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Viewing posts categorised under: Email Lists

The Truth About Emailing Without Permission

by Karen Talavera

07 15, 2013 | Posted in Email Lists, Email Marketing, Lead Generation | 9 comments

Last month we explored how to begin mailing a list of email addresses gathered both with and without explicit permission. You can read about how to handle the “never-been-emailed” list here. While many email marketers have the best of intentions when it comes to obtaining the clear permission of people they want to email, their inexperience with or reluctance to getting a program started can cause both permission and data to age. But there’s a more serious degree of this problem in which permission is not simply lax or questionable, it is ignored altogether. Hence our conundrum for this month.  

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Should You Ask for Email Permission or Forgiveness?

by Karen Talavera

06 30, 2013 | Posted in Email Lists, Response Improvement | 6 comments

You’ve probably heard the familiar saying “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission”. All too often I hear from many marketers and business owners who find themselves in this unfortunate position when either just starting their email marketing programs or trying to build their lists. This month’s email marketing conundrum explores the problem of how to begin sending to a “never-been-emailed” list, especially if it contains email addresses that may have been obtained without clear permission or were gathered offline such as from business cards, membership lists you have access to, contest entry forms, prize drawings at events, LinkedIn, etc.  

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Keep More Email List Members with Unsubscribe Minimizers

by Karen Talavera

05 28, 2013 | Posted in Email Lists, Email Marketing | 3 comments

Over the next several posts I’ll be addressing a series of email marketing conundrums. A “conundrum” is defined as a puzzling question or problem, and in email there are a few persistent ones I have been asked about on a regular basis since the channel’s earliest days. In fact, these challenges seem to keep so many people up at night that I believe they’re always worthy of discussion and a fresh perspective. So let’s begin with a classic: How do I prevent or minimize unsubscribes from my email list? First, make no mistake about it: over the course of their life cycle with you a certain percentage of subscribers will choose to leave your email list despite your best attempts to keep them and believe it or not, this is good. It’s the nature of any permission-marketing channel for the ultimate choice and control over receiving messages to rest in the hands of subscribers. Plus, we know from the channel’s nearly 15 years in existence that commercial email works best when it is deeply rooted in permission. So, your first step is to  

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Measuring Email Marketing Impact: 3 Essential Analyses Every Program Needs

by Karen Talavera

04 23, 2013 | Posted in Email Lists, Email Marketing, Metrics | Measuring Results | 0 comments

Measuring Email Marketing Impact; Email Marketing AnalysesToday it’s not enough to know how an individual email campaign performed on a one-time basis.  To learn whether or not your company is deriving true value from email marketing, you need the both broader and deeper perspectives offered by program- and list-level analyses. While standard email campaign performance metrics like delivery, open and click-through rates have their place, without looking beyond them the true impact of your email marketing – and opportunities for continuous improvement - will go undetected.  

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The Permission vs. Relevancy Debate: Navigating the Murky Waters of Email Append

by Karen Talavera

07 31, 2012 | Posted in Customer Loyalty, Email Lists, Email Marketing | 2 comments

Navigating the Murky Waters of Email Append There’s an ongoing debate over the role of permission in sending marketing email to customers you have a pre-existing business relationship with. Although in recent years opt-in list building practices have clearly been on the rise, there is still no clear legal mandate for opt-in as a standard email marketing practice in the US and many countries.  

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Could Inactive Email Subscribers Hurt Your Program?

by Karen Talavera

04 30, 2012 | Posted in Email Lists, Email Marketing, Multi-Channel Marketing | 7 comments

inactive email There’s a heated debate in email marketing over what to do with inactive subscribers and whether or not they can seriously  harm a sender’s reputation, deliverability and response enough to justify no longer emailing them.  The passion on both sides of this issue – the potential harmful downside of continuing to mail “inactives” juxtaposed with the potential helpful upside of keeping them on your list – makes this argument one worth taking a closer look at.  

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Email Like It’s 2012, Not 1999

by Karen Talavera

03 18, 2012 | Posted in Email Lists, Email Marketing, Marketing Vision | 0 comments

Email Like It's 2012, Not 1999Given that all things Internet seem to move at the speed of light and come or go overnight, it’s fairly impressive to see commercial email marketing approaching its fifteenth birthday. I remember first becoming involved in email in 1999 and being impressed then with what was creatively and technically possible – even though dial-up Internet connections still outnumbered broadband! Although anti-spam software and abuse-prevention delivery rules have often thwarted the channel’s technical capabilities (even since its early years - video in email was possible in 2000), there is no excuse to still be mailing like it’s 1999.  

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Will You Make The Opt-In Marketing Mindset Shift?

by Karen Talavera

04 30, 2011 | Posted in Audience & List Growth, Customer Loyalty, Email Lists, Email Marketing, Marketing Vision | 1 comments

Opt-In Marketing

photo credit: Berto Garcia

It’s no secret that in the United States at least, we’re obsessed with size. Perhaps stemming from our pioneering roots we equate bigger with better, have a preference for more vs. less (even if it’s far more than we need), and value limitless expanse.  Whether it is due to this mentality or other reasons, a similarly pervasive way of thinking has been the mindset in direct marketing for decades. Yet in an age of awareness about how unfettered human expansion has negatively impacted the environment, times are changing.  Sustainability and austerity are in, conspicuous consumption is out.  There’s a clear quality over quantity movement underfoot and already visible in social media.  I for one say it’s high time this shift made its way fully into email marketing.  

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Do you Really Know Your Customers? Marketing to a Rapidly Diversifying Population

by Karen Talavera

03 31, 2011 | Posted in Customer Loyalty, Email Lists, Targeting & Segmentation | 0 comments

The U.S. Census Bureau releases the results of its 2010 census this summer and marketers are advised to prepare for some major demographic shifts. In a recent interview I read of Peter Francese, consultant to advertising megalith Ogilvy & Mather and author of the research report 2010 America, I was surprised to learn:  

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Maximizing Your Blog Sidebar to Build Your Email List

by Karen Talavera

11 15, 2010 | Posted in Blog Marketing, Email Lists, Lead Generation | 0 comments

GreenDaily features Fierce Hugs!

photo credit: fiercehugs

If you’re not using your blog sidebar to request email addresses and other communication touch points from your readers you’re missing out on one of the best and most trustworthy avenues for building your list - essential to increasing engagement, loyalty and sales. Here are the three top blog sidebar elements every marketer using email should never be without:

Get New Blog Posts by Email

Assuming you have interesting - if not remarkable! - content on your blog, your readers will be interested in coming back to read more so make it easy for them. A common method that alerts subscribers when you have new posts is RSS (it stands for Really Simple Syndication). Readers can subscribe to your RSS feed and see in their RSS reader when you have a new post. However, many people still don’t use RSS, so give your readers an option to receive new blog posts via email.  

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