Posted by: Mackenzie Ross, Marketing Coordinator
There is no clear best practice, or set-in-stone rule, as to when to send an email broadcast. That’s because it all depends on your specific audience. Every audience’s email-checking habits are different. For example, a B2B audience might check mail throughout the day while stay-at-home moms might only check email at night. There are, however, different steps you can take to zero in on your audience’s preferred send time.
Get Started: Check your site analytics and note the busiest times. You can use this information to tell when your customers are their most active or are more engaged at their computers. This may be easier to nail down for a business audience, given that you know the work day’s approximate start time, lunch hour and end time.
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Posted by: Megan Amick, Marketing Coordinator
Email is a great tactic for qualified lead generation and for delivering traffic to your website because these visitors have already expressed interest in your offering. So, it is important to track emails to see which tactics within your emails are the most effective. The best way to track your email campaigns is to create tags within each email and use Google Analytics to provide measurable statistics. Tags are created by inserting additional traceable information into your email marketing campaign links. Using the Google Analytics URL Builder you can create these tags to track email campaign information.
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Posted by: Christy Roth, Project Manager
Most marketers are in the same spot: do more with less money. As you’re facing this challenge, here are three things that you can do to improve the efficiency and results of your lead generation program:
#1 – Stay Visible Even in a Tough Economy
Through these tough times it is more important than ever to stay visible to prospects whether or not your competitors are doing the same. There are many cost-effective and even free opportunities to help us accomplish this. Use social media and social networking sites to your advantage. Even though it may be out of your comfort zone, consider being present on tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, and more. In addition, if you are planning online media buys for 2009, work to negotiate tactics that include freebies such as e-newsletters and ad units. All of these things help keep you in front of potential leads.
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Posted by: Rosemary Riley, Senior Copywriter
If our recent series of posts on e-mail marketing hasn’t convinced you yet, check out these findings, courtesy of an eMarketer article from October 15th based on MarketingSherpa research:
Highlights of the full story include:
- E-mail ad spending was up 15% to $230 million during the first half of 2008 compared with the first half of 2007.
- As of Q1 2008, online marketers in the US said they were least likely to decrease e-mail marketing spending in case of a recession. Just 5% said they would cut their spending on e-mail if times got tight, compared with 41% who said they would cut display ads.
It seems e-mail isn’t going anywhere… at least not yet.
Posted by: Caitlin Diehl, Marketing Coordinator
With businesses investing more and more in interactive marketing efforts, it seems like there are hundreds of new e-newsletters popping up every day. How do you know which ones to subscribe to? Which ones are helpful, and which ones will only take up space in your inbox? Below is a list of some of my favorite e-newsletters available today and details on how they manage to stay on top with new competitors emerging all of the time.
· MediaPost’s SearchINSIDER
o INSIDER guarantees good content in a short, easy-to-read format. The blog is available through free subscription. It is sent to your inbox every day and provides valuable information about the search engine industry. Topics range from tips on word-of-mouth branding to social media marketing and even Google engine updates.
http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/
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Posted by: Rosemary Riley, Senior Copywriter
Over the past month, we’ve been covering topics related to email - from benchmarks to best practices. Now MarketingSherpa has issued a new Guide with research in which marketers reveal top strategies for email during an economic downturn.
They offer a timely, special fourteen-page PDF as a free excerpt from the Guide. It includes:
- Stats showing email’s resurgence as a marketing tactic during the economic downturn
- Marketers’ attitudes toward email budgets and correlation with performance
- An eyetracking heatmap on how to overcome image-blocking
- And an outline of opportunities for international email marketing read more »
Posted by: Kelly Hall, Account Manager
When you’re mobilizing to create an email campaign for lead nurturing there are two very important considerations to make. Number 1, timing.
We’ve all gotten them – the automatic email you receive, after registering for something from a company, thanking you for your interest. Great, right? Definitely. But what about when you get another email, pushing you to take action less than a day later? And they just keep coming, every day? All of a sudden you’re not quite as interested in what that company has to tell you. Instead, you may be tempted to unsubscribe, or worse, put them on your blacklist. We, as marketers, need to walk the fine line of staying top of mind for our prospects, and simultaneously not being annoying. read more »
Posted by: Janessa Seewald, Account Manager
Third party lists or internal database? How often? What day of the week and time of day? What results can I expect to see (open rate, click-through rate, conversion rates, etc.)? Marketers face many questions when planning, implementing and managing an email program. Here’s your chance to get some answers. Post any questions you have in the Comments area, and a qualified online marketing expert from 90octane will be in touch.
Of course, the industry you’re in will affect your campaigns, but there are still certain best practices and benchmarks that serve as useful guidelines. read more »
Posted by: Megan Amick, Marketing Coordinator
Email is an important part of your online marketing mix. Even with recent developments in the online sphere that have the potential to impact email popularity, social networking in particular, email is the most popular digital communication medium. Check out this blog entry from Oracle AppsLab on the subject.
In order to increase your open and click-through rates, as well as overall email campaign effectiveness, here’s some helpful information, which I’ve summarized from research by Lyris EmailLabs:
· Most Popular Day to Send: Tuesday is the most popular day to send emails with 25.4% of respondents noting that they send emails out on this day. The second most popular day is Wednesday, which also happens to be the most popular day for emails to be opened. read more »
Posted by: Neil Broome, Marketing Coordinator
Email is a very cost effective tool that reaches thousands of people at once and creates qualified leads for your business. Before sending out an email, be aware of some basic email metrics that you should use to track your email campaign’s success.
Sends
-The number of email addresses in the list you’re sending to.
Bounce Rate
-The total number of emails that were returned as undeliverable divided by the total number of emails sent. Multiply the number by 100 to express the result as a percentage. This helps you gauge the cleanliness of your database and is an important metric because each time you send an email to an undeliverable address, you risk being labeled as spam. After each email send, check the bounced addresses and delete them from your database.
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