Email Marketing: Take it to the next level!

There are many many many articles, blogposts, and studies about the effectiveness of Email Marketing and the current state of affairs.  While the email marketing channel offers the largest ROI of any of the marketing channels, what are the things to keep your eye on that will take your email marketing activities to the next level?

One thing to think about for metrics and tracking that will help you build a relationship with your prospect is what they do AFTER they click through the email. Things such as:
- how long did they spend at your site, microsite, or landing pages?
- what did they look at?
- what did they download?

That will help you understand your prospects better, and allow you to target your messages more effectively.

Rather than an email marketing system that is "Email Campaign" centered, how about a system that is "Lead or Prospect" centered? Meaning you can come at the metrics and intelligence from both the Email campaign perspective, but also from the Lead/Prospect "Profile" that shows all campaigns they've received and how they responded.

One that is "Activity Focused" rather than "Demographic Focused" -- meaning that you can target and segment for the demographics you might be interested in, but you can also easily target based on the activities and responses that leads/prospects have to your campaigns -- with content and messaging that is relevant to them, and considerate of the "permission" they have given to you.

With 77% of companies using email marketing, and 60-95% of those companies sending every email to their entire list -- those companies who can build intelligence about their leads, and target relevant content and offerings based on their interest, are going to see their email marketing ROI continue to go up -- while others will see it flatten out as they saturate their list to diminishing returns.

The articles and information compiled from around the Net this month, offers a lot to consider and think about.  As you scroll through the articles, one thing becomes really clear -- ultimately, it is a content marketing strategy that is driven by the intelligence you can capture and act on from your leads' responses to your marketing efforts that will drive ongoing success from email marketing initiatives.

Sep 22, 2010 - from Convince & Convert - excellent article that explores the difference between email marketing and social media marketing: the difference between actual audience and potential audience. How social and email work together to harness your marketing messages and generate interest.

Sep 14, 2010 - eMarketer Daily - Marketers are working video into email marketing - to increase clicks and conversions. However, ease of implementation is the most commonly cited barrier, followed by cost and availability of video assets. Most are using an image in the email that links to a landing page where the video can be viewed.

2/17/10 - Sales X Marketing Blog Post: New research by Marketing Sherpa and IDC reveals the difference between what marketers think about what's important to buyers, and what the buyers ACTUALLY respond to.

Print out this list and ensure that you are smart about your email copy.

5/22/09 post to the XDXY eMarketing Tips blog lays out these 7 obvious tips that work, but we tend to want to make it more complex. Email Marketing can be highly effective when you target your emails and provide relevant content that's valuable to the recipients.

Mar 27, 2009 - We're now all enamored with social media, and reports saying that social media is eclipsing email, but video email has been getting more prevalent. Read the article to learn current practices and explore how it could work in elevating your emails.

We have aggregated a bunch of the Q/A at LinkedIn all about Email Marketing and questions that people had -- and the answers from LinkedIn members. It's been interesting to archive some of these common questions and concerns we all have.

9/2/08 Blog post by Ardath Albee takes a look at what works in an email. You've tried all kinds of configurations and formats, but your email communications still aren't generating the leads and activity levels you'd like to see. Well, guess what? Brief, bold and germane are three factors that play to generating initial attention.

This series of blog posts examines all aspects of email marketing -- and that it is all about creating relationship. Read one per day, there are 15 posts so far, but it will give you some great stuff to think about.

Fingerprint's report on the top 10 email clients in use by business users and consumers. Do you think you could guess what's the top email client used by business users?

9/17/08 - Email Marketing Blog post explores mistakes made in emails received from companies and what to do/not do about them. Since mistakes happen, having a good understanding what to do in the face of them, as it pertains to email, is a good thing.

9/10/08 post at Email Experience blog: Your call-to-action (CTA) tells your email recipients what you want them to do, and what they can expect from you when they do it. Subject lines get a lot of love, but once you get an open you need a click, so don't forget to lavish some much-needed attention on your CTA.

9/4/08 - Return Path's Stephanie Miller blog post warns that while email is the highest ROI channel by far, sending out a generic, non-segmented blast mailing masks a lot of missed opportunities. For too many marketers, email revenue per subscriber is not growing and more and more subscribers are simply ignoring our messages. Get interested in segmenting and targeting!

9/2/08 post on the DMA Email Marketing Blog says, "The key to optimising mailing frequency is to analyse customer behaviour rather than campaign performance. In other words, focus on the people and not the list. Do you have the lead activity intelligence to enable this in practice?

8/20/2008 - Denise Cox blog post examines the disconnect between what B2B folks want vs. what B2B Email Marketers think they want. Uses research done by Marketing Sherpa and KnowledgeStorm.

8/5/08 post by Omniture's Mikel Chertudi explores what makes a lead nurturing email effective. This post helps B2B marketers understand how lead capture forms and information you have about a lead can be utilized to personalize a lead nurturing email. It also explores other aspects, such as timing, content relevancy, and the need to automate as keys to an effective lead nurturing email strategy.

7/21/2008 David Baker post has some insights for small businesses and email marketing. It can apply to larger companies as well in many ways.

5/14/07 - Article reports on what email marketers consider important focus for email marketing success.