more tips

Worthwhile article titled 3 Common Email Mistakes by Caroline Nye. 
         I particularly like:

Underestimating Email's Overall Impact

Within hours of sending an email, you know how many people opened, clicked, and purchased or converted. What is hard to measure, however, is all the other ways in which an email will actually affect your bottom line.

After years of sending email and analyzing results, I’ve consistently seen a huge percentage of recipients coming back, within three days, to purchase via another channel. I have also seen large percentages of consumers use an email-only offer code while calling to place an order, or consumers calling in not to use a promotion code but mentioning they received an email. In short, measuring the effectiveness of an email through initial clicks captures only a portion of the actual impact. Similar to television or radio, email contributes to the bottom line in a way that will never be completely quantifiable.

Spend time with more advanced analysis. Look at all the sales since a specific campaign, and track which people had opened or clicked on the email. The true impact of a single campaign will likely emerge. Email is an effective branding tool, helping consumers remember a company, even when they don’t open an email.

visible and invisible lines of customers

Key customer service note for all of us:

"The memory of the event is more important than the experience: Leaving a positive impression is important because that’s how a person will remember the event."

read the whole Business2Community article by Scott Anderson

social commerce best practices

We feel like social sign-on is everywhere, but data shows this is still a huge opportunity for many e-commerce sites.

Great infographic on Patricio Robles' 12/12 eConsultancy blog

yep.

well done boden.  i know exactly what you're after.

check out some others here.

unfolding social business

Pay attention, people. Google Communities, which launches today, defines Web 3.0.

This is the real intent of Google+... beyond a social network, the true semantic web.  Google Communities enables topic pages beyond groups, company pages and blogs because rather than operating as standalone topic pages, they’re interconnected.  Everything is indexed so you can discover, link and share topics of interest.

What does this mean for marketers?  Don't simply create content, consider how that content relates to your products, your promotions, and your other content. From a social media and social business perspective, enable these connections between customers, not just between you and the customers.

Great TechCrunch writeup by Drew Olanoff this morning.

perspective: current industry ideas

i find it useful to seek out blog posts and niche marketing sites for scoop and new ideas. here are a few floating around:

• subject lines drive click rates on marketing emails more so than the sender/from
• marketing email deliverability rate is currently 82%.  how does that compare to your organization's performance?
• direct email is one of the the most trusted marketing channels
• there's a direct relationship between content and social exposure, so get newsletter [in part or full] on your organization's website and social networks, don't just utilize that space for promotions
• email marketing automation cannot replace personal connections of inside and outside sales reps in B2B environments; those personal connections are still proving necessary

deliverability from thomson local on and on trust
newsletter scoop from search engine journal
customer think on B2B

wired: missed opportunity

I'm an avid reader of Wired news and blogs.  That team puts together a great print magazine, a well designed website and fantastic content.  I'm wondering why their email newsletter is so mediocre. They send me 2 photos with headlines, one of which is "from the archives."  I am not sure the business sense of pushing archived content since it's free to readers, though there could be some benefit to them in promoting the depth of their website.  25% of the page is an ad for an outside vendor.  And on my laptop, I cannot read the images or copy for the additional five headlines (bottom right list).  When I try to view this on my phone... well, I can't try.  It's a miss, guys.