Summary:

1. Integrate With Social Media
2.Focus on Engaging Subscribers
3. Re-Engaging Active Subscribers
4. Creating Viral Campaigns
5. Split Testing and Optimizing Landing Pages

I had a similar conversation with colleague Ben Stone a few weeks ago as I was doing some email marketing research. He recommended a local market / restaurant as a good example of email marketing...

I had not subscribed to them but recently started shopping there so I was interested in getting some inside information. After clicking around to find their opt-in form (first mistake) I came upon a similar, although not nearly as expansive, form that required my physical address.

This is not something I am willing to give out to just anyone (I HATE getting direct mail - HATE it) - so I left as there was no option to just sign up for their email newsletter.

How many people leave your opt-in forms or sales funnel because you require too much from them? (hint: you can track that in web analytics)

So what's the point? Only require as much information you need to capture the lead. In 99.99% of the cases that is 2 fields: Name & Email Address...

If you *need* the other information - ask it in follow up emails as a way to add value to the user...

Example: If the market discussed above had just taken my email address and then sent me an email a week later saying, "Hey we are having a 20% off beer sale next week... If you would like a coupon please send us your address so we can send it to you"

What do you think? Let us know in the comments

Timing in an email marketing campaign - that is, deciding on what day or even what time of day the send button gets hit - is as important as actually crafting the message and selecting which segmented group of customers will receive it. Unfortunately, though, that decision is rarely given the same level of attention.

We use a variety of pieces of software to run different parts of our service and provide support to customers. Some of these are tools we have developed ourselves; others are third-party ones that we license from other companies.

By exploiting and combining vulnerabilities in two separate third-party software systems, the perpetrators managed to gain access to a part of our system where subscriber email addresses are stored.

We have received reports of some of those email addresses receiving spam messages. While the volume of these reports is low, we are treating this incident with the utmost seriousness and addressing it fully.

We use and love AWeber's popular email marketing service and hate to see them fall victim to hackers.

One good note: AWeber's email service will remain white-listed (means they are not flagged as spammers) because the hackers sent the spam email using their own systems and not AWeber's.

Also - they've fixed the glitch.

E-mail addresses: In early 2010, Facebook will launch the ability for Facebook Pages to collect e-mail addresses from fans on an opt-in basis. This has huge implications for marketers - currently, you can reach fans through the Page itself, but every company would love to have e-mail addresses to go with it. Ideally you'll be able to achieve some crossover between your Facebook communications with your e-mail marketing initiatives.

As Nathan says in his post - this is huge for marketers.

Via MediaPost...

"For the first time, brands will be able to collect email addresses from Facebook users directly through Facebook Pages and applications using a new email API. Smart marketers have been collecting email addresses from users since the Platform launched. However, this new 1-click functionality will reduce much of the friction and will make building your email list within Facebook much easier. "

This is huge... Look for popular email marketing applications to embrace this via API - looking at you AWeber and Mailchimp

Nearly half (40%) of email marketers plan on increasing their budgets for the channel in 2010 and 47 percent said their budgets would stay the same, according to a new survey by Silverpop.

In recent years, retailers have sent more email marketing messages on Cyber Monday than on any other day of the year. This year will be no exception, according to Responsys.

In 2009, email marketers are hoping to be out in force with emails - not only on the Monday directly after Thanksgiving, but on all four Mondays in December. It is on these so-called 'Echo Mondays,' when marketers say consumers are most most likely to be receptive to email marketing campaigns, according to the Retail Email Blog. This year, nearly 97 million shoppers are expected to log online and make a purchase on each of these days.

In 2008 three of the four "Echo Mondays" were among the top five most popular days of the year to send promotional retail emails. "Last year Mondays were not only the most popular day of the week among retail email marketers during December, but all of the fourth quarter," the blog said.

Extremely interesting statistics for you e-commerce people out there... Sending promotional emails on Mondays in December will yield the highest conversion rates for promotional emails...

Lesson: Send retail emails on Mondays :-)