Smart New Innovations To Boost The Email Marketing Industry

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Is “email marketing” the first word that pops into your mind when you talk about innovation? Guess not. This is because many people consider email marketing as tedious. We mostly think about mobile technology or social media when the topic of innovation comes up. But the fact is that the email marketing industry has been rapidly evolving in the past 15 years and has experienced a lot of impressive innovations. During the last 2 years specifically a number of prominent advances have taken email marketing from tedious to cutting edge. Read on...

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During the initial years of emailing, the email marketing services were developed to send and deliver simple messages and newsletters as well as to effectively manage subscribers. As different email marketing companies emerged and the industry evolved, these businesses introduced new features and functions such as auto-responders that enables users to automatically send a number of emails in a specific sequence, right at the moment an event occurred, like a new user signed up. Today, most of the mid and small sized businesses utilize very basic services to implement email marketing efficiently.

Age of Marketing Automation

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Even though you might have heard about marketing automation before as it is not a new concept, this has gained credible prominence in this field fairly recently. With marketing automation, you can track the behavior of each subscriber and send them the most suitable messages which will not only transform him to a loyal customer, but bring in more business.

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The notion that marketing automation promotes is valid as it claims that each individual subscriber gets interested in unique and different services and products. Moreover, every person is at a different zone of the buying cycle at any given moment. Hence, when you send different email messages to each subscriber, you boost your chances of conversion. When you use a marketing automation software, it studies and learns from the emailing habits of subscribers and then delivers a more targeted and appropriate message to them that boost conversions.

Keith Hearn of MyTechBits.com recently wrote

“Compared to email marketing services, marketing automation has a very small market share. Main reasons is that it is highly priced for small business and it’s complicated and difficult to use.”

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In case an organization wishes to utilize marketing automation, then the business leaders will need to gain adequate knowledge regarding email marketing and invest sufficient time on it. 

Hearn added

“Until now, most innovation in the email marketing industry were around the software. The latest innovation I’ve seen focuses on the creation of the content.”

Era of Newsletter Content Automation

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Newsletter content automation companies focus on content generation and integrates with email marketing companies to deliver newsletters. 

Keith Hearn claims that such companies bring

“the content from the web and from Twitter. Then it specifies how many times each article has been shared on social media. This information gives users good information on what’s the best content and lets them create quickly a newsletter.”

The Bottom Line

It's true that in the past 15 years, the email marketing industry has seen some impressive innovations, but experts believe that in the coming years many more are expected come forward. Email marketing is the one of the most efficient ways to successfully convert prospective clients to loyal customers.

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How are you using email marketing for your business? Feel free to add to the discussion by share your views and opinions below.

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2015 Email Metrics Study Offers Valuable Email Marketing Data

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Are you looking for ways to boost your email performance? Do you have doubts about comparing with competitors?The fact is, without accurate data about your peers, evaluating your position in the industry can  be rather challenging. But don't worry! The 2015 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study will offer you the required industry information that will enable you to assess and boost your email performance. Read on...

Analyzing email open rates

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The 2015 study was conducted recently which focuses on the email open rate for various industries.This latest email metrics benchmark study reported that the Lodging, Travel Agencies & Services sector has the highest email open rate at 56.7 per cent, among the other 17 sector included in the survey. Other industries which performed good and had over 50 per cent email open rate in the study were Hospitals, Healthcare & Biotech; Schools & Education; Insurance; and Consumer Products.

Here is a list of the email open rate (top quartile) for some of the surveyed industries:

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• Lodging, travel agencies & services - 56.7%
• Schools & education - 53.1%
• Insurance - 51.8 %
• Consumer products - 51.6 %
• Hospitals, healthcare & biotech - 50.2%
• Nonprofits, associations & governments - 48.1%
• Marketing agencies & services - 48.0%
• Industrial manufacturing & utilities - 46.6 %
• Computer hardware & telecommunications - 45.2 %
• Automobiles & transportation – 44.9%

 

Studying click-through rates

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Then the 2015 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study evaluated click-through rates, it was found that the Lodging, Travel Agencies & Services sector again had a high score with 5.3 per cent, along with Consumer Products industry at 5.4 per cent and the Computer Hardware & Telecommunications sector at 5.7 per cent. The study revealed that these were the only industries that were able to score higher than 5 per cent for Mean Click-through Rate. 

Here we have listed the click-through rate (top quartile) for some of the industries that were studied:

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• Computer hardware & telecommunications - 16.3 % 

• Lodging, travel agencies & services - 15.2 % 

• Consumer products - 14.6 % 

• Schools & education - 14.5 % 

• Insurance - 12.8 % 

• Hospitals, healthcare & biotech - 12.5 % 

• Marketing agencies & services - 11.8 % 

• Nonprofits, associations & governments - 11.4 % 

• Food service, sports & entertainment - 11.4 %

• Corporate services - 10.1 %

 

Establishing a benchmark

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The 2015 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study surveyed emails from over 750 organizations and more than 3,000 brands from around 40 countries. The researchers evaluated the different types of email marketing messages and different metrics to conduct the study and set up email marketing tools & benchmarks across different regions and industries. The study also found that transactional emails had higher probability of getting opened than promotional or other non-transactional messages.

What do you think? Do you find the study useful? Feel free to share your views with us and add to the discussion. 

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SMTP - A Successful Email Marketing Tool

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Email marketing refers to directly marketing a commercial message for a larger audience. Every email that is sent to prospective customers is an integral part of email marketing. The emails contain advertisements, business propositions, information about donations, encourage customer loyalty and builds brand awareness.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) providers are cloud-based technology used to send out emails without any hindrance.

Why are SMTP providers so important in the twenty- first century?

Email marketing relies on a good SMTP provider. Every company wants to communicate with as many people as is possible. Only this leads to success.

Using ordinary providers have their own limitations. There is a very limited number of emails that can be sent

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per day by these providers.

The emails that are sent after the maximum numbers of emails are sent are regarded as spam mail and are often ignored by customers. The IP address earns a bad reputation and gets blacklisted.

In this context reliable smtp providers to reach clients are always sought for the above-mentioned limitations.

Delivery Reports are Provided

The SMTP providers verify the configuration of the computer from where the email is being sent and grants permission for the task to be completed. It ensures that a delivery report is sent out and in case the email doesn’t reach someone, it returns to the sender.

If you install an SMTP provider your mail will reach the receiver with great accuracy and speed.

Add More To Your Email Using This Provider

The Extended SMTP can send images and other file attachments along with the email.

Don’t Get Blacklisted

One can send unlimited emails without having their mail reach the spam box and without getting their IP address blacklisted.

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Mail While On The Go

You can send the emails from wherever you are. You can be on the road and still be sending emails without further delay. You can depend upon reliable smtp providers to reach clients.

Build A Rapport With Your Customers

A personal connection is established when unlimited mail is being sent and is received by potential customers.

Connect With Any Device

These SMTP providers can be installed on computers, laptops, mobiles, tablets and any smart phone. So you get service from any device that you own.

Get An Instant Feedback

These providers also ensure that recipients get your mail and you can also be assured that they have responded to your mail.

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Keep In Touch To Not Forget

You need to make your presence felt by your customers by keeping in touch with them so that they do not establish businesses with others. The SMTP provider ensures that your mail reaches your customers whenever they are seeking products or are interested in doing business or making a purchase.

You must agree that SMTP providers are very useful in our day and age and we can’t think about business and communication without them. They have become progressively popular over the years since their first inception in 1982.

Build your business and reach out to others with the SMTP providers. Live your dream and share your success story by leaving a comment below.

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Why Digital Advertising Technology Is Driving Mergers And Acquisitions

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Advertising technology was undoubtedly one of the most thrilling areas last year for acquisitions and mergers. I have seen several influential acquisitions highlighting the noteworthy strategic worth of mobile advertising. So it got me thinking. What trends in digital marketing and advertising technology are motivating such investment decisions? Let’s find out....

The Boom Of Digital Advertising

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In the past 3 years, digital advertising has grown at 15 to 18 per cent per year worldwide. This growth has been considerably fueled by mobile and real-time bidding. With further advancements in technology, you will surely see the online advertising market gaining a larger share of the pie than expected earlier. 

Recently, Twitter acquired MoPub for $350 Million. What does that tell you? Well MoPub enables advertisers to focus on potential customers more precisely, in real time and in a bigger scale directly on their smartphones. Hence I don’t think it’s shocking that that Twitter has acquired the platform. Currently the core of advertising marketplace lies in real-time bidding for mobile and online inventory.

Real-Time Bidding- The Real Deal                                       

Real-time bidding is growing its market share at breakneck pace. Presently 19 per cent of the US online display inventory is being dealt in real-time. Moreover the rates in European are also growing rapidly. It is expected that by the year 2016, 25 per cent of ad impressions will be auctioned-off in a similar manner. These act as bids for programmatic ad buying platforms that helps to create more and more refined methods of optimizing and measuring the ROI of advertisers.

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I believe in the coming 5 years, real-time bidding will bring about radical changes and make the ad marketplace more effective. This will provide advertisers the capability to target audiences more efficiently based on certain criteria. Real-time data regarding your target audience, like age, gender, location, and others, merged with real-time pricing, can offer you a much clearer picture of the underlying market. The truth is such online advertising models will facilitate the transition of transition from offline to online providing a larger share of the pie.

It was found that in 2013 mobile marketing constituted almost 14 per cent of global digital ad spend, whereas in 2012 it was merely around 8.5 per cent. Moreover experts believe that by the year 2017, it will be around 33 per cent of the online ad market.

Marketing Automation- A Key Trend

Apart from mobile ad tech, marketing automation also plays a significant role in the Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A). As various sophisticated software is rapidly replacing human decision-making by running advanced data analytics and complex algorithms, marketing automation is gaining ground. Although you may think that email marketing has almost become obsolete, but it still acts one of the core strategies for a growing number of automated campaign management.

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Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are primarily focused on customer relationship management systems that utilize valuable social data about target audience to develop to provide successful marketing campaigns. A number of key acquisitions in the past 2 years have steered marketing automation to the front of the digital and online marketing revolution.

What do you think? Share your own views, opinions and experiences with us by commenting below.

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What Marketing Campaign With Off-The-Charts Email Means Today

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An email needs to be written in such a manner that it reaches the target audience with a positive effect and gives you an optimistic result. You need to keep in mind that your customers are your top priority. It is how you can impress them that matters most. If you don’t have all the elements that make a great email campaign, you are at the risk of tasting failure instead of success.

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Make Sure You Have A Clear Objective

          

           You will need to set goals about creating awareness about your product or publicity when you are willing to sell it online. This will serve as a framework for your email campaign.

Have An Eye-Catching Subject-Line

         

            Your customer’s inbox will be full of emails. Your email needs to stand out among all others. It will help you grab the attention of the reader.

Headline and Content Should be Captivating

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                The headline of your email should be the first thing that one notices. The subscriber must be convinced that you are providing the best service or product there is.

The content should engage the attention of the subscriber. You don’t need to provide great details but you must give a hint in the form of an interesting introduction and leave the rest to the imagination.

The Design Should Appeal To The Interest Of The Reader

        

         You need to design an email in such a manner that there remains brevity, concentration on style, relevant and it should not deviate from its point.

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Email Should Compel One To Read It

           

           Be creative and make sure that a reader will be curious to open the page and discover more information. You should be able to convince your reader to read what you want to present before him.

You Must Have An Appropriate Landing Page

         

         The landing page must interest the reader. It will fine tune the content and allow reading to be consistent and uninterrupted.

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Find Out Which Is The Best Time To Send Your Email

         

         You need to know at what time the email is to be sent to your recipient. You need to make sure that it is sent at such a time that it catches the attention and the person can follow up on it as soon as possible.

Break And Send Your Emails

           

        If you intend to send your emails to many thousand recipients, make sure that your mail is not sent to all of them. Divide them into small groups and send them one after the other. If one group receives them and you get a positive feedback, feel free to launch the next lot of emails. It is always wise to verify and test yourself to be free of risks.

It is in this manner that you can ensure that you will have a successful campaign. If you feel that we have not answered all of your questions, leave a comment or question for us and we will be pleased to get back to you.

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5 Essential Gadgets to Help Real Estate Professionals Grow in their Business Endeavors

If you are a real estate professional, you need to fix a few things that may kill or delay parts of a real estate transaction. Clients may consider some factors like weather, when a deal is delayed, but they want solution for everything else. That emphasizes on the role of technology, which can help you do business, irrespective of the constraints put forward by time, weather, or location.

When it is about technology gadgets for real estate, portability comes above all. Here is a list of smart spends to ensure technology never stops you from closing a deal.

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Tablet – A wide range of tablet devices are now accessible in the market, though the Apple iPad remains the grand daddy of all the tablet computers. It does not matter whether you go for Android or Apple’s iOS, because both are equipped with strong application networks, though you need to make a choice between the two. A tablet device could make travel, emailing on the go, presentations and contracts reviews seem easier to the real estate agents. And in terms of usability, tablet devices are more useful than smart-phone.

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Digital Measurement Device – Real estate professionals could literally save hours on any listing or buyer appointment with the use of a digital measuring device. They can know exactly the distance of the wall with a quick push of a button. If the same thing is done with a tape measure, it will take more manpower and consume extra time. Real estate professionals could use an acoustic device that is able to send out a little pulse which can easily be received by the device’s microphone. If you show a client that you are ready with proper tools to come to work, your credibility is built in their eyes.

Smart Phone – While a smart phone is not considered as ideal and efficient as tablet devices for appointment listings or contracts reviews, a smart phone is extremely necessary for practicing real estate. As 85 percent of all home sales begin from internet, it is essential to respond in quick time to a call or lead produced by a website. In the modern times, almost every smart phone has the push email feature where server deposits the email without the phone needing to retrieve the messages.

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Multi-Feed Scanner – This is one of the most essential gadgets for a real estate professional. A multi-feed scanner is utterly essential to a resourceful, competent real estate business. Most successful real estate businesses have more than one or two transactions in the pipeline all the times, hence a paperless filing system is going to be of great help to them.

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A Good Laser Printer – If there is a piece of technology that has not changed since the mid 1990s, it is the printer. Getting a good laser printer may prove a boon for real estate businesses.

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Printers seem to be a piece of technology that has remained basically constant since the mid 1990s. I have no idea why, but getting a decent laser printer has been the bane of my real estate career thus far.

There are several other cutting edge technology devices that a real estate professional would require to succeed in their endeavors.

How Emails can drive the Sales Conversion Rates and Click-Through Rates on Your Website?

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Email marketing is a great method to market your products among the global consumers without investing a lot. But, as getting email addresses of others is a tough task, email marketing is a big responsibility.

Email is said to be the best direct channel in regard to daily use and consumer preference for communications on both personal and marketing levels.

According to MarketingSherpa, Email Benchmark Survey, 2013, “67% of marketers say that delivering highly relevant content is a strategic goal their organization wants to achieve through email marketing.” (Source: goo.gl/Ggm9ns)

The evolution of email marketing is largely due to its familiarity, universality and flexibility. The new generations of smart-phone and tablet users have given a new meaning to email usages.

Here are a few top tips to help you create a strong and powerful email marketing strategy, which begins with list-building, continues with data management and concludes with revenue generation.

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Make an acquisition strategy – If the audience growth is your priority, you should start analyzing the platforms where consumers engage with your brand. Subsequently, consider to bring in new tools and techniques to drive interactive engagement and consumer experiences. You must always optimize acquisition forms for mobile phones, because if a customer finds it difficult to fill out form on their mobile device, you may lose the opt-in.

Present relevant data – You must first assess your current data to ensure targeted communications. Use of simple data points like location and gender can significantly improve the subscriber experience. Likewise, use Facebook’s geo-tagging features with status updates on social media. Make sure to never repeat the same promotional messages on social media and email.

Personalize email as and when possible – You should know that your website visitors, email and mobile subscribers and social media followers appreciate personalized messages. Add personalized references into marketing emails for the crucial one-to-one interactive sessions. You should focus on the browsing behavioral pattern of your each subscriber and create your email content accordingly. Personalized emails have the potential to improve the click-through rates by 25 to 35 percent and sales conversion rates by 15 to 25 percent.

Receive customers’ permission to use their email addresses – Emails promote the concept of permission marketing, which asks brands to first seek permission prior to sending consumers email marketing messages and newsletters. Once the permission is received, you should next jump on data personalization and building around the consumer.

Automate your after-purchase messages – You should keep in mind that customer retention is of greater importance in email marketing, so must automate a re-engagement campaign for a set duration post-purchase.

Email, along with a well-designed and developed website and consumer experience, cites a long-standing base for interactive marketing. You should bear in mind that your audience comprises both non-smartphone owners and smart-phone owners, so ensure that your marketing strategies suits them both.