email | Internet Marketing Blog

The rules of email engagement

Bulk email is dead. OK, some people might still be doing it, but does that mean it works as well as it could? Just look in your own junk folder to find the many emails you have opted into but no longer reach your inbox.

So why is bulk email on the way out? Well, let’s consider what the top three email ISPs have to say...

by Matthew Kelleher 14 January 2010 09:54am 1 comment

Charles Nicholls of SeeWhy on driving your web conversion with retargeting

Reach for your ecommerce buzzword bingo card and you'll see 'website optimisation' and 'conversion analysis' bang in the middle. Behind the industry buzz there is a genuine commercial challenge:how do you turn your visitors into customers and increase the profitability of your web channel? Retargeting is one technique to help deliver results.

Retargeting is the process by which a website owner contacts a customer who has abandoned their conversion (whatever that conversion might be) in order to continue the communication and encourage that customer to take further action. Retargeting is more popular in the US than the UK. However, UK companies are starting to wake up to the commercial value that retargeting via email can play in their website optimisation.

Having had the opportunity to work with and learn from the brains behind SeeWhy, I asked founder and conversion optimisation blogger Charles Nicholls to share his expertise on the value of retargeting for UK web owners.

by James Gurd 27 October 2009 10:43am 4 comments

Customer care in online retail: are email and the phone overrated?

If you're an online retailer, offering email customer care is a best practice that few ignore. And many, myself included, believe that providing customer care by phone is very desirable. Anecdotally, I have a good friend who runs an e-commerce website and he claims that his orders dropped significantly when he (temporarily) stopped taking orders and providing assistance by phone.

But be that as it may, a new study conducted by Loudhouse Research for CRM provider RightNow Technologies suggests that when it comes to customer care in online retail leading up to a purchase, both email and phone are overrated.

by Patricio Robles 22 October 2009 09:24am 10 comments

What happens in Vegas: Nielsen Usability Week (day one)

Nerves kick in as I weave my way past rows of fat people munching on fried chicken and simultaneously shoving coins into slot machines. I’m looking for Caesar’s Palace Conference Center but all I can see is a giant bust of Nero and rows of busy blackjack tables. It’s 8am.

At 9am, having eaten my own way through a Vegas breakfast buffet the length of a tube carriage, I’m ready to present six hours of brand new material onhow to write cost-effective customer care copy at Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Week.

by Catherine Toole 15 October 2009 10:30am 3 comments

Email is alive and well. And helping your social media campaign.

The Wall Street Journal may have declared "The End of the Email Era" this week, but that obituary went live far too soon.

Email is still alive and kicking. Beyond the fact that email usage still continues to grow, it is also a key factor in all of the more recent social tools that are seeing explosive growth. And according to a new study by Pontiflex, marketers are finding consumers much more willing to share information via email than social media, meaning that email is still an integral tool in marketing campaigns.

by Meghan Keane 14 October 2009 21:10pm 9 comments

Don't close the door on the way out

Recently looking for contracts and jobs here (a long, long story) I noticed the very heavy competition for my viewing eyes from job boards. To differentiate they all had the best email list or an RSS feed for my favourite harvester.

This process has given me a clear path into which sites I'd use again. Those sites are definitely not the ones I'm still trying to get rid of now. So why does this matter? Brand, recommendation, customer experience.

by Julian Grainger 28 September 2009 10:11am 0 comments

Why 'quality not quantity' matters online

Too often online marketing is characterised by quantity rather than quality. There's a pervasive idea that quality is too hard but sheer volume will have the same effect.

Let me give you a shining example of what I mean. I was recently browsing a forum when I found, without a doubt, the dumbest attempt at marketing I've seen in a while.

by Kevin Gibbons 25 September 2009 10:06am 4 comments

Are retailers making it easy to unsubscribe from emails?

If people want to unsubscribe from emails, it should be made as easy as possible, as the alternative for many customers is using the report spam option, something which can have an adverse effect on sender reputations with ISPs.

I signed up for emails from some of the top UK retailers, and have been seeing how easy (or otherwise) they are making it for customers to opt out of marketing emails...

by Graham Charlton 22 September 2009 12:36pm 13 comments

10 ways to avoid spam in all its forms

Despite all of the tools that are brought to bear in the War on Spam, spammers continue to ply their trade successfully. The most prolific reach millions upon millions of people and are adept at adjusting to new weapons that aim to shut them down.

The truth is that defeating spam doesn't require more technology but changes in human nature. Here are 10 common sense ways to avoid spam that are forgotten or overlooked far more often than we'd like to believe.

by Patricio Robles 15 September 2009 12:01pm 2 comments

What can email marketing learn from Twitter, blogs and other social media channels?

Just had a “conversation” with our shiny new marketing manager of the benefits of social vs email marketing. Wish I had a tape recorder (doesn’t that sound dated, hmm iPhone anyone?) to hand as I think it encapsulates the position a lot of marketing managers find themselves in...

by Marc Munier 18 August 2009 11:54am 10 comments