The Truth About Email Marketing

DESCRIPTION

Email marketing is a much maligned, often misunderstood, but heavily utilized marketing channel that can boast the highest return on investment of any marketing method in existence. Written by the industry-leading voice, G. Simms Jenkins, one of the top email marketing experts.

The Truth About Email Marketing should serve as the definitive handbook on email marketing. This book contains everything you must know to utilize email marketing in your corporation or small business.

The truth about recession-proofing your business with email marketing

The truth about measuring results and improving promotional and newsletter campaigns

The truth about email marketing versus spam

Includes dozens of easy to test and implement best practices that every email program should utilize

Table of Contents

Foreword Mark Brownlow ix
Introduction xiii
The Truth About Why Email Works 1
Email is a powerful marketing tool 1
Permission-based email marketing is not spam 5
Email marketing is extremely cost-effective, targeted, and measurable 9
Email is stronger than ever 13
The Truth About Email Budgeting and ROI 17
Don't be cheap: email cuts other costs, so invest in it 17
Using email ROI to guide your budget 21
Keeping your email program alive when budgets are cut 25
The Truth About Organizing an Email Department 29
Deciding to outsource or bring in-house 29
Finding the right partner 33
Getting the ball rolling with your email marketing partner 37
What makes a good email marketing manager 41
The Truth About Customer-Focused Email Strategy 45
How to be relevant 45
Making your first impression count 49
The Truth About Creating and Growing a List 53
It is not easier to ask for forgiveness 53
How to create an email list 57
Using lead-generation tactics to build your list 61
Complement email list growth with search 67
Keep a clean list 71
The benefits of a robust preference center 75
Get more from your email list 79
The Truth About Best Practices 83
Length and your call to action 83
Creating an email newsletter 87
Establishing the right email frequency 91
Personalization 95
Segment lists for more targeted emails 99
Great Subject lines drive a strong response 103
Consider the From line 107
Test, test, test 111
Maximizing system-generated and automated emails 115
Use your signature line 119
Top to bottom advice for better emails 123
Audit your email program annually 127
The Truth About Getting into and Optimizing the Inbox 131
The basics of deliverability 131
Understanding rendering 135
Creating email campaigns for mobile devices 139
The Truth About Measuring Email Performance 143
Know your email metrics, part 1 143
Know your email metrics, part 2 147
Remarketing for results 151
The Truth About Privacy and CAN-SPAM 155
Understanding the CAN-SPAM Act 155
A closer look at spam 159
The varying levels of permission 163
What your privacy policy should cover 169
The Truth About Automated Email 173
Create a meaningful welcome message 173
Creating an unsubscribe process 177
The right (and wrong) ways to monitor replies to your email campaigns 181
The Truth About B2B and International Email Programs 185
Delivering on business-to-business email campaigns 185
Best practices for international email efforts 189
The Truth About Where Email Is Headed 193
The impact of social media on email 193
The future of email marketing 197
References 201
Acknowledgments 20
4About the Author 206
Recommended sites, newsletters, and blogs
Glossary
Useful statistics