Email Marketing

August 24, 2011 • Armando Roggio

According to published reports, some 92 percent of American adults use email. Many of them are subscribers to one or more email newsletters or product alerts. So it is little ...

August 22, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Email is one of the most potent tactics in the ecommerce marketer's toolbox. Recent studies — which I addressed last week — indicate that email is a favorite activity for adult American Internet users. MailChimp, a leading email-marketing service provider, has a terrific feature that a...

August 19, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

Many merchants rely on email marketing to drive sales. Increasing the number email subscribers can drive sales even more. By establishing and understanding the value of an email subscriber, merchants can decide how much money and effort to spend growing their lists. This article will...

August 18, 2011 • PEC Staff

Email remains among the most popular marketing vehicles for ecommerce merchants. But the email marketing business is changing, with new auto response tools and customer acquisition strategies — and social media alternatives. To address the use of email for ecommerce merchants, we spoke ...

August 17, 2011 • Armando Roggio

American adults are more likely to email and search than any other online activities, according to the results of a recently released survey. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has been monitoring online behavior for nearly a decade. Most recently, Pew Internet found that ema...

August 9, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Creating valid HTML email newsletters and announcements with a canonical link element may help marketers boost search engine optimization. The canonical link element, which is often referred to as rel="canonical," (pronounced rel canonical, no "equals") is a way of describing the pref...

August 8, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

Online retailers often face decisions regarding their email programs. These include issues like determining ideal frequencies and crafting compelling subject lines. To help address these questions, I’ll be writing a ...

August 4, 2011 • Armando Roggio

When one considers that 93 percent of American online shoppers receive at least one permission-based email each day, it is little wonder that email marketing is a mainstay of Internet promotion and an excellent source of traffic and sales for ecommerce businesses. Sometimes, however, t...

July 19, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

Ecommerce merchants frequently reach out to new and existing customers. Whether they use methods such as email, paid search, search engine optimization or banner ads, the goal is always the same: to drive qualified traffic back to their sites. Unlike brick and mortar stores, however, th...

July 11, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Between 12 and 19 percent of email marketing messages are now read on mobile, Internet-enabled devices like smartphones or tablets. To continue to get good results from email, marketers should consider mobile user behavior and device capabilities. Last year, eROI, a digital agency, con...

July 5, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Email marketing is one of the most potent promotional tactics available to online retailers when, in fact, those merchants have customers to send emails to. Email can boost site traffic, drive conversions, and help build strong relationships with shoppers. The hard part is getting thos...

June 20, 2011 • Armando Roggio

A successful ecommerce marketing strategy is an ever-changing blend of techniques and tactics aimed at achieving specific, predetermined goals. If executed well, email marketing is often one of the most ...

June 14, 2011 • Charles Nicholls

There is a very strong link between website conversions and email. A recent study by my firm showed that once traffic has gotten as far as the shopping cart email was the largest source of ecommerce conversions, ranking above a direct entry and search. This is a useful reminder that the...

June 9, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

Sending timely and relevant communications to your email file is a necessity in driving qualified traffic to your site. Simply increasing your traffic numbers may be the first step, but ...

May 9, 2011 • Armando Roggio

Content intensive email newsletters can provide potential customers with real value, present an opportunity to build trust, encourage sharing, and drive direct site traffic. In the old days of advertising and marketing, retailers would place ads in newspapers or magazines. The idea was...

April 29, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

With increased use of social media, many marketing professionals wonder if email will remain relevant. The question for ecommerce retailers then becomes where should they focus their efforts, and should they abandon email for social media? comScore, the tracking and analysis firm, publ...

April 8, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

For email marketing, the practice of "batch and blast" is dated. Companies should move beyond this strategy, into a segmented email approach that is more relevant to each individual subscriber and increases the overall effectiveness of an email-marketing program. But where do you start ...

April 8, 2011 • PEC Staff

Businesses have more tools to communicate with their customers than ever before. There's email, text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, blogs and websites — and those are just the most widely used tools. But with all those tools comes additional responsibility. Your customers should feel en...

February 24, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

Email is a proven marketing channel for many online retailers. It's relatively easy to implement, and inexpensive. Return on investment tends to be high when marketing to your opt-in subscriber file or to visitors on your website. But can email be used to prospect and acquire new custom...

February 14, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

Email is a unique marketing channel because it is permission based. That's one reason email has a high return on investment: If consumers raise their hands and say, “Please market to me;” they are likely to purchase in the future. But building a large opt-in subscriber base takes dedi...

January 11, 2011 • Carolyn Nye

Email marketing is vital for many ecommerce merchants. What does 2011 hold for email marketing? Below are seven key email marketing tactics businesses should be planning for the upcoming year. Relevancy Craft email messages with increased personalization, through segmentation and tar...

December 22, 2010 • 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 email distribution providers that allow purchased ...

December 8, 2010 • Matt Ferner

Ecommerce merchants have several options to hide or obscure that email address from spam bot programs and still make it accessible and user-friendly for customers. Below is a listing of some of the more popular methods and simple step-by-step instructions on how to employ them, each one progressively more hidden, or "obfuscated.

December 7, 2010 • Carolyn Nye

In the natural progression of most email programs, there comes a time when an ecommerce site is ready to tackle the power of triggered emails. Although a challenge to set up, they can be a crucial element in your overall marketing communications strategy, and for good reason. Triggered ...

November 18, 2010 • PEC Staff

Remarketing is an advertising concept to bring back consumers who have visited ecommerce sites and left without purchasing. In general, the remarketing services fall into two camps. We discussed the first remarketing camp, targeted banner ads, in “Remarketing 101, Part 1: Targeted Banne...

November 3, 2010 • Carolyn Nye

Frequency is always an important topic for email marketing. As marketers, we are afraid to overload our customers. We often forget that email is a channel that requires consumers' permission before communicating with them. As consumers, we don’t opt in to viewing Staples television com...

October 7, 2010 • Carolyn Nye

Transactional emails, by definition, are sent automatically after a customer places an order. Every transactional email is an opportunity to connect with your customer at a point where he or she is fully engaged. But how can you optimize transactional emails to encourage customer inte...

September 29, 2010 • Charles Nicholls

September 22, 2010 • Paul Chaney

Social media has breathed new life into email marketing. And email provides a "push" element to update social network friends, Fans and followers. Email service providers (ESPs) are leading this renewed vitality and interest with the integration of email with social media. In this art...

September 8, 2010 • Carolyn Nye

I am the email marketing manager for S&S Worldwide, a large retailer of crafts and school supplies. Over the years, I have encountered many "email best practices." But like Snap Bracelets, Cabbage Patch Kids and Atari, trends change. And email best practices, I've learned, do not ap...