Migrating ESPs is a little like moving. Nobody wants to meticulously pack, box, and label the entire contents of their home only to have to unpack it all somewhere new. However, the more prepared and organized you are, the smoother the transition will be as you start anew.
An ESP migration can feel overwhelming, as each new platform comes with its own learning curve. If your company has decided to move to a new ESP, keep in mind it’s a complex task with more than its fair share of obstacles to overcome. To help, platform migration experts here at Trendline Interactive have compiled a basic ESP Migration Checklist for you to consider.
1. Export Lists
Maintaining the quality, reliability, and size of a company’s contact list during an ESP migration is a common concern. Rookie mistakes are easy to make, so don’t rush it. Take the time necessary for a proper setup to avoid deployment errors. First, remember to export lists from your...
A Welcome Email is the first look subscribers have into a company’s brand. It should reflect the brand, thank the subscribers for subscribing, provide guidance as to what they can expect, and generate excitement for upcoming emails. Properly implementing the Welcome Email as a key element of your email marketing campaign avoids setting a negative tone for your subsequent sends. A well-crafted Welcome Email will likely be the most-engaged email in your program, so don’t waste this prime opportunity to make a positive first impression. Here are a few Do’s and Don’ts we recommend to help you create an effective Welcome Email.
What to do in a welcome email:
Make it timely. Be sure to send out the Welcome Email immediately after they sign up, before they receive any other emails.
Make your subject line personalized and worthy of your brand. We’re not saying to simply use first-name personalization. Make the Welcome Email personal––personal to the brand, to the recipient, to...
Spring is in the air! The perfect time to take a look at your email program and get a better understanding of what’s working, what’s not working, and where you might need some support.
Spring cleaning at work can provide an opportunity to practice being more mindful of the tasks you’re doing, promote a more positive attitude and help establish a clear mindset - and quite possibly, avert those feelings of languish so many are experiencing these days.
For marketers that manage a sophisticated email program, there can be so many different ways to optimize its performance - just thinking about it can take time that you probably don't have. We have compiled 3 steps email program owners can take to capture some of the stress-relieving benefits of spring cleaning at work.
Get in the inbox
What is more distressing than sending a message and not knowing if it is even being delivered to it’s intended recipients? Even more stressful is actually knowing your...
What Is Customer Lifetime Value?
Take a look at your current customers. How well do you understand their value? Do you know how much revenue they produce for you? Do you understand how much it costs you to generate this revenue? And more importantly, are you able to predict these values into the future? Customer lifetime value (CLV) is an important metric for organizations who want to get a more accurate view of their customers and become more profitable in the process.
Understanding CLV allows you to make changes to your business to attract, convert, and retain more high-value customers, while increasing the overall value of your entire customer base.
While there are many simple approaches to calculating average CLV, predicting true customer-level CLV and implementing it as a performance metric across your entire organization is a complex process. Many companies fail when it comes to CLV because they underestimate the amount of change it will require to be successful. On the other hand,...
Marketers shape their email strategy by asking questions. Many companies ask if they send too many emails—and often assume that they do. This is most likely based on a slew of reports and research studies asking questions along the lines of “Why do you unsubscribe from email?”
It’s a fair question and, through our experience, we’ve found that people almost always cite frequency as one of their main reasons for unsubscribing.
With that information in hand, email marketers tend to assume they do send too many emails. But this survey question is extremely generic, lacks context, and therefore can be misleading. For all we know, the respondents could be referring to the average email from the average company.
However, ask the same exact users which companies do the best job communicating with them through email, and they're likely to list a company that sends them more than one email per week. In fact, we find that companies who send subscribers emails multiple times...
At the core of any successful email marketing program lies a healthy database of subscribers. Therefore, marketers should make growing that database a central priority.
However, list growth continues to be difficult for marketers. An Ascend2 survey reported that 34% of respondents found “increasing email list size” was a difficult objective to achieve. This was third behind maintaining an engaged list (45%) and reducing spam complaints (37%). The study also revealed that more marketers felt email list growth was more difficult than proving ROI.
These results are not surprising. Instead of letting analysis of comprehensive datasets lead the way, we often see “anecdotal evidence” and corporate agendas guiding email-list growth strategy. In an effort to demystify list growth, here are three things we’ve found that email marketers with large and thriving email databases have in common.
1. They track all sources of email list growth.
Yes, tracking only some list sources is better than not tracking any list sources. However, unless all sources are...
Sending opt-in or re-engagement email campaigns to subscribers to verify and keep email permission is not a new idea. And yet, the pertinence of these campaigns is increasing. Over time, a portion of your email list will become unengaged. Disengagement creates several negative impacts for your email marketing. These include lower response rates and wasted marketing dollars.
Re-engagement campaigns allow you to confirm which subscribers want to continue receiving your emails. You can then clean out your lists by removing disengaged subscribers. This refresh not only results in healthier lists and increased ROI, but it also helps keep you on the good side of security and anti-spam laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL). In addition, if you are not properly cleaning your list, you risk harming your deliverability—or even being blacklisted.
Re-Engagement Email Best Practices
Over the years, Trendline has had the opportunity to work with various marketing clients on re-engagement campaigns. Many have conducted...
Your email marketing program relies on many factors for success, but the most important is the quality of your email database. In earlier blog posts we've reviewed strategies for acquiring more of the high-quality email addresses that will grow your email program and help you achieve your business goals, and for measuring the success of those strategies. Now we'll look at some specific metrics that will help you refine your success measurements when it comes to a good email acquisition strategy.
Pay attention to these early-warning metrics
Opens, clicks and conversions are reliable ways to measure how active and interested your email subscribers are, but they are long-term indicators. Their greatest value comes when you track them to see if they're trending up or down.
Two metrics need your immediate action, both to correct as soon as they occur and to serve as the springboard for investigation into potential problems with acquisition sources. They also indicate low-quality subscribers but have more power to...
A well-rounded email program does more than just send messages that say “Buy this.” You can communicate effectively and continuously with an email program that includes many kinds of content and messages that align with your email content strategy and goals.
Effective email messages combine captivating images and optimized design with strong copy in articles and offers. Images capture attention. Good design helps readers navigate through the message. Strong copy engages, nurtures and retains customers. These relevant conversations build long-term relationships and increase customer lifetime value.
Don't lose the customer with too many of the same messages
While sales messages and other promotional content are useful, you can burn out your list if “Buy this” is the only message you send. Your audience will tune out by unsubscribing, hitting the “report spam” button or quietly disengaging (deleting messages without opening them or letting them pile up in their inboxes).
When you send valuable and relevant information beyond the usual “Buy this” or “Sign up...
The lifeblood of a high performing email program is growing the email subscriber base, whether by converting current customers into subscribers or attracting new ones. Having a growing subscriber list is an important indicator of a healthy digital marketing program, but the quality of those subscribers is just as important as their quantity.
In this post, we'll explain why quality matters and how to learn which email acquisition strategies will help you attract the best subscribers for your customer base. (See our previous post, “How to Grow Your Email Marketing List,” for effective opt-in strategies and tactics.)
Why quality matters
Size is important for an effective email database because it means you are reaching a broader share of your market with email. A larger database allows you to segment and target communications to be sure you're always sending the most relevant messages. It's also a reliable data source for testing new approaches and understanding what your customers are thinking and doing.
However, size does...
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