Welcome to Jigsaw's Email Marketing Center

Adopting an Email Program

Moving your e-mail program from a basic broadcast model to one that incorporates targeted and triggered messages is like buying an old house and trying to figure out whether you should do the entire project at once, or work room-to-room as your time and budget permits. In the column, "Creating a Good E-mail Marketing Strategy", I encouraged marketers to "start somewhere; start anywhere. Even the smallest change you make today will start you down the path to the right strategy"...

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Email Best Practices: New IP Addresses

When new IP addresses are used to send emails, there are a few obstacles that must be cleared in order to successfully build a good reputation at the major ISPs. ISPs measure reputation based on the mailing history of an IP address. Contrary to popular belief, an IP address is not clean just because it lacks history – rather, it has a neutral reputation. IPs with a neutral reputation are prone to frequent blocks and volume limits at ISPs. Here are the IS-specific problems and corresponding recommendations to get the new IP addresses white listed...

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Email Checklist

To avoid nasty email campaign mistakes we created an easy to use checklist internally here at VerticalResponse that we're happy to share. We've even left some blank space at the bottom for you to add some of your own. Never make a mistake again, or at least come close – no one is perfect. ;-)...

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Email Design Gone Bad: What To Do When the Biggest Challenge Facing Your Email Marketing Program is Your Own Creative Team

Time and time again I discover that one of the main obstacles to creating effective, visually engaging, brand propelling and, most importantly, result driven emails is often the very creative team creating them. Whether internal or outsourced, creative teams often forget that they are paid to design whatever it is in order to communicate a specific message and generate a specific result...

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Get the Most Out of Your Welcome Email

Your initial message to a new subscriber is a lot like a first date. Follow these tips to ensure it's the start of a long-term relationship. When I look at retailers' email programs, I am always surprised at the number of them who send a simple text email confirming that someone has been added to their mailing....

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Making Deliverability a Non-issue Through Great CRM

There is no arguing that deliverability is a complex issue. Deliverability complexity for legitimate marketers seems to stem from the ever changing nature of the way ISPs measure the attitudes of their customers through innovative concepts like reputation. The good news, however, is that there is an interesting...

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Marketo Email Marketing: Thinking Outside the Inbox

Content creation. Deliverability. CAN-SPAM laws. These email marketing challenges are easier to face with the right solution on hand. Here's a quick look at what makes email marketing in Marketo unique, along with some helpful tips on making your emails shine...

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Signed, Sealed...Delivered?

Deliverability is arguably the hottest issue in email marketing today. And rightly so: failed deliveries can translate directly into significant lost revenue, and even the possibility of being blacklisted by ISPs. But the fact is, getting your message through to its intended target is no easy task. The SPAM plague...

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Six Tips to Improve Email Delivery Rates

1. Use opt-in form instructions
2. Use emails as reinforcement vehicles
3. Host your newsletter
4. Use a filter
5. Meet the challenge Response
6. Market to those that want to hear from you

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Truth 1: Email is a Powerful Marketing Tool (Chapter 1 of the book)

Recent research shows that for every dollar spent on email marketing, you can expect an estimated return of $46.20. If that didn't get your attention, maybe this will: Email marketing delivers the highest return on investment (ROI) of any other Internet marketing approach available. Furthermore...

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10 Email Marketing New Year's Resolutions

Internet Retailer magazine recently surveyed its subscribers and found that 54% of marketers said their email marketing programs perform better than other marketing platforms. Yet, only 5% said that their open, click and conversion rates had improved significantly over last year. If marketers want to continue to see success, however, they must invest time in making their emails...

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The 2009 Email Marketing Manifesto

Email's new role in digital marketing — In this tough economy, digital marketers are looking to their email communications with renewed hope. Here's what you need to know about the latest shifts in the fundamentals of email marketing.

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Actionable Tactics for Boosting Online Conversion Rates and Revenue

The set of tools used to improve your web presence provides an incredible wealth of information for your email marketing team. Too often, however, the people managing the website are in different groups than the people managing outbound marketing campaigns. Consequently, that gold mine of data is kept inside the walls of the web channel, and ideas, strategies, and objectives are not shared seamlessly enough between the two groups...

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Analysis Paralysis: Making Sense of Multi-Channel Metrics

We've all heard the expression "paralysis by analysis" to describe a situation where no decisions get made because an organization has so much rich data that it's difficult to agree on a conclusion. But in today's multi-everything marketing environment, most marketers aren't paralyzed by the analysis...

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Email: Creative Best Practices

Effective, relevant email marketing is fast becoming an art, so there is a stronger focus on merging basic formatting practices and creative design to increase click throughs and conversions. Best practices are constantly evolving, but there are many creative techniques that can make or break your next email campaign...

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Email Marketing Best Practices: Your Checklist for a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

Whether you are new to email marketing or a savvy veteran, working for a company that sends 500 emails a week or 500,000, there are certain policies you should follow to optimize your campaigns. Call them the commandments of email marketing or call them best practices; here are 18 ideas to improve your delivery, open, and response rates...

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Email Marketing Essentials Handbook

When you are looking to grow your business but you're short on time and resources, email marketing is the perfect solution. Small businesses today increasingly rely on the ease and affordability that email marketing with VerticalResponse provides. In just a few minutes you can create professional looking e-newsletters, direct mail postcards, and online surveys to delight your customers and increase sales...

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Increasing Response to your B2B Email Marketing Programs

As B2B marketers, we spend a lot of time and money generating leads to create a pipeline for sales. But as you know, sales isn't always enamored of the leads passed to them. Why?...

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Marketing in a Down Economy: Four Stategies to Increase Returns and Efficiency

Few companies have escaped the turmoil of the economic downturn, and nearly all organizations are looking at ways to reduce their budgets while minimizing the impact on the bottom line. Unfortunately for marketers, when cash flow is squeezed, marketing budgets are often the first to get slashed. For those faced...

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Umpteen Ways to Build Your Email List

Getting permission to send someone an email is probably the toughest, yet one of the most important, things you can do. Why is it so tough? Because you have to gain your potential recipient's trust, that's why. They need to feel comfortable that you won't abuse their valuable and personal information...

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Vertical Response, Email Delivery and You — A Handy Guide

Delivering email seems pretty straightforward, right? You upload a mailing list, create an email, hit send, and then mighty wizards transport that email to your recipients through the use of ancient, handcrafted cables and powerful laser beams. What more could you possibly need to know about this process? As it turns out, loads more...

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