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The push email market may have plenty of room for growth, but competition is expected to grow significantly over the next few years.

This situation raises the question of whether the leader Research in Motion (RIM), with its BlackBerry offering, will be able to maintain its position or whether it is destined simply to become an also ran or acquisition target (the sector continues to mature).

The market, he believes, has to date been held back because “it is still too hard to set these things up and smartphones that use push are still too large and difficult to use for most”.

While the BlackBerry “remains one of the most attractive devices in the segment” and is “comparatively easy to use”, the advantage of going with a Microsoft Mobile 6 and Exchange 2007 combination, for example, is that there is no need to set up a separate back-end push email server, “although the settings on the phone can be daunting”. Read the rest of this entry »

Accessing e-mail from a mobile phone is no longer just for corporate bigwigs. New services are arriving that make it easier and more affordable for everyone, from soccer moms to college students.

On Thanksgiving Day, a start-up called Berggi will launch a service that is intended to make accessing e-mail and sending instant messages easier on low-cost mobile phones.

Babur Ozden, chief executive of Berggi, said the service aggregates all personal e-mail and instant messaging clients into a single interface, for simpler access. And the service can be used on just about any handset, offering a less expensive alternative to corporate-based e-mail services from companies such as Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry handheld messaging device. Read the rest of this entry »

This summer’s Email Insider Summit, I sat at a breakout session where marketers were debating list rental. The discussion got quite heated. If you’re in good company, list rental is just as dangerous a topic as religion or politics (”the things we don’t talk about”). Later that evening, I sat at dinner between a friend of mine from another ESP and a gentleman whose company provides email appends and list rentals. Emotions flew back and forth for over 30 minutes.

How is List Rental Like Car Rental?

• The Company: There are scores if not hundreds of different places you can rent a car from. Most often, you get what you pay for. The same goes for list rental services. Some list rental companies are backed by well-known organizations.

• The Car (List): Sometimes you get a good car (list), sometimes you’re not so fortunate. If you are lucky, the car drives well, responds to corners, gets good gas mileage. Other times, you get the bad car with much sound around inside the car. Similar to email list rental, sometimes you get subscribers who are really interested in your product/services, more than likely - not.

Why is ListRental So Controversial? Read the rest of this entry »

“There are much-much fish in the ocean.”

That isn’t true anymore. It’s more harder to find people willing to part with their email address, two things happen.

1. Look for new and better ways to drive new subscriptions

2. Do your best not to lose those subscribers you do have

As such, list growth isn’t just about acquiring addresses. Your whole program bears responsibility for keeping these addresses happy so they stay with you. Indeed, the qualities that encourage retention also encourage new sign-ups.

“If you create content that stirs emotions, causes laughter or inspires recipients in some practical or meaningful way; they will probably want to share it with others in their life.”

Retention is key to list growth for a simple reason: if you have a leaky bucket, you plug the leaks before you add more water. Read the rest of this entry »

Maximizing email deliverability does require managing many factors, but once you understand the various components, the process is fairly straightforward.

Even if you’ve followed all of my data capture advice, you still need to engage in list hygiene to ensure its quality. Without proper list hygiene, you risk losing contact with your customers, damaging your sender reputation and getting your emails blocked by the ISPs.

For example, if you continue to send emails to accounts that have been closed for some time (i.e. to “unknown users”), ISPs will take notice, which could lead to getting your email blocked. You also run the risk of getting in trouble with spam traps. Essentially, an unclean list tells the ISPs that you don’t care about your customers, or about following best practices. Maintaining a good reputation also requires that you respond to unsubscribe requests and bounce data immediately. Read the rest of this entry »

Inbox marketing’s benefits are illustrated by a case study from MSN UK. The campaign illustrates not only high response rates and ROI, but also email’s technological advancements, flexibility and branding ability.

Historically, consumer newsletters, done right, have been a great way for brands to stay in touch with their market segment. Creating and maintaining engaging e-newsletters represents a fraction of the cost of printing and production associated with direct mail while retaining all its advantages. E-newsletters offer consumers branded lifestyle or news content in a timely, direct way, while providing related contextual offers tailored to readership interest in an interactive medium. Subscribers receive consumer education, research, and advice, alongside contextual offers from relevant brands. Read the rest of this entry »

According to Forrester, email marketing will be a $4B industry by 2011. As Anna Chernis, senior research manager with DMA stated in eMarketer on October 30, 2007, “Email produces the highest response rate for lead generation — especially for house campaigns — of direct mail methods we have studied.”

Most advertisers think of email marketing as purely push tactics that can be added to other campaigns. But, an increasing number of strategists are realizing that running strategic, relevantly targeted campaigns within emails can drive tremendous benefit. Read the rest of this entry »

It can be hard for most email marketers to step back from the never-ending campaign production cycle to see what else is going on besides their own deployments.

When reviewing the surge of traffic that came to the site in the first few weeks, I found it fitting that a site about email metrics can shed light on what kind of specifics people are interested in within the email marketing world. Just like looking at one’s response metrics for a campaign, you need to take a step back and look at the big picture on what the data means.

The current buzz in the email industry based on popularity :

HTML vs. text

For several years, companies have debated the pros and cons of sending in HTML versus text only. HTML has always been the runaway favorite for its branding power, merchandising capabilities and ability to track open rates. The debate has taken a new angle with the increasingly complex issues related to rendering, deliverability and preview pane usage. I suspect this subject matter is also popular as it touches all aspects of an email team: creative, analysts, production, copywriters, strategy, etc.

Read the rest of this entry »

With the younger generation using online social networking and texting more than web-based emails for communicating, marketers need to adjust their strategies.

If you really want to get young people’s attention, you need either to send them an SMS or post a message to their “wall” on Facebook. Don’t believe me? My daughter went off to Skidmore College last fall. I emailed her several times a week without ever getting a response. In November I created a Facebook profile (for research purposes I swear!) and within 30 minutes she had posted to my wall — “Dad?! Facebook?!”

Now just consider for a minute the implications of this trend for MSN, AOL and Yahoo. For the first time this past October, UK internet visits to social networks overtook visits to these types of web-based email services. Detractors may point out that social network users engage those kinds of sites differently than they do email, but that’s the point. Social networkers engage the MySpaces and Facebooks of the world in a much more intense fashion than they do their Gmail and Yahoo mail accounts. Read the rest of this entry »

Use this 9-step checklist to ensure your email sign-up process not only lures in users, but also keeps them subscribed — and happy.

My biggest beef with email marketers is that they design and manage their programs based on marketing goals and internal objectives rather than their end users. Since my company keeps the lights on by working with marketers to create, optimize and manage their email campaigns, I need to be careful where I tread, but let’s face it: Email programs that come across as created and delivered specifically for the email subscriber’s benefit are few and far between.

Your email program’s (and often your brand’s) first impression starts with offering up a value proposition to your website visitor (or maybe a catalog or in-store browser if you are a lucky retailer that collects email addresses via call center or in-store). Be relevant, and deliver real valuable and unique information, offers or something that is compelling enough to give your users a reason to read and respond — and subscribe. Read the rest of this entry »