Digital + Social

Flexible mailing frequencies and event-driven messaging were among the e-mail trends Chris Baggott, chief marketing officer of e-mail marketing solutions provider ExactTarget, singled out as important for the coming year. Now that the year is more than halfway over, Baggott has refined some of his predictions regarding trends.

For those e-mailers who go out of their way to do everything right—getting permissions, using double opt-ins, employing an e-mail service provider, applying SPF authentication and generally treating the Can-Spam Act as the e-mail equivalent of the Bill of Rights—here’s some disturbing news:

When it comes to e-mail campaigns, little things like personalized greetings mean a lot, and big things — like original photography and strong subject lines — mean a whole lot.

Bill Nussey is president/CEO of Atlanta-based Silverpop, a provider of e-mail marketing services. CHIEF MARKETER caught up with him last week at the Annual Catalog Conference in Orlando, FL. Here are selected words of wisdom from our conversation

Everyone dreams of posh accommodations in exotic locales. And since it doesn’t cost anything to dream, Leading Hotels of the World has found a growing audience for its e-mail newsletter.

Permission to send e-mail newsletters to a consumer needs to be proactive and voluntary. The only correct way to get permission is by having people sign up with the understanding that they want to receive e-mail from you.

Responding to the tremendous buzz over RSS (Really Simply Syndication) a number of free sites on the Web have sprung up that completely automate the process of syndicating site content across the Web. In practice, this means that in a matter of minutes, you’re now able to tweak your site so that hotlinks to your company press releases and similar promotional materials can be sent to RSS readers across the Web.

Permission to send e-mail newsletters to a consumer needs to be proactive and voluntary. The only correct way to get permission is by having people sign up with the understanding that they want to receive e-mail from you.

Feel like fish? Red Lobster makes it easy with online purchases and overnight delivery. And if you’re an Overboard Club member, you can enter the Passion Prize drawing and win dinner for two, a fresh lobster delivered to your door or a trip to an exotic locale.

Video is an accepted part of online marketing, but there’s one area it has not yet penetrated: E-mail newsletters. Not yet, anyway. But IMN Inc., an e-mail service vendor, is working on a system that will soon allow marketers to present near-DVD quality videos in their e-zines