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email marketing news, tips & insights from the Orchard

Spotlight: Email Marketing Infographics

Monday, April 30th, 2012 Best Practice, Email Marketing, News

We have to admit we love a good infographic. We’ve come across a few great ones of late highlighting the rise and power of email marketing and thought we should share them. Here are 5 great examples:

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Email return on investment

Thursday, April 26th, 2012 News

Email may not be the most glamorous marketing channel, especially with all the hype surrounding social media, but when it comes to effectiveness and return on investment email is the clear leader.

In a study conducted in 2011 by the Direct Marketing Association‡, email recorded a return on investment of $40.56 for every dollar spent on it. In comparison Search Engine Marketing (SEM) returned $22.24, Internet display advertising generated $19.72 and social media provided $12.71 per dollar.

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Video in email. Everything you need to know.

Friday, April 20th, 2012 Email Marketing, News, Video

With the explosive growth in online video showing no signs of slowing, it’s no surprise that one of the most common questions we get asked is “can I insert a video into my email campaign?”, so we thought it a good time to review the current state of play.

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A Viral Marketing Success Story

Thursday, October 20th, 2011 Email Marketing, News, Social Media

Running A Successful Viral Campaign

It’s no secret that building your email database is a key strategy to growing your business, both online and offline. Good list growth requires constant attention, and strategies, to ensure that you’re gathering new leads to compensate for your list churn rate (unsubscribes and hard bounces can churn through up to 30% of your list every 12 months!).

A great way to achieve a quick win and give your email audience size an immediate boost is to run a viral marketing campaign (think refer-a-friend or member-get-member).

It’s important when planning a viral campaign to understand exactly what makes your audience tick. A good viral campaign relies on creating a sense of buzz around your product. You need to give it the wow factor, so much so that when people read about it they will automatically want to tell their work colleagues, their friends and their family.

We are currently running an integrated viral campaign for a client and we’d like to share with you some key results and learnings:
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Bacn, the other kind of spam

Monday, October 17th, 2011 Best Practice, Deliverability, Email Marketing, News

Bacn – Email That You Want But Not At The Moment

SPAM has long been considered public enemy #1 in the email marketing industry – but there is a new challenger to this crown that you may not yet be familiar with. Introducing BACN.

Pronounced “bacon”, the term was first coined in 2007 and was used to describe opt-in emails that were left unread over long periods of time.

Just like spam, bacn accumulates and clogs up a recipient’s inbox. However, the main difference between bacn and spam is that bacn is something the recipient has subscribed to receive, unlike spam where the sender has typically acquired an email address and emailed the recipient without their consent.

According to a recent article by Mashable, bacn accounts for almost 70% of a recipient’s delivered email and its growing occupation of inbox territory has had a direct and negative impact in industry wide open rates.

In this article, we look at the current trends associated with bacn and steps marketers should be looking to take to combat open rate attrition.
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