Conversion Rate Optimization

Conversion Rate Optimization

"Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the technical term for strategically planning your tests. It’s the active process of defining the metric you’re trying to optimize, creating several hypotheses about what tweaks in your campaigns may increase your conversion rate, and measuring the effect of each hypothesis. It applies equally to email and landing pages, but I’ll limit the discussion here to email as much as possible."

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What’s next? Why Inbox data will fuel the next wave of email innovation

What’s next? Why Inbox data will fuel the next wave of email innovation

"Where are the big opportunities for email innovation over the next several years? My bet is on the Inbox."

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The State Of Email Marketing In South Africa

The State Of Email Marketing In South Africa

"Email Marketing in South Africa is truly in it's infancy. There are few true ESP's in South Africa, and very few companies truly using Email Marketing to it's full potential."

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Leveraging Your Next Logical Product to Create Repeat Customers

Leveraging Your Next Logical Product to Create Repeat Customers

"If you’re a marketer, you’ve no doubt heard about the 80/20 rule. For those of you who haven’t, it’s simple: 80 percent of your revenue comes from 20 percent of your customer base.If that is indeed the rule, it means the vast majority of your business is coming from repeat customers....

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Buying on the Quarter: How to Get Your Best Deal From Any Vendor

Buying on the Quarter: How to Get Your Best Deal From Any Vendor

"Serious buyers will ask a lot of questions on a number of topics. They include service, implementation, integration, support, product roadmap, financial information on the vendor, timelines for contract negotiations and other elements that are necessary to make a move. Aside from asking a lot of questions, serious buyers tend to involve more people from their organizations to gain exposure to the platforms. As you work to understand how you may be getting scored by your vendor;"

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The Green, Yellow, and Red Lights of Email Marketing

The Green, Yellow, and Red Lights of Email Marketing

"And what's the process for controlling email marketers and taking away the power of the channel? It's easy. Call them a spammer."

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Using Cause Related Emails as a PR Tool

Using Cause Related Emails as a PR Tool

"Many companies use cause-related marketing to boost their brand image, build goodwill and create positive PR. This is widely apparent at holiday time and during October, for example, as businesses jump on the breast cancer awareness bandwagon."

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Top Resources for 'Best Practice' in Email Creative

Top Resources for 'Best Practice' in Email Creative

"The body of knowledge on best practices for email creative has grown exponentially in the time since I started working in online in the late 1980's at Compuserve. Today there are dozens of resources for traditional and cutting edge best practices in email creative. Here are some of my favorites:"

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Six Tips to Help Align Your Business and Your Teams

Six Tips to Help Align Your Business and Your Teams

"When your organization goes through change, it means you have to re-align your business leaders, your teams, your vendors and sometimes, your customers. What steps can you take to get back on track once you realize you are not aligned? "

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The Creepy Side of Email and Big Data

The Creepy Side of Email and Big Data

"Personalization is touted in email circles as a positive. I tell clients all the time that including a recipient's first name and other personal details in a message has been shown to increase engagement. But there are times when personalization can be creepy."

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3 Tips to Get Your Email Program Goals in Tip Top Shape!

3 Tips to Get Your Email Program Goals in Tip Top Shape!

"What do you want to accomplish this year in your email program? Sounds simple right? "

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Jobs

In this journey, many of us have had a lot of different jobs and worn different hats. I've had more than most. Recently I made a list of all the jobs I've had. Believe or not, here it is: I worked as a Sprout Farmer. I have been a grave digger...

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Why Testing is Hard

Why Testing is Hard

"The question is, if everyone wants to test, then why isn’t everyone testing? The answer is that testing is simple in concept but really, really hard to execute. But not for the reasons you think."

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Make Data Privacy & Security Your New Year’s Resolution:

Make Data Privacy & Security Your New Year’s Resolution:

"Marketers, service providers and app developers alike must protect their data no matter where it resides. This includes holding service providers accountable by demanding they adopt the best practices available."

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The Ho-Ho and Ho-Hum of this season's Holiday Email Campaigns

The Ho-Ho and Ho-Hum of this season's Holiday Email Campaigns

As we start a new year, let's take a look at Christmas emails past. The 2013 holiday season was filled with promotional emails galore. Here are a few that caught my attention.

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Move Your Organization through the Process of Change

Move Your Organization through the Process of Change

"Problem: How do you deal with, and lead, the changes in an organization? Answer: You understand the process of change and apply it to the situation and person."

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When Things Go Wrong: Handling Apology Emails

When Things Go Wrong: Handling Apology Emails

As email marketers, we cringe over what can possibly go wrong with our deployments - typos, broken images, broken links. And we lose sleep at night over the even bigger bloopers - missing or expired promo codes, products that sell out before the promotion is over, website glitches and more.

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Analytics and Easy, Actionable Tips for Email List Conversion

Analytics and Easy, Actionable Tips for Email List Conversion

"Back in September I wrote a post for this blog about the mindset of great email marketers: that they are always looking at the data and using the quantitative results to improve their future performance."

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From the Sales Side: What makes a successful Sales Pro

From the Sales Side: What makes a successful Sales Pro

"The challenge that sales folks face in the email space is differentiating between competitive vendors. It’s hard to do. It’s made more complex by the fact that many times the buyers don’t do a good enough job of identifying their needs and truly understanding the core variables that each vendor brings to the table. The reality is that all of the ESP’s can handle sending email and sending it well. Trying to differentiate between basic features that accomplish this table stakes task isn’t going to yield insight for the buyer. Understanding which sales team is bringing you value, versus the one who is interested in winning the commodity race, can have a huge impact on your decision making."

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3 Ways to Impact Engagement with Analysis

3 Ways to Impact Engagement with Analysis

"It amazes me how many companies start email “strategies” without putting much thought into the impact of a poor, or typically complete lack of, planning. It’s not easy to start emailing customers, potential customers or subscribers, or to add new campaigns to existing channel strategy – but, it all starts with understanding what they want followed by consistency."

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