolis - based business process and workflow consulting company. His new book, Failure: The Secret to Success is available now at www.failurethebook.com.

I recently received a notification from one of my User Groups on LinkedIn that another member wanted to know what should be "an acceptable rate of opt-outs".

Another group member provided the following statistic,  "Studies done in the past have consistently shown a ~30% per year churn rate (unsubscribes, bounces and complaints) which is 2-3% a month."

While this may be an acceptable industry statistic, I asked: why be happy with what is statistically acceptable?

I pointed out that if you are seeing a high opt-out rate, it would be best to look at things like segmentation, relevancy, frequency of emails, content and even subject lines. As we say all the time, you should really TEST to find out what email is going to get you the most engaged recipient. For instance, you can A/B test subject lines to see if that improves open rates. Or, test content blocks within the email to see what message resonates better with the audience. The combination of tests you can do to improve your campaigns are nearly limitless.

At Delivra, we help our customers build relevant email campaigns every day. If you can't keep your list healthy and growing, you are not going to be satisfied with your email marketing efforts.

David Turpin | Account Executive

Many years ago, when I worked at a local retail store, they had a motto: "Think Like a Customer."  Today, at Delivra, I get reminded of that motto every time I have a client ask me, "What type of content will get me the most open/click throughs?" My standard response is: "Think Like a Recipient." We help our customers to "think like a recipient" by utilizing our Profile Form. This enables a marketer to ASK their recipients what content they want to receive.

The benefits are numerous:

1. Higher open rates.
2. Higher click through rates.
3. Higher conversion rates.
4. Send less email because you are no longer blasting to the entire list.
5. Save money by only sending relevant content to the people who requested it.
6. People will stay on your list - a number of people opt out of a list because they're tired of receiving content that does not pertain to them.
7. You don't have to waste time guessing what your recipients want.
8. If someone does not request to opt out of a list, it gives you one last chance to ask them if they want to opt out of all mailings or just the ones they're not interested in.

So the next time you find yourself asking, "I wonder what my recipients want to receive?" Remember to "think like a recipient" and call Delivra to find out how we can help you create a Profile Form to ensure your recipients stay engaged with your messages.

David Turpin | Account Executive

Feel like you are sending the same emails to your subscribers over and over again?  Sometimes you need to throw in various types of emails to change it up a bit and keep your subscribers engaged with your email marketing efforts.

An example is the thank you email.

Some of you may already be sending a version of the thank you email and don't need to worry about reading further. Some of you may already be thanking your subscriber for opting in when they receive their welcome email. Is this the only time we need to be thanking our subscriber though?

Particularly for online retailers, it may be appropriate to send a thank you email at another time. For example, after the subscriber hits the year mark of receiving your emails send a thank you email saying, "thanks for sticking with us for a year and here's a coupon for your loyalty!"

Your subscribers will probably feel appreciated to know that you view them as an asset and want to thank them - encouraging them to be a faithful subscriber for another year!

Remember, sometimes, a simple thank you can go a long way.

Lavon Temple | Marketing