Don’t-Go-It-Alone eMarketing Blog

There’s been a lot of debate recently about the future of email: is it pushing forward stronger than ever or on the verge of extinction, about to be overrun by all-inclusive social networks?

As an e-marketing specialist, I find it hard to imagine the internet without email. No matter what you use email for, I believe that we, as online content consumers, will always need our inboxes to aggregate, create, organize, and search the hundreds of online data points we create daily as we navigate the web. Email is the only private online location where users can store and create content with very few limitations or restrictions. Where else can you manage your social networks, businesses, bills, family, friends, banks, job searches, and more in one location?

At ListEngage, we help our clients with email and social media marketing daily, so we see the benefits and drawbacks of each: email is a great relationship building tool but not a great prospect acquisition channel, while social media, if used intelligently, is ideal for prospect acquisition and qualification but lacks the “direct contact” that opt-in email does.

I’ve been really impressed with a company called Groupon lately, that seems to be using email and social media as a dynamic 1-2 punch for spreading their daily deals and messages. Click here to read more about the union of email and social media, and how Groupon is delivering a winning e-marketing TKO.

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Just in case you hadn’t turned on your laptop lately, or walked out the front door in awhile, we thought it would be helpful to let you know that it isn’t the 1950’s anymore. Things are moving fast, people are getting bombarded with messages and information at lightning speeds, and businesses now have to cater to a global clientele in order to keep up.

The further we venture into the 21st century, the more we’ll see not only just how important email marketing and online presence will become – but we’ll also begin to see how essential it is to get your message across in the right language as well. We live in a global economy – and it’s hard to sell a product when users can’t understand the language that you’re speaking to them in.

A client of ours, Parametric Technology Corporation, or PTC, is one shining example of how to cater to multiple audiences the right way, by using email marketing. Several years ago, PTC approached ListEngage with a problem: they wanted to send a monthly newsletter to customers around the world, but they didn’t necessarily have a language of choice database for each subscriber. Here’s where we came in: ListEngage helped PTC to design a process that allowed the creation of one newsletter in 10 different languages that would be emailed to subscribers by country. People in Italy would receive the Italian version and their audience in China would receive the Chinese version .

But what if a reader in China received the email in Chinese and wanted to view its content in English? ListEngage helped PTC streamline this problem by creating a “language bar” at the very  top of each email which links  a specific language to a web page version of the newsletter that is posted as a HTML document  in that particular language. So, if a reader in Italy wants to read the newsletter in Spanish, all they have to do is click on “Español” and their  newsletter will pop up for reading right there. The multi-language emails are great for readers and even better for PTC who can connect with more prospects and possible customers with just one click of a button.

PTC “Maintenance Minute” readers can currently enjoy their emails in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Russian.  And though ListEngage doesn’t have the talent to read and translate in 10 different languages, our platform and employees certainly have the expertise to coordinate the “heavy lifting” of getting emails like these out the door in a timely fashion.

James Winokur, Director, Business Development Global Maintenance Support had this to say about the email creation process and ListEngage’s efforts: “[ListEngage] now helps us with all aspects of the 10 language versions of the Maintenance Minute that we send out world-wide on a monthly basis. ListEngage has had a huge impact in our monthly production of this newsletter endeavor and has made this… a success for us.”

Email continues to be the "Great Organizer" for users

According to a new survey published by Merkle, 71% of online consumers spent 20 minutes or more weekly exchanging email with friends and family in 2009, the same level recorded in the previous year.

With plenty of speculation that social networking sites were going to trample email out of the picture, some of the numbers in the report are truly powerful examples of how important email communication is in the average online user’s day-to-day. In fact, with the increased usage of Mobile Email and with most users linking their social networking updates to their personal emails—social networking is actually “breeding” a new brand of “Hyper Email Checkers”!

Here are some other great findings from the study:

– Nearly two-thirds (63%) of social networking consumers use the same email account for their social networking alerts and messages as they do for the majority of their permission, or opt-in email.

– Over 42% of social networking consumers are “hyper email checkers”– those who check their personal email account at least four times daily –compared with 27% of those not socially networked.

– 48% of social networking consumers spend 45+ minutes weekly with personal email, compared with 40% of those not socially networked.

and Mobile users with internet on their phone are even more likely to check their emails constantly:

– 50% of mobile email consumers are “hyper email checkers” too–compared with 32% of traditional email users.

FYI – Data was collected through Merkle’s annual “View from the Inbox” study, an online survey of 3,281 US adults age 18+ conducted during fall 2009.

Image was adapted from an original image by: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A poem for My Love on Valentine’s Day:

Shall I compare thee to a great email list-growth strategy?
You bet!

The two of you “art” fairly similar, I must say.
Our love and my list both started out small, like the darling buds of May.

Then over time, as our love organically grew,
So did my lists-in quality and quantity too!

Like a good little prospect, I subscribed to your love,
And just like the email capture on my website, it fit like a glove.

So on the horizon, what do I see?
Well, more chances to grow us all social-ly,
We can take dance classes, or have dinner with friends,
While my lists will use Twitter as a means to an ends.

Remember my love, thy eternal beauty doth brightly gleam.
And like my list growth strategies, the ROI on your love is Supreme.

Ok, so maybe you’d get backhanded if you actually delivered this sonnet to your True Love this Valentine’s Day– but after you read  ”Why Growing Great Lists is just like Growing Great Love” you might actually agree that the two share some pretty stark  similarities. Could it be that growing any good relationship–whether it’s two people “feeling sparks fly” for the first time or a web visitor signing up for a newsletter for the first time-always begins with a few simple steps?

With 2009 about to draw to an end, we here at List Engage just wanted to take a moment to congratulate our clients, friends, and fellow businesses on growing and thriving through the unprecedented economic climate of 2009– and to wish everyone a happy and healthy 2010!

With businesses looking to expand their eMarketing and social media budgets in 2010 — on everything from email marketing design and services to developing niche followers on Twitter — List Engage has something to offer any business, big or small. Why not make one of your resolutions to join us on the cutting edge of eMarketing success in 2010!

Ho ho hoooo nooooo! It’s too late. You’ve already hit send, and your seemingly perfect Happy Holidays email is now going to be the laughing stock of your clients’ Christmas parties. Let’s face it: email mistakes happen, but they happen a lot less to experienced senders who follow specific steps and check their final product meticulously before they send it out. Although you may be forgiven for your big email mishap, it’s better to just avoid it all together.

This year we wanted to spread our Holiday cheer by helping you send a cleaner, crisper, error-free email, to all of your clients, prospects, and friends. All you have to do is follow these simple steps:

The 5 Best ways to Avoid Email Blunders this Holiday Season

From all of us at List Engage:

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes in the New Year!

2009 has been a dark year for marketing budgets. As the economy tanked, so did every big company’s dreams of plastering market campaigns across every medium available.

Fortunately for e-marketers, email and social media marketing budgets defied the odds, and most actually grew in ‘09.

Take a look at the Marketing Sherpa chart, to see the average email marketing budget decreases versus increases across 8 financial sectors.

To read the entire article, go here.

It turns out, that when consumers want to share something they’ve found online with their friends or family– like an article link, or a video– an overwhelming amount of people still use email as their primary form of sharing. According to the latest survey from Marketing Sherpa, while social media is gaining some ground, the latter still dominates as a sharing tool.

In email’s defense, there are plenty of reasons to use it over social networking sites: privacy, certainty of delivery,  no length restrictions… to name a few. In the words of Marketing Sherpa, “When we look at media use over the last 15 years, we see a pattern of aggregation and adoption rather than replacement. Some media suffer in the exchange, but none are eliminated entirely. More commonly, their uses become more refined.”

So, while we may find a Facebook status update good for conveying a one-liner, or Twitter for “tweeting” our location it’s a lot less likely that social media will replace email for getting in touch with Nana, keeping updated on your bank’s latest policies, or interacting with potential clients.

To read the complete Marketing Sherpa study, click here.

As List Engage rolls out the new ShareThis feature for all of our email marketing clients, the social networking world just got a whole lot closer. Now, with the click of a button you can instantly connect your emails to your social networks– and simultaneouly sync all that time, money, and effort you’ve invested in your email campaigns into your social networking efforts as well! And with the 2010 media buying budget looking to have email marketing and social media neck-in-neck on ad spending– now’s the time to make your marketing dollars work overtime.

Keep Reading…

To learn more, specifically about ShareThis and our other Social Forward features, click here.

Recently, Seattle based outdoor clothing retailer Filson came to ListEngage with a challenge—create an email marketing campaign that reached their valued customer’s inboxes with a time sensitive offer and in turn help them increase their campaign performance and sales. They wanted to see positive results, and ListEngage delivered!

By following best practices in email design and rendering, smart list segmenting techniques and moving away from an all-image based email to a combination of images and text seen above the fold ListEngage was able to achieve a much higher success rate than average email marketing campaigns. The campaign generated much better open and click-through rates and even reported “higher than expected sales” – the ultimate dream for any online retailer and what every e-marketing company should strive for when helping clients with their online marketing efforts.

To learn more about Filson, or to sign up for their exclusive offers and events click here.

To learn more about ListEngage and our “Don’t Go It Alone” philosophy or to sign-up for our newsletter click here.