Email Deliverability Specialist @ Revenue Path

The Email Deliverability Specialist/Analyst will be responsible for ensuring successful deployments of email marketing campaigns. In this role, the Analyst will utilize internal tools and expertise on email deliverability to prepare content and will update deployments when necessary to ensure consistent and accurate delivery.

Key Responsibilities:

• Create and Initiate Multiple Campaign Deployments daily (while strictly adhering to mailing guidelines)
• Monitor Campaign Delivery and Performance using internal Reports and Tools
• Test IP deliverability to maximize use of internal resources and to ensure that Reputation of IPs will not be negatively affected by chosen deployment parameters
• Work with assigned team to determine selection, frequency, and distribution of campaigns
• Work consistently, with little oversight, to Optimize Campaign Performance and Maximize Revenue Generation
• Test effectiveness of new campaigns and highly targeted campaigns
• Analyze results from previous deployments to measure effectiveness and identify areas for improvement
• Share all key findings with team and management

By: Copyblogger

Many online publishers run into the same vexing problem when they start email marketing:

You know that email subscribers drive traffic and make up the long-term, profitable audience for your brand or business. But only a handful of your site’s visitors are choosing to sign-up.

Maybe you’ve just started building your list, or maybe you’ve had that opt-in form on your page for months.

No matter how many unique daily visitors you get — or how amazing your service or product is — if they aren’t finding your valued subscriber content, all the likes, tweets, pins, and pluses in the world aren’t going to build that loyal following you need to grow.

Getting your readers and prospects to opt-in to your email list grows harder every day for a very simple reason …

Your prospects have a very limited focus

During most everyday tasks, psychologists now say that our minds wander 30-70% of the time.

Have you ever surfed the internet, only to find an hour later you had no idea what you set out to look for in the first place?

With mobile devices putting us all on an “on all day” multi-tasking collision course, it’s no wonder the visitors to your site are blind to your email opt-in form … if you even have one, that is.

Thankfully the special-ops team over at StudioPress has done much of the hard work for us with a handful of premium WordPress themes designed specifically to boost your email opt-ins. Here’s why …

They know that attention is selective. And when you give someone specific instructions to focus onone thing, they will unconsciously filter out all other stimuli.

By: PromotionWorld

For every small business that has ever attempted email marketing, most will tell you that it is not brain surgery.

That being said, an ineffective email marketing campaign can lessen your company’s reputation among current and potential customers, cost you more time and effort the next time around to get it done right, and dampen your team’s enthusiasm for promoting the business.

So, when you are reaching out to customers, there are several steps you should make sure you are undertaking in order to enhance your chances of success.

Spam Should be for Eating, not Emailing

Start off by reminding your email marketing team not to spam to individuals that are not familiar with your business.

Not only can spamming lead to wasted time and effort on your part, but it can hurt your company’s reputation, making it harder the next time around to right a wrong. If the email marketing campaign is not an opt-in one, you are essentially spamming someone.

You also want make sure not to blast out the identical mass-market message to all. If you think that everyone is interested in the same message that is your first mistake, as you must segment your message by topic.

Before putting a campaign together, make sure you can answer what is in it for the prospect and what the relevancy is to your product and/or services. Keeping something of relevance to the consumer in the subject line matter is a great way to attain their interest.

By: Business 2 Community

In the area of online marketing, there are many different tools that you can use. Pay-per-click campaigns, banner ads, article marketing and email marketing are just a few of the options that you have available. Of the most prominent marketing methods available, email marketing is one of the most effective strategies that you can apply to your business. Why exactly is email marketing such a powerful way to market to your customers? Lett’s talk a little about how it works.

How Email Marketing Works?

Email marketing is a discipline in which you gain access to a list of email addresses of individuals. Once you have the list, you then send out email messages to these individuals to promote a product or service. Typically, a link to your website is included in the email so that the recipients of the messages can click directly on the link and be taken to your site to make a purchase or engage in some other action.

Email Marketing Is Highly Targeted

One of the major advantages of using this type of marketing is that it is so highly targeted. When you send emails out to a list of subscribers, you are sending messages to people who are receptive to what you have to offer. They have voluntarily signed up for an email list and they want to learn more about a specific topic. This means that you are not just cold marketing or sending your message out to the masses. Instead, you are actually sending messages to people who want to receive them. This vastly increases the conversion rate of your marketing efforts and makes it so that you can sell more products or services to your email list.

Email/Online Producer @ Premiere Global Sports

Premiere Global Sports is seeking a creative, innovative manager of social media and email marketing to manage the development and deployment of email campaigns and drive transactions through social media channels.  This individual will manage the day-to-day operation of an active email channel, and will have complete ownership of growth strategy, execution and revenue targets. ​  The manager will establish best practices to ensure deliverables that meet the needs of various business units by creating campaigns and measuring effectiveness using established metrics.​ We’ll also look to the Email Marketing Manager to keep us current on email marketing best practices with regard to content strategies, data capture and campaign analysis, deliverability, and CAN-SPAM compliance.​ This position requires development and execution of all email marketing campaigns including list development, scheduling, and creative and content development, from start to finish.

Please note that in order to qualify for this job you must have HTML writing and editing skills and a thorough knowledge of Dreamweaver, Exact Target or similar email systems.​

Responsibilities:

• Provide strategic planning, support and recommendations to include social media as an important element of the marketing and business planning process.
• Manage all communications via social network channels.
• Monitor opportunities across social media channels including Facebook, Youtubeand Twitter while identifying emerging trends and opportunities to achieve objectives.    Provide strategic planning, support and recommendations to include social media as an important element of the marketing and business planning process.​
• Manage all communications via social network channels targeting both consumers and clients in the live entertainment industry.​
• Monitor the corporate opportunities across social media channels includingFacebook, Youtube and Twitter while identifying emerging trends and opportunities to achieve objectives.​Manage email production, coding and proofing for all campaigns.​
• Manage the email campaign process full-circle, from definition to development to deployment to reporting.​  This includes: email campaign set up, list segmentation and generation, and ensuring the right offers and products are going to the right segments.​

By: Constant Contact

It’s heartbreaking to think that people are making snap judgements about whether or not to read your emails based on a quick glance.

But they are. You are, too! Here’s how we all sort through our inboxes:

1. We choose an email message
2. We give it a two-second glance
3. We decide if it’s worth our time
4. If it is, we keep it and read it
5. If it’s not, we hit the delete key, and send the email to the trash

How can you keep your email out of the trash? The secret is good design. In those first two seconds, that’s all your reader sees.

Let’s take a look at seven common design mistakes that get emails trashed, and I’ll offer morethan seven solutions to help your next email get read.

1. Forgetting to say hello

Your emails should feature an instantly-recognizable, consistent header image. Over time, your header image will be associated with the high-quality information you share.

Ideally, this email header should relate to the business or product your reader signed up to learn more about. So if you’re a dog groomer and you have a special email newsletter just for poodle owners, your header should identify the information you’ll share, and look visually related to your overall dog groomer brand.

2. Hard-to-read fonts

Your email newsletter’s main goal is to communicate, and — obviously — that happens through words. But what if the words are hard to read?

Be sure to avoid these two errors:

• Using fonts that are too small. This is especially important if some of your readers are 50 and over, and may have eyesight problems. And with so many emails being viewed on smart phones, it makes sense to increase font sizes.
• Using too many fonts. Combining too many different fonts makes your email look messy. Pare it down to no more than two fonts, and just use the italic and bold weights to add variety.

Find out more about how to use fonts.

By: VerticalResponse

Do you remember the theme song to The Golden Girls? Don’t hold back now, sing it with me: “Thank you for being a friend. Traveled down the road and back again. Your heart is true, you’re a pal and a confidant.” In the world of email marketing, guess who your customers’ pal and confidant is? Ding, ding! Your newsletter… and there’s research to prove it!

According to the Nielsen Norman Group’s latest and extensive Email Newsletter Usability report (based on 270 email newsletters across 6 different countries), readers feel an emotional attachment to their email newsletters.

“Newsletters feel personal because they arrive in users’ inboxes, and users have an ongoing relationship with them… The positive aspect of this emotional relationship is that newsletters can create much more of a bond between users and a company than a website can.”

Did you read that? Newsletters create a bond. Cue Golden Girls theme song again. So how do we ensure we remain the Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia of newsletters to our readers? Follow these five steps and you’ll be golden:

1. Be informative 

You might be rolling your eyes and scoffing, “well, duh,” but being informative and relevant is the end all/be all in the newsletter stratosphere. It’s also how we make friends (hint hint: girl/bro talk!). If your email looks like a newsletter and smells (?) like a newsletter, but isn’t valuable, educational and/or dripping with juicy new content, then you can’t call it a newsletter. So what do people consider valuable content?

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, more than 40% of users said that each of the following aspects make for valuable newsletters:

• Informs of work-related news or company actions (mentioned by 2/3 of users)
• Informs about personal interests/hobbies
• Informs about events/deadlines/important dates
• Reports prices/sales

Hungry Girl has an uber-informative daily newsletter (with more than 1 million subscribers!). If you love food, but you’re watching your weight, she’s got the know-how on just about everything including newly released low fat/cal sweets, eats & recipes. Starting out with an email newsletter in 2004, Hungry Girl today has exploded into NY Times Bestseller book deals, a Food Network TV show, and features on The Rachel Ray Show, Good Morning America and more. Looks like having an informative newsletter is nothing to scoff at!

By: Jeff Korhan

How do you get the most out of your email marketing campaigns?

Get the attention of your audience.

This means giving them something of value at every turn.  Since giving away real products for free is probably not feasible, the logical alternative is delivering quality informational content that will help them do more of what they want to do – better, faster, or cheaper.

Social media channels are great for sharing, but when what is shared is valuable and vitally important, email is still the preferred method for most businesses. 

Consider your practices and you realize this is true.

One big advantage of email is that you have the full attention of your audience, something that is rarely possible with social media channels that are designed to draw attention to all types of advertising and news feeds.

This guest post by Patrick Carver is a reminder that email marketing is enjoying a resurgence, and for some valid reasons. Read further to learn about a free software tool his company created to help you more easily accomplish your email marketing objectives.

3 RULES FOR BETTER EMAIL MARKETING

#1 – Create a Campaign Theme to Build Focus and Trust

It’s important to give your email campaigns a general theme that guides you and your audience down the right path. Simple is always better. It communicates that you have a plan – and that builds confidence and trust.

Coca Cola uses live positively as the umbrella theme for all of their campaigns. This gives them the freedom to comingle their content with great material from other sources – while still staying on message.

Every industry is different. Your umbrella theme should resonate with your audience, which is probably related to their aspirations or what keeps them up at night.

Email Marketing Specialist @ Road Runner Sports

Road Runner Sports, the World’s Largest Running and Walking Store, is seeking an experienced Email Marketing Specialist to provide support to our Marketing Team!  The Email Marketing Specialist is responsible for implementing the email marketing plan developed by the Email Marketing Program Manager.  The Email Marketing Specialist executes the flawless day to day operation of a complex and active email channel.Success in this position is dependent on attention to detail, ability to multi-task,  organization, excel capabilities and creativity.

Email Marketing Coordinator @ Airbnb

Airbnb is looking for an Email Marketing Coordinator to join the family.  You would support this process from soup-to-nuts, and also facilitate distribution of amazing assets such as our poignant videos, wonderful content and fantastic host engagement events around the world.  The ideal candidate for this position will be quantitative, fun, motivated, detail-oriented, and excited about marketing within the travel space.

Responsibilities 

• Help build, optimize, and track email marketing campaigns for Airbnb globally; Airbnb is an international company operating in 9 countries with content translated into 18 languages
• Support day-to-day tasks critical to the email marketing strategies for our traveler acquisition, host acquisition, re-engagement, retention, segmentation and merchandising (cross-sell, up-sell) campaigns
• Collaborate with marketing, communications and international teams to build an content calendar across various stakeholder teams, including community, communications and product organizations
• Contribute to the “brain trust” of innovation across all online marketing channels, including search, display, social and affiliate/partner marketing

By: Return Path

Many people see email marketing as a one-way communication. Email marketers are sending emails to their recipients, who are then reading and/or deleting with no real dialogue back to the sender. However, it’s important to understand that it is a two-way street as subscribers do have various ways to communicate back to the sender via email activity (opens, clicks), spam complaints and trusted subscriber voting. And these communications from the recipients can negatively affect your inbox placement causing your emails to be delivered to the spam folder.

You’ve heard all about subscriber engagement used in spam filtering and how having an engaged list can help your deliverability. But what does that really mean? On one side, we’re talking about your open and click-through rates. The more subscribers engage on this level with your emails, the more favorable you will look to the internet services providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail, as they will see that you’re sending to a clean and engaged list, and that your subscribers actually want to receive your emails. This shows the internet services providers that you have a clear opt-in process and are sending relevant emails, which will lead to less email in the spam folder and more in the inbox.

But the other side of that is spam complaints. Most ISPs will have a “This is Junk/Spam” button that recipients can easily click on, and these votes will also impact your deliverability. If enough people are voting that your emails are junk/spam, then your emails will begin to be routed to the junk or spam folder. Conversely, if enough recipients are moving your emails from their junk or spam folder to their inbox by clicking on the “This is Not Spam/Junk” button, then this will improve your deliverability and inbox placement.

Note: Many ISPs participate in feedback loop programs that work to notify you of “This is Junk/Spam” votes so you can then remove those complainers from your list(s). If you are not yet signed up for all available feedback loops, contact your Return Path account manager today to get started.

Keep in mind that there are also other ways that a recipient can register a complaint. The first is through emailing the postmaster or spam agency, like SpamCop. These methods are typically used by more savvy recipients, and therefore can take on more weight than the “This is Junk/Spam” marking would.

By: ExactTarget

You are in the final stages of choosing ExactTarget as you new email service provider (ESP) and the realization that the task of either migrating your existing campaigns, or integrating a new ESP into your back-end system comes into focus. Whether you are using the services provided by ExactTarget or a consulting partner, here are the top 5 tips that we give clients to ease the burden on your team at the same time as speeding up the implementation.

1. Define your marketing objectives and goals

   Prior to engaging with your assigned services team or partner agency, it is critical that you have discussed  internally and defined your overall marketing strategies. Take the time to document your marketing strategy and how email marketing fits into your broader cross-channel strategy, including off-line, mobile and social.

2. Identify your team. 

   This is probably the most important aspect of a successful implementation and identifying and empowing them early in the process will pay key dividends later on in the project. Your team may consist of a cross-functional set of roles including, but not necessarly limited to:

• Project manager- responsible for owning the internal resources, budget and decision making for the project
• Marketing consultant - responsible for implementing campaigns, and managing relationships with other creative development teams
• Data analyst - data preparation, data analysis, campaign execution, report building, etc.
• Creative - concepting, designing and executing email and  web pages with basic interactivity and HTML
• Technical architect - plan and design technical solutions and architecture for interactive marketing programs

Digital Marketers Respond Swiftly to Google+ ‘Hangouts on Air’ Roll-out

Google recently began letting worldwide members of its social network broadcast live ‘Hangouts’ sessions for anyone to watch – just like some performing artists and politicians have already been able to do.

The new ‘Hangouts on Air’ feature was introduced in September 2011 at Google+, with certain high-profile individuals testing out the service that lets as many as ten people simultaneously take part in roundtable-style video chats, with the option to live stream and record the session.

The public roll-out of ‘on Air’ has opened everyday real-time Hangouts to any number of viewers, automatically publishing these streams to the hosting user’s YouTube account for anyone who may have missed it (which is private by default, but can be made available to the public) allowing him or her to monitor the number of views.

In addition to YouTube, recorded Hangouts can be posted to one’s Google+ social profile or one’s website by checking ‘Enable Hangouts on Air’.

Some companies have already started experimenting with the platform to see if it will be suitable for staff, webinars, conference calls and for communication across global business networks.

Says Barbara Ulmi, Marketing Director at GraphicMail: “It’s really handy for our business that you can filter friends into different circles in Google+. So far we’ve been creating circles for different departments in our international team as well as for franchisees, which has helped us organize and channel the right information to the right people. We’ve really taken to Hangouts’ screen share ability, which will be especially useful for doing business-to-business conference calls. We also like the fact that you can add phone numbers, especially for branches of the company that do not have the liberty to use Google products, such as our representatives in China.”

The official news was first broken to a South African audience by Brett St. Claire, Google’s Head of New Products for Sub-Saharan Africa, as climax to his talk about how social media is challenging online promotions at the 2012 CTICC Marketing Indaba.

Members of the GraphicMail marketing and design team were present for the talk, prior to running their own workshop on integrating email with mobile and social media channels.

One of the advantages of Google+ as group-chat destination is that most people already have a Gmail address, or are at least familiar with the service, which means it’s not as intimidating as needing to use one of the many other voice calling tools out there on the web that may not be comparatively as well-known or trusted.

‘On Air’ Hangouts give users a real sense of immediacy and intimacy with their audience and live interaction is great for engagement.

The only downside to a live stream is in its unpredictability; the real-time aspect means you can’t edit the footage first. Once you’ve said something, it’s broadcast.

When Google+ first launched last year, arguably one of its biggest differentiating features was the free video chat service. At first glance, it looked like something that’s been done before, but unlike most video chat options that require friends and colleagues to invite each other to a third-party stand-alone platform (often requiring its own installation), Hangouts is a part of the widely-used Googleverse.

It’s fully integrated with other features that are inherently useful to businesses, such as Google Docs, and has a dandy face-switching tool that cycles the camera to focus on whoever is speaking.

Google is also making Hangouts more useful for the all those people who don’t have a computer with a camera, or a high-speed Internet connection, since it’ll let you call into a hangout by using a phone.

In the coming weeks, the ‘On Air’ option for Google+ Hangouts will be gradually rolled out to users in 40 countries. So if you have something to say – as a concerned citizen, an aspiring artist, a bored housewife or a raving revolutionary – you will soon be able to go live in front of a global audience, if not already.

Takeaway: ‘Hangouts on Air’ equips digital marketers with a new way to engage audiences and could signal a huge change in the media landscape.

Wikus Engelbrecht is a member of the GraphicMail email marketing team. Wikus can be reached at wikus@graphicmail.com .

By: VerticalResponse

It used to be that you literally had to throw your name into a hat for a chance to win something. Now that online promotions are the norm, you have more tools than ever to create a cool, engaging contest to excite your audience and build your brand. Just recently, the VerticalResponse Next Teen Tycoon video contest came to an end and we wanted to share what we learned (some of it the hard way!).

If you’re thinking about launching a contest of your own, these eight tips will start you off on the right track.

1. Set your goals

Just like any marketing campaign, you need to establish what you want to get out of the contest before you get into anything else. Is it more Facebook fans? Traffic to your website? Press coverage? Set specific metrics you want to accomplish at the end of the contest, whether it’s an X percent increase in fans or traffic, or X number of stories and articles written about the contest. Then develop your promotion, user interaction flow and follow-up based on those goals.

2. Know the laws

This isn’t a whole lot of fun, but the most important. There are different laws and regulations for different types of promotions (sweepstakes versus giveaways, for example), and they can vary by state, too. We strongly advise having a lawyer or legal expert review your official contest rules. Check out Social Media Examiner’s great post on online promotions and the law.

Additionally, if you’re using Facebook or another third-party platform to host your contest, they may have their own set of guidelines. For example, promotions on Facebook must be administered within Facebook Apps. Here are the latest Facebook Page rules, including promotions.

3. Make it easy to enter

It makes sense: The more hoops people have to go through to enter a contest, the less likely they’ll do it. It’s best not to require participants to do something complicated unless the potential payoff is in line with the large amount of effort. Sweepstakes have the lowest barrier to entry, since all you need to do is throw your name and email address into the bucket. With giveaways, a prize that’s exclusive or in limited supply will attract more interest than just something off the shelf. Video contests, with all the preparation and equipment needed, tend to draw fewer (but more engaged) entrants.

4. Give ’em something worth their efforts

When was the last time you entered a drawing for a free pack of gum? Yeah, I can’t remember either. I’m not saying the prize needs to be worth X amount of dollars, but it should feel special. Some of the most creative online promotions are memorable and successful because they speak directly to their audience’s interests. Side note: Having multiple, tiered prizes makes people think they have a greater chance of winning, something to think about.

Building Customer Loyalty with Email Marketing List Segmentation

Loyalty-targeted emails can result in open rates as much as 40 percent higher than bulk mailings. That’s a statistic worth noting. If you don’t currently use segmentation to cater to subscriber preferences and build loyalty among existing customers, now is the time to start.

Thank-You Notes

A simple “thank you” for subscribing, purchasing, or providing feedback goes a long way toward building rapport with your audience. Let subscribers know you appreciate their business and offer them a special discount or coupon code to be used toward a future purchase.

Shopping Cart Recovery

Use shopping cart recovery software to remind customers of unfinished purchases. A timely email letting them know the cart is about to expire or that the items are now on sale may be enough to bring them back to your website.

Redemption Reminders

If you use a loyalty program that incorporates points, coupon codes or e-dollars, send subscribers an email when these incentives are about to expire. They’ll appreciate the reminder and the tactic could boost your sales.

Feedback

Solicit customer feedback in the form of interest and opinion surveys, product reviews and social sharing buttons. Customers appreciate knowing that you care what they think.

Shopping Preferences

Use previous subscriber behavior to target emails toward individual shopping preferences. By tracking what users click on, what they search for and what they ultimately buy, you can create emails that cater to their needs.

Demographics

Send offers that relate to the subscriber’s location, age, profession or gender. You don’t want your senior citizen market to receive emails about college savings or your Los Angeles subscribers to receive information about discount flights from New York to Miami.

Purchasing Volume

Customers who spend significant money with your company should receive special offers such as free shipping, platinum status, or early notice of sales. On the other hand, one-time spenders may also be encouraged to shop again if you offer them a special deal.

Repeat Customers Vs. Prospective Customers

Both repeat and prospective customers deserve special attention but in a different way. Offer special deals or discount codes to repeat customers, and make sure they aren’t turned away when they notice that your prospective customers get seemingly better offers than they did. You can entice both these markets by creating email messages tailored to their needs and purchasing habits.

eConnect Email offers stellar list segmentation options that allow you to send emails designed with a particular audience in mind. Use custom fields to manage subscriber data and then segment your lists based on the criteria and user behavior of your clients, customers and subscribers.

Takeaway: By segmenting your email list and catering to subscriber preferences, you build valuable customer loyalty and increase open rates significantly. Can you think of other ways to nurture repeat shoppers?

By: MailerMailer

Poor sending practices and list hygiene can negatively affect your email sender score and reputation, ultimately causing you to be blacklisted. Additionally, high complaint rates, rented or purchased email lists, and a dismal IP sending history can lead to a diminished sender reputation. Companies such as SenderScore.org, aggregate data from a variety of ISPs, spam filters, and security companies in order to distinguish legitimate emails from spam. Based on the data and a variety of email metrics, SenderScore then assigns a score between 0 and 100 to the IP address, where 0 is the worst and 100 is the best possible score.

Clearing your name and working your way back toward a positive sender reputation may take a few months, but it is possible. Here are a few sender best practices to improve your reputation.

Clean up your email list

Cleaning your email list includes removing inactive list members, confirming that active list members still wish to receive your email, and removing names that you may have rented or purchased. First, take your entire list of email addresses and identify those that are inactive or have not opened your email in several months. Based on the number of consistently unopened messages, use your best judgment to determine what qualifies as an “inactive” list member. For example, you may decide 5 consistently unopened email messages qualifies as an inactive list member and decide to remove them from your list.

Next, ensure that your current and active list members have actually requested to be on your list and want to continue receiving your email. You can do this by sending a brief email to your active list members to verify their address and confirm their interest in your email. Lastly, identify and remove all purchased or rented email addresses from your list. In most cases, email addresses obtained through purchased and rented email lists have not given their permission to receive your emails. This increases the chances of those recipients filing your message as spam and hurting your sender reputation.

By: HubSpot

We talk a lot about how critical landing pages are to the effectiveness of your inbound marketing. But no matter how many landing pages you have and how well-optimized they are, no one will get to see them if you haven’t mastered the art and science of creating killer calls-to-action. They’re the gatekeepers of your landing pages, after all! Those tiny little buggers have to jump out to your visitors, convince them of the value of your offer, and get them clicking — which is why it’s crucial that marketers don’t make silly mistakes that could seriously harm their CTA click-through rates.

Luckily, this blog post can serve as your reference next time you create a new CTA or modify an existing one. If you’re making any of these common mistakes when creating your calls-to-action, get in touch with your designer ASAP (or just break into your inbound marketing software) and fix these conversion-killing faux pas.

13 Common Mistakes Marketers Make With Calls-to-Action

1) Overselling and Under-Delivering

Your call-to-action sets certain expectations with your visitor — the language you use tells them what they’re going to get if they redeem your offer. The thing is, sometimes calls-to-action promise the sun and the moon to ensure they capture a click, but then don’t actually deliver on those high-falutin’ promises. Let’s take a random CTA from HubSpot’s website as an example:

Sr. Inside Sales and Lead Generation Specialist @ MetraTech

Directly support the strategic development and tactical execution of marketing lead generation programs to drive MetraNet across industry segments and across regions. Oversee programs from inception to completion including, demand generation, outbound/inbound communications, online advertising, email campaigns, promotional offers, website content development, SEM, SM, webinars, event management, press and media relations. Versatility is the key; the ideal candidate has proven creative copywriting skills, killer lead generation skills, analytical aptitude in tracking marketing performance, and demonstrated experience in providing ROI results.

Responsibilities:

• Build lead generation campaigns and programs to support sales and elicit direct responses
• Complete a high volume of outbound calls to prospective clients
• Create email marketing and lead nurturing programs to build marketing database
• Ensure leads are advancing through lead generation funnel and that appropriate follow-up is completed timely
• Collaborate with sales team to escalate sales opportunities and achieve conversion targets
• Participate in online forums, twitter and LinkedIn discussions
• Provide input and support SEO and PPC efforts
• Assist in building content like white papers, blog posts, case studies, research, best practice guides, FAQS, videos and industry trends
• Drive website traffic and awareness through content, landing pages, email, advertising, events and SEM
• Recommend, optimize and report on programs utilizing Google Analytics, SM tools, SalesForce, LeadFormix and other 3rd party tools
• Cold-calling experience (50+ dials per day)
• Account prospecting and nurturing experience

Manager, Club Carlson Email Marketing @ Carlson

Set plan for and manage the Americas email communication channel for the Club Carlson hotel rewards program to accomplish marketing objectives. Responsibilities include long-term planning and enhancement, as well as near term scheduling, content development, cross-departmental coordination, and email performance assessment. Closely align work with hotel brand and other Marketing partners, and regional loyalty teams.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES 

• Work with E-Commerce to create the long-term email communication strategy for various target audiences and to maximize communications personalization.
• Devise and coordinate the messaging and creative needed for Club Carlson emails to drive program enrollments and brand revenue.
• Ensure that communications tone and messaging is in concert with Club Carlson branding standards.
• Continuously optimize emails through rigorous analysis of guest segmentation, database triggering capabilities, and related testing.
• Analyze campaign metrics to evaluate revenue and acquisition performance.
• Implement effective strategies and recommend new ideas/innovations to enhance email channel activities and grow Club Carlson membership.
• Leverage member engagement by monitoring and improving overall perception of email value and style.

20 Ideas to Inspire Your Next Email Marketing Newsletter

It’s that time again; the deadline for your upcoming email newsletter is looming, and you just can’t find the energy or inspiration to even start.

In fact, you find yourself staring at the screen with eyes slightly out of focus and fingers itching to type ‘w-w-w-dot-f-a-c-e-b-o-o…’ into your web browser.

Sound familiar? Well help is at hand. Instead of procrastinating, shake off the cobwebs by going for a walk (depending on the neighbourhood), bouncing ideas around with a colleague, or drawing a mind map to organize your thoughts.

If that doesn’t work, check out the list of ideas below.

Make some friends

1. Invite other staff members to contribute stories to the newsletter.

2. Find that person who’s always taking photos of team activities and projects and ask if they’ve got anything you can use.

3. See that grad student sitting and staring out the window or that guy whose project has just finished? Go and have a chat and ask them if they would like to help brainstorm or have a go at writing an article.

4. Make friends in high places. Many company directors and team leaders often have messages or news they would like to share with clients but they just don’t have the time. So help them out, and ask them if there is anything important they would like you to write about.

5. Introduce the new guy or girl in a staff profile or interview. Or re-introduce an existing team member that your audience really needs to know (or know better).

6. Check in with your friendly local industry association. Nearly every industry from Engineering to Hospitality to Advertising has an industry association, so find out if they would like to contribute to your newsletter.

Think like a journalist and sniff out a story

7. Find out the news for your industry. Browse industry publications and websites and see what are the latest innovations, trends or scandals.

8. What’s on the radar? What are people talking about around the water cooler? Yes I’m sure there is quite a lot of talk about the latest Biggest Loser episode but what are people really getting passionate about? Ask 3-5 people this question and see if a pattern emerges. ‘What do you think is the most important thing going on at [company name] at the moment?’

9. Interview someone in the company who is considered (internally at least) an expert on a topic.

10. Talk to clients or other team members who talk to clients. See if you can answer a common question, spot a trend or write a ‘top 5′ list.

11. Know what your clients like? Whether it’s sneakers or coffees, write a review or invite someone else to.

If there’s no news then make some

12. Hold a competition. It could be a staff competition that you take photos of and write an article about or it could be a competition for your readers.

13. Include a survey or poll in your newsletter and use the results in the next one.

14. Write a case study. One of the best ways to demonstrate how great your company is without boasting is to let your successes speak for themselves.

15. Hold an event. Celebrate successes such as when your company wins a new client, completes a project, or organises a team bonding activity. This is not only great for your team culture, but sharing these events with your clients helps them to feel like they know you.

16. Share the love. Clients are the ‘life blood’ of companies and an easy way to make them really happy is to give them a bit of free advertising. Especially if they have something of interest to offer your recipients.

17. Investigate some social media and see if there is something you can get started on. Start by searching for what other people are saying about your company and products and then branch out to other topics relating to your audience.

Be yourself and have some fun with it

18. Tell a personal story or share some company news. Depending on your industry, some clients may like to get the ‘inside scoop’. Knowing what is going on at a company beyond the products and offerings can help your customers get to know and understand you better.

19. Do a bit of research and write an article on the company’s history. All companies have a story. Maybe it was an idea two friends had on holidays or the owner saw a fantastic opportunity.

20. Get creative and instead of writing an article, show or teach your recipients something using a presentation, webinar, infographic, photo album or video.

Takeaway: Don’t give up – no matter how bad your writer’s block is, there’s always a good story around the corner. You just have to find it by thinking laterally, talking to people or even making the ‘news’ happen.

By: Thomsonlocal.com

2012 will prove to be a great year for well-targeted email marketing.

With the marketing  mix becoming  much  more varied – as online technologies mature – and previously separate marketing channels become far more integrated, it easy is to get caught up in the latest trends and lose sight of the things that make business to business marketing successful.

2011 saw social media rise to new heights and it was inevitable that it would soon be adopted as a core business tool. Social media marketing in many ways reinvigorated firms’ online marketing efforts and allowed them to refocus their aims on producing far-reaching campaigns that spanned a plethora of different platforms. It was this ‘all inclusive’ attitude towards social interaction that set the pace of marketing in 2011, which is why we saw firms returning to tried and tested methods – like B2B email marketing - but using them in fresh, integrated and innovative ways.

While there were a number of new tools also pushing their way into the mainstream – such as online video and the rapidly growing platform of mobile marketing – it is clear that underpinning all this innovation were familiar techniques and methodologies. While content was to remain king for 2011 web-based marketing strategies, data was the cornerstone of B2B marketing – in particularly, segregated, up-to-date, highly-organised business lists.

By: HubSpot

It’s not an uncommon scenario: Business bloggers get so caught up in the grind of churning out quality content on a regular basis, they tend to forget about some of the other fundamental factors that contribute to a successful blog. One of these factors is a growing subscriber base. You know, those dedicated blog readers that keep coming back to your blog on a regular basis? The people who consistently read and share your content with their networks?

Unfortunately, too many bloggers undermine the value of these loyal members of their blog’s readership. But the fact of the matter is, the more subscribers you can get to opt into your blog the wider you can expand the top of your funnel, and the more people you’ll have coming to your website. So if you haven’t put a lot of calories into growing your blog’s subscriber base, consider these 20 simple ways to attract more ‘regulars’ to your blog.

20 Simple Ways to Generate More Blog Subscribers

1) Clearly Display the Subscription Button/Email Opt-In Form

First of all, don’t make it difficult for visitors to your blog to figure out how to opt in to your blog. Display a clear call-to-action module to subscribe to your blog, along with an RSS subscription button and a simple, one-field email opt-in form near the top of your blog – above the fold. Don’t make your visitors search through all the bells and whistles in your blog’s sidebar to subscribe. Put it right in their face, and make it stand out.

2) Demonstrate the Value of Subscribing

If a visitor is new to your blog, they’re likely going to need some convincing that it’s worth coming back to time and time again. Just as with any effective call-to-action, you need to clearly demonstrate that value of subscribing to your blog. Explain what the visitor will get from the blog when subscribing. In the HubSpot blog’s subscriber call-to-action, for example, we explain what the HubSpot blog covers — “all of inbound marketing – SEO, blogging, social media, lead generation, email marketing, lead nurturing & management, and analytics” — so visitors have a clear understanding of what they’ll get from subscribing.

3) Create a Dedicated Subscription Landing Page

In addition to the subscribe module right there on your blog, create a dedicated landing page that you can direct people to via other channels such as social media, other pages on your website, PPC, or email. This way, rather than saying, “Visit myblog.com, then look for the subscriber option at the top right. You know — right below the banner CTA,” you can say “Visit myblog.com/subscribe to be the first to receive our latest blog content!” You can also use the extra real estate on this page to better demonstrate your blog’s value, as we did with HubSpot’s blog subscription landing page.

By: MarketingSherpa

SUMMARY: Over time, sending general emails to an entire database can erode results. However, many marketers continue to do this, because they’re unsure of how to move beyond “batch and blast” practices to a more targeted approach.

Yet, this change can be easier than you might expect. See how a marketing team from one e-commerce company selected a high-value segment, sent a targeted offer, and saw conversion rates jump by 208%. You will also learn which segment the marketers chose, and how they crafted a strong offer.

by Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter

CHALLENGE

The marketing team at Artbeads.com wanted to pursue targeted email marketing. The beads and jewelry-making supply retailer sent marketing emails each week, but they were the same for everyone on its list.

Devin Kimura, CEO at Artbeads.com, wanted to avoid getting addicted to the quick revenue that can come from batch-and-blast.

“When you have to pay those bills, you run a big batch-and-blast promotion with a sitewide coupon that can bring a lot of money in the door. Then you have to replenish that inventory you just sold, so you have to run another discount campaign. Then your customers start to get hooked on the discounts coming… It’s a very damaging cycle,” Kimura says.

Kimura and his team needed to identify valuable segments, send targeted emails, and increase results — all on a small budget.

CAMPAIGN

Artbeads.com tested targeted emails in several one-off campaigns last year. The team hoped to prove the value of sending targeted emails, generate revenue, and spur the company to invest further.

By: Napa Valley Register

Email marketing is a powerful tool, but there are some things you need to know to make it work well for you. If you answer “no” to any of the following questions, you may be missing some important opportunities to make more money.

• Do you send valuable information to your customers at least once every one or two weeks? (Not sales information with discounts or updates on your business, but real information that helps your customers succeed.)
• Do you customize your emails to use relevant information about the recipient? By simply using a person’s name, you can increase your readership results by 15 percent or more.
• Do you do any “split testing” with different offers?
• Do you test different email templates and track “open rates” to be sure readers are actually reading your messages?
• Do you preview your email in Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and a smartphone? Make sure you check them all.
• Do you minimize your use of images to make sure the message can be read when readers have their pictures turned off in Outlook? (If not, you can lose up to 76 percent of your audience.)
• Have you got an automatic series of messages and activities set up to go out to subscribers based on a specific action from them?
• Do you track open and click-through rates on every email you send? If you are not using an email marketing service, it is difficult to track this activity.

By: CMSWire

E-retailers have a habit of sending messages at least once or twice a day to their database of customer email addresses, regardless of who they are or the last time they made a purchase. Marketing managers are still attempting to unravel the mystery of what makes some people open and read their messages and others immediately trash them.

There is one obvious clue — settling for mass blasts will do nothing for garnering positive attention.

In Marketing Sherpa’s 2011 Benchmark report, targeting email audiences with relatable materials was respondents’ number one obstacle to email marketing effectiveness. Creating segmented email campaigns based on audience behavior was cited as the most valuable e-marketing tactic, but also the trickiest.

With the explosion of Big Data however, the e-commerce and marketing industries are stocked with enough fresh, timely consumer information to write off email blasts for good.

Dive into the Treasure Trove

Increased accessibility and availability of computer storage and power has opened the floodgates to a deluge of consumer analytics. All of this data — from who’s ditching their virtual carts to who’s buying a particular shoe in a particular color — can be leveraged by e-commerce businesses to target their audiences.