The Importance of Humanizing Your Marketing
We received a beautifully addressed holiday card from a vendor last week, and I was totally blown away when I heard a machine holding a pen had addressed it. The writing looks like a person created it, and even has variation in the letters, unlike standard print typefaces. The system can write notes, signatures, and just [...]
Distributed Marketing E-Mail Bliss = ExactTarget & SproutLoud
OK OK….the title of this blog-post may go a little bit overboard, but distributed marketing e-mail is a tough nut to crack…..and we’re excited because we think we’ve cracked it well. Our recent partnership with ExactTarget (announced here) pairs the industry leading distributed marketing platform with the world-class e-mail deliverability and reporting engine of ExactTarget. [...]
The E-Mail Marketing Vendor Landscape
Recently, ExactTarget announced they raised $30 million in new funding bringing the company’s total funding up to $208 million since inception. This comes on the heels of other announcements, such as iContact’s $40 million dollar raise last year. Clearly, the e-mail marketing industry continues to grow. E-Mail marketing companies all differ in their core focus [...]
Distributed Marketing through E-mail – Should You Empower your Sales Channel Partners?
Should You Empower your Sales Channel Partners with e-mail tools? Better yet – why should you care? Many companies already have their e-mail strategy and systems well matured and established. E-mail systems are plentiful – both to the corporate user and the local marketer. ExactTarget, Silverpop and Lyris are all examples of companies with enterprise-level [...]
The CMO & Channel Marketing Manager Data Conundrum
If you are a COM or channel marketing manager of your organization, you know the pain-point of trying to explain the rest of your team how your channel marketing spend is affecting ROI. You know this pain well especially when your sales occur at the local level through franchises, VARs, affiliates, retailers, brokers, etc. To [...]
20% of Opt-In Mail Never Finds Inbox
Just more support of my many year opinions that make integrating multiple methods of message distribution is even more essential today, and will always trend that way in the future. The report shows: Despite more aggressive efforts by companies to ensure their marketing messages are inbox-friendly, more than 20% of permission-based commercial email gets relegated [...]
Locking in Content Freshness
To keep website content fresh, there are varied opinions – some experts say to update at bare minimum once a month, while others say at least once a week depending on your topic. But when it comes to marketing materials, such as direct mail pieces or company collateral, keeping content fresh focuses less on frequency [...]
Data Builds Customer Loyalty and Retention
In today’s economy, retention of customers is the foremost goal among businesses. And building customer loyalty has become the top priority – especially when a five percent increase in customer retention can potentially augment revenue by more than 100 percent. In fact, in a recent report by the Aberdeen Group, 100 retail organizations were surveyed [...]
Universal Rules of Marketing
Marketing recommendations are often prescribed in response to changes in the environment. Certainly economic periods, as well as social and political issues, have significantly influenced recent marketing conditions. While the ability to react to environmental influences is important, this behavior begs the question, “Are there any universal rules for marketers?” According to Philip Kotler of [...]
Tips to Make Your Direct Mail Relevant
I came across an interesting video from Pitney-Bowes. They make a lot of the equipment mailing companies use to manufacture direct mail – machines for inserting, addressing, collating, etc. I wanted to share this video as it highlights simple rules of thumb that not everyone always thinks about – check it out: A few take-aways [...]
