Bronto Blog

What’s the message from the Internet Retailer Convention & Exhibition in Chicago where Bronto has been exhibiting as an industry leader in email marketing this week?

In a slumping economy, retailers tell us that the effectiveness and efficiency of email marketing makes it even more important in their marketing mix. When consumer spending takes a hit, retailers need to work even harder to keep costs low, while maintaining revenue numbers. We’ve seen it before. Bronto client From You Flowers eliminated their catalog channel altogether; after realizing that the high costs of production (materials, printing, postage) didn’t come close to their email marketing returns. Read the rest of this entry »

It became clear that social media is no longer just a buzz phrase as we explored last month’s customer success story which featured our client Interactive Media Associates (IMA) and the work they’ve done with their client New York City Ballet (NYCB). When NYCB began growing their library of exclusive behind the scenes videos of practices and performance previews, they made the logical step by uploading them to YouTube. While effective, this practice had unanticipated consequences. Fans and potential fans had to “pull” the videos from YouTube.

With the concept of “push” marketing, IMA incorporated YouTube videos into email marketing campaigns. This practice was extremely effective in driving traffic to not only view videos, but also to the NYCB website, and ultimately driving users to purchase tickets. On average, the YouTube link in an email would receive twice as many clicks as any other link in the email, and considering the design of their YouTube channel, visitors are directed back to the NYCB site to purchase tickets. The NYCB story demonstrates one method of incorporating video in email marketing. This month we’re taking this a step further and exploring email marketing that promotes many forms of social media (video, blogs, etc.) to their email list, using email marketing effectively allows companies to target segments

So, we’ve established one way you can utilize video in email marketing. This month we’re taking this a step further and exploring other avenues of social media in email marketing by featuring Wofford College (another Bronto client) in our Customer Success Series. Wofford College is a great example of an email marketer that promotes not only video, but also blogging, RSS Feeds, Facebook, MySpace, and soon Twitter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bronto is very focused on developing our email marketing product for online retailers. Why? We strongly believe that email marketing segmentation, analytics and reporting are significant drivers of online revenue.

The latest research from Shop.org, the online retail arm of the National Retail Foundation, and Forrester seems to agree with us. Recently, they published the “The State of Online Retailing 2008″and according to the report, email marketing continues to be one of the most successful marketing program for retailers. Here are some of the highlights from the report:

• Email marketing remains a top marketing priority for retailers in 2008.
• Email marketing is widely used among online retailers (92%) to market to their own customers. Over 93% of these retailers plan on making it a higher priority in the upcoming year
• The typical retailer in the survey expects to spend $311,634 this year sending emails to its own list of customers. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeanniey Mullen of the eec recently posted “Email - The Battle Never Ends” on the eec blog. In the article she voices her frustration with the bad rap that email has taken over the years. As Jeanniey puts it, “email has been battling for respect since day one, like one of those little toy soldiers battling their way through the real (and very large) world.”

On this day - Thursday, April 10th, 2008 - I join Jeanniey and the eec in addressing the “email battle.” I’ve heard some refer to email as the “digital glue.” Think about email in the context of new technologies, widgets, killapps, fads, trends, etc.

For example, the interplay between email and…

1. Facebook/LinkedIn/MySpace
2. Email Marketers Club
3. Twitter (quickly becoming my new addiction)

Read the rest of this entry »

In the final post in a 3-part series (see first and second) written by our partners at Return Path, Dan Deneweth continues the discussion on issues affecting email deliverability. Want more deliverability information? You can check out their blog, the Email Marketing Water Cooler and sign up for real-time alerts when new content is published.

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Spammers have negatively influenced email in lots of ways, with one of the most visible being the need for image suppression. There is no question that the average consumer prefers pretty, graphically-enhanced email over the boring, plain text versions. But there is also no question that the average consumer prefers that pictures with “adult” themes don’t accidentally pop up while at the office or in front of impressionable kids. The ISPs have combated this problem by suppressing graphics — essentially treating all images as potentially problematic. (Thank you, Mr. Spam.) Despite how widespread this practice has become, few marketers really think about how image suppression affects their email program. They should. Why? Four reasons:

1. Image suppression messes up your tracking: Open rates are calculated when an invisible graphic pings your servers. No graphic, no ping, no open. Data from DoubleClick and others suggests that an overall decline in open rates is due to the rise in image suppression. Knowing this when analyzing your data is important.
2. Image suppression can make your email unreadable: Depending on how your email is designed, your message without images might look very bad or it might be completely unintelligible. Through the design process consider what the email will look like without graphics. You may not be able to make it look great, but you can at least make it readable.
3. Image suppression limits your response rates: When someone can’t see your email, or read your email, they are less likely to interact with it. How much money do you leave on the table because your best offer is in a graphic that doesn’t display?
4. Image suppression can hurt deliverability: When subscribers don’t recognize an email because images are blocked, they may inadvertently mark it as spam. Also, the lack of responses (reason #3) and tracking (reason #2) can lead to poor marketing decisions, hurting the relevance and value of your program.

Our recommendation is to design for life without images. You can design a very attractive HTML message with no images at all. Most importantly, don’t use images in place of text. Instead, think of images as the spice in your message – a little bit goes a long way. It’s also crucial to use a safety link at the top of your message include hyperlinked copy that says, “Can’t read this email? Click here to view in your browser.”

Spend a little time on your email design and you can create great messages that will be readable in a variety of environments.

Dan Deneweth, Sr. Director, Sender Score Product Management, Return Path