Blog
A Blueprint for Email Messaging Strategy Success
by Karen Talavera
01 31, 2014 | Posted in Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Messaging Strategy, Resources for Getting It Done | 4 comments
As a marketing channel, email is coming off a banner year! 2013 boasts some of the most significant investment and acquisition activity in the industry’s 20-year history (Salesforce.com acquired ExactTarget for almost $3 billion, Oracle offered $1.58 billion for Responsys). Despite the occasional sensational headline to the contrary, email marketing’s use and popularity continues to grow and technical innovations abound.
Could Inactive Email Subscribers Hurt Your Program?
by Karen Talavera
04 30, 2012 | Posted in Email Lists, Email Marketing, Multi-Channel Marketing | 7 comments
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.
Getting Them to Say “Yes!”
by Karen Talavera
05 30, 2011 | Posted in Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Marketing Vision | 0 comments
photo credit: lukxde
Invitation
It’s universally human that we would rather be asked than tricked or forced. Free will is one of the very cornerstones of human nature. When it’s all said and done, we’d rather be given the chance to make a conscious decision than cornered into unconscious choices we end up inevitably regretting. So when it comes to asking someone to join your email or social media sphere, don't fall back on deception and coercion. You don’t need to sneak them in under the wire. Simply invite them and trust that they can decide for themselves what is in their own best interests.2011: Year of Marketing Alignment
by Karen Talavera
01 27, 2011 | Posted in Marketing Vision, Multi-Channel Marketing | 2 comments
photo credit: D.H. Parks
Three Holiday Retail Email Marketing Lessons for Non-Retail Companies
by Karen Talavera
12 20, 2010 | Posted in Creative, Customer Loyalty, Email Marketing | 0 comments
photo credit: doug_wertman
Vary frequency and cadence seasonally
Retailers live and die by the holiday gift giving season (hence the term “black Friday” for the day after Thanksgiving, traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year on which many retail businesses that haven’t yet made an annual profit will go from “being in the red” to “being in the black”). Even before the days of e-commerce, holiday messaging was much more frequent than advertising done at other times of the year. This increase is easy to see in the email marketing frequency of retailers, which goes from monthly or weekly to as often as weekly or daily during November and December. It may not be at holiday time, but chances are there is a period or there are seasons when it makes sense to increase yourAre You Pulling the Trigger? (part 2 of 3)
by Karen Talavera
10 30, 2010 | Posted in Customer Loyalty, Email Marketing, Targeting & Segmentation | 0 comments
Creative Commons License photo credit: Mooganic
Welcome and Onboarding: Are You Saying Hello?
I like to think of email in the eyes of the recipient first and foremost as a conversation marketing channel.Avoiding Forgotten Stepchild Syndrome in Email Design
by Karen Talavera
10 14, 2010 | Posted in Creative, Email Marketing | 0 comments
photo credit: Pranavian
Thankfully, the days of silo-ed email marketing run by two techies hunched in a shared cubicle wedged into a forgotten corner far from the marketing department are largely over at most companies. However, marketing email can still suffer from "forgotten stepchild syndrome" when it comes to design.
It's a fair enough question: "Should my email creative match the design/look/feel of my company's website?" Ideally yes, provided your website was created or at least had a face lift in the last few years. (If it hasn't been touched since 2002, that's a different story.) But in general, yes, from a creative standpoint your email marketing messages need to be included in your digital family.How to Identify Your Brand’s Biggest Fans on Your Email List
by Karen Talavera
09 16, 2010 | Posted in Customer Loyalty, Email Marketing, Social Media | 0 comments
photo credit: kozumel
On any email list, there will be three populations: the people who love you, the people who like you, and the group who are just hanging in there. Last month I wrote about how to re-engage inactives, but this month I’d like to focus on a far more appealing sector: the people who love you. I call them brand loyalists.
So how do you figure out who's who? Here are five ways to identify brand loyalists on your email list:Get Free Updates
Let’s Get Social
