Those who know me well know that I am a fan of quality steaks and quality email data appends. A favorite high-end steakhouse of mine, Fleming’s, is batting .500 in this regard. They serve some of the best steaks in the world, but unfortunately, experienced a misstep while performing a recent data append.

I have been a Fleming’s email subscriber for some time. I diligently open each email looking for the next delicious deal. Recently I received an email from Fleming’s with the subject line “Email Communications from Fleming’s.” This immediately raised my suspicions. When I opened the email I instantly recognized it as an email append message. I was being automatically opted-in to receive emails from Fleming’s even though I was already an active subscriber. Oops…

This screen shot shows the append email, and past emails I have received. As you can see, I regularly receive their emails.

So, how did this happen?

Read More »

Email marketing is an ever evolving art.  It morphs and changes from one hot topic — or “must have” — to the next. Below are twelve current hot topics in email marketing listed in no particular order. Any serious or casual email marketer should know what these are and should use as many as them as he or she can in their email marketing endeavors.

7) ReMarketing (Abandoned Cart Campaigns)
One especially important and potentially lucrative triggered campaign is the abandoned cart (a.k.a. ReMarketing) campaign. This is an email sent to someone reminding them to purchase items/processes which have been abandoned — or left — in their online shopping cart. ReMarketing is a great way to nudge potential purchasers into converting.

8. Social Media Integration
Everyone seems to be tweeting, Facebooking and doing other awkward sounding social media actions. Be sure you include these important social media outlets in your emails. Allow subscribers to rave about how great you are on various social media sites or browse your corporate social media pages. Email marketing must adapt as the marketplace and subscriber preferences change.

9) Personalization and Dynamic Content
Use personalized or specialized imagery, product placement, or text when you can and when appropriate. Instead of saying “Dear Customer” in your message, it is much nicer to use your recipient’s first name — ‘Dear Balthazar” as an example. Also, utilize the data that you have on your subscribers. Some common dynamic content strategies are using different messaging based on the customer type, location, nearest store, browse or purchase behavior, recency, or email interaction.

Read More »

In the April 22nd issue of Clickz, Stephen Pollard urged marketers to follow established best practices and to reevaluate their ongoing strategy for addresses acquired via email append programs.

I agree with many of Pollard’s comments about eAppend. Inherently, eAppend carries more risk than organic email capture methods, such as at point of sale or via an email sign up form. Pollard also makes valid arguments about the deliverability risks that can occur from appending email to your customer file. In this tough economy when companies are closely evaluating their budgets, it is very important that they do not compromise quality for price when evaluating third party data providers. Regardless, eAppend can be a very effective means of growing a traditional offline customer file.

One thing that Pollard doesn’t address is the quality of the client data submitted for an eAppend match, or the frequency at which a client runs an eAppend program.

We have a few of our own best practices that are worth mentioning in addition to those mentioned in Pollard’s article.

Read More »