Part 2 in Tim Watson's Email Delivery improvement series

You might think your delivery rate is a measure of deliverability... That would be a reasonable assumption, when you see the measure in your reports. Confusing, yes?! So, in this, part 2 of my three part series, I will show how you can monitor your deliverability. In Part 1, I covered the criteria ISPs use to filter email. The delivery rate as provided by email marketing tools is the percentage of emails that didn't bounce. If you are emailing at least weekly to each email address on your customer base and you have good list hygiene practices in place then your delivery rate should be over 98%, that is less than 2% of emails sent are bounced. But delivery rate isn't the same as inbox delivery, ReturnPath have recently reported an average inbox placement as low 88%, even when the mailer has a…

Six key questions to answer in your social media strategy

Assuming that you're clear on what you need from social media in terms of goals and objectives, there is often a key missing ingredient from a social media initiative - a fully considered strategy. It sounds a little glib, and yet it remains important to be clear on the how and why of implementing and integrating social media marketing into the business. There are multiple benefits to getting this right: Get buy in from budget holder, project sponsors and senior management Clarity on vision, purpose and direction with business context Ability to scale both the size and scope of the social media programme Budgeting and resource management against objectives and goals, to understand the return against any other marketing activity I find that strategy is generally misunderstood, and it appears that this is even more the case in social media where focus is so often about…

Having only recently got an invite I was wondering how the messaging worked and came across this on Mashable. Thought you may find useful!

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Search for infographics with Visual.ly

Recommended link: Visual.ly technology category example Value: [rating=3] Our commentary: What SearchEngineLand has described as a "new search engine" was launched this week. Pronounced "Visually", the service offers to "Explore the Best Data Visualizations on the Web". That's what we know as infographics. These are a great way to engage business audiences and they have become popular since they are very shareable. For example our post on Mobile Marketing Statistics has proved popular. With Visual.ly you can: Review infographics in a category Search by keyword Upload your own infographics Marketing implications: Although touted as a search engine, it's only a niche, vertical search engine. I've also found that it's limited in more specialist areas like mobile or email marketing although there is no shortage of social media examples. Still we're alerting you to it since: It's an additional way to search for infographics You…

How should we manage social media conversations in the real world?

Did you see the publicity late last year around the launch of these "command centers" by two megabrands? Think nuclear power station or space shuttle consoles, very futuristic.  I thought their launch campaigns were really interesting in the way they were used to highlight, the importance of listening and responding, both to consumers and other people within the company.

Gatorade Mission Control

Here is a great example of how one brand uses social listening not only to monitor, but to engage and influence too. Mashable wrote-up the thinking behind this.  If you take a look at this promo video, you can see how they emphasise the importance of listening to ALL conversations, but not only to monitor negatives, but find a way to engage and create dialogue. You can also see the scope of the control centre is not just…

How to approach content production for your emails

Last time out, I suggested four reasons why you might add content elements to your traditional, "promotional" (retail) emails. The trouble with this kind of advice is it sounds great in theory, but what about the "how" part, where can we find this content is the challenge for most? How do you produce content that is useful, engaging and/or entertaining? And how do you do that when budgets are tight and your time is limited? Let's start with four general guidelines, before looking at some specific ideas.

Producing content: four broad guidelines

1. Recycle

Many people are intimidated by the prospect of producing copious quantities of new content...but you don't have to. (more…)…

Be mindful of the content marketing trap

A lot of my recent posts, and indeed a lot of what I read at the moment, are focussed around content creation and content marketing. I for one have been promoting it as the last bastion of marketing, an area where you can really and genuinely create the inbound effect and be valuable to your customers and users at the same time. A colleague mentioned Doc Searls (of The Cluetrain Manifesto fame) during a conversation yesterday and it prompted me to remember that content alone is a dead end for real engagement and it's an easy trap to fall into. Indeed, much of the content and social media marketing that we see and hear about seem to have a very linear goal, to end with a Facebook Like or a click, or for the SEO focussed…

Some of the best in digital marketing offer their social media advice

We're always cautious of rule-books - but when Eloqua team up with JESS3, Steve Rubel, David Armano and Scott Monty (amongst others) then it's certainly worth stopping to read. This ProBook is an evolution of the PlayBook that was created a year ago - having read both I'd say this latest piece is designed for people with some idea of social media marketing The book is a corporate guide to organising a brand or business to succeed in social media marketing, it also doubles as a who, where and how of the social media landscape with fun features such as a 'day in the life'. The book seeks out to specifically answer: How to optimise your Facebook newsfeed How to scale a social media marketing programme How to measure social media success beyond Likes How to create infographics that wow How to…

What is Stumbleupon and what are its benefits?

StumbleUpon is another way of finding & consuming content online, just as Twitter, LinkedIn news, Facebook sharing / likes & Google do. Since web users are likely to use a number of tools as way of finding and sharing information, StumbleUpon may be worth a look. [Editors note: by chance as we published this, a new report suggested that StumbleUpon sends more traffic to US websites than Facebook. I'd have to say treat this caution - this is only for sites with Statcounter installed, which won't be representative of larger sites]. If your audience is active on StumbleUpon, then it makes sense that your business is active on StumbleUpon. During this blog post I'll cover, what StumbleUpon is, who uses it, why & how your business can be active on the service. Here's an intro to the scale of StumbleUpon which shows its scale

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An 11 step process to review your international marketing effectiveness

Following on from my first post on Understanding your Global Customers, in this post we look at how to conduct a Global Digital Marketing Audit  within your business before creating a Global Digital Marketing Strategy. This includes the following areas: Review global website and digital inventory Regional Campaign activity Mobile activity Regional Social Media Activity Regional Digital Marketing Plans Regional Search Engine Marketing Measurement tools Regional content Global digital agencies and suppliers Regional team structure and skills audit Communication and information sharing 1. Review global website and digital inventory How many websites does your business ‘own’, and who looks after them on a day-to-day? Pull together a list of all active domains and main contacts. This sounds obvious, but if you have marketing teams or even individuals based in several different regions, you can often find the odd microsite/campaign…