Category

Email Marketing

Most ecommerce businesses rely on email marketing as a low-cost sales driver. We’ve addressed a wide array of strategies for email, including improving opens, clicks, and conversions, mastering deliverability, optimizing by device, automation, spam, segmentation, and more.

  • Email Marketing

    New Gmail Tabs Impact Email Marketing, Expert Says

    July 26, 2013 •

    MailChimp, a popular email marketing solutions provider, says that the new Gmail tabs that are intended to help users clean up their inboxes have negatively impacted open rates for email marketing campaigns, but that there is no need to panic. Google began introducing its new tabbed Gm...

  • Email Marketing

    Email Marketing Dos and Don’ts for Ecommerce Merchants

    July 23, 2013 •

    In "Email Still an Effective Marketing Tool?," we addressed why email marketing is highly efficient, inexpensive, and easy to measure. This is unlike social media marketing, which for smaller merchants is often difficult to manage and track. I used email marketing extensively in my pr...

  • Email Marketing

    Using Email to Maintain and Build Site Traffic

    July 18, 2013 •

    When I managed email marketing for a leading ecommerce site, I would receive calls from our IT department almost every Tuesday, asking if I had sent a large email campaign. The trouble was that we were sending too much traffic to the site at once. This was a good problem to have, but we...

  • Email Marketing

    Cart-abandonment Email Best Practices

    June 25, 2013 •

    An abandoned shopping cart is like a broken promise. For the merchant, there is a lost sale and unclaimed revenue. For the shopper, there is an unfulfilled need or want. Fortunately, a quick series of cart abandonment emails may renew that promise, helping both the customer and the reta...

  • Email Marketing

    Will Gmail’s New Tab Layout Affect Ecommerce Merchants?

    June 17, 2013 •

    Consumers have many options for email services. The top three providers are Gmail, Yahoo!, and Hotmail, which recently changed to Outlook. Occasionally these services make changes that can impact ecommerce email programs. The changes are often dynamic — changing algorithms, rules, and ...

  • Email Marketing

    Email Still Effective Marketing Tool?

    June 5, 2013 •

    At a time when social media seems to be the only thing people talk about, email is still an effective ecommerce marketing tool. But merchants will have to alter how they use it if they wish to keep up with changes in how people access email messages. Are People Still Reading Email? Th...

  • Email Marketing

    Good, Bad Email Design for Ecommerce Merchants

    May 20, 2013 •

    Email design has changed over the years. It has evolved from basic text, to beautiful design with great images, to hybrids that balance images and text. With the majority of shoppers previewing or reading emails on their smartphones, many ecommerce merchants wonder what the best practic...

  • Email Marketing

    Applying Data to Improve your Email Communications

    April 19, 2013 •

    With so much information available about your customers and prospects, how do you apply that information to your email communications? In this article, I'll address steps to apply the right data to improve your email-marketing program. What Data Do You Have? This question is not alwa...

  • Email Marketing

    5 Tests to Improve your Email Marketing

    March 18, 2013 •

    For email marketers, there are several key tests that will improve a campaign, and an ongoing program. Here are five basic testing strategies to optimize your email marketing efforts. Subject Line Testing Many marketers believe that a subject line’s purpose is simply to get people to...

  • Email Marketing

    Email Marketing: 5 Ways to Generate Immediate Sales

    February 14, 2013 •

    Email serves many functions for ecommerce businesses. It's a method of sending order confirmations and shipping notifications. It also delivers valuable content via newsletters. The goal of each function differs widely, depending on your site and the average sales cycle and order value....

  • Email Marketing

    Making Emails Responsive to Tablets, Smartphones

    February 7, 2013 •

    In "Optimizing Ecommerce for Tablets and Smartphones," my article last month, I addressed responsive design, the practice of coding a website to automatically adjust to the size of a user's Internet device. This month, I extend that discussion to include outbound emails, so that the ...

  • Email Marketing

    Using Sales Data to Automate Email Marketing

    February 6, 2013 •

    Customers are the bloodline of any business. For ecommerce businesses, it’s particularly important to focus on creating recurring, loyal customers. This centers on understanding customer sales and shopping data, and using that information to develop profitable, automated email campaigns...

  • Email Marketing

    Email Marketing: 4 Tips for Sending to Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo!

    January 17, 2013 •

    An email is effective only if it is successfully delivered to the recipient. Moreover, getting the email to the inbox, versus the spam or junk folder, increases the chances of the message being read. Deliverability is a crucial element in the overall success of an email program. It ca...

  • Email Marketing

    Don’t Forget Email Marketing; 13 Reasons

    January 11, 2013 •

    With all the focus on social media, it seems that email marketing is almost an afterthought for many companies. Email may not be trendy, but it’s cheap, easy to measure, and easy to target. It's a good place to do testing, it keeps your brand visible, and at the end of the day it delive...

  • Email Marketing

    Remember a Holiday ‘Thank You’ Email

    December 19, 2012 •

    As the 2012 Christmas shopping season comes to a close, online retailers should take the time to sincerely thank customers and offer appropriate holiday greetings. Email marketing often reaches its peak during the weeks leading up to December 25. Many, if not most, Internet retailers a...

  • Email Marketing

    3 Common Email Marketing Mistakes

    December 18, 2012 •

    There were some fantastic email campaigns in 2012. And there were some ineffective ones, too. In this article, I'll address three of the top email marketing mistakes from 2012. Sending Emails Too Frequently As an email marketing professional, I subscribe to hundreds of ecommerce em...

  • Email Marketing

    Transactional Emails: 5 Secrets to Improve

    December 12, 2012 •

    Five relatively simple steps could help online retailers significantly improve transactional emails, and, perhaps, earn additional sales. Transactional or relationship email messages complete, confirm, or provide information about a previously agreed upon transaction. In the ecommerce ...

  • Email Marketing

    Email, Mobile, On-site Driving 2012 Holiday Sales

    December 6, 2012 •

    Retail holiday sales for 2012 from the first of November through Cyber Monday rose 16 percent year over year to more than $16.3 billion. Email marketing, mobile shopping, and on-site promotions have all played an important role in online sales. The 16 percent boost in early holiday ret...

  • Email Marketing

    Automated Email Marketing Drives Ecommerce Sales; 4 Tips

    November 20, 2012 •

    Email marketing is becoming increasingly automated. Recent acquisitions by ExactTarget, a leading email service provider, of iGoDigital and Pardot, for $21 million and $95 million respectively, illustrate this trend. iGoDigital is a platform that helps online retailers offer product re...

  • Email Marketing

    Email Marketing: Planning Your Holiday Calendar

    November 12, 2012 •

    Email marketing is a powerful driver of holiday sales. But haphazardly sending emails is not the way to optimize campaigns. Taking just a few minutes to think about what an email will contain and when it will be sent should help to improve results. What follows is an example holiday em...

  • Email Marketing

    Email Marketing: Analyzing J.C. Penney’s New Approach

    October 22, 2012 •

    J.C. Penney has received a lot of press for the many changes made by its new CEO, Ron Johnson, who came from Apple. As a J.C. Penney email subscriber, I have noticed its email program has become more engaging. The subject lines are more compelling. The emails contain unique and interest...

  • Email Marketing

    Ask an Expert: Appropriate to Send Remarketing Emails to Guest Shoppers?

    September 27, 2012 •

    "Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about sending remarketing emails to consumers who abandon shopping carts. It comes from Kenny Kelly, general manager of Shops.com, an Okla...

  • Email Marketing

    5 Holiday Email Marketing Tips

    September 20, 2012 •

    For ecommerce businesses, September is crucial for planning a successful holiday-sales season. For email marketing, starting the planning now will allow more time for last minute changes and time-sensitive promotions. Below, I'll offer five tips to make the most from your holiday email...

  • Email Marketing

    Email Case Study: Moosejaw Adds Personality to Email Messages

    August 2, 2012 •

    The challenge with an ongoing email program is that people are busy. Unless they have a need for your product or service, they aren’t necessarily going to open your email and purchase from you immediately. To stay relevant and keep email recipients engaged, some retailers are turning to...

  • Email Marketing

    Sending HTML and Plain Text Email Simultaneously

    July 25, 2012 •

    With so many different smartphones and tablets, it’s important to be able to display your company's emails in the way that the mobile browser is best suited. Some mobile browsers will show your email in its full HTML form. Others will default to just plain text. How do you know which version to send to each recipient? The solution to this problem is to craft an email which has two parts: one that displays your complete graphics and the other made up of nothing more than conventional text, with no images and colors.

  • Email Marketing

    4 Ways to Improve Email Deliverability

    July 18, 2012 •

    For an email-marketing program to be successful, the message must be delivered. In this article, I'll explain email deliverability basics, and offer four tips to make sure your emails hit the inbox of your recipients. 1. Know Your IP Address An IP address is a numerical number for th...

  • Email Marketing

    5 Ways to Freshen Your Email List

    June 18, 2012 •

    Your email-marketing program depends on a quality list. It's easy for a list to stagnate over time. An email database that is left alone, without refreshing, combined with an email marketing program that is not stimulating, will lead to lower open and click rates. In this article, I'l...

  • Email Marketing

    How to Choose an Email Service Provider

    May 10, 2012 •

    Selecting an email service provider can be a daunting task. With so many potential providers — and a vast range of pricing options and levels of service — how do you know which providers are the best match for your ecommerce business? In this article, I'll address five keys to help yo...

  • Email Marketing

    5 Unique and Effective Email Offers

    April 16, 2012 •

    The offer in an ecommerce email campaign is key. Coming up with offers that stand out from the competition and get your subscribers' attention, however, can be difficult. A straight dollar-off discount gets boring over time, and email recipients will eventually ignore the same types o...

  • Email Marketing

    Using Email to Promote Holiday Sales; Pros and Cons

    March 15, 2012 •

    With St. Patrick’s Day near, companies are scrambling to deliver emails to promote green-themed products, or events around the holiday. With all the buzz, it brings up a interesting question: When does it make sense for ecommerce merchants to embrace a holiday or event and incorporate i...

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