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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. 

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! 

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. 
 

I recently met with a company that we work with to strategize content and how best to implement their email marketing plans.  The first question I heard from the CEO was, "how do we produce the amount of content you are laying out in the plan?"  I stopped for a minute to try to understand their concerns.  We talked a bit more and he explained how he didn't  have a ton of time and no one on staff had time to squeeze it in either.  For many, this might have been a stopping point to any marketing efforts.  However, I believe there is content in what you do everyday and you just have to think about it differently and not be afraid to repurpose from time to time.  Think about it, I bet as I list these items out you are nodding your head to at least a few.  Let's begin.....ready, set, go:

1. Brochures or Catalogs: If you have pre-existing collateral, don't be afraid to reuse bits and pieces of it in your ongoing communications.  Chances are, your audience might never have even seen it before.  And for those that have, it becomes a nice refresher.
2. Website, Articles, or Blog: Have any of these?  I would bet you have at least one if not more.  Take that content and use pieces to fill out email content in newsletters or to add in with a new call to action.
3. Customer Stories: We all love stories and customers love to hear how others worked with you.  Customer stories give a great frame of reference, but also provide a certain level of creditability.  Don't have a story?  Contact a customer that would be willing to share.  You'd be surprised who might take you up on the offer.
4. Headlines, Industry News, or Company Position: This is a big resource to never forget.  Companies often forget they are the only tie between their customer and the industry.  It may be old news to you, but your audience and customers are likely hungry for more of that information.  Or they might want to hear your take on it.
5. Tips & tools: Ever have a quick list of things you recommend or share with clients?  Share those with your audience and they will consider it a great resource.

Didn't take long did it?  Content is often right under our noses.  Content that can be used for email marketing, website, social media, or even blogging.  Just remember the golden rule of repurposing...

Always give credit where credit is due and always link when you can to additional content or the source.  The author will appreciate it and your audience will too!

Now it's time to get busy filling in your calendar of email activity, go forth and find that email content and send, send, send my friends!  Need more ideas on email marketing, contact us at info@delivra.com or at 317-915-9400.

Carissa Newton | Marketing

Email marketing, although barely a decade old, is an established tool for marketers and it plays an important role. How can you improve performance? Here are a few ideas for your 2011 email marketing objectives list.

1. Integrate your email marketing with emerging marketing channels like social media. At the very least this tactic extends your email reach to recipients' friends and followers.

2. Insist that your email marketing efforts produce a ROI. I like to say that a good open rate cannot be deposited in the bank.

3. If your monthly email marketing budget is less than your monthly cell phone bill, you're not doing email marketing. You're starving the marketing channel with the best chance of measurable results.

4. Sending highly relevant content to your target audiences is a key to success. The more relevant your email campaigns, the more  content is required. Developing quality content costs money. Budget for it.

5. Understand email deliverability. A reported successful delivery may not be an inbox delivery. Work with your provider to know the difference. A reported successful delivery to a recipient who has not opened for over six months is not successful. Work with your provider to fix the problem.

6. Building your recipient list is on every new year's resolution. This year, Delivra will have a new tactic - text/SMS to subscribe. Check back for more on this exciting development early in 2011.

7. Have an email marketing strategy. Without it you're just sprinkling the lawn on a windy day (so to speak).

8. Throw out opens and clicks as primary metrics. Instead, focus on post click activity and conversions. Use automated remarketing efforts to make a real difference.

9. Last, don't go it alone. An experienced agency or email service provider can get you started on the road to success.

Best wishes for a happy new year and successful 2011!

Neil Berman | President & CEO

There are several ways to grow your list  that we've talked about on the Delivra blog before in posts such as:

Growing Your Email List

5 Ways to Build Your Email List Organically

Today, I'd like to focus on just one of the ways to grow your email list and that is signup forms. A signup form is a place that a person can type their email address into a form and signup to receive your emails. I'm going to highlight a couple of tips about signup forms below.

1. Location, Location, Location!

You need to add your signup form in places that people will see it and have the opportunity to signup. So where are some places that you can add a signup form where people are likely to see it?

• If nothing else, make sure that you have a signup form on your website - that way when consumers or potential clients are looking for information about your product and service they can signup to receive your emails.  Many email marketing service providers, including Delivra, provide a widget for you to create this signup.  You can then take that code and drop it right on your website, landing page, blog or social pages.  By doing this, your new opt-ins can go straight into your email list with very little work on your end.

• You can also add a signup form to your blog placed beside your blog feed for readers to signup to receive additional information through your emails or to receive blog posts by email.  Something you may want to consider is a floating signup form. Opinions vary on how effective using these forms is - some find it captures the readers attention and others just find it annoying.

2. Keep It Simple

As the above examples show, initially just ask for an email address.  Then once a person chooses to enter their email address and subscribes, maybe your signup form will expand into a preference center. In the preference center, it is appropriate to ask for further information, such as what specific emails they would like to receive from you or further details that you can use for segmenting mailings. Still - be sure not to ask too many questions. You don't want to overwhelm a new subscriber.

3. Examples

Most people love to see an example of what they are about to get and emails are no different.  Coming soon - we'll be offering 2 new emails to our clients to receive, but before sending we want to make sure that we are asking people to update their preferences and let us know what they want to receive. Okay - besides the fact that I just added a shameless plug - I am using this as an example! In the preference center, we've provided our clients with examples of the emails we are sending. If you'd like to see it, click here. (Feel free to sign up for the newsletter at the same time you're checking it out!)

For more information on sign up forms, check out this past blog post: Why won't they sign up?

Lavon Temple | Marketing

We've just announced the creation of the Back to School:  Email Style whitepaper series and Email Marketing Master certification program!  The certification is a free six-part program designed to build knowledge of email marketing best practices among both novice and seasoned email marketers.

The program consists of a series of six best practice white papers followed by a quiz. Those who pass the quiz will be awarded an Email Marketing Master certificate. The program is available to anyone who wants to brush up on skills or learn best practices in email marketing.

Marketers will receive a new white paper every month when they sign up for the program. Topics will include how to plan campaigns, managing and growing lists, design tips, campaign optimization, results tracking and advance campaign tips, such as using segmentation, dynamic content, surveys and video.

For more information about the Email Marketing Master program, read the press release here.

Sign up for the Email Marketing Master Program today!

I recently read an article on iMedia Connection: The unique benefits of 5 marketing platforms by Gordon Plutsky. (To read the entire article, click here.) He started out by explaining that marketers now have so many methods of communicating with customers. Then he asked, "If advertising is out, what is the most effective way to reach customers and create more sales opportunities?"

He goes on to explain that to find the answer, you must "focus on your target audience" and by creating a strategy that includes "using several media platforms" and "matching the content to the strengths and unique benefits of each platform." It's difficult to remember with all the different platforms and tools available to focus on your target audience. Yes, using more than one platform can be effective, but NO, you don't have to have a part in EVERYTHING. Enough of that - let's move on.

Plutsky ends the article by taking a look at the strengths and weaknesses of five popular marketing media reinforcing the fact that more than one media platform should be used when trying to reach your audience.

Let me start by saying - I was glad to see email! I agree with Plutsky that email is not dead. It is still an effective way to communciate with your customers, especially when used with other platforms.  Email, like the other marketing channels mentioned, has weaknesses, but when used well, it's a way to reach prospects, customers, and re-engage customers cost - effectively.  In fact, watch the video below to see what I mean.

Delivra chooses to use email as one of the ways we reach out to our own community. Gordon Plutsky mentions, "There is typically not enough (convincing) information in a single email to attract a new customer to complete the transaction."

Agreed, in a single email there probably isn't enough opportunity to attract and turn a prospect into a client; however, Delivra has set up a drip marketing campaign (and can help you set one up too), a series of emails that go out at different times with different content to a list of prospects. The series of emails includes information about how Delivra can help them improve their email marketing efforts, educate them on our application, and start communications with them to be able to build that foundation into a relationship. It's a process that we're planning on putting more efforts into because we think it works so well. (For further information on drip marketing, contact Delivra.)

Although we send emails to prospects, customers, and to re-engage clients, we also employ other marketing platforms as suggested by Plutsky. We have our website branded with Delivra that acts as our central spot, offers further information about our industry and includes educational content about the application for our clients.  We also are involved on social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, to form a more personal relationship with clients, partners, prospects, and others.

Overall, a great article by Plutsky and a reminder to focus on your target audience when planning a strategy for the best ways to reach your target audience.

Lavon Temple | Marketing

Building a quality email list for your company is one of the biggest concerns when starting and continuing email marketing.  It is important to know when and how to ask people to join your mailing list, so you are not sending people unwanted emails.  Recently,  I stumbled upon an article that presents clear tips to help people grow their email lists organically.

Click here to read 9 ways to build your email list. It is a great resource to start expanding and engaging new users in your email marketing campaign.  By improving your email list, you will see a much greater impact on the success of your campaign.

For further information on growing your email marketing list, take a look at these past Delivra blog posts:

Growing your list: three simple changes that can make a big difference

Snail mail, a way to grow your list?

Lavon Temple | Marketing

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

Marketers thrive on information about customers and prospects. It's one of the reasons email is such a powerful marketing channel--the ability to see in real-time exactly which recipients are interacting with your content, and how (opening/clicking/sharing), and to what effect (page hits/conversions).

However, the marketer's desire to collect as much data as possible, when applied to signing up new email subscribers, can have unintended consequences. Aggressive collection of personal information and preferences can backfire. Here are a couple of ways we've seen it go wrong, along with suggestions for avoiding these pitfalls:

1. Asking for too much personal information. Many consumers are concerned about privacy in the digital age, and there is widespread disagreement about how much privacy one should be expected to give up in exchange for the benefits of new technology. Identity theft is a rampant problem, and even reputable brands have been victims of hackers, or otherwise found to have mismanaged personal data provided by their customers.Given these circumstances, it's natural for customers not to want to share any more information than is strictly necessary. Therefore, don't scare them off by requiring them to provide more than is needed to deliver the emails they're signing up for. If your program truly requires responses in seventeen different form fields, then set expectations clearly about how you will and won't use those responses.On the other hand, if you don't expect to use all that information, why overwhelm the user by asking for it? They may decide that subscribing to your email is more trouble than it's worth. Consider asking for minimal information up front, to lower the barriers to subscribing. Then, after building some trust with the subscriber (by sending relevant content that doesn't abuse the opt-in permission you were given), follow up with a request for more details to serve the subscriber better, and give some incentive for them to cooperate.
2. Asking for preferences, but not honoring them. Related to #1 above, subscribers tend to assume that information requested on the signup form is somehow needed to deliver the messages they're subscribing to. If you ask for their preferences about the kind of content they're interested in, it's reasonable for them to think that you intend to honor those preferences.Consider a profile form for a fictional video game retailer that lists all of their product lines with checkboxes next to them. Suppose that a subscriber checks only the boxes indicating interest in "Sony Playstation" and 'Xbox 360", but doesn't tick the box for "Nintendo Wii." If you've recorded these choices, and yet persist in sending the "Wii New Release Deal of the Week" email to your entire mailing list--without regard for subscriber preferences--then the subscriber of our example has reason to feel that you're sending them unsolicited email. And when users feel they're getting more than what they signed up for, unsubscribes and spam complaints are likely to result.

   The rule of thumb here is simple. In the context of an email signup form, don't ask what subscribers want, if you have no intention of delivering it. If you seek preference information for other reasons, like trying to decide how to allocate your marketing budget, then consider sending out a survey instead. But definitely do ask my preferences if your aim is to send me the most relevant and engaging emails possible.

Chris Broshears | Product Development

I have often said that marketers cannot be effective if they are looking at each tactic in a isolated tunnel.  In my opinion, all marketing efforts should be woven together to ensure the greatest return and results across the various marketing mediums.  It was refreshing to hear this from one of our clients this morning.  We were discussing their email marketing program and trying to learn what impact it has made to their overall marketing efforts.  I loved the client's response to us:

Email marketing is part of every strategy we employ.  In fact, we include it in every marketing plan because we know that it can help us drive the results we are after.  Especially in those efforts where we know we have to extend our reach.

In this specific example, email marketing often helps extend the client's grassroots marketing efforts.  They gave us multiple examples where they did not have extensive marketing budgets for an event, but after employing email marketing into those campaigns, they were able to not only increase attendance, but generate enough response to consider the event a success.  Why, you might ask?

Well, I believe it is simply because they gave email marketing a seat at the strategy table.  They purposely and intentionally looked for ways to intersect their email marketing efforts with their outreach strategy.  I often make this suggestion and typically the next question that follows is, How? Here are a few steps that I would recommend:

1. Make email marketing an important part of your marketing efforts: Ensure that at every point of interaction, your audience has the ability to opt-in to your mailings.  Better yet, give them the option to further detail their preferences and you will be able to segment your mailings to increase effectiveness. Remember, it's not about the quantity, but the quality!
2. Build a Calendar: Whether you are mailing quarterly, monthly, daily or even ad hoc as events occur, building those emails into your overall marketing calendar will ensure that they are a constant part of strategy.
3. Plan out each email: This may sound like common sense, but I have found it helpful to define a few things in your plan to be most effective.  1)  Who are you trying to reach?  2) What message/theme do you want to convey?  3)  How will you measure success?  Believe it or not, I still to this day use this strategy to plan my emails.  I have found that I am more consistent with my messaging and am able to stay on point much more effectively.  In fact, I often sketch out my content first to see what works best.  We recently outlined how to find inspiration in design.
4. Monitor your results: In the rush to get an email out, I'm sure we are all guilty of checking it off the list and moving on to the next tactic.  However, don't forget to circle back and monitor your results.  This can be helpful in measuring success, improving future campaigns, and even in re-marketing efforts with follow-up communications.

These are just a few tips that I recommend to clients, but also use myself.  Be sure to subscribe to our blog via email and continue to receive additional tips and tricks to make your email successful.  Need help with your email strategy?  Contact me at marketing@delivra.com or at 866-915-9465.

Carissa Newton | Marketing

I always get excited when we can devise a new way for a client to build a list and communicate with their subscribers. In this case it is a franchised hotel.

Background
The hotel had done little marketing in the past. They are located near a major airport and business demand kept the rooms full and the food service facility busy. However, economic conditions have reduced business travel and business.

Marketing Goal
The hotel marketing manager was looking for a high ROI method to build sales. Email was on her list but she was unsure of how to proceed. With 200 email addresses in hand and no previous email marketing program the task looked daunting. In addition, the facility did not have authority to post anything on the franchiser's national website.

Needed
Before you can market with email you need a recipient list to mail to. How do you build a sizable list of email subscribers interested in receiving site specific information (in this case the airport hotel) and with offers that are relevant and timely?

Solution
The solution required connecting four marketing tools. Print, web, email and smart phone.

Printed announcements are to be placed in all guest rooms and maintained by the housekeeping staff. The printed offer sends hotel guests to a one page web site hosted by Delivra.

The web site has a subscribe form with text boxes for email address and optional name. Plus the offer is reinforced on the site. Revisions to the web page are easily performed using simple editing tools already in the Delivra solution.

An emailed coupon is delivered in real time to people who complete the web site subscription form.

Using any smart phone that displays HTML or text email, a guest can merely display the coupon to hotel food service staff who redeem the offer.

Payoff
The hotel gets an instant boost in sales from current guests plus they build a list of email addresses for an email newsletter aimed at encouraging return visits.

Neil Berman | President & CEO

Tales from a poor confused artist who thought school was finally over

I’ve been working at Delivra since last summer. I started with a basic e-mail marketing I.Q. of about 12, and considering how lost I get during conversations within the company or with other big-wigs of this particular market, that number does not seem to have changed much.  Fortunately, as a designer, my job is relatively straightforward and simple, but it does come with some memory-testing challenges.

The whole process seems to be like a never-ending finals week. You spend a few days studying (building the email), turning in homework (sending the client your drafts), you take the pre-quiz (send the test email), then panic your way through the final exam (send the email).  It’s stressful, nerve-wracking, and worth everything when it results in a perfect A+ (a happy client). And while it probably isn’t as nail-bitingly terrifying as that Psychology exam you just found out about, it is enough to give you nightmares about being eaten alive by HTML.

Fortunately, cliff-notes and study-guides are available in the form of blogs. Those come in really handy when an HTML-monster project comes along, and your usual weapons of choice aren’t cutting it. There aren’t many challenges out there that another designer hasn’t overcome, and they’re more than willing to help a clueless fellow out.

Before your next test (email), here are some things to memorize that'll help you out:

1. Paragraph and Header tags are evil. They sound like a brilliant idea, but really, they are not to be trusted. If you’re wondering why you have so much space between text, images or just space that doesn’t need to be there, chances are there is a <p></p> or <h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6></h> somewhere in your HTML code. P-tags will just show up uninvited if you hit enter after a sentence. Instead of enter use shift + enter; this will enter a break tag or <br />, which will move the cursor to the next line without inserting space that has no business being there. Also, instead of using header tags, just resize the text to match the size of your choice. Painless and a lot less hassle.
2. Keep your tables simple. You would be amazed how much havoc a complicated table can wreak. I got a lot of hate from an email I was working on, and could not figure out why until fellow designer Celeste looked at my code and pointed out how ridiculous my table was. I had all kinds of merged cells and spacing issues that looked ok in Dreamweaver, but neither email client or web browser were feeling it.
3. CSS: Embedded and External = Bad, Inline=Good. Styles in e-mail are becoming more and more common, but knowing which ones can or can’t be used is a little tricky. Not all email clients are created equal, and most clients treat CSS like a weird cousin who wasn’t invited to the family reunion but came anyway.
4. Convert Word Document or Copy to Plain Text before pasting into HTML editor. Doing this helps to prevent weird symbols popping up randomly throughout your email. No more question mark apostrophes for you!  Not sure how to do this?  One way that I often do this is to drop the text into Notepad, which is an application listed under your Accessories of your computer (Start | Programs | Accessories).  You can then select Edit/Paste from Notepad and take it right into the HTML editor without any pre-defined formatting that might not otherwise work in an HTML version.

Hope this helps you as much as it helped me!

Peace out!

Abby Alexander | Design Services

One of the most common questions fielded by our Support team goes something like this: "My email looked just like I wanted in the editor and when I tested it, so how come it didn't look the same for my recipients?"

It's a common misconception that HTML is a "standard."  Web developers have known for years that different web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.) interpret HTML in slightly different ways.  I like the way this web design tutorial puts it:

Your Web browser is a translation device. It takes a document written in the HTML language and translates it into a formatted Web page. The result of this translation is a little like giving two human translators a sentence written in French and asking them to translate it into English. Both will get the meaning across, but may not use the same words to do so.

There was a time when browser compatibility was a bigger problem for Web page designers than it is today.  Years ago--during the so-called "browser wars," when Microsoft and Netscape were competing for market share--both browsers added their own proprietary "extensions" to HTML, instructions that only worked in their web browser. The difficulty faced by designers, trying to write HTML that would look good in either IE or Netscape, gave rise to a "Web Standards" movement, which held that:

If Netscape and Microsoft persisted in building ever–more incompatible browsers, the cost of development would continue to skyrocket, tens of millions would find themselves locked out, and the Web would fragment into a tower of digital Babel. In fact, we said, it had already begun to do so.

Adoption of Web Standards by the browser makers has eased the burden of compatibility testing on Web page designers.  But what about those who write HTML for email rather than for Web sites?  Unfortunately, there hasn't been widespread adoption of standards among different email clients (Outlook, Yahoo!, Gmail, etc).  Worse, some of the recommendations of the Web Standards movement aren't fully applicable to the current state of email clients.

For example, one of the principles of the Web Standards movement is that HTML should only be used to define document content and structure, while CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) should be used for formatting.  Therefore, use of HTML tags like <font> for formatting is no longer recommended.  And while the <table> tag still has a purpose, it has nothing to do with aligning and positioning text on the page. But if a designer tries to apply those recommendations to email, they're not going to be pleased with how their message looks in, say, Outlook 2007, or Gmail, or Lotus Notes.

So what's an email designer to do?  May I suggest:

1. Test, test, test.  Set up accounts on the free web-based email services, and use them to preview your email before releasing it to the world.
2. Use tools like EmailAdvisor, which send your email to a seed list of addresses, then provide you with snapshots of how the HTML message looked in each of several popular email clients.  Or...
3. Use a simulator that doesn't require sending to a seed list--this is especially useful when the designer is not the same person who will be triggering the email send (and therefore doesn't have access to a seed list).  Our designers at Delivra find a tool called "Email on Acid" particularly useful.
4. Design for the lowest common denominator.  Our built-in HTML editor purposely does not generate code that uses the newest instructions.  That way, when you create an attractive-looking mailing, you have fewer worries of it breaking in, say, Outlook 2007 due to lack of support for certain CSS features.

Chris Broshears | Product Development

I love this time of year.  The snow has melted away.  The yard is starting to green up.  The flowers are beginning to bloom...  and I receive reminders via email for the lawn care items that need to focus on for this month.

So my inbox is now providing part of my "honey do" list.  And I'm ok with that.
A while back, while purchasing fertilizer, I was asked if I'd like to receive alerts when it is time to apply the different stages, as well as helpful tips and sale items related to that season's lawn care items.  Expectations were set that the email would only be used for this particular program and would not exceed 6 emails a year.

The emails I have received in this series not only advise on the best date for fertilization, but also include:

• Links to calculators for determining how much area I need to cover (especially helpful because my yard is far from a perfect rectangle)
• Tips on proper soil testing (to determine if there is a nutritional deficiency or PH problem.)
• Advice on seasonal mower maintenance (sharpen and balance that blade!)
• Information on proper watering (to build a more drought resistant lawn.)
• And I have the opportunity to join other series, like home maintenance (is it time to replace that air filter or flush the water heater?)

In one quick shot, I'm able to plan out my weekend activities, and I know I can find additional help in their store when I take my blade in for sharpening, pick up my new fertilizer and replace that old leaky hose.  And yes, it makes me more likely to do my shopping with them, even if another hardware chain has the same items a little cheaper.

From a technical standpoint, this email series is rather simple.  It is something that can be re-used over and over without changing much if anything.  But looking at it as a recipient, it's very powerful and delivers exactly what I need when I need it.

We help marketers implement programs like this every day.  And we can help you too.

Kris Dougherty | Director of Operations

According to MarketingSherpa, 19% of online marketing budgets are now allocated to e-mail and 54% of marketers are planning to increase their email budgets in 2010, based on research from Econsultancy and a major ESP.  Companies are obviously noticing the importance of email and how, if done properly, it can strengthen current client relationships and grow your clientele.

A budget should include funds for list building, content creation, new technology, strategy and management reporting.  Don't just send more emails.  The goal is to send emails that are more planned and efficient.

Want a free assessment from a knowledgeable Delivra consultant? Call us at 866-915-9465 or complete the contact us form at http://www.delivra.com/getting-started/request-a-guided-tour.aspx.

Neil Berman| President & CEO

Last week, Delivra exhibited and attended the EEC's Email Experience Evolution Conference in Miami.  The conference was a chance to meet email marketers from around the world and hear their best practice insights for email marketing.  The event was an excellent chance for us to learn what email marketers are doing and what works.  The overriding theme of the event was email best practices and how email can serve as a bridge to multiple channels.  Here is a Top 5 List of what we learned at the event.

The conference opened with Brian Harniman of Kayak speaking about how they have used email marketing to efficiently communicate with travel subscribers around the world.  A relative newcomer to the travel marketplace, Kayak has to attract new customers in a highly competitive marketplace, but also do so efficiently given their size and resources.  A veteran to email marketing, Brian outlined how Kayak has built their email marketing efforts through the use of testing.  He emphasized that testing is one of the most important methods to employ to ensure you are engaging your audience regardless of size.

As the conference progressed, there were a number of helpful sessions outlining email best practices in testing, design, optimization, list management, incorporating new medias along with numerous case study presentations from companies successfully using email to generate ROI for their organizations.  The key takeaways from these sessions for me were:

Sometimes the largest list is not always best. The key is to ensure that you have engaged recipients and to do that, email marketers often have to trim their lists for best results.

Building a list is easiest when you engage your audience. Mailing to recipients that have requested your email is the BEST way to drive action from your email campaigns.

Testing is probably one of the most underutilized resources that an email marketer has to use. Testing for subject line, content and design are all important and should not be overlooked.  While this effort does take a little additional time, it can increase the effectiveness of your email campaigns ten fold.

Measurement of email success should be measured at every stage throughout the campaign. It is so much more than simply opens and click-through rates.  How effective is your email in driving action?  In driving results? Measure that and you will learn ways to make improvements and changes with every email campaign that will meet what your audience wants.

With all of the various methods to market, email STILL is one of the more effective ones out there. New medias are having an impact on email campaigns, but only if they are integrated throughout the marketing strategy.  Social media, video, rich media landing pages and other methods are all ways to further engage your audience and grow your list.  However, they cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather as part of a whole.

There you have it, Email Evolution 2010 in a nutshell.  Surprisingly, even with the wide spectrum of attendees, email marketers are all facing many of the same issues.  The takeaways may seem simple and common sense, but remember that when employed efficiently and integrated throughout your marketing strategy, they will drive results.  Which is after all why you try to engage your audience through your email.

Wrapping up the conference, Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon led a lively session titled "Email Idol" where a team of expert email designers evaluated two email campaigns (one for USA Funds and the other for National Geographic).  In their review, the team was challenged to review the email campaigns, redesign the email layout, call to action and update any content to ensure a higher success rate.  Interestingly enough some of the improvements made to the winning emails were simple changes, yet they changed the impact of each email entirely.  The team recommended the use of pre-headers in each email to ensure that regardless of rendering, the email's purpose is clearly understood.  Simplicity is better in both design and content.  Using too much information can often cause confusion and dilute the call-to-action within the campaign.  Keep it simple whether it is in your navigation, look and feel or even in your text.  Test multiple versions of a campaign with a sample of your audience to see what messaging and imagery speaks to your audience.  Mighty Interactive led the Email Idol face-off with clean and simple design that illustrated that less is truly more.

Closing the conference, Don Shula spoke to the attendees and covered the importance of setting and achieving goals. During his entertaining presentation Shula outlined his gameplan for success.  His quote,  "Strive for perfection and settle for excellence" couldn't be more relevant to marketers today.

Last, but certainly not least, Ali Swerdlow of the Email Experience Council awarded the 2010 EEC People's Choice Award to Mighty Interactive.  Congratulations to a clear leader in email marketing design and best practices!  To view additional coverage of the conference, read The Email Guide's Wrapup Report , the Retail Email Blog, or view the Twitter feed at #EEC10.

Excellent conference with so many resources available to marketers.  I hope this wrap-up provides you a glimpse of the event along with a wealth of actionable information you can use to improve your marketing efforts.  Looking forward to next year's event.

Carissa Newton | Marketing

Our own Carissa Newton, tweeting from the EEC conference in Miami, mentions a case study presentation in which it was mentioned that Publisher's Clearing House improved their email marketing ROI by removing inactive subscribers from their mailing list and divided the remainder into "actionable" segments for targeting.

I'm not at the conference, so I don't have all the details, but I'm not surprised by the result.  It's a great example of a paradox--that which runs counter to our intuition and so seemingly can't be true, but is.

In my field of software development the most famous paradox is known as Brooks' Law.  Joel Spolsky recently explained it in his Inc. magazine column:

The cost of overcommunication within organizations was fleshed out by Fred Brooks in his 1975 book, The Mythical Man-Month. Brooks helped run the OS/360 project at IBM, building a giant operating system for the company's mainframes. In those days, computers were large, room-size, water-cooled machines, sometimes with a massive 256,000 bytes of main memory. OS/360 was probably the largest software project ever attempted to that point. And it was monumentally late.

Every time some aspect of the project fell behind schedule, IBM assigned a few more people to the task. And what Brooks noticed, which still surprises people, is that this didn't work. His observation came to be known as Brooks' Law: Adding people to a late project tends to make it run later still.

Read that sentence again, because it's not intuitive. Brooks discovered that adding people to a project will put it further behind schedule.

The reason it doesn't work to add people to a project is because adding resources also adds communication overhead.  A team of one person has zero communication overhead.  A team of two only has to communicate with each other.  Each new person added to the project has to be brought up to speed and put in communication with the other team members, to make sure their efforts are coordinated.  Soon, the hoped-for productivity gains of adding new people are erased by the overhead of keeping them all on the same page.

Adding people to a late project seems like it should get the job done faster, but it doesn't.  Email marketing is very similar: it seems like you would get the maximum ROI by mailing the maximum number of recipients.   But the more addresses you mail, the greater the likelihood that you're mailing uninterested recipients whose lack of engagement will affect how the ISPs prioritize delivery of your mail.  And the more you send to disengaged recipients, the more likely they are to hit the "Report Spam" button, damaging your deliverability further.

So what if you mailed fewer people?  What if, instead of sending a "blast" intended to appeal to the lowest common denominator among the gazillion subscribers who ever signed up for your email, you focused on those who actually still seem to interact with your mailings, and tested to find out how you can most effectively target them based on their demographics and behaviors?

It wasn't a popular idea with PCH's salespeople, reports Kristin Hersant.   And it won't be popular with yours, either.  Heck, it's not always popular among my own salespeople here at Delivra, since we're paid based on the number of emails that you send.

It's unpopular because it's not intuitive.  But just because an idea isn't intuitive, doesn't make it wrong, as Fred Brooks demonstrated to software engineers over 30 years ago.

Chris Broshears | Product Development

Here at Delivra, we are always asked for best practice tips, insight, and advice.  By far the most prevalent question I hear is, "How do we build our list?"  There are a number of ways to build your list, but the key is to treat your web site as the hub of activity. 

For years marketers have been trying to get people to subscribe to their lists using various tactics.  The most effective organizations are ones that setup a web of connections that all point to a hub.  It all depends upon your audience and how you communicate to the public, but all marketing tactics can easily point to one central location to allow organizations to gather permission.  Here are some examples:

• Advertising:  Whether you are advertising in print publication or online, you can easily incorporate mention of your website.  This will help in a number of ways.  First, it helps you measure the effectiveness of a particular ad campaign based upon the response you see.  Second, it provides a landing ground for visitors to learn more about who you are and what you do.  And finally third, provides you unlimited opportunities to gather opt-in's throughout the web site.
• Direct Mail:  While direct mail is likely a higher cost initiative to email marketing, it can be used quite effectively to build your list of followers.  Use a postcard campaign with a call-to-action that drives traffic to your hub/web site.
• Social Media:  Many organizations are spreading the word virally with social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Corporate Blogs.  By doing this, the organization is increasing their brand recognition, but also driving traffic to that hub/web site.  Check out our Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter Pages....all driving traffic to our site.

The number one way to gain subscribers is to point all of your marketing tactics to one central source.  Point them to your web site and from there you can easily incorporate buttons, icons, and links with a call-to-action for visitors to receive information from you.  I see this work well with all types of businesses both B2C and B2B.  Try making your web site the hub and point all of your activities to that hub, I guarantee you will begin to see your list grow organically!  Want to learn more?  Sign up to receive the "Strategies to Build Your List" Whitepaper.

Carissa Newton | Marketing