Is your email newsletter readable on a mobile device? Mobile email is not an option today but a must.
The Best and Worst Time to Send E-mails
What are the best time and worst time to send emails?
Are you testing your best times? If not, you may not be seeing effective results.
Email is Social
Is the person in charge of social media at your company also knowledgeable and in charge of your email marketing? Or, better asked, is all of your marketing integrated.
Despite calls that “e-mail is dead” because social media has taken the place of e-mail, that gets the process backwards — choose goals and strategy prior to choosing the technology or technologies to implement.
Email is social. Email is also very strongly integrated with social networks. Social media also integrates with email.
If you want fans to your Facebook page, you don’t simply create an offer and let it sit there. Frequently, one of the most effective tactics is to send an email to your list, informing them of the offer on Facebook. This serves the dual purpose of lead nurturing and also empowering your strongest advocates — those that chose to receive your email (it is opt-in only, right?) — to help promote yourself.
According to ClickZ:
E-mail should be working hand in hand with the other digital messaging channels and each channel should complement and leverage the strength of the other. Ask yourself:
- Are you talking to your best advocates (e-mail list) and pushing them to your Facebook page where they can amplify the conversation in your favor?
- Are you following up on conversations happening on Twitter and sending your followers the more detailed information, or coupon, or content they want?
You can also tweet your e-mail newsletter, like Smashing Magazine recently did.
According to ClickZ,
E-mail marketers need to get in this mindset – it’s not either/or; it’s not one killing the other; it’s two different channels that are very much the same.
This is why every facet of the campaign needs to be integrated; marketers need to start looking at holistic messaging strategies. Does your community manager have a schedule of when content will be pushed to Twitter and Facebook so that those two channels are complementing each other? Is e-mail on that same calendar? I’m not just talking about someone, somewhere in your organization who has a master marketing calendar. I mean, is all of your digital messaging working together in real-time? E-mail is just another one of your social channels, and it could be argued that the people who subscribe to that list are your best customers.
E-mail Marketing is Not Dead: The Problem with the Social Media Bubble
There is a social media bubble. That is not to deny the growing importance of social channels in an integrated digital marketing strategy, but there are more and more voices decrying email as dead and only social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, as relevant. Why send an email, when you can tweet, they ask?
That not only misunderstands communication but is sure to ensure that their target audience misses their message.
E-mail is more relevant than ever, to reach key audiences. In addition, email has among the best ROI. Click through rates of email are among the highest — more than banner ads or video.
In 2010, over 107 trillion emails were sent — 294 billion per day. There were over 244 million new email users. 25% of which were corporate accounts.
Over 93% of web surfers subscribe to permission-based email, according to eMarketer. “Best practices for email marketing can be summarized in one sentence,” said David Hallerman, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the new report, “10 Best Practices for Email Marketing.” “Get accurate and detailed data from people who want to hear from you, then automate the numerous steps involved in sending them relevant messages.”
E-mail is also adapting and changing. These are concerns that marketers need to be aware of.
- More and more email is being read on mobile devices
- Email is increasingly becoming social as well, with content being shared online and links from articles being shared
“Not only does email usage remain a prime activity among internet users of all ages, it allows marketers to contact their target audience with timing and personalized details that social sites cannot match,” said Hallerman. “And the rise of mobile usage helps marketers reach their customers via email more than before, since many people use those devices to check email much more frequently than they might have in the past.”