We're delighted that Chad White and the Retail Email Blog mentioned one of our Creative Services Team's designs for HP Shopping in the 'Design Hall of Fame: 2011 Inductees.'Our clients at HP Shopping really pushed us to create a layout... More

We're delighted that Chad White and the Retail Email Blog mentioned one of our Creative Services Team's designs for HP Shopping in the 'Design Hall of Fame: 2011 Inductees.'


Our clients at HP Shopping really pushed us to create a layout that stood out. Their new Folio Notebook is an amazing product, and we wanted to show that with a "breakout" email layout.  Here's what Chad White had to say about it:

"I'm a big fan of email design best practices, but I'm also a big fan of occasionally ditching those best practices to stand out in the inbox. HP does exactly that in this email, where they jettison their preheader text, header, and navigation bar and increased their email width to 800 pixels from 570. Those changes helped put more focus on the hero image of their new ultra-thin laptop."

It's an exciting time to be a part of the Yesmail Interactive team, and, as we announced this week, it has been especially exciting for the Creative Services Team as we're a part of 4 awards in the last 3 months! 

• 2011 Email Hall of Fame: Retail Email Blog HP, 12/8 - Exclusive: HP's First Ultrabook is Here
• 2012 Marketing Sherpa Email Awards Best Triggered Email or Auto-Responder Series: Silver - Feld Entertainment - Welcome Series
• 2012 eTail Email Marketing: Best in Class Finalist - Webroot Newsletter
• 2011 OMMA Award: Best Email CRM Campaign - HP Customer Revival Campaign

While we would love to take all the credit, we have to thank our clients for continuing to strive above and beyond the ordinary and inspiring us to create innovative email templates.

Last but not least, if you happen to be attending the Marketing Sherpa event in Vegas next week you're in luck, I'll be there both days providing FREE email design audits in our dedicated clinic room. Be sure to register to here today as space if filling up quickly.

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We at Yesmail Interactive are incredibly honored to be included in the most recent Forrester Wave™ for email marketing vendors.  We have much to be excited about as we received perfect scores for: Dynamic content setup, testing, delivery executionMultiple, flexible... More

We at Yesmail Interactive are incredibly honored to be included in the most recent Forrester Wave™ for email marketing vendors.  We have much to be excited about as we received perfect scores for:

• Dynamic content setup, testing, delivery execution
• Multiple, flexible reporting and analysis options, and
• Security

Yesmail Interactive also received top scores for:

• An Apps library that provides advanced reporting, like competitive intelligence reporting, industry benchmarks and customer interactions across different channels
• Creative services offering further supported by customer references utilized in the Wave  
• Customer retention with a global churn rate consistently above 99%

Additionally, Yesmail Interactive's proprietary research tool, "Yesmail Market Intelligence", contributed to the perfect score in the multichannel correlation evaluation.  Yesmail Market Intelligence, among other things, monitors the correlation between digital channels, like email, and social activity, i.e. how email activity drives social buzz, and how social activity drives email response.  Yesmail Market Intelligence combines social, mobile, and email monitoring to power competitive, market, and digital content intelligence from a centralized, easy to use console.

Yesmail Interactive's email and social media integration functionality also received above average scores.  With several ways to integrate social media with email, users can seamlessly schedule and deploy social campaigns, show growth and response trends in social channels via the Social Insight Dashboard, track click-throughs of social 'share' buttons, and create social opt-in forms.  

Yesmail Interactive has made noteworthy leadership changes including the appointment of Chairman Mike Iaccarino as CEO.  His outstanding industry track record will help bolster our growing business, as will Purandar Das who brings his extraordinary expertise in email marketing technology and analytics as CTO.  We have further strengthened our expansion in the market with the hiring of Linda Vetter as Director of Marketing and Marc Shull as Sr. Director of Strategic Analytics.  These highly experienced professionals bring demonstrable successes and domain expertise in email marketing with them.

Along with significant new technology features, functionality and benefits we are releasing this year we are aggressively investing in strategy and analysis skills so that as customers evolve we're evolving with them. More exciting news to come.  Watch this space.

Michael Fisher
President, Yesmail Interactive
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Yesmail Interactive's field research indicates that marketers are struggling with the following question: 'Which Facebook Campaign-Type (aka Post) will generate maximum user engagement for my business?' More

Yesmail Interactive's field research indicates that marketers are struggling with the following question:  'Which Facebook Campaign-Type (aka Post) will generate maximum user engagement for my business?'   To bring everyone up to speed, we've defined the 6 popular Facebook campaign-types below:

1.     Link - A campaign (post) that contains an URL.

2.     Music - A campaign (post) that contains a streamable song.

3.     Photo - A campaign (post) that contains a photo / image.

4.     Status Update - A campaign (post) that contains basic text with no interactive media.

5.     Flash Object / SWF - Contain an interactive survey or application.

6.     Video - Contains a full motion video.

 

We decided to put our new Market Intelligence (MI) solution to the test and obtain deeper insight into this question.   Our Market Intelligence solution uncovered the following facts after analyzing 19,223 Facebook campaigns posted from the Top 100 marketers:

1.     'Link' campaigns are the most popular deployment type amongst Marketers.

2.     'Photo' campaigns generate the most 'Likes'.

3.     'Status Update' campaigns generate the most 'Comments'.

The same Market Intelligence solution also uncovered the top Facebook campaign based on Comment count from the marketers in our tracking network.  Walgreens currently holds the top campaign spot with over 33,790 comments after being posted on December 13, 2011.

Closing Comment:  Comments are 'King' with Facebook.  Deploying more Status Update campaigns will generate more comments and potentially more leads for your business!

 

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Macy's Facebook Campaign " 'Like' this if you believe in Santa!" is currently leading ALL Facebook campaigns from the top 100 marketers with 68,834 'Likes' and is in the 12th place overall from the top 1000 Marketers worldwide! More

Yesmail Interactive - Marketing Intelligence Quick Fact:

Macy's Facebook Campaign " 'Like' this if you believe in Santa!" is currently leading ALL Facebook campaigns from the top 100 marketers with 68,834 'Likes' and is in the 12th place overall from the top 1000 Marketers worldwide!

Below is a snapshot of the top 3 Facebook campaigns from the 100 top retailers we are tracking. 

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Have you ever wondered how other Marketers are utilizing ALL digital channels (Email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube)? Or how many campaigns other Marketers are sending out across each channel per day this holiday season? The Yesmail Interactive laboratory has been hard at work these past 12 months developing a new revolutionary solution to help answer these questions! More

Have you ever wondered how other Marketers are utilizing ALL digital channels (Email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube)? Or how many campaigns other Marketers are sending out across each channel per day this holiday season?  The Yesmail Interactive laboratory has been hard at work these past 12 months developing a new revolutionary solution to help answer these questions!

We have randomly chosen 100 of the top 500 online internet retailers from (internetretailer.com/top500) and plugged them into our new Competitive Intelligence solution.   This solution (which will be formally launched in Q1 2012) is the FIRST solution on the PLANET that captures ALL digital marketing campaigns from ALL marketers on Email, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and SMS.  Much like on Facebook how you would add a Friend to your Social Network, in our solution you add a Marketer to your Marketing Network! 

Throughout this holiday season Yesmail Strategic Services will be providing marketing analysis & insights with data from the Top 100 Marketers utilized in this study.  Basically we are following the best in class retailers and sharing their holiday marketing efforts over four key spending periods.

Snapshot 1: Nov 1 to 17: Holiday Kick-off  

Snapshot 2: Nov 18 to Dec 2: Black Friday / Cyber Monday Performance

Snapshot 3: Dec 3 to Dec 20: Green Monday / Free Shipping

Snapshot 4: Dec 21 to Jan 16: Holiday Wrap-up

 

We are excited to invite you to our late January webinar where Kristin Kleweno (Sr. Strategist from Yesmail Strategic Services) and myself (Jason Warnock) will be presenting key trends, patterns, and findings this holiday season after analyzing it under the microscope. Stay tuned for specifics on date and time.

 

In the mean time, here is a quick glimpse of our findings from the 2 Holiday snapshots. As you know, so far it's been an exciting time out there with ecommerce records being broken - Cyber Monday reached $1.25 billion in online spending this year, rising 22% from 2010 and representing the heaviest online spending day in history, and just the second day on record to surpass the billion-dollar threshold (comScore). We see marketing deployments at all time high as well.  

 

1.     Average number of deployments per Marketer, per channel, per day.  These averages showcase how Marketers are utilizing each digital channel this holiday season.  How does your program size-up?

Snapshot 1 Holiday Kick-off (Nov 1 - 17):

a.     Email campaigns per day: 0.43 (average 3 per week)

b.    Twitter campaigns per day:  3.1

c.     Facebook campaigns per day: 1.4

d.    YouTube campaigns per day:  0.6

Snapshot 2 Black Friday / Cyber Monday (Nov 18 - Dec 2):

a.     Email campaigns per day: 0.6 (ave of 4 per week)

b.    Twitter campaigns per day: 4.1 

c.     Facebook campaigns per day: 1.5

d.    YouTube campaigns per day:  0.5

 

2.     What was the busiest day for marketing campaign deployments during these snapshots across all marketers?

Snapshot 1 (Nov 1 - 17):

·         Thursday November 17 with 719 total marketing campaigns from all 100 tracked Marketers.  

Snapshot 2 (Nov 18 - Dec 2):

·         Cyber Monday November 28 with 892 total marketing campaigns from all 100 tracked Marketers.  

Can you confirm if these were your busiest digital campaign days during these 2 periods?

3.     Which Major Marketer is NOT using Facebook this holiday season?

 

Apple.  It's truly fascinating that Apple has not endorsed Facebook for Marketing.    Apple is rapidly accelerating on YouTube holding the top Campaign spot with their sensational commercial 'Apple - Introducing Siri on iPhone 4S' which gained 6,233,564 views since being posted Oct 4, 2011.  Macy's 'Guys Scream for Justin Bieber in Macy's Black Friday Commercial' is currently the top YouTube campaign in our holiday research study with over 2,761,899 views since being posted November 16.

 

Stay tuned for our next snapshot and our January webinar! It will be a complete Holiday analysis which includes trends, key themes, promos and examples of multi-channel campaigns.

Interested in learning more about Yesmail Market Intelligence and want to be a part of our exciting beta? Email sales@yesmail.com or contact us directly at 1-877-YESMAIL. 

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The creative team here at Infogroup/Yesmail continues to earn recognition for 'out of the box' email design. Literally, out of the box. Our HP campaign was recently recognized by Chad White for visually surprising recipients with a playful design that... More

The creative team here at Infogroup/Yesmail continues to earn recognition for 'out of the box' email design. Literally, out of the box. Our HP campaign was recently recognized by Chad White for visually surprising recipients with a playful design that has Shrek's arm breaking outside of the grid. As he points out, this isn't a common tactic used today, but when it is used it certainly does grab your attention. Our HP Monsters Vs. Aliens message was also designed to break the grid and received awards from Creative Media and OMMA. A shout-out to our award-winning creative team here at Infogroup/Yesmail - nice work!

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We are proud to announce that we have won another Interactive Advertising Competition award with HP. HP was awarded the 2010 Internet Advertising Competition Award for Best Technology Email Message Campaign for their Windows 7 Launch multi-message series.HP created a customized... More

We are proud to announce that we have won another Interactive Advertising Competition award with HP.
 
HP was awarded the 2010 Internet Advertising Competition Award for Best Technology Email Message Campaign for their Windows 7 Launch multi-message series.

HP created a customized email message stream to highlight the new Windows® 7 operating system and associated new product launches. The targeted audience consisted of tech savvy email subscribers, which allowed HP to focus more attention on the new product designs featuring the new operating system, rather than on the operating system itself. The Windows® 7 launch proved a huge success, with customer engagement metrics 20% higher than typical email campaigns and significant revenue generated.
 
The Windows 7® Launch was another example of the strong collaboration between HP and Yesmail, with Yesmail providing creative design and strategic consulting, as well as full service campaign management and execution.
 
The full list of IAC award winners can be found here.
 
This is the second IAC award for Yesmail and HP. We also won the Best Computer Retailer Email message award in 2009 for the HP Mini 1000 campaign.
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Today Yesmail Professional Services hosted a webinar for our clients called Getting into the in-box: Deliverability in 2010. Deliverability continues to be a top concern and challenge for all email marketers, and since it is a constantly changing landscape it... More

Today Yesmail Professional Services hosted a webinar for our clients called Getting into the in-box: Deliverability in 2010. Deliverability continues to be a top concern and challenge for all email marketers, and since it is a constantly changing landscape it is important for us to take the time to update our knowledge and stay on top of emerging trends and opportunities.
 
Jason Warnock, Director of Deliverability and Bob Sybydlo, Deliverability Analyst shared some great information about the state of deliverability including compliance, legal and technical challenges all senders face.
 
They helped our clients understand how ISP actions can impact deliverability, what Yesmail does every day to help our client's get their email delivered, and what steps senders need to take to ensure their email gets into the in-box.
 
Key topics covered included:

• Email authentication
• Campaign volume monitoring
• Abuse and hard bounce metric tracking
• How to combat mail stream pollution
• Standard bulking and blocking challenges
• Creative content blocking

It was a great event. If you would like a copy of the presentation, please email me.
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Develop original contentMake sure you show value to your customers by providing original, useful, or at least fun and entertaining content via your feed(s).  Sales announcements, store openings, new items, causes supported, service outings and restorations - all of these... More

Develop original content
Make sure you show value to your customers by providing original, useful, or at least fun and entertaining content via your feed(s).  Sales announcements, store openings, new items, causes supported, service outings and restorations - all of these are great, proactive ways to communicate with your followers.  Remember to be brief (obey the 140 character limit!) but not too brief.  Leave the "gr8" abbreviations for SMS whenever possible.
 
Include links to relevant content
140 characters isn't much space to work with, but you can and should include relevant links to website content in your Tweets. To save space you can shorten URLS and track clicks for free using services like bit.ly
 
Track response
Twitter response tracking is limited, but you do have some important success metrics you can monitor.
 
Yesmail Enterprise will help you track:

• What you tweeted
• When you tweeted
• How many were following you when you tweeted

Additionally, you can track:

• Follower trends - are the number of followers increasing with your marketing efforts? Increases and decreases in follower trends can also be tied to engagement and relevancy of your content.
• Clicks - how many clicks are you getting on the links in your Tweets? How many clicks do you get on email content promoting Twitter?
• Conversion - if you have revenue tracking codes as part of your URLs you can track website visits and revenue generated by your Tweets.

With patience, perseverance, and an open mind, you can make Twitter a core component of your marketing strategy and improve the results of your email initiatives as well.

Catch up on Part 1 to learn more about how Yesmail Enterprise allows you to centralize the management of a single marketing campaign across many channels. Less

This week we announced our new Twitter Campaign Management feature available in Yesmail Enterprise. This is exciting news for marketers, because now you can save time by centralizing the management, coordination, and analysis of a single marketing campaign across many... More

This week we announced our new Twitter Campaign Management feature available in Yesmail Enterprise. This is exciting news for marketers, because now you can save time by centralizing the management, coordination, and analysis of a single marketing campaign across many channels (email + social + mobile) within one tool.

It only takes three simple steps to execute your Twitter campaigns in Enterprise:

1. You set up your account
2. Create your content (up to 140 characters)
3. Schedule and send

Not sure where to get started? Twitter crosses many of the boundaries of social, email, and SMS and requires its own approach to be truly successful.  Here are some best practices to keep in mind as you develop your Twitter marketing strategy.

Promote Twitter in your emails and on your website
Make sure your customers know how to find you and what benefits they will get from following you on Twitter. Will you send special discounts or give them early notice of new products or sales? Will you keep your followers updated on the latest events?

Dick's Sporting Goods sent their email subscribers an invitation to follow them on Twitter with a nice Free Shipping incentive.  The message did a good job creating visibility and outlining the benefits for followers.

Integrate Twitter with your email program
Twitter can be used to announce special sales and promotions, or to create viral buzz for new marketing campaigns. With Twitter Campaign Management you can schedule tweets as teasers or chasers for email campaigns, or send out special "twitter only" deals. Your  Twitter strategy should complement your other marketing channels, not be a stand alone.

Buy.com's Tweet 'n Seek campaign is a great example of a multi-channel strategy.  They promoted a "social scavenger hunt' via email and website banners. Clues were tweeted to followers, and then the community posted their answers on Buy.com's Facebook page.

One Twitter feed may not be enough
If you have a large company, several customer-facing departments, or varied products or services, you may need more than one Twitter feed.  Don't try to cram several disparate message streams into one account if you don't have to; create individual feeds for specific topics or customers to drive more value to the end user. For example, you could set up one Twitter feed for Customer Service, and a second Twitter feed for Marketing.

Stay tuned next week for Part 2 and learn about developing original content, including relevant links, and using Yesmail Enterprise to track responses.
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