Leaks in your email response mechanics? Better check.

Posted on May 8, 2013 by | 1 Comment

Why is it that only 84% of marketing emails make it into the recipients’ inboxes? And why do only 20% hit an email open? Many leaks lurk on each stage of the response mechanics. Those stages are: 1. Delivery, 2. open, 3. click, and 4. conversion. Can we plug the holes, so that our customer relationships flourish? Continue reading →

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What’s your best email frequency? Here’s the math

Posted on April 25, 2013 by | 3 Comments

Some weeks ago, I asked my subscribers: What does sending more emails mean to you – more revenue or less subscriber lifetime value? The answers have been 50/50. And surely, there is a lot of evangelism on both sides. Some literally praise to send more for years. Others raise their subscribers permission shields and warn that such attitude in the market might kill email in the long run. All in all, both don’t help marketers that much in finding their optimum email freq, do they?

Yesterday, I stumbled across an article from John Foreman, data scientist at MailChimp. He showed how to determine the best emailing frequency in an objective manner. I liked that. So here is what he found – plus a little add-on: Continue reading →

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“250 Email Experts on Twitter” gleanings

Posted on February 1, 2013 by | 1 Comment

I thought I’d share some more material with you with regards to the 250 Email Experts on Twitter blog. This material is more or less a byproduct that fell off while extracting the email influencers. That means the numbers are quick & dirty – mainly because the geo data append lead to inaccurate results. Yet, they are still good enough to end our working week: Let’s have a look. Continue reading →

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Meet the top 250 Email Experts on Twitter [Infographic+List] – are you connected?

Posted on January 25, 2013 by | 75 Comments

Twitter is growing. Although I myself haven’t posted very much, I do check tweets regularly. If you follow the right people, Twitter is a great way to be the first to know about important news & updates in email marketing.

But who are the right ones? I’m not sure if I know them all. But the machine knows – by doing some nifty calculations. Thus, it’s time to look closer at all the email experts: “Who’s hot, and who’s not?” ;-)

Here is what I found: Continue reading →

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Golden newsletter rule: First things first!

Posted on January 23, 2013 by | 1 Comment

I had a look at my newsletter results lately. For example, I wondered how link position (top vs. bottom) affects click rates for certain links. Do people only click on what they can see directly in the preview pane, or do they also scroll down to the bottom to find more juice? A heat map sheds some light on this.

First, here’s the info-graphical representation of what I found: Continue reading →

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Every marketing email must answer four questions instantly

Posted on January 21, 2013 by | 4 Comments


… if any of these questions remains unanswered, or if the tought sequence is ansticipated wrongly, recipients could break off their silent dialog with the sender at once. It’s also important that they can find answers immdediately during the orientation phase. It usually lasts no longer than three to five seconds according to neuroscience. That’s just as much as a single breath of air, so there is little time to convince. A good friendly name, subject line, pre-header, and preview pane area can make the difference.

I suggest you to perform a quick FiveSecondTest.com. (I love this service.) You will see, how difficult it really is, to provide the answers:
>>Do the 5-second-test <<

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#EmailRocks – 41 years old, 2.2 billion users worldwide, and growing!

Posted on January 18, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Two days ago, Pingdom published their latest “Internet in numbers” end-of-year review. It contains some very interesting facts & figures – lead by email: Continue reading →

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Outperforming your industry? Check out new email benchmark data from MailChimp

Posted on January 8, 2013 by | 3 Comments

Are you looking for your industry averages? Then have a look at MailChimp’s Email Marketing Benchmarks. They just updated their data.

The company is probably one of the most popular email service providers, serving more than two million users which range from startups to Fortune 500 companies. So the numbers are somewhat significant. A former study dates from 2010 – I mentioned it a while ago. The new one again pulls open rates, clicks, bounces, complaints, and unsubscribe rates. It includes 669 million sends, that’s 65,000 campaigns, which went at least to 1000 subscribers each.

However, if the table looks like a data cemetery to you, check out the following two figures. I condensed the numbers and put them into an interactive graph using the wonderful rgl. This way, you can better compare all the different industries.
Continue reading →

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Lead capturing with videos: two promising examples using Wistia

Posted on December 11, 2012 by | 5 Comments

The discussion on combining email with video normally focuses on how to play clips directly in newsletters. However, haven’t you ever wondered how you could use your video clips to build lists or capture leads more effectively? I just stumbled about “Wistia”. It seems to be a nice service for that purpose. They also offer a freemium plan: Upload up to three videos and use (most of) the features for free – forever. I couldn’t resist trying it… Continue reading →

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Two ways to embed dynamic countdowns in your newsletters

Posted on November 28, 2012 by | 2 Comments

I’m seeing more graphical countdowns in emails lately (e.g. TigerDirect’s Black Friday email). No wonder: They are great means to increase the pressure to act today, and not tomorrow (or never).

Marketers use such timers in flash sales and traditionally in their Christmas communication. Typically, around Christmas you see messages like “x days left until xmas” or “y days left until the last order date for punctual delivery”. On every email opening, the countdown image renders the actual time that is left until the offer runs out. Some images even come as animated gifs so that the user sees his time slipping away in realtime.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? So here are two ways, how you can incorporate such timers into your newsletters. Continue reading →

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