Category

Email Marketing

Most ecommerce businesses rely on email marketing as a low-cost sales driver. We’ve addressed a wide array of strategies for email, including improving opens, clicks, and conversions, mastering deliverability, optimizing by device, automation, spam, segmentation, and more.

Email Marketing
Will Gmail’s New Tab Layout Affect Ecommerce Merchants?

June 17, 2013 • Carolyn Nye

Consumers have many options for email services. The top three providers are Gmail, Yahoo!, and Hotmail, which recently changed to Outlook. Occasionally these services make changes that can impact ecommerce email programs. The changes are often dynamic — changing algorithms, rules, and ...
Email Marketing
Email Still Effective Marketing Tool?

June 5, 2013 • Marcia Kaplan

At a time when social media seems to be the only thing people talk about, email is still an effective ecommerce marketing tool. But merchants will have to alter how they use it if they wish to keep up with changes in how people access email messages. Are People Still Reading Email? Th...
Email Marketing
Good, Bad Email Design for Ecommerce Merchants

May 20, 2013 • Carolyn Nye

Email design has changed over the years. It has evolved from basic text, to beautiful design with great images, to hybrids that balance images and text. With the majority of shoppers previewing or reading emails on their smartphones, many ecommerce merchants wonder what the best practic...
Email Marketing
Applying Data to Improve your Email Communications

April 19, 2013 • Carolyn Nye

With so much information available about your customers and prospects, how do you apply that information to your email communications? In this article, I'll address steps to apply the right data to improve your email-marketing program. What Data Do You Have? This question is not alwa...
Email Marketing
5 Tests to Improve your Email Marketing

March 18, 2013 • Carolyn Nye

For email marketers, there are several key tests that will improve a campaign, and an ongoing program. Here are five basic testing strategies to optimize your email marketing efforts. Subject Line Testing Many marketers believe that a subject line’s purpose is simply to get people to...
Email Marketing
Email Marketing: 5 Ways to Generate Immediate Sales

February 14, 2013 • Carolyn Nye

Email serves many functions for ecommerce businesses. It's a method of sending order confirmations and shipping notifications. It also delivers valuable content via newsletters. The goal of each function differs widely, depending on your site and the average sales cycle and order value....
Email Marketing
Making Emails Responsive to Tablets, Smartphones

February 7, 2013 • PEC Staff

In "Optimizing Ecommerce for Tablets and Smartphones," my article last month, I addressed responsive design, the practice of coding a website to automatically adjust to the size of a user's Internet device. This month, I extend that discussion to include outbound emails, so that the ...
Email Marketing
Using Sales Data to Automate Email Marketing

February 6, 2013 • Jaime Brugueras

Customers are the bloodline of any business. For ecommerce businesses, it’s particularly important to focus on creating recurring, loyal customers. This centers on understanding customer sales and shopping data, and using that information to develop profitable, automated email campaigns...
Email Marketing
Email Marketing: 4 Tips for Sending to Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo!

January 17, 2013 • Carolyn Nye

An email is effective only if it is successfully delivered to the recipient. Moreover, getting the email to the inbox, versus the spam or junk folder, increases the chances of the message being read. Deliverability is a crucial element in the overall success of an email program. It ca...
Email Marketing
Don’t Forget Email Marketing; 13 Reasons

January 11, 2013 • Dale Traxler

With all the focus on social media, it seems that email marketing is almost an afterthought for many companies. Email may not be trendy, but it’s cheap, easy to measure, and easy to target. It's a good place to do testing, it keeps your brand visible, and at the end of the day it delive...
Email Marketing
Remember a Holiday ‘Thank You’ Email

December 19, 2012 • Armando Roggio

As the 2012 Christmas shopping season comes to a close, online retailers should take the time to sincerely thank customers and offer appropriate holiday greetings. Email marketing often reaches its peak during the weeks leading up to December 25. Many, if not most, Internet retailers a...
Email Marketing
3 Common Email Marketing Mistakes

December 18, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

There were some fantastic email campaigns in 2012. And there were some ineffective ones, too. In this article, I'll address three of the top email marketing mistakes from 2012. Sending Emails Too Frequently As an email marketing professional, I subscribe to hundreds of ecommerce em...
Email Marketing
Transactional Emails: 5 Secrets to Improve

December 12, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Five relatively simple steps could help online retailers significantly improve transactional emails, and, perhaps, earn additional sales. Transactional or relationship email messages complete, confirm, or provide information about a previously agreed upon transaction. In the ecommerce ...
Email Marketing
Email, Mobile, On-site Driving 2012 Holiday Sales

December 6, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Retail holiday sales for 2012 from the first of November through Cyber Monday rose 16 percent year over year to more than $16.3 billion. Email marketing, mobile shopping, and on-site promotions have all played an important role in online sales. The 16 percent boost in early holiday ret...
Email Marketing
Automated Email Marketing Drives Ecommerce Sales; 4 Tips

November 20, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

Email marketing is becoming increasingly automated. Recent acquisitions by ExactTarget, a leading email service provider, of iGoDigital and Pardot, for $21 million and $95 million respectively, illustrate this trend. iGoDigital is a platform that helps online retailers offer product re...
Email Marketing
Email Marketing: Planning Your Holiday Calendar

November 12, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Email marketing is a powerful driver of holiday sales. But haphazardly sending emails is not the way to optimize campaigns. Taking just a few minutes to think about what an email will contain and when it will be sent should help to improve results. What follows is an example holiday em...
Email Marketing
Email Marketing: Analyzing J.C. Penney’s New Approach

October 22, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

J.C. Penney has received a lot of press for the many changes made by its new CEO, Ron Johnson, who came from Apple. As a J.C. Penney email subscriber, I have noticed its email program has become more engaging. The subject lines are more compelling. The emails contain unique and interest...
Email Marketing
Ask an Expert: Appropriate to Send Remarketing Emails to Guest Shoppers?

September 27, 2012 • PEC Staff

"Ask an Expert" is an occasional feature where we ask ecommerce experts questions from online merchants. For this installment, we address a question about sending remarketing emails to consumers who abandon shopping carts. It comes from Kenny Kelly, general manager of Shops.com, an Okla...
Email Marketing
5 Holiday Email Marketing Tips

September 20, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

For ecommerce businesses, September is crucial for planning a successful holiday-sales season. For email marketing, starting the planning now will allow more time for last minute changes and time-sensitive promotions. Below, I'll offer five tips to make the most from your holiday email...
Email Marketing
Email Case Study: Moosejaw Adds Personality to Email Messages

August 2, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

The challenge with an ongoing email program is that people are busy. Unless they have a need for your product or service, they aren’t necessarily going to open your email and purchase from you immediately. To stay relevant and keep email recipients engaged, some retailers are turning to...
Email Marketing
Sending HTML and Plain Text Email Simultaneously

July 25, 2012 • Web Marketing Today

With so many different smartphones and tablets, it’s important to be able to display your company's emails in the way that the mobile browser is best suited. Some mobile browsers will show your email in its full HTML form. Others will default to just plain text. How do you know which version to send to each recipient? The solution to this problem is to craft an email which has two parts: one that displays your complete graphics and the other made up of nothing more than conventional text, with no images and colors.
Email Marketing
4 Ways to Improve Email Deliverability

July 18, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

For an email-marketing program to be successful, the message must be delivered. In this article, I'll explain email deliverability basics, and offer four tips to make sure your emails hit the inbox of your recipients. 1. Know Your IP Address An IP address is a numerical number for th...
Email Marketing
5 Ways to Freshen Your Email List

June 18, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

Your email-marketing program depends on a quality list. It's easy for a list to stagnate over time. An email database that is left alone, without refreshing, combined with an email marketing program that is not stimulating, will lead to lower open and click rates. In this article, I'l...
Email Marketing
How to Choose an Email Service Provider

May 10, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

Selecting an email service provider can be a daunting task. With so many potential providers — and a vast range of pricing options and levels of service — how do you know which providers are the best match for your ecommerce business? In this article, I'll address five keys to help yo...
Email Marketing
5 Unique and Effective Email Offers

April 16, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

The offer in an ecommerce email campaign is key. Coming up with offers that stand out from the competition and get your subscribers' attention, however, can be difficult. A straight dollar-off discount gets boring over time, and email recipients will eventually ignore the same types o...
Email Marketing
Using Email to Promote Holiday Sales; Pros and Cons

March 15, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

With St. Patrick’s Day near, companies are scrambling to deliver emails to promote green-themed products, or events around the holiday. With all the buzz, it brings up a interesting question: When does it make sense for ecommerce merchants to embrace a holiday or event and incorporate i...
Email Marketing
3 Tips for Better Email Subscription Forms

March 14, 2012 • Armando Roggio

Email subscription forms should be simple and direct, encouraging site visitors to become opt-in participants in email marketing campaigns. Email marketing is one of the best ways that ecommerce businesses have to engage shoppers, introduce new products, and make more sales. But these ...
Email Marketing
5 Steps to Effective Email Calls to Action

February 17, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

In email marketing, subject lines get recipients to open the email. The "from" line gives credibility and builds brand awareness. The creative message invokes the desire to know more, buy a product, or sign up for a webinar. But one of the most important and overlooked elements to email...
Email Marketing
Email Marketing: 3 Ways to Increase Relevancy

January 19, 2012 • Carolyn Nye

An email marketing message needs to be relevant to its recipients to achieve maximum results. Relevancy can be a simple as inserting the recipient's name in the subject line or salutation. But it can be much more dynamic than that, too. It can include recommendations based on past pur...
Email Marketing
Segmenting Email Lists for 2012

January 2, 2012 • Armando Roggio

When ecommerce marketers make their New Year's resolutions, they should include improved email segmentation and personalization. Email segmentation is simply the idea of organizing email-marketing lists so that each group of recipients receives a relevant, even personalized, marketing ...

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