Email Marketing News & Insights

On Tuesday, October 6th The New York Times ran an article titled "More Ads for Basic Brands as Shoppers Spend Less." The article reports on advertising spend data from the first half of 2008 and the first half of 2009, supplied by TNS Media Intelligence.

Advertising has increased for basic mealtime products such as Heinz, Hellmann's, Jif, and General Mills. Meanwhile marketers in the automotive, financial services and luxury good industries are cutting ad budgets.

Email Data Source searched its database to see if these basic brands had also increased their email marketing campaigns.  Results were as follows:

Heinz - Email campaigns increased 250%
Hellmann's - Email campaigns increased 63%
Jif - Email campaigns decreased 71%
General Mills - Email campaigns increased 270%

While there was not an overall trend for these brands' email marketing activity between the first half of 2008 and the first half of 2009, it will be interesting to track the following months to see if there will be a spike in their email marketing activity.

StrongMail's Email Breakthrough Report was developed to help marketers achieve that potential by showcasing email programs that are strong enough to break through the consumer consciousness and lead the way towards the next level of email communications.

StrongMail, along with representatives from Email Data Source, Smith-Harmon and The Email Advisor, scoured the Internet and their respective inboxes for programs that truly demonstrate the power of the email channel. The campaigns honored as part of the Email Breakthrough Report share the following characteristics: outstanding content and creative execution, application of sophisticated email technology, use of innovative digital marketing techniques and a commitment to an exceptional user experience.

Campaigns honored in this report came from the National Geographic Channel, Microsoft, Cooking.com, TripAdvisor and Mint.com.

Click Here to download the full report.

It takes a lot of thought and time to establish an effective email marketing program. Compendium Blogware has done so with their Content Quest email campaign. Since Email Data Source became a new client of Compendium Blogware, we have been impressed by the email communication sent by Compendium's client marketing team.

Compendium believes the first 2-3 months are crucial in establishing a successful corporate blog. To keep their clients engaged, each blogger receives two emails a week reminding them to make a blog post. The emails include best practices, tips and tricks and potential blog topics. Compendium keeps their new client email program automated, organized and running efficiently by working with ExactTarget, Salesforce and 5 Buckets.

At the end of the Content Quest program, individual bloggers who have contributed receive a certificate of completion stating they are now a business blogger. And yes I am proud to say I am one!

For more information about Compendium Blogware, visit www.compendiumblogware.com.

From October 7 - 8, Email Data Source will be exhibiting at the Inbound Marketing Summit at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA.  Come visit us at Booth #7A. 

Email Data Source Founder, Bill McCloskey, will be speaking on a panel entitled "How to Build Effective Email Marketing Programs" on October 7 at 3:45pm.

Click here for more information about the Inbound Marketing Summit.

As a follow up to the EPQ report comparing the email presence and quality between top e-retailers in the Office Supplies market sector, Email Data Source has done further analysis of the email activity of top players (Staples, Office Depot, and OfficeMax) using data obtain from an independent panel of 50,000 email users.

By combining Email Data Source's information with information on the email campaigns sent by Staples, Office Depot and OfficeMax recorded by the panel, Email Data Source is able to provide deeper insight into the email marketing activity,  and relative reach and performance of the top players in the Office Supplies market sector.

Click here to download the entire supplement.

A new joint research report between Email Data Source and Goodmail, "The Top e-Retailer Email Best Practices" focuses on email marketing tactics and social networking of top e-retailers.

As technology and services in email marketing expand, marketers have more options than ever before. Email Data Source and Goodmail conducted a study of the Internet Retailer top 100 e-retailers to see how these companies have adopted social networking in their email campaigns.

The study looks at the growth in social network marketing and different techniques used to promote social marketing efforts in email campaigns, as well as new email marketing trends. 

Download the complete whitepaper at http://www.emaildatasource.com/Resources/Whitepapers/eRetailer_EmailMarketingBestPractices.

Today, Email Data Source released its latest Email Presence & Quality (EPQ) Report on the top e-retailers in the office supplies market sector. Ranking results are listed below.  To view the entire report, visit http://www.emaildatasource.com/Resources/EPQ.

Email Presence & Quality Ranking of Top Internet Retailers in Office Supplies Sector (Information Provided by Email Data Source)
Rank	Company	Presence Score	Quality Score	EPQ Score
1	Staples Inc.	310	70	190
2	Office Depot Inc.	210	75	142
3	Franklin Covey Products LLC	129	109	119
4	Office Max Inc.	113	98	105
5	OvernightPrints.com	53	131	92
6	123inkjets.com	27	142	84
7	PrintingForLess.com Inc.	8	153	80
8	ReStockIt.com	44	94	69
9	DataBazaar.com	23	76	50
10	National Business Furniture	4	76	40
	Office Supplies Market Sector Average	56	64	60
	Internet Retailer 500 Index	100	100	100

In 2007 and 2008 there were increases in the number of Back to School discounts offered by retailers in email marketing campaigns.

In 2009, Email Data Source has noticed a small drop in the number of email campaigns sent by retailers promoting Back to School discounts.  However there has been an increase in the amount of discounts being offered through social media sites, particularly Twitter.

Between July 1 and August 11, 133 email campaigns sent by retailers have promoted Twitter pages which offer additional Back to School discounts. 

For example, J&R Electronics has sent email marketing messages promoting Back to School discounts.  In addition they have also been tweeting additional discounts as shown below.

In the data Email Data Source has been tracking there has been a dramatic increase in the number of email marketing campaigns that contain links to Facebook and Twitter.  In 2009, Twitter and Facebook have become the 2 most prominent linked-to sites in email marketing.

The chart below illustrates the number of email marketing campaigns tracked by Email Data Source that have contained a link to Twitter or to Facebook.



The first email campaign with a link to twitter.com tracked by Email Data Source appeared in 2007.  For all of 2007, there were a total of 215 email marketing campaigns linked to that site.  In 2008, the number of email campaigns linked to Twitter grew by 1081% to 2,540 campaigns.

In comparison, there were 729 campaigns that linked to Facebook in 2007 and 12,650 campaigns in 2008.

Last week, the Engagementdb 2009 Report was released by Wetpaint and The Altimeter Group.  The report supported the theory that there is a direct link between a brand's social media efforts and revenue growth.

The top ranking brands were:

1. Starbucks
2. Dell
3. eBay
4. Google
5. Microsoft
6. Thomson Reuters
7. Nike
8. Amazon
9. SAP
10. Yahoo/ Intel (tie)

Using Email Analyst, we looked at the email marketing campaigns for these top brands to see who linked to social media sites.  Of the top 11 companies only Nike and Intel consistently link to social media sites in their email marketing efforts.

We are pleased to welcome you to the official blog of Email Data Source. Now you can stay up to date on the latest information posted by the Email Data Source team.

You'll learn about:

• product updates and new features
• new reports on email marketing
• use cases
• best practices
• resources
• tips and tricks

Visit often to learn about updates from a variety of members from our team.