http://www.practicalecommerce.com/authors/58/Ben-Chestnut/ Ben Chestnut is CEO and co-founder of MailChimp, a self-service email marketing firm for small to mid-sized businesses. en-us Copyright 2007 Confluence Publishing Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:43:31 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/rss/ Practical Ecommerce v2.0.1 Ecommerce kmurdock@practicalecommerce.com bgetting@practicalecommerce.com 60 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/713/Email-Marketing-Avoid-This-Deadly-Mistake/ Over the years, I've seen many ecommerce store owners make one simple but deadly mistake when they get started with email marketing: They send emails to old, obsolete email addresses. Does this sound like you? You started your ecommerce store a few years ago. Even back then, you had the foresight to start collecting email addresses because you knew you'd be sending marketing emails someday. Finally, you locate an email service provider (ESP). You spend hours designing and testing your first campaign, and you hit the send button. Then your email service provider shuts down your account because you've been blacklisted by all the major Internet service providers (ISPs). What gives? For one, people change email addresses all the time, such as when they get new jobs or switch ISPs. Or they get inundated with so much spam at one email address that they create a fresh email account, so all those emails you sent to them will bounce. Too many bounces tell the ISPs that your list is... Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:43:31 -0600 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/713/Email-Marketing-Avoid-This-Deadly-Mistake/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/673/Email-Marketing-Report-Card-Delightcom/ Delight.com sells gifts, fashion accessories and home decor items. It claims to make the online shopping experience quick, fun and simple. But what about its email marketing? Delight.com requested a review from Practical eCommerce of its email marketing activities, which we are please to do. Opt-in Process: Setting Expectations Unlike most sites that have a signup box on just one page of their website, every page of Delight.com’s website has a signup box in the footer. One advantage to placing the signup box in the footer is the proximity to GeoTrust and Hacker Safe icons. I submitted my email address in the signup box, and it took me to a page asking to specify my interest groups, and also offers links to view archived versions of past newsletters (this gives me a preview of what I can expect). It’s odd that the site places the archives in a blog, however. It makes me wonder if it’s a search-engine-optimization tactic, or if it’s just a limitation of its email... Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:12:45 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/673/Email-Marketing-Report-Card-Delightcom/ http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/626/Email-Marketing-Report-Card-Acceptedcom/ Accepted.com provides admissions consulting and application-essay-editing services that help people get into top business schools, medical schools and graduate schools. It produces a free monthly email newsletter called “Odds ‘N Ends” and the staff of Accepted.com has requested that Practical eCommerce review the newsletter for this report card. Background I run an email marketing service that caters to small and medium sized businesses. Most companies I’ve observed handle email marketing as a totally separate process from the rest of its business. So in this ongoing report card, I’ll be checking how companies complete the “full circle” of email marketing — not just how cool the emails look. We’ll review the opt-in process, the email creative itself, the landing pages that the email campaigns point to and general list management practices. The Opt-In Process: Setting Expectations At Accepted.com, the newsletter subscribe link is easy to find, but it was,... Mon, 10 Dec 2007 11:20:42 -0700 http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/626/Email-Marketing-Report-Card-Acceptedcom/