Start the new year ahead of the game by planning your content now

By: Unknown on 21:37

With 2015 just around the corner, now is an excellent time to prepare your email marketing calendar. Creating an email marketing calendar may not be high on your list of priorities right now, but it should be. That’s because it is crucial that you stay top of mind with your target audience! Without careful planning, however, email marketing can quickly become an unmanageable task. By getting organized now, it will be easier to stay on track, measure your progress and meet your goals in the upcoming year.

The best place to start thinking about 2015 is to benchmark your success against 2014.

If you regularly measured your progress, review your analytics, such as the number of click-through and open rates. Note what content worked best and the days and times that generated the most click-through and opens. If you haven’t measured your performance, try to look back at the year as a whole and evaluate your progress (and put analytics on your to-do list for 2015)!If you set goals last year, ask yourself if you met them and note what led to your success. If you didn’t meet your goals, make note of where your efforts fell short.

via:www.inman.com

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Free Shipping Day Email Marketing Insights

By: Unknown on 21:33

This holiday season we’ve examined email marketing activity and trends on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Green Monday. Now it’s time to look at Free Shipping Day. This is a shopping occasion that’s in decline. Unlike last year when email activity on Free Shipping Day exceeded Green Monday and rivaled other important shopping days, this year email activity on Dec. 18 was very average. Of the more than 100 major retailers that we track, 73% sent their subscribers at least one promotional email on Free Shipping Day. That’s down from 77% last year.

Perhaps more importantly, only 9% of the promotional emails sent by retailers on Free Shipping Day mentioned it by name, which is a sign that the “Free Shipping Day” brand is weak. And it’s easy to understand why that would be the case. Free shipping offers are plentiful throughout the holiday season indeed, throughout the year. So a day that trumpets a promotion that’s very common on other days is surely confusing to consumers. 

via:www.emailmarketingrules.com

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Email marketing trends on major shopping occasions throughout the holiday season

By: Unknown on 03:54

We’ve been examining email marketing trends on major shopping occasions throughout the holiday season. So far we’ve looked at Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Green Monday. Next up: Free Shipping Day. This year 73% of the more than 100 major retailers that we track sent their subscribers at least one promotional email on Free Shipping Day, which was on Dec. 18 this year. That’s down from 77% last year. This current level of activity made Free Shipping Day a decidedly average email marketing day during the holiday season, whereas last year it had been above average.

Perhaps more importantly, only 9% of the promotional emails sent by retailers on Free Shipping Day mentioned it by name. That’s not to say that there weren’t plenty of free shipping offers to be had, but that’s not all that unusual these days—which is a big part of the problem for Free Shipping Day as a brand. Back in 2008 when Free Shipping Day burst on the scene, free shipping was still a huge draw because it wasn’t offered all the time.

via:blogs.salesforce.com

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Email marketing remains very popular but evolves: what has changed

By: Unknown on 04:04

Two digital marketing “techniques” have stood the test of time: email marketing and search engine marketing. Since over a decade marketers get confronted with a multitude of new channels people use to interact with business. Even if today’s customer is channel-agnostic, email marketing de facto remains a crucial element of most (digital) marketing mixes. With each new generation of marketers joining the ranks of digital marketing, the quest for solid email marketing advice comes back.  In this guide, we offer an overview of email marketing today, what it can do and how it fits in an integrated marketing approach, with these new generations in mind but also to refresh the minds of marketers who have embraced email marketing since a long time and want to optimize their email marketing efforts.

This email marketing guide will continue to grow and is based on over 15 years of email marketing practice and numerous papers and blogs on email marketing we wrote since the end of the nineties for email marketing, marketing automation and marketing software vendors and experts. It also will contain all tips we published on our own email marketing blog, which is now getting integrated here.

via:www.i-scoop.eu

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Online Programmatic Marketing: Getting Ads Delivered In Real-Time

By: Unknown on 04:09

We are experiencing an online explosion of personalized media. The old way of marketing tools like TV ads, newspaper and magazine ads have given way to marketing to vastly fragmented audiences. The changes are coming so fast and furious it is almost impossible to keep up. For example, the sudden rise of sites likes Pinterest that have dramatically changed the playing field. Effective online marketing requires tons of data along with some highly talented marketers who can customize relevant messages to highly targeted audiences. Online programmatic marketing is the way these challenges are being met. While the concept is still relatively new, there is little doubt it is the future of online marketing — at least until the next digital revolution comes along.

One of the largest challenges today is reaching consumers through the array of various devices they use. For instance, giving a consumer a smooth and consistent experience on her laptop, then iPad, and then Smartphone is a monumental challenge. No wonder so many marketers are scurrying to try to catch up. Another important part of this new digital marketing technique is getting ads delivered in real time. By bidding on real-time display ads the marketer can determine ahead of time what he or she is willing to pay to reach their targeted market immediately.

via:clarkmarketingsolutions.com

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