Imagine this: It’s your birthday. You check your email and see a message from your bank. “Happy Birthday from Capital One 360!” says the subject line. Lots of businesses send out birthday greeting to their customers, often with coupons or free offers. Hey, maybe the bank is giving my savings account some extra interest! Of [...]

The Super Bowl…the Oscars…the Olympics…the Grammys… all popular cultural events that get a lot of attention. What do these events mean for your business? Should you mention them at all? It depends on how you do it. There’s a right and a wrong way to do everything in marketing, and this is no exception. The [...]

I tried a new restaurant a few weeks ago. When the waiter stopped by my table, I ordered a hard cider to go with my meal. The next time he checked in on me, he struck up a conversation about the cider I was drinking and mentioned a beer they had on tap that night [...]

This post is from Danny Iny, who markets naked and on firepoles. Email is the third rail of online marketing. Sure, Twitter, Facebook and RSS can be nice, but there’s just no comparing them to the raw power that comes with invited access to your prospect’s inbox. Of course, with power comes risk, and the [...]

We talk a lot about segmenting by your list’s demographics. Breaking your list into segments certainly helps you deliver what each reader is looking for. But have you ever considered segmenting according to psychographics, instead? While demographics show your subscribers’ hard data (age, location, marital status, ethnicity, etc), psychographics slice across your list from a [...]

It’s the age old story of subscriber meets email campaign. Sometimes it’s love at first sight. Sometimes the relationship takes a little warming up first. And sometimes, it’s just one relationship buzzkill after another. Is your campaign irritating subscribers more than connecting with them? It could be if you’re making any of these mistakes. It’s [...]

At the end of 2011, we talked about reasons subscriber preferences should be top priority and asked if you’re marketing to the right audience. The reason for this was simple: you should deliver the most relevant content possible in order to get the best results. If you’re curious what other email marketers feel about this, [...]

While you’re pushing forward with your head down, trying to build and market your business, time is flying. Things are changing. If you’re marketing with email, the industry is shifting. What worked last year may not work this year. So what better way to find out how to move forward than asking experts in the [...]

Small- and midsized-business marketers recognize the importance of helping prospects solve problems. And they know that quality content leads to more sales. But when you’re wearing a half-dozen hats, as many SMB execs and marketers do, disseminating that content can be as challenging as developing it. Fortunately, more marketers are rising to the occasion, according [...]

The summer of 2011 ended on a string of serious notes for those of us in the Eastern United States: an unusual series of natural disasters, followed by the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. For email marketers, this has raised the question, “If you’re sending email into this region, how should you adjust your marketing?” A [...]