The Blog

Although social media like Facebook and Twitter get all the buzz, it’s email that generates leads and sales. For champions of social media, the numbers are somewhat embarrassing. A recent report by Custora found that over the last four years, online retailers quadrupled their customer acquisition rates via email to nearly 7 percent. Facebook and Twitter barely registered as acquisition … Read More

Forrester’s recent report, The State of Retailing Online 2013, has some interesting findings when it comes to email. The report states that email will continue to be one of the top two areas of greatest focus for retailers. To that end, Forrester says retailers are investing in email more than ever. The reason is the shift in how consumers access … Read More

With the amount of email found in most inboxes today, getting consumers to engage is tough. You have just seconds to attract their attention and convince them to act. Until recently email marketers had to rely mainly on strong subject lines, catchy headlines, and inviting images. But now there’s an exciting new option: Video In Email. Video is arguably the … Read More

Back in July we posted a blog titled, Socially Awkward, comparing email with social media. The blog cited a study by Custora that revealed email generated significantly more leads and sales than social networks like Facebook and Twitter over the past four years. A recent report from SocialTwist, a company that gives consumers incentives to share deals online, further enhanced … Read More

Have you ever wondered whether the beautiful images you include in your email messages actually get seen? The answer might surprise you. A lot of recipients block images in HTML formatted messages either by personal preference or by default email client settings. Some people block HTML messages altogether A study by Merkle in 2009 stated that only 48% of recipients … Read More

After months of news about Gmail’s tab feature and its impact on inbox placement, you probably thought it was time for a truce. But instead Gmail has launched a holiday offensive in their war on email marketers. This time they’re targeting image links and the impact could be major on open tracking and geo-targeting. On or about December 3, Gmail … Read More

A lot of email marketers dread the unsubscribe link. They view it as the end of a relationship. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead of fearing the process, email marketers should embrace it as an engagement opportunity. In doing so, email marketers can maintain their reputation with ISPs, learn more about their subscribers, and most important: retain … Read More

Have you found invalid email addresses creeping into your list via the subscription page? It could be a sign that malicious bots are attempting to access your site. Bots can exploit the data entry fields on your subscription form to enter bogus names and email addresses. They can also insert URLs in hopes of having them posted on your site … Read More

SpamCop.net includes new spam traps on a regular basis. They also mix things up by reactivating spam traps that were as much as two years old. Spam trap operators like SpamCop play an important role by identifying email abuse ranging from malicious botnets to inexperienced marketers who inadvertently send to bad lists. In order to be effective, SpamCop and other … Read More

In a blog posted in December (“Is Gmail Waging War on Christmas?”) we alerted you to a change in Gmail that had a significant impact on email marketers. Google quietly began to proxy images through their own servers, impacting the way they were cached. The change was intended to enable Gmail to display images to users instantly without the need … Read More