email | Internet Marketing Blog

Who is responsible for deliverability? The ESP or the mailer?

Recent meetings with clients and prospects has raised this issue to the top of my mind: who exactly is responsible for deliverability?

And by ‘responsible’, who carries the can if it all goes wrong?

by Matthew Kelleher 21 February 2013 10:10am 2 comments

Seven tools to optimize your email marketing for mobile

Here's a huge stat that hasn't been getting much attention lately: nearly half of all marketing emails are now being read on mobile devices.

This is a really important trend, so I'll repeat it in a different way. When you send your next email campaign, more customers will read it on smartphones than in a web browser (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.).

Which begs the question: are your emails optimized for opens, reads and click-throughs from all these mobile users?

by Peter Tanham 04 February 2013 12:09pm 2 comments

Whoopsy daisy log-ins: a further look at good and bad micro-copywriting

I wrote a piece about micro-copywriting earlier this year, and in my ignorance thought this was a new concept, and that I may even have coined the term.

Shows you what I know. It’s a term that’s been used for a number of years, and great examples have been collected already, e.g. this Flickr Microcopy Group (thanks to Doug Kessler for pointing to this).

As the last post was popular I thought I’d bring together some more examples. So here’s a look at some micro-copy from the log-in error messages of four big players in the tech world.

These were easy to collect as I didn’t have to remember my passwords. In the end I found that although this could be an area where it’s not worth trifling with a user’s frustration, there’s still a lot to be improved upon.

And although looking at some of these fine-grained areas could be seen as the pedantry of a dilettante, I like to think of these little things as a microcosm of brand identity.

by Ben Davis 04 February 2013 10:52am 2 comments

Why does customer service suck online?

If you have ever paid for anything online you will know that web customer service sucks.

As soon as anything goes wrong and you need support, the quality of service almost always takes a turn for the worse.

by Paul Boag 25 January 2013 09:07am 10 comments

Personalization key for email in 2013

Though email has been with us for the lifetime of most digital marketers, I think it has the potential to be an exciting space, if marketers are able to look at it as a new and exciting channel just as they think of social media.

Agencies are beginning to merge email and social as they see personalization at the core of the success of both channels. This is one area we'll see grow in 2013 but what else is in store for us when it comes to email?

by Heather Taylor 22 January 2013 16:45pm 2 comments

What do you love or hate about email marketing? Tell us!

For the past six years, Econsultancy and Adestra have been asking marketers on both the client and agency side for their opinion on what is happening within email marketing.

This year we are doing the same again, launching our seventh survey to take the pulse of email marketing and to see what those at the coalface are doing to get the best results of their efforts.

Those taking part in the Email Marketing Industry Census will get a free copy of the report, worth £250/$400.

by Andrew Warren-Payne 10 January 2013 09:43am 2 comments

Email is most important channel for driving Christmas sales: infographic

Email is considered to be the most important channel for driving online sales this Christmas, according to a survey of marketing professionals by eCircle.

More than 40% of respondents said email is ‘very important’ for driving sales, followed by SEO and SEM (both 33%).

In comparison, social media is considered to be the fourth most important channel with 20%.

This tallies with data from the Econsultancy / Adestra Email Marketing Census.

It shows that more than two-thirds of companies (70%) rate email marketing as ‘excellent’ (23%) or ‘good’ (47%) in terms of return on investment. While this represents a slight fall from 2011 (72%), this is still a higher ROI than any other digital marketing channel except search engine optimisation (79%).

by David Moth 19 December 2012 10:40am 5 comments

10 things you can do to make me love your emails

To all keyholders of the company spam cannon, before causing immense collateral damage by firing off emails that don't fit with the lovely idea of your brand, follow these ten pointers and, with me at least, you'll be guaranteed a pair of eyes.

by Ben Davis 14 November 2012 11:17am 16 comments

How to make an infographic online: case study

Many moons ago, in April 2012, I wrote a humorous post about how not to make an infographic, where I enthusiastically chastised a selection of misguided visualisations.

A few people chortled and applauded at the time but many others requested a more positive follow-up post featuring helpful tips on how to actually create and promote an infographic, with personal examples.

Fair enough - and since then I've been involved in a few projects that fit the bill with the most recent example being an infographic for Snowskool, a company that specialises in ski instructor courses.

The infographic was created as a collaboration with the talented Snowskool team and released two weeks ago on Visual.ly, Facebook, and the Snowskool blog: Myskool.

by Michael Wilkins 14 November 2012 10:15am 4 comments