Tamara Gielen, an expert in email marketing and based in Belgium, asked her Twitter followers to finish the sentence "Email marketing works because...". The result has been a great list of reasons why email marketing is an important part of the mix for any marketer today.

Here are my fave five:

- @marcmunier: Email marketing works because people spend more time at their inbox than any other online activity

- @djwaldow: "Email Mktg works b/c it has a proven, measurable, ROI; easy to test; "Long" track record; digital glue of SM

- @jewelss: bc it's cost-effective & allows u to form a personal relationship w/ a consumer by way of their inbox! :)

- @thecmunzproject: Email marketing works because it opens up a conversation that otherwise you could not have with your members.

- @LorenMcDonald: Email marketing works because when done correctly no marketing comms channel resonates more w/ subscribers & delivers higher ROI

You can see the full list on Tamara's blog here.

Posted by Riaz Kanani at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Forrester have released a report predicting that individuals are are going to receive 9000 email marketing messages a year. That's is nearly 25 marketing emails a day.

Already today, email marketers are being advised to engage with their recipients rather than just trying to target them. If your recipients are going to be receiving that many emails everyday, engagement is going to be critical. Let's face it, most of those emails are not going to be opened.

Dela Quist wrote on the DMA's email marketing blog last week about recipients being "unemotionally subscribed". These are those users that make up the majority of your list - the ones that are not always opening and reading your emails. They stay subscribed preferring instead to ignore your emails because there might be a use for them another time. Unsubscribing now would mean the hassle of trying to find the website again when I actually want to read the email. I am defintely guilty of this - though likewise a subject line might temporarily sway me from locating the delete button immediately.

So how can you stand out from the pack and engage with your audience?

Before you can engage with your list, you first need to listen and understand your audience. Here are 3 ways to start engaging more with your list.

Use behavioural information from website tracking or through share-to-social type tools to add one level of understanding; as well as surveys, replies or other tools to obtain more specific responses.

Use techniques like Silverpop's send time optimisation feature to deliver your message at a time when the recipient is more likely to be in front of their computer.

Once you have a deeper understanding of your list, you are then able to split your list up into 4 categories and look at reports based on these groups.

1. "unemotionally subscribed" - see above

2. "engaged" - those who have opened, clicked etc

3. "engaged to buy" - showed a desire to purchase or have purchased

4. "engaged to influence" - those who are virally spreading your brand to others

More to come on this, as being engaged with your list is going to become more critical over time!

Further resources:

Webinar: Maximise Results with Engagement Marketing Technologies
Whitepaper: Engagement Marketing: Partnering With Your Customers for Success
Case Study: National Express

[image credit: quinn.anya]

Posted by Riaz Kanani at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What is the level of disengagement from your emails?

As email marketing gains greater visibility within companies, pressure is increasingly being placed on email marketers to send out more mails - especially given the provable uplift in revenue generated from each campaign.

Often the timelines get shortened and before you know it you're expected to send out twice as many mailings which leads to less targeted and less thought out campaigns. This will almost certainly work the first time but quickly the engagement and conversion metrics will start to decrease. How many recipients are unsubscribing as frequency increases? What impact does a less targeted campaign have on opt outs and abuse rates?

As pressure mounts make sure you monitor all your metrics closely, and track not only the level of engagement but the disengagement some activities may result in. Customers are increasingly fickle (Brits are more likely than other Europeans to change their minds after researching online according to a MediaScope Europe survey) and with a plethora of companies vying for every piece of business it's important to minimise activities which may lead to the long term decline in your ability to re-engage with your audience (and a significant reduction in the number of people you can engage with!).

Julie Joseph
eMarketing Strategy Consultant

(Image courtesy of AliceNWondrlnd)

Posted by Riaz Kanani at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Silverpop is hosting its 5th Annual Masterclass event next week for B2B and B2C marketers. The event is aimed at helping marketers boost results and prove their value to the bottom line, which is obviously important to us marketers in today's environment!

The day is split into two, with a focus on B2B in the morning followed by a more broader look at Engagement Marketing in the afternoon. You can see the agenda below and also see all the presentations from the event.

Silverpop Masterclass 2009 - B2B Engagement Marketing

9:30am Don't Let Leads Slip Through Your Fingers - Engagement Marketing and Lead Management
Will Schnabel, Silverpop

Engagement marketing has moved to the forefront of the B2B marketing vernacular,
and with it, the robust strategy of integrated lead management has finally come
of age. For the B2B sales and marketing world, it is no longer a luxury, but an
imperative, to be able to nurture and score leads until they are ready for
sales. In this presentation, we will discuss the newest findings in lead
generation and management, including:

- The newest strategies used in developing a modern lead-generation process
- The key components of a robust lead nurturing strategy
- Aligning sales and marketing to maximize the benefits of lead management efforts
- The newest innovations in marketing automation to support integrated lead management

10:45 am Panel Discussion: Crossing the Chasm: Best-in-Class Sales and Marketing Integration
Sally Hewitt, Pitney Bowes Stephanie Robotham,Salesforce.com, Adrian James, Curious Group
Moderated by Joel Harrison, B2B Marketing Magazine

World-class demand generation and lead management now requires a much tighter
and higher level of integration between sales and marketing than ever before. Do
the efforts and costs involved with the alignment between these functions
pay-off in terms of increased efficiencies and improved revenues? Experts on
both sides of the divide discuss the benefits and pitfalls of incorporating a
lead-management integration program into your marketing efforts. Panellists will
discuss:

- How to build the business case to initiative a sales and marketing integration program
- The best places to start in initiating a lead-management program for your organisation
- How you can measure the impact of lead management on sales effectiveness
- Key lessons learned from best-in-class companies that focus on performance through integration

11:30 am Measuring Up in the Downturn
Stuart Small, Industry Leader for B2B & Public Sector, Google
Insights from Google into how to drive leads using information available online to marketers.

Silverpop Masterclass 2009 - Engagement Marketing

2:00pm Six Steps to More Engaged Subscribers,
Loren McDonald, Silverpop

Understand the key to delivering unprecedented ROI and gain insights into
achieving this with engagement email marketing.

3:30pm Measuring Success with Social Marketing,
Tom Nixon, Nixon McInnes

Examining successful real world social marketing techniques and the metrics used
to understand success

4:15 pm Panel: Engagement Email Marketing Problems Solved.
Adrian James, Curious Group, Noorin Virani, Visit London, Alex Powell, STA Travel
Moderated by Riaz Kanani, Silverpop

Success stories and techniques from implementing advanced engagement marketing
techniques such as Shopping Basket Abandonment, "share to social" and Send-Time Optimisation.

Posted by Riaz Kanani at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Social Media has been a big topic in marketing for a while now. Last month, Forrester released a report showing that more than 50 percent of marketers planned to increase their investment in social media and predictions place this area as the strongest for growth in 2009.

With conversations coming online through networks like Facebook and Twitter, marketers need to move to take advantage of these new communications channels to reach both existing and prospective customers. To date, the traditional online methods of advertising to this audience have not been successful, but this is because they have not been able to engage with the user. Solving this is a big challenge for marketing today.

This is not something that can wait either.

Rebecca Jennings at Forrester Research posted some statistics earlier this month on how the Baby Boomer generation (43-63 year olds) in Europe are actively using Social Media today.

The research shows that almost half of the younger baby boomers (43-52 year olds) are participating in Social Media today compared to approximately 40% of older baby boomers (53-63 year olds). This is not something that is restricted to Generation X or Y. You can see the country breakdown below.

Twitter (which has seen phenomenal growth last quarter) and Facebook (which is also growing in Europe) are focussed on generating conversations online and continuously trying to reduce the barriers to creating content. Over time, this will reduce the number of spectators and force marketers to become more actively involved and closer to their audience.

Posted by Riaz Kanani at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the same time I also want to point you in the direction of our European webinar series. Our first webinar is an introduction to Engagement Marketing for both B2B and B2C marketers given by William Schnabel, General Manager-EMEA. Engagement Marketing allows the marketer to work within a new environment where with the increase in social media, users are having many more conversations online and traditional marketing channels are now just one of many sources of information. You can find out more here.

Posted by Riaz Kanani at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)