Silverpop Blog

Subject Line Testing: Tips for Getting It Right

By Loren McDonald (@LorenMcDonald), on February 8th, 2012

We at Silverpop often hear email subject line questions such as, “What’s the sample size needed for subject line testing?” in conversations with clients and other marketers. My colleague Stephen Guerra wrote an excellent explanation (“Email Testing: Determining the Right Sample Size“) in a previous blog post, and he and I came up with these [...]

Your Blueprint for Building a Birthday Email Program

By Loren McDonald (@LorenMcDonald), on January 12th, 2012

We at Silverpop are big on birthday emails, and not just because we enjoy receiving them on our special days.

A well-designed birthday email program has the potential to generate high ROI on a relatively low level of effort. Birthday emails also give you another opportunity to reach out to your customers with a highly relevant [...]

Boosting Your Click Rate

By Arthur Hughes (@Silverpop), on January 5th, 2012

Despite the attention many marketers pay to open rates, the only real proof that your email is getting your subscribers’ attention is when they click on a link within the email after opening it. Clicks are the true measure of whether anyone is actually reading your emails and thinking about what you’re trying to say [...]

4 Content Tips to Cure Sickly Email Marketing (part 3)

By Richard Evans (@rlevans), on December 22nd, 2011

Several weeks back, we began looking at the queasy effects that poorly executed email programmes can have on recipients. Following that post, I proposed three forms of data that can be used to give you the insights you need to improve your email marketing efforts. As the conclusion to this series, I thought it fitting [...]

My Top 5 Favorite Silverpop Customer Stories of 2011

By Karen Marchione (@kmarchione), on December 15th, 2011

From providing developing nations with safe drinking water to crafting complex social campaigns, our clients were no strangers to success in 2011. We’re always excited about our customers meeting their goals with the help of our products, and this year they achieved some incredible results. Here are five of my favorite customer stories from 2011:

1) [...]

Guest Q&A: Mark Brownlow on Email Marketing

By Loren McDonald (@LorenMcDonald), on November 21st, 2011

This month, I’m truly excited to have Mark Brownlow, the founder and publisher of Email Marketing Reports, answer my questions on several often-discussed email marketing issues. Mark has been my favorite blogger on email marketing since we first crossed paths in 2003—though unfortunately we keep missing each other during my trips to Europe—so I was [...]

STO Revisited: What We’ve Learned About the Best Time to Send Email

By Loren McDonald (@LorenMcDonald), on August 3rd, 2011

Two years ago, Silverpop introduced Send Time Optimization in an effort to provide marketers with the answer to the eternal question, “What’s the best time to send email?” With email habits varying widely from person to person and endless time variables to consider, we proposed that a “one size fits all” approach wasn’t the best [...]

Email Testing: Determining the Right Sample Size

By Stephen Guerra (@StephenGuerra), on July 27th, 2011

Almost any marketer who has ever pushed the “send” button on an email understands how powerful testing can be in improving results. Sometimes we don’t test when time is short and resources scarce, but we all know we should be testing. That’s why I often get frustrated when someone takes the time to construct a [...]

Are You Testing Apples and Oranges?

By Loren McDonald (@LorenMcDonald), on August 2nd, 2010

Testing, especially A/B testing of subject lines, is one of the most popular topics among email marketers. Subject-line testing is also probably the easiest and most popular test to execute. Perhaps because of that, the results are the most misinterpreted too.

A perfect example of this is a recent test, submitted to the conversion-optimization website Which [...]

Testing Moves to Perpetual Content Optimization

By Loren McDonald (@LorenMcDonald), on May 17th, 2010

Testing has always been an essential part of email marketing. If you don’t test, you don’t know what works and what doesn’t—and whether you’re reaping rewards or wasting your marketing money.

However, testing as we know it is evolving to keep up with the complexities of email and constant changes in consumer behavior. It’s no longer [...]