Conversion Marketing forum

Relevance is crucial in all forms of online and offline communications. And it has nothing to do with your company. It has everything to do with your customer, the content of your communications and individualization. The question you should always ask yourself is: ‘is this relevant for the people I try to reach?’.

Without a relevant story, there is no word of mouth or viral effect. Without relevant content that is targeted to the recipient of your e-mail newsletter people will unsubscribe and without relevant content on your website it is an empty box. Read more »

One revelation (OK, it’s not a revelation unfortunately) in a recent report from the DMA in the UK is that the number of organizations with no strategy for the maximum number of times an e-mail address may be contacted remains unchanged from 2009, at 52%.

Over half of the respondents still have nothing in place to guide their e-mail marketing campaigns regarding frequency. This lack of awareness regarding a fundamental success factor in e-mail marketing leads one to wonder if companies actually believe that simply sending more e-mail the same old way is going to increase ROI. Of course, it won’t. Read more »

E-mail marketing as a practice of sending frequent promotions and e-newsletters is under pressure. Various conversion rates are on the decline and this is also the reason why it is so important for such e-mail programs to be function of the recipient’s real-time needs on all levels: timing, content and integration etc.

Decreasing conversion rates are obviously a priority for e-mail marketers. It’s not only important for the ROI of their e-mail marketing programs but also from the deliverability viewpoint: interaction, open rates and click rates are becoming ever more important in determining the sender reputation. Read more »

When e-mail marketing emerged as digital alternative for other forms of direct marketing, the emphasis with many e-mail marketers was for a rapid growth of the lists. The use of rented lists, co-registration programs, mass campaigns and competitions to acquire as many possible subscribers, were daily practices. Even e-mail address ‘harvesting’ programs were frequently used, long before there was any legislation on e-mail marketing.

Today practices like renting lists are not recommended and ‘harvesting’ is only used by spammers. Even co-registration programs have many drawbacks and are under fire, and justly. But the use of incentives, freebies and competitions for ‘list growing’ purposes is not without dangers, even if this is still applied eagerly by many companies and marketers. Read more »

Although there are debates regarding the changing role of the subject line in e-mail marketing, for many people the subject line is still very important in their decision to open your e-mails. Sure, the sender, trust, what people see in the preview pane and past experiences regarding the relevance of the interaction and content, play a big role as well. But in a world where people are overwhelmed by marketing messages and this, together with marketing and list fatigue, has a negative impact on conversion (download a white paper about preventing this here), every little bit counts.

And the subject line is more than just a little bit. It is an important part of the overall e-mail marketing efficiency. Subject lines should be personal, engaging and function of the recipient and his behavior to be efficient. But if you can't achieve this yet, you still can improve results with the tips in this post. Read more »