Top brand marketers suggest ways of beating the major email
marketing pitfalls in new E-consultancy report

Released on = September 24, 2004, 7:01 am

Press Release Author = E-consultancy.com

Press Release Summary = Based on feedback from a recent roundtable, this report looks at the very latest trends in email marketing and includes many tips and tricks as suggested by attendees.

Topics covered include:

1 - How to improve email delivery rates 2 - Capturing the right data to improve your email marketing strategy 3 - Timing the delivery of your campaign for the best results 4 - Content vs offer-based emails 5 - Rich media, video and highly functional emails 6 - Targeting, segmenting and personalisation

Press Release Body = London, UK: 24th September 2004

How do you know whether your company has been blacklisted? Who in your organisation should be responsible for checking blacklists? How can you make sure legitimate emails arrive? Do content-based emails work better than offer-based ones?

These are just a few of the questions discussed – and answered - at two recent E-consultancy.com roundtables, where some of the biggest brand names in email marketing made sense of the key issues in this area.

The findings have been published, alongside an invaluable collection of resources, in E-consultancy’s latest email marketing report (http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/email-marketing-september-2004/).

The publisher of best practice internet marketing reports invited major brands such as lastminute.com, Argos, Warner Bros, B&Q, Debenhams and Eurostar to the two events, to provide the latest practical insight into the problems faced by marketers
when conducting email campaigns.

The biggest single issue was found to be email deliverability, with many attendees citing bounce rates of at least twice as much as the 10.5% suggested as an industry average by DoubleClick. To improve performance in this area, the following were
suggested (more detail on each point contained within the email marketing report):

• Regularly change your IP address/range. Don’t rely on just one IP address, and consider sending operational mails from a different address than marketing messages.

• Monitor blacklists. We’ve included a resource that marketers can use to search hundreds of blacklists in one go.

• Measure bounce rates. Details and resources in the report will help you work out the difference between soft bounces and hard bounces.

• Open email accounts with the major ISPs. Test emails before you despatch them to thousands of subscribers. If they don’t arrive, it is more often than not a content issue.

• Work out what content to avoid. Capitalisation and excessive punctuation are a bad idea…

• Educate the user about unsubscribe messages and ‘whitelisting’. If somebody really wants to receive your messages, then persuade them at the sign-up process to add your email address to their ‘friends’ list.

Other topics covered in the report include: Data Capture, Co-registration, Buying Third Party Lists, Timing Delivery, Rich Email (HTML, functional, transactional, video), Targeting, Personalisation and Segmentation.

More information can be found in E-consultancy’s latest roundtable report on email marketing:
http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/email-marketing-september-2004/.

Non-subscribers can view a sample here:
http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/download/90263/email-marketing-september-2004/email-marketing-september-2004-sample.doc.

E-consultancy’s email marketing section also contains a wealth of advice for advanced and novice marketers keen to improve the efficiency of their email campaigns.

Individual subscribers pay just £99 per year to access the full range of exclusive content featured on E-consultancy. A popular new ‘All-in-One’ subscription package (priced at £249) provides unlimited access to E-consultancy’s press release
distribution tool, an enhanced listing and unlimited individual access to the content for one year.

***Journalists and internet marketing bloggers can contact E-consultancy editor Chris Lake to request a complimentary copy of the 15-page email marketing guide.

### Ends ###

About E-consultancy:
http://www.e-consultancy.com/about/

Since 1999 E-consultancy has provided UK e-business and marketing professionals with access to the best information and advice to help them get the most out of interactive channels:

* Information - Specially commissioned reports, white papers and guides as well as 100,000+ pages of articles, case studies and features from leading sources.

* Advice - Exclusive roundtable events, Beauty Parades, bespoke training courses, seminars, expert forums and a network of specialist e-business consultants.

E-consultancy charges for individual subscriptions and multi-user corporate membership as well as for bespoke training and research work. E-consultancy has over 23,000 registered users, 30% of whom are CEOs, Directors or Senior Management.

E-consultancy was co-founded in 1999 by Ashley Friedlein and Matthew O'Riordan. Ashley is a twice best-selling Internet author. E-consultancy's shareholders include Philip Redding, former Managing Director of Wheel, which he helped grow to the
largest UK new media agency.

About Ashley Friedlein, CEO, E-consultancy.com:
http://www.e-consultancy.com/account/profile-2/ashley.html

Ashley Friedlein began his career in digital media at Pearson and Bloomberg, before becoming Lead Strategist at Wheel, where he successfully managed the development, delivery and ongoing maintenance of several major Internet sites, in particular for
media owners.

Ashley is also the author of the books "Web Project Management: Delivering Successful Commercial Web Sites" and "Maintaining and Evolving Successful Commercial Web Sites: Managing Change, Content, Customer Relationships and Site Measurement"
[Publishers Elsevier Science & Technology Books].

---Contact Information---

Chris Lake, Editor, E-consultancy
e: chris@e-consultancy.com
t: 0207 0718612

Web Site = http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/email-marketing-september-2004/

Contact Details = Chris Lake
E-consultancy
85 Clerkenwell Road
London EC1A 5AR
tel 0044207 0718612