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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.
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
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
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.
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.
Email Like It’s 2012, Not 1999
by Karen Talavera
03 18, 2012 | Posted in Email Lists, Email Marketing, Marketing Vision | 0 comments
Given 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.
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
photo credit: Berto Garcia
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
photo credit: fiercehugs
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.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
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