'Net Features : StrongMail

Potential Mobile Marketers Lack Resources, Strategy

Allison Howen — Thu, 24 May 2012 23:30:00 GMT

A new study from interactive marketing solutions provider StrongMail reveals that more than half of marketers still face challenges in implementing a mobile strategy.

The most popular forms of mobile marketing are mobile websites (70 percent), mobile applications (55 percent) and QR codes (49 percent). However, only 45 percent of marketers are currently running any of these mobile strategies, with 57 percent of those who are only doing so for a year or less.

The study also reveals that 75 percent of businesses not running programs plan to do so within a year or more – and of those businesses that are running mobile programs, 70 percent expect to see their budgets increase during the same time period.

Other statistics from the survey show that 37 percent of respondents cite a lack of strategy as the top reason for not having a mobile marketing program, followed by 22 percent claiming a lack of resources. More than half of respondents expect a mobile program to help them increase sales and acquire new customers, while almost half expect it to increase brand awareness.

Almost a quarter of respondents reported less than 1 percent of their budgets go towards mobile. On the bright side, 55 percent of respondents report an increased mobile budget during the past 12 months, and only 2 percent saw a decrease in budget.

Timing is Everything with Email Marketing

Allison Howen — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Most Web workers know that email marketing is one of the most effective strategies that businesses can use to reach their customers, but a new study reveals that one email marketing strategy outperforms the others.

Email marketing provider StrongMail surveyed more than 1,000 business leaders last year regarding the benefits of lifecycle email marketing, the results reveal that timing is everything – especially when it comes to email marketing.

Lifecycle emails are timed to reach customers at opportune moments in order to increase engagement – and the study proved that this strategy does just that. Among the survey respondents, 67 percent reported increased subscriber engagement, while 55 percent claimed they saw an increase in open and click-through rates after making the switch to lifecycle email marketing.

Part of the reason why this email marketing strategy outperforms traditional batch email marketing is because of the extra effort that is taken to create and deliver the message at the right time, which increases the likelihood of consumers responding to it. In fact, according to StrongMail, one of their clients experienced a 16 percent increase in revenue by transitioning from traditional to lifecycle marketing.

“These numbers make sense to us, of course,” says Kara Trivunovic, vice president of agency services, StrongMail. "As with so many other aspects of marketing, timing is one of the most important elements for success and that is no less true when it comes to email marketing. Companies that rely on the quality and strategy of their emails simply see better results than those bombarding their readers with quantity. As a result, they spend less time chasing leads and building customer loyalty.”

Pinterest Integrations from Demandware and StrongMail

Allison Howen — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 22:30:00 GMT

Although a recent study suggests that Pinterest isn’t directly influencing purchasing decisions yet, it doesn’t mean that retailers should write off the social pin board site when it comes to social media marketing strategies.

In fact, the interest in Pinterest is gaining more steam everyday – most recently with two tech companies that have integrated Pinterest features into their solutions.

Demandware

E-commerce solution provider Demandware launched a Pinterest integration, which allows retailers to display the Pin It button on e-commerce product pages, providing consumers with an easy way to share product content among the social pin board site.

Retailers are able to benefit from the Pinterest integration because it enables them to attract and engage with consumers, increase brand awareness, and allows for more targeted pinning of specific items – including color and size.

“Pinterest has had extremely positive adoption rates and we wanted to make sure our clients could leverage this exciting new tool to drive their online revenue,” says Jamus Driscoll, senior VP of marketing for Demandware. “Our Labs team was quickly able to develop this valuable integration and now it’s in the hands of our clients for adoption. This is another great example of how our commerce platform can be easily extended to meet the demands of today’s consumers.”

StrongMail

Email marketing provider StrongMail added Pinterest as an additional sharing channel to its StrongMail Influencer word-of-mouth customer acquisition solution, which allows marketers to expand their reach by motivating brand advocates to share content via Facebook, Twitter, email and now, Pinterest. By allowing customers to share content via Pinterest, marketers have the ability to track what colors, shapes and words customers are attracted to, and are more likely to share (or purchase).

"Pinterest opens up a promising new word-of-mouth marketing channel for brands to connect with consumers, and StrongMail Influencer fully leverages its capabilities to maximize customer acquisition," says Joerg Habermeier, Senior Director of Social Media Product Development, StrongMail. "When it comes to building a healthy and profitable customer base, there is nothing more powerful than word-of-mouth referral, and that is exactly what Influencer is designed to do best."

Email, Social, and Your 2012 Web Budget

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 23:15:00 GMT

Marketing solutions provider StrongMail has analyzed how businesses plan to budget and prioritize marketing spend in the coming year, announcing the results of its "2012 Marketing Trends" survey today.

Perhaps most heartening is that marketing budgets will remain healthy next year, with 51% of responding companies increasing and 41% maintaing their current marketing budgets. The survey also indicates that email (60%) and social media (55%) will attract increased investment.

The top email marketing initiatives for 2012, according to Strongmail respondents, are increasing subscriber engagement (48%), improving segmentation and targeting (44%) and growing opt-in email lists (32%). Data integration is key to achieving these top priorities, but it is also identified as the primary email marketing challenge in 2012 (45%), followed by lack of resources (43%) and content management (40%).

"While email marketing leads the pack in terms of increased investment in 2012, the data also reveals that marketers need to overcome key challenges around data integration and resource constraints," said Christopher Marriott, vice president of agency services at StrongMail. "Whether managing and optimizing existing email marketing programs or enabling integration with social media and mobile, there is a real opportunity for full-service email marketing providers like StrongMail to help companies get the most out of their interactive marketing investments in 2012."

Driving Daily Deals With Email Marketing

Allison Howen — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:00:00 GMT

The daily deal market is clearly saturated, with more than 600 sites in the U.S. alone.

It is nearly impossible for all of these sites to be successful, and one report claims that 33 percent of daily deal sites have been shut down or sold in 2011.

So, how can a daily deal or a flash site differentiate itself from the hundreds of like-sites in order to achieve success? One of the most influential tools that these sites can use is effective email marketing.

A recent study called “Special Report: How Daily Deal Sites Capitalize On Email Marketing” from StrongMail analyzes successful email strategies, especially for daily deal and flash sites.

Successful daily deal sites such as Groupon, LivingSocial, Google Offers and DealSwarm, as well as successful flash sites like Zulily, Rue La La, HauteLook, Ideeli and Gilt Groupe, have all implemented a strong email marketing presence into their marketing models. However, many of these strategies can be improved upon in order to obtain and maintain the maximum number of consumers possible.

Using email marketing effectively can not only drive business for many of these sites, but also build brand loyalty with consumers, which will increase user engagement.

Here are a few tips from the report that will help take an email marketing program to the next level:

• Get the right offers to the right people at the right time. A daily deal has a much better chance of being successful if it is relevant to a consumer. Additionally, deals that aren’t relevant may lead to a loss of subscribers.

• Gather behavioral information from consumers. This makes the job of providing relevant content to customers much easier.

• Be consistent. Messages that arrive within the same 10 to 15 minute time frame everyday create a sense of urgency amongst subscribers. It will also increase open rates, clicks and your bottom line.

• Give subscribers choices. Do they want content separated into multiple messages or a single all-inclusive message?

• Draw attention, but not too much attention. Since most recipients scan email instead of reading it, you have about 3 to 7 seconds to convey your message and capture attention. Keep things simple, use good spacing, attractive headlines and even bullet points to get your point across quickly to subscribers.

• Optimize the pre-header for conversion instead of notes like, “add to address book” or “view in browser.”

• Use catchy subject lines. These need to be short and to the point. Think of something that you would see on a billboard that would capture your attention.

Daily Deal Sites Bursting With StrongMail

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Marketing solution provider StrongMail announced that daily deal sites including FamilyFinds, Joss & Main , HauteLook and Privalia are now leveraging its burst email delivery technology. When you need to deliver millions of dynamically personalized sales event emails, you need to do so in minutes, not hours.

With the influx of daily deal sites competing for consumer attention, there is simply no room for error today – particularly when it comes to email (which for many accounts for a majority of their traffic). "Every one of our members wants to find out what’s on jossandmain.com at exactly 11am. In order to keep it fair, we have to reliably deliver millions of emails in a very short time window," said Mitra Morgan, Chief Curator at Joss & Main.

Thanks to limited inventories and short sales windows, any delay or failure in these critical email alerts can cause customers to miss out on desired sales and lose interest in participating in future events.

"We offer these daily deal companies dedicated, high burst rate systems that are free from the performance limits often encountered with traditional ESP platforms, where the competition for computing resources at critical times of the day has a real impact on time-sensitive delivery of offers," said Scott Ollivier, vice president of product management at StrongMail.

StrongMail's Social Studio an All-in-one Marketing Platform

Linc Wonham — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 02:00:00 GMT

E-mail and social marketing leader StrongMail has launched Social Studio, an all-inclusive platform for campaign management, viral marketing and social sharing. The application is available immediately in the U.S. and the U.K., and StrongMail is offering a 14-day free trail.

Every product in the Social Studio suite provides detailed performance metrics all the way to the conversion. Highlighted features of the platform include the following:

•    StrongMail Influencer – Combines word-of-mouth marketing, e-commerce and the social web
•    Social Direct – Targeted direct-response campaigns into Twitter and Facebook
•    Social Notes – Share branded content across the top social networks, blogs and e-mail