Email marketers must look beyond CTR and open rates
A key takeaway from E-consultancy's Email Marketing Roundtable last week was the growing need for marketers to look beyond traditional email success metrics when looking at their email strategy.
Top ten viral marketing mistakes
Entertainment marketing outfit AzACreations has come out with a ‘How To’ guide on advergaming – not a new area but one in which campaigns still see widely varying degrees of success.
The report provides some useful tips on how to make the games themselves grab users’ attention. These include: setting targets for players, clear rules, allowing feedback, and enabling in-game characters to grow and develop.
It also offers ten reasons why viral campaigns fail, which we'll list after the jump...
Do your users know their RSS from their elbow?
Whilst we get all excited about social software and Web 2.0, does the average web user care at all? Should they?
Email marketing worst practice list - exhibit A
At our recent Email Marketing Roundtable one of the attendees said: "I hear the phrase 'best practice' email marketing bandied about, and everyone nods sagely. I'm sure some people could give a definitive list, but where is that list? And is there a list of 'worst practice'?"
I had a little dose of worst practice this morning, something worth adding to any email marketer's Things Not To Do Under Any Circumstances Because You Will Have Angry, Disbelieving Customers list.
Tips on B2B email newsletter content
Mark Brownlow at Email Marketing Reports has published some useful tips on creating quality content for B2B email newsletters.
Mark has eight years' experience in writing various newsletters and his article contains 31 tips in total: 10 on managing your content, plus another 21 to give you ideas for your newsletter’s content.
Amazon launches the Spam Cube in the UK
The Spam Cube is a piece of anti-spam hardware which is being launched through Amazon in the UK, designed to sit between a broadband modem and your PC/laptop, scanning incoming email for unwanted messages.
This hardware will retail at around £100, but the real question is why internet users should have to pay for hardware to deal with this problem. Isn’t this a problem which could be dealt with some other way? You know, ISPs, that sort of thing...?
Do eRetailers need to use discounts in their email marketing?
I’m in the process of moving house at the moment. In my infinite wisdom, after spending my life’s savings on the bricks and mortar, it is the turn of my own wallet to finance a range of home improvements.
To help in this arduous task, I’ve signed up for a number of relevant newsletters including B&Q, Screwfix Direct, Comet and more.
Strikingly, the majority of the email promotion focuses on discounts and offering deals...
BT pioneers new ‘spam-buster’ system
BT hopes to take a lead in the battle against the scourge of spam on the internet by introducing a new system designed to filter out spam before it reaches their customer’s PCs.
BT’s Content Forensics system, devised by StreamShield Networks, will scan millions of emails every day, alerting them to the location of spam related problems on its network.
Spamhaus domain name under threat from US court ruling
The Spamhaus project, a UK based website which monitors the activities of spammers, may lose its domain name due to legal action in the US.
The legal action was taken by US email marketing company e360 Insight, who were aggrieved at being blacklisted as a spammer by Spamhaus.
New email metrics released, personalisation worth the effort
US email marketing company MailerMailer released its Email Marketing Metrics Report this week, revealing practices to help businesses increase returns from their email campaigns.
Key factors highlighted in the report include the use of shorter subject lines, personalisation of emails, and targeted, well-managed lists. Campaigns using these strategies achieved higher then average open and click rates.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
