time of day matters

eBags determined receipt time - not just day of the week - can improve response rates.
simple idea: email the person the same time of day they had time to opt in to hear from you.

check out this eConsultancy writeup

marketers investing more in email during 2013

The 2013 eConsultancy marketing budget report indicates that marketers are now using email for a variety of reasons, other than straightforward monetary objectives; such as engagement, brand awareness and acquirement. Online channels are being integrated with email to build relationships with customers as well as increase ROI.

One quarter of respondents report that email contributes more than half of its digital revenue.

Also see a bizcommunity article about this.

iPad dominating email space

iPads are becoming the preferred place to read and send emails.  And there are 67.5million iPad users in the U.S., 65% of whom check those iPads for email at least 3 times a day.  This will affect the format and delivery of marketing messages, prioritizing usability.

read complete eMarketer article

signs point --> 2 email (at least in the UK)

Brand marketers ‘bullish’ about email marketing budgets, with 89% deeming it important

New research from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has found that 89 percent of senior marketers called emails "important" or "very important" to their organisation, with 56 per cent “confident that expenditure on email marketing will increase this year”.

According to the senior B2B and B2C brand marketers surveyed for the DMA Email Marketing Council's 2013 National Client Email Report, email delivered an average ROI of £21.48 for every £1 spent last year.

It was also found that over half of brands surveyed reported an increase in open, click and conversion rates in 2012: up five per cent from 2011.

Dela Quist, chair of the DMA Email Marketing Council’s Email Benchmarking Hub and chief executive at Alchemy Worx, said: “The report characterises 2012 as the year where email has defied market trends and carried the load in terms of delivering revenue. This is equally true for our clients, who closed 2012 up on budgets and targets for email but down in other channels. The result of these successes, as the report reveals, is that marketers will be investing even more effort in email in 2013.”

The research discovered that rigger email campaigns generated 21 percent of email revenue.

Originaly from ISHBEL MACLEOD in The Drum

mobile offers

Mobile Spurs Digital Coupon User Growth

check out the full eMarketer article

one way to do the super bowl

extra points, paper culture.
single message, single call to action, mobile-friendly, graphically compelling.

The future of email marketing and three ways it must evolve

Mark Munier's eConsultancy post is insightful and accurate.  Read it here:

Email has been around for a while now, and it’s done us all proud. The ubiquitous method of communication is so pervasive as a communication method that not having one is even more unusual than not having a telly (brave souls).

It’s difficult to talk about a new communication channel without comparing it to email, and for email to remain relevant it needs to evolve to give consumers what they now expect from digital communication channels.

1. Become geographically and time aware

The trouble with email is that it is dumb to all the technology that is available to it. As email marketers you are used to understanding when, how, on what and where people are checking their emails – but the clients themselves aren’t using this information to produce a richer email consumption experience.

Even so, people are going to want to be able to check their email and this tech nirvana would be brought to an abrupt end when all your emails whizz past your eyes while you are trying to look hip.

BUT imagine a world where your email client knows where you are (on the tube) and where you are going (downtown so you’ll be on the tube for 20 minutes), so it navigates to emails which it knows will take you 20 minutes to digest – maybe the latest from the Financial Times?

Geographically aware email is not that far away. Apple’s Passbook (Android options do exist) has been missed by so many bricks and mortar retailers that it’s frankly scary.

Passbook allows you to tag your prospect or client so that they receive notifications when they are near your store, so you get more footfall to your store from people who have already engaged with you online – something HMV would have crawled over broken CDs for.

An awesome fellow @pure360’er, Kav Webb, did a blog on practically how you can do this. 

2. Replace notifications 

It is bizarre what you can do to trigger a tweet. There are some great examples on iftt.com, but the trouble with Twitter is that you easily miss tweets – especially if you follow more than a few hundred people.

To the contrary, email never goes away until you address it, bar a few smart innovations from outlook.com, so as we have more and more devices we need to keep track or we will start to see more emails from our actual belongings. 

Notifications on your smart phone are pretty intrusive – the fact that the iPhone is advertised as having a ‘do not disturb’ button gives an indication of the backlash against constant interruptions.

So expect to see emails from devices and applications a lot more – an email from your boiler asking if you want to turn the heating up as it’s getting a bit chilly outside, for instance – naturally you’ll reply in human language if you want to.

3. No more annoying emails

You can’t get away with sending unsolicited emails anymore. Back in the bad old days of email, marketing spam filters weren’t very sophisticated and as long as you weren’t pushing Viagra marketers could email a lot of people quite easily.

However, after the efforts of the larger ISPs, spam filters are now very smart, meaning that you really shouldn’t receive any email that you don’t want. This decline has predominately already happened but will continue to get tighter as people become less satisfied with unwarranted marketing messages.

The emails that annoy me are the “thanks” emails or “ok”, these little digital fist bumps don’t belong on email – these belong on an Instant Messaging platform.

Soon enough there will be a common protocol for IM so it won’t matter what client or service you are using, you will simply be able to chat with people who you want to.