Multichannel Marketing for B2B Marketers

There’s one problem with numbered advice lists (as in “Ten Ways to Maximize Your ROI”). Each item suggests another ten, and you can end up with hundreds.

Take the recent article on how to improve your email marketing campaigns. One of the five steps was: “Use the right lists.”

We have no argument with that. But doesn’t the subject deserve more than a single bullet point?

The author should have noted that good email marketing lists are found on the rental market, and that it pays to enhance and profile your own list. continue reading…

They’d better be. For that’s where your email may well be read.

U.S. consumers spend 41.6% of their mobile Internet time on email, according to a new study from Nielsen. That’s up from 37.4% last year. And the percentage must be even greater for on-the-go business professionals, who conduct serious communications via their mobile devices.

In general, nothing else even comes close. Web portals get an 11.6% share of time. And social networks barely make it into the double digits with 10.5%. Yet those are in the top three. continue reading…

There’s only one thing to do: Let them go.

This isn’t a guideline—it’s the law of the land. Can-Spam requires that you post an opt-out message and mechanism in a visible place, and quickly honor requests.

That said, you can improve your email performance—and build trust—by following these suggestions: continue reading…

As every marketer knows, email response can be affected by dozens of variables: The subject line, the offer, the call to action, the time of day. Here’s a new one: The weather.

Yes. A study from a British firm named Pure360 shows that people are more inclined to open and click through during good weather.

We all know, of course, that postal mail response can be affected by the elements. Planes are held at airports during thunderstorms. Trucks and postmen are delayed by snow. And the consumer’s needs shift with the seasons. continue reading…

Ready for another gloomy update on the decline in email metrics? Open rates worldwide fell from 14% in the first half of 2007 to 11.2% in the second half of 2009, Emarketer reports.

There are many possible causes: cluttered inboxes, the use of mobile devices and the blocking of email images. But we wonder if the economy wasn’t partly to blame.

Clickthrough rates suffered an even more precipitous drop—from 2.9% to 1.6%. And most of that took place in the second half of 2009. The culprits include clutter and list fatigue.

These are depressing findings. But they’re not true for everyone. And emailers can improve their metrics by observing direct marketing basics. continue reading…