MindComet

Beginning of the End at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit

After a long day yesterday of gaining some great knowledge on various aspects of email marketing as well as a networking gala, we are diving right back into it this morning!  We just attended the first presentation of the morning here at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit, from Pam McHugh from Mintel.  Her presentation was on a New Proprietary Study: How Consumers Interact with Email.  She had some great stats and info to share. 

As mentioned various times throughout each day, she began discussing the daily challenges we see as email marketers.  Two main topics she discussed was Subject Lines and Frequency. 

“Subject lines transcends familiarity,” is something that sort of echoed in the room when Pam made the statement.  Her role is to study email marketing and they have found that subject lines can get you past the reader not knowing who the sender is.  A reader is more likely to open the email if the subject line is relevant and catching. 

When she touched on frequency, which is a very touchy subject around email, there were some interesting points she mentioned.  Consumers reported a high tolerance for multiple communications if their perceived relationship with the company was high.  They were more than likely to tolerate up to 9 emails a month.  This did not necessarily mean the emails would be opened, but they would not get annoyed that they were receiving them.  If the perceived relationship with the company was lower, the tolerance or receiving emails was significantly lower.

On to more breakout sessions here at the Summit, more to come!!!

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 26, 2008

Correct is Not Always the Most Effective…

During the introduction of the 3rd Annual MarketingSherpa Email Summit by Stefan Tornquist this morning, he concluded with TO DOs for 2008!

1. Conduct an email audit
2. Obsess on content
3. Reputation (monitor your delivery on multiple ISPs)
4. Subject lines (get to the point, don’t waste time re-stating who the email is coming from, that is what the “From” line is for)
5. Vary your email templates
6. Optimize

This list was revisited during various other presentations throughout the day. 

Other great statements to note from the various presenters:

- “Relevance drives campaign performance.” - Kimberley Talbot, Adobe Systems Inc.

- Utilize your “Thank You” email when people subscribe for your Newsletter, don’t waste the communication with a one line message.  Add white papers, good, relative content to ride off the initial interest of the customer. - Stefan Tornquist, MarketingSherpa

- “The first email communication your subscribers receive is the one they spend the most time on.” - Randall Huff, Intuit Inc.

- Use Salesperson photos in your Service (not sales) emails you send out.  Creates a better connection to the consumer. -Dave Wieneke, Thomson Compumark

Are you executing doing your email campaigns correctly?  Maybe!  BUT, are you making sure it is executed to the extent in order to make sure it is the MOST Effective?

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 25, 2008

Start of Day 2 in Miami

While MindComet was preparing for the MarketingSherpa Email Summit we were given the chance to speak to a presenter, Vicki Morris, Vice President of Marketing for NorthStar, a leading B-to-B wealth management software provider to financial services institutions.  Vicki will be presenting B2B segmentation strategies and sharing how her company doubled the number of client engagements in just one year with an aggressive email marketing program.  We are looking forward to her presentation and had some questions in order to prepare. 

The enticing piece of Vicki’s presentation will be seeing how they came to report that NorthStar doubled the number of client engagements in as fast as one year.  Their testing was based on the way they target for their email sends.  With each send, results increased and they were able to prove that the more targeted, the better.  This is a very easy tactic if you think about it in a marketing perspective however it is easily forgotten when we think we should message in terms of urgency instead. 

Vicki stressed to us that, “...metrics are an increasingly important part of every successful marketing project.  I strongly encourage all marketing executives to establish clear metrics and expectations with sales and executive teams before launching any e-marketing campaign.”  In most industries time is of the essence, however if we do not take the time to set metrics and give the campaign something to measure upon, there is no real value in the results we see for future planning and tactics. 

Vicki had so much to say so look for more posts on her interview about NorthStar’s Segmentation Strategies and Procedures presentation.  We look forward to seeing Vicki’s presentation today and all the great tips we will receive that we will convey to you.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 25, 2008

MarketingSherpa Email Summit Day 1 - Email Certification Course

We just got through a day of email marketing best practices and training which is typically a few days worth of training conducted by Marketing Experiments.  We have to give Marketing Experiments, Director, Flint McGlaughin our thanks again, as he not only crammed our heads with insightful email information but made it all very interesting by going over many examples they have previously tested in addition to live examples from the crowd.  Marketing Experiments not only reiterated some of the best practices that we follow through on a daily basis but also shed light in other areas that we can take back to our clients and encourage them to try out some new tactics.  One of the key takeaways from today’s event that I couldn’t agree more with is that optimization takes place in the mind, not on the landing page that you are trying to get a user to click through to - I’ll expand more on this later with some other key insights we left with.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to what’s in store over the next two days of the Summit.  We’ll be online throughout the two days so keep checking back for the latest updates on MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit Agenda.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 24, 2008

Upcoming Email MarketingSherpa Summit

One week until Marketing Sherpa’s Annual Email Marketing Summit and I can’t wait.  Not only is there a lengthy list of great attendees but its my first summit.  Im really looking forward to the hearing others case studies in regards to email marketing success, struggles and lessons learned.  We’ll be blogging from the event so be sure to tune in for the latest.

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Posted by MindComet on Feb. 18, 2008