Understanding how others use email marketing for their business can help you with developing your own email marketing strategy. One way you can gain insight is by utilizing studies from marketing research firms like the eMarketing Association, Email Experience Council or Forrester.
Below are some stats published by industry recognized marketing research firms:
88% of retailers listed email as a high priority for the year, largely to retain customers, the study found. - Forrester Research and Shop.org, “Retailing Online 2009: Marketing Report” (2009)
Visual appeal is an important factor for retail customers- and accordingly HTML formatting was favored by 95% in 2009, up from 86% in 2008. - E-Tail Group “More Merchants Rely on Email to Minimize Cart Abandonment”(2010)
41% of US Internet users threatened to stop buying from companies that send them irrelevant messages,. -CMO Council and InfoPrint Soultions (2010)
More than 1 billion consumers will be accessing email on their mobile phones by the year 2013. This is compared to fewer than 200 million in 2009. -The Radicati Group(2010)
18% of business executives wanted to add social components to their e-mail campaigns and did not know where to begin. - eMarketer “2010 Marketing Trends Survey” (2010)
Small retailers should be aware of the problems that larger retailers face. Smaller retailers have the advantage of being able to make quicker decisions while adapting to market conditions, as compared to larger retailers. These same lessons apply to email marketing.
The User Experience Team (UX) at iContact is tasked with researching, creating, communicating, and testing the various design elements of our new features and our overall user interface.
We’re positively obsessed with getting the details right for our users.
We start with research. We talk to our users. We talk to stakeholders. We talk to experts. We read whatever we can get our hands on. We talk to some more users. We look at the competition, and at completely different products and mediums. Most of all, we listen.
When our brains are full, we find a whiteboard and mercilessly fill every corner again and again, exploring ideas, taking what works, and then tearing them down. We fine-tune features, specifications, navigational elements, and design approaches.
Message Composition Simplified - A game changer is coming… Composing your email messages will never be the same… It will alter the way you view email marketing…
iContact’s completely re-designed MessageBuilder is our answer to one of the most common issues in email marketing: How to easily create a beautiful, compelling and actionable email message.
We’ve added our newest feature, Ask The Marketing Team, to make certain we can add value – not just by providing the information that we think you’ll appreciate… but by delivering the content that we know you’ll find valuable, because you’ve asked us for it.
iContact’s marketing crew includes designers, writers, media buyers, product marketers, search marketers, communications experts, brand strategists, research analysts, developers, engineers, and seasoned executives. All of us are now at your service. Ask us anything related to email marketing and our team member with the most relevant expertise will answer your question. Be sure to send your questions to us at askmarketing@ icontact.com
Written By: Ted Roberts, iContact Director of Deliverability - The inbox deliverability experts at iContact employ many best practices to help our clients avoid the dreaded spam folder.
May 12, 2010 - iContact, an industry leader in email marketing services for small and mid-sized businesses, announced today iContact for iPhone – a new application that allows iContact users to search contacts, send messages and access iContact analytics on their iPhone or iPod Touch.
“iContact for iPhone lets users tap into our powerful email marketing system on the go,” said Keith Moore, Chief Marketing Officer at iContact. “This is just one example of what is possible with iContact’s new API v.2 environment. We are excited about the many customer-focused changes coming from iContact this year.”
Rich Features iContact for iPhone delivers several of the powerful features found on the iContact web application, right on a user’s mobile device, including:
Search, Create, or Add New Contacts Users can search through their contacts by first name, last name, or email address. This feature allows users to see if a contact is on a particular list, or add them to a list.
Sending Email Messages Draft messages can be sent while on the go. Users can also preview a message before sending it.
Tracking Email Results To see how an email marketing message is performing, users can click on the message and see the analytics for that message, including opens, clicks and bounces. The user can also email these statistics while on the go.
iContact for iPhone is available for download at the iTunes App Store here. More information on the iContact API v.2 environment is available here.
About iContact With more than 63,000 customers, iContact provides email marketing for SMBs and non-profits. iContact allows for easy creation of email newsletters, surveys, and autoresponders. Market leaders like Intuit, Vonage, Symantec, International Paper, LG Electronics and ReMax, use iContact to build stronger relationships with their customers and prospects at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing methods.
iContact, designed for the Small Business market is available at www.iContact.com; iContactPlus, a suite of custom and managed services designed for mid-sized organizations, is available at www.iContactPlus.com.
iContact Ranked #1 Email Marketing Service Provider in Website Magazine’s 2010 Top 50 Rankings
Magazine cites Email as a dominant Marketing Communications Tool.
Durham, NC — February 10, 2010 -– iContact, an industry leader in email marketing services for small and mid-sized businesses, has been named the #1 Email Marketing Service Provider and Resource for Web professionals by Website Magazine in its March, 2010 issue. The article also cites studies that show that email marketing a dominant communications tool for marketing.
Website Magazine’s Top 50 rankings are a measure of a website’s popularity. Rankings are based on average daily unique visitors and page views over a specified period of time as reported by multiple data sources. The site with the highest combination of factors and variables is ranked in the first position.
“Email Service Providers, such as those listed in this month’s Website Magazine Top 50, provide Web marketers the ability to communicate to a broader audience in a personal, non-invasive way,” commented Peter Pestipino, Editor-in-Chief of Website Magazine. “Email has retained its position as the dominant communication channel.”
The March issue of Website Magazine is available now to subscribers and in digital form at http://websitemagazine.com.
About iContact
With more than 60,000 customers, iContact provides email marketing for SMBs and non-profits. iContact allows for easy creation of email newsletters, surveys, and autoresponders. Market leaders like Bank of America, Ford, Intuit, Vonage, Symantec, International Paper, LG Electronics, ReMax, United Colors of Benetton, and Centex Homes, use iContact to build stronger relationships with their customers and prospects at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing methods. iContact, designed for the SMB market and iContact Enterprise, designed for mid-sized to large organizations, are both available at www.iContact.com.
MediaPost Email Insider: Are you ready for the biggest retail email day of the year? I’m speaking, of course, of Cyber Monday, which is this upcoming Monday, Nov. 30. I expect it to easily be the biggest retail email day of the year — and probably the biggest ever.
Cyber Monday has been the most popular day to send retail emails for the past two years. Last year, 70% of the top online retailers tracked by my Retail Email Blog sent at least one promotional email on Cyber Monday. That was up from 68% in 2007.
The last time that Cyber Monday wasn’t most popular retail email day of the year was 2006, before the day was a big deal. That year, Cyber Monday was the sixth most popular day to send retail emails; the day after Christmas was No. 1.
Retailers’ increasing comfort level with Cyber Monday has helped the day become responsible for more and more retail sales. According to comScore, Cyber Monday accounted for $846 million in online spending last year, up 15% from 2007 — and the second-highest amount spent in online retail since the $881 million spent on Green Monday 2007.
The iContact Team at our Dreamforce booth (310). The team provided Salesforce customers hundreds of demos on the new Email Marketing AppExchange offering for Salesforce CRM.
