When we hear the word "blog," we automatically think of a personal journal posted online for the world to read, like a public diary. In the short time since they've appeared on the scene, blogs have morphed into an essential business tool for leading-edge marketers.

Take Symmetricom, for example. The company, the world's leading provider of atomic clocks, and precision devices and equipment, is using blogs to keep in touch with a decentralized sales force that includes 325 representatives and distributors scattered throughout the world.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:34 AM  |  Permalink

Proactive, permission-based e-mail marketing programs are the foundation of successful digital marketing. One of the best ways to ensure success is to build a relationship with existing customers and prospects. The best e-marketers know their in-house lists are their most valuable marketing databases. They comprise marketers' best customers and prospects, those who prequalified themselves and demonstrate interest in the company's services and products.

I bet you all have at least one in-house list available to you. You probably can't remember the last time you did anything with this list to re-qualify it, deleted old names and profiled existing members with some additional information, such as title, purchasing authority, and installed base.

Give your in-house e-mail and direct marketing lists a spring-cleaning. Re-qualifying everyone is one of the most important projects you can undertake. You should do it every six months, at least.

Tips for building a better in-house mailing list.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:30 AM  |  Permalink

How many news stories do you read that are like this? These blacklist wars can last forever. One company complains about spam coming from a certain IP range, blocks it and tells the owner of the offending IP blocks to clean up its act. Meanwhile, the spammers who have been utilizing those IPs to send spam have moved on to a new IP address and are continuing to send.

Folks, blacklists don't work for exactly the reason I just gave. As soon as a spammer's IP is blocked, he gets a new one and continues to send. Meanwhile, the poor guy who inherits that IP from a spammer quickly finds that he's on a blacklist and can't get legitimate email delivered. Occasionally, you'll see a drastic action like the one in the article I linked above - an entire ISP or even a whole country gets blacklisted and IT folks and legit ISP customers are left holding the bag.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:23 AM  |  Permalink

Last year, advertisers watched the progression of the CAN-SPAM Act with mild interest, only to discover to their surprise that much of the compliance burden and exposure now fell on them. And also that the law failed to differentiate between B-to-B versus B-to-C campaigns. While the law is a positive step forward for advertisers and legitimate marketers, it has added new dimensions for advertisers planning and implementing B-to-B email campaigns and increased the importance of the advertiser-marketing partner relationship.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 8:50 AM  |  Permalink

A Jupiter study showed that about one in six marketers continued to send messages for more than 10 business days to people who unsubscribed from their lists, violating the recent Can Spam Act. Separately, several spam traffic studies show that the percentage of email that is spam has leveled off or is rising at a much slower rate than before
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:32 PM  |  Permalink

New Hampshire-based Sendmails adopted a distributed computing model - hiring out unused computer cycles of tens of thousands of people who download its software - to send emails from many locations, thus avoiding spam filters. The company lays claim to 60,000 computers, allowing them to send 2 million messages simultaneously. Downloaders get paid half a dollar per computing hour used. Anti-spam advocates are agog
Posted by: DTB at 9:31 PM  |  Permalink

One benefit of e-mail is its ability to cost-effectively deliver targeted information to customers and prospects. Are you taking full advantage? Based on an experience I had last week, many companies aren't.

That's when I celebrated my birthday. I was surprised how few companies I receive e-mail from acknowledged it. Those who did were lacking. So following, some ideas taken from client strategies I've developed to make a customer's birthday a branding and revenue-generating experience.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:29 PM  |  Permalink

My last column covered skin and body care company Philosophy's acquisition of online customers. I looked at how Philosophy drives customers to its Web site and demonstrates the value of membership so visitors sign up for its mailing list.

Today, let's look at how Philosophy is keeping those people happy and looking forward to the company's communications.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:28 PM  |  Permalink

Think of marketing message relevancy and the recipient as rungs on a ladder. The lowest rung is an untargeted offer sent to an list of unknown recipients. The highest is the most targeted offer, sent to the recipient most likely to respond.

The lowest rung nearly always has the lowest response rate, lowest effective CPM, highest unsubscribe rate, and most complaints. The highest rung is the opposite; it boasts the highest response rate, highest CPM, and lowest unsubscribe rate.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:26 PM  |  Permalink

When we hear the word "blog," we automatically think of a personal journal posted online for the world to read, like a public diary. In the short time since they've appeared on the scene, blogs have morphed into an essential business tool for leading-edge marketers.

Take Symmetricom, for example. The company, the world's leading provider of atomic clocks, and precision devices and equipment, is using blogs to keep in touch with a decentralized sales force that includes 325 representatives and distributors scattered throughout the world.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:25 PM  |  Permalink

In a survey of 98 online merchants’ e-mail marketing strategies during Q4 of last year, The E-Tailing Group found mass merchants, home-and-garden and apparel retailers to be the most aggressive in using targeted e-mail to spur last-minute and impulse buying among their regular customers. "In most cases, it’s more about loyalty than prospecting, because the end result is you wind up with more loyal customers," says E-Tailing Group president Lauren Freedman.

But she cautions that retailers need to be careful about the frequency and content of e-mail to assure that it’s suiting the interests of their customers. "There can be a fine line between sending something that’s relevant and scaring loyal customers away," Freedman says.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:23 PM  |  Permalink

A study by Jupiter Research found that a third of marketing emails tracked weren't compliant with the federal Can-Spam law. In fact, one-quarter of marketers studied were considered at high risk because they didn't remove opt-out email addresses frequently enough.

The reason for this is that they are not using an ASP based email program that allows for list management, bounce tracking and unsubscribing by the subscriber.

Here is a company that provides a great tool.

eROI email marketing Tools Posted by: DTB at 9:19 PM  |  Permalink

The e-tailing group signed up to receive e-mails from 98 retail sites at the end of 2003 and found that the number of retailers studied in a specific category did not necessarily coincide with the volume of e-mail received by those retailers.
In fact, mass marketers and books and music retailers both averaged the highest amount of e-mails sent per week at 1.6.

The e-tailing group received 1,000 e-mail messages during the time period of 6 October through 28 December in 2003. Other types of retail outlets that claimed the highest percentage of total e-mails received for the study were apparel outlets and home and garden outlets claiming 16% and 15%, respectively. Meanwhile, gifting and drugstore retailers represented a respective 14% and 11% of the total merchants studied by the e-tailing group, but each contributed to less than 10% of the volume of e-mails received.

Of course, the e-tailing group notes that an increased number of e-mails were sent by retailers as the holiday season approached. The research firm also warns retailers that sending too many messages can be overkill to consumers, as targeted messages and relevant content are still the most important factors for successful e-mail marketing.

E-Mail can be an extremely valuable tool for retailers. Shop.org and BizRate reported in November 2003 that 74% of US retailers found e-mail the most successful online ad vehicle to drive shoppers online. Posted by: DTB at 9:19 PM  |  Permalink

SUMMARY: Arrgh! Harbor Freight, the biggest tool retailer in the US, had more than 300,000 AOL names on its house list. Not one of these eager tool customers received the Harbor Freights' weekly alerts they'd requested. Why?
AOL's filters decided they didn't like the HTML format the messages were in.

Marketer Martin Vrieze switched to text-only, and voila!his messages got through, and his sales went up by 20 percentage points within 30 days.

If you suspect your HTML isn't getting through (B-to-B emailers to the corporate world also have this problem) you should test text-only to your non-opens. But, first read this article to avoid design pitfalls we've seen too many mailers fall into:
Read Till May 2nd >> Posted by: DTB at 9:18 PM  |  Permalink

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that nearly 75 percent or 204.3 million Americans have access to the Internet from home. In comparison, Internet access penetration hovered around 66 percent in February 2003, rising nine percentage points year-over-year.

"In just a handful of years, online access has managed to gain the type of traction that took other mediums decades to achieve," said Kenneth Cassar, director of strategic analysis, Nielsen//NetRatings.

Women represent a higher proportion of Web surfers, with eighty-two percent or 34.6 million women between the ages of 35-54 accessing the Internet at home. Men in this age group posted an 80 percent access penetration rate, accounting for nearly 32.4 million surfers. Seventy-seven percent of females in the 25-34 age group are Web surfers, while 75.6 percent of males in this age bracket have Internet access.

"Women make the majority of purchases and household decisions, so it's no surprise that they are utilizing the Internet as a tool for daily living," said Cassar. Posted by: DTB at 9:17 PM  |  Permalink

Taking a Second Shot at Spammers Wired points out that, while the Can Spam Act did pre-empt existing state laws, it didn't set out to pre-empt all future state regulations. A little-noticed clause toward the bottom explicitly allows states to regulate spam based on "falsity and deception." This would allow states to regulate the sort of spam that the Direct Marketing Association worries about - the small operation, low-to-the-ground emailers using false headers - but disallow the states from regulating what everyone else in the world considers spam: unsolicited commercial email.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:15 PM  |  Permalink

Email Service Provider Coalition, Interactive Advertising Bureau, and TRUSTe Agree Registry Will Not Reduce Spam

Today, three leading interactive organizations that jointly represent a combined membership of over 1,500 industry leaders announced their discord with the concept of a Do-Not-Email (DNE) registry, currently being reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission. The Email Service Provider Coalition (ESPC), Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and TRUSTe believe that a DNE registry will not reduce the amount of spam plaguing consumers and will impede legitimate marketing efforts of many businesses.

Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:37 PM  |  Permalink

Email list brokers who went to cost-per-action deals in the past few years have mostly succumbed to the temptation to over-use those lists. As a result, they've burned out the inventory at exactly the time when cost per thousand impressions (CPM) deals are now losing their attraction due to problems with getting a high percentage of those emails delivered past various forms of spam filters. These factors are among those pushing list buyers to ask for a cost-per-delivered-impression, putting the liabilities of delivery failures and list burnout on the party that can do something about it. DM News reports.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:35 PM  |  Permalink

Delivery. Delivery. Delivery.

Deliverability and "false positives" (permission-based e-mail filtered erroneously) are a top concern among legitimate marketers and their consumers. Statistics from Return Path, an e-mail hygiene and delivery monitoring service, estimate the amount of permission e-mail not delivered to inboxes increased to 18.7 percent in H2 2003, a 1.7 percent increase over H1 2003.

What's a legitimate, permission-based marketer to do? This column provides guidance on some of the key tools and intelligence every legitimate marketer should investigate and understand in an increasingly complex delivery environment when seeking to work with an e-mail service provider.
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:59 PM  |  Permalink

A column about a year ago discussed emerging opportunities in the tween and teen market. Most direct marketers tend to shy away from these groups, believing they don't have credit cards and therefore aren't viable direct response prospects.

Well, a lot's changed. Teens now represent a viable direct response audience. A June 2003 Harris Interactive study shows the ability to buy online is no longer a major concern. Some key stats from the study and Jupiter Research (a Jupitermedia Corp. division):
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:58 PM  |  Permalink

Have you gotten into a business-to-business (B2B) e-mail rut? Time to take a fresh approach to keep your readers' attention and view rates high across your campaigns.

Here are some of the best approaches we've seen lately:
Read Article >> Posted by: DTB at 9:57 PM  |  Permalink