Spotlight Ideas

Here are a bunch of interesting/thought-provoking/useful blog posts on email marketing.

Few general points.
Email marketing, like any other marketing approach, must be rooted in new marketing. This means that an important part of time spent on email marketing must be devoted to finding relevant audiences i.e. audiences that will find the email content of interest  and/or use to them. And communicating to them with the same approach. Remember, it’s, firstly, about you (the customer) and then about me (business / product / service) – not the other way around.
All of this is going to require patience, research, planning, creative-thinking, copywriting skills, and human touch.

How has email marketing helped you? Advice?

• Reports of e-mail’s death are greatly exaggerated –TechBlog - Oct ‘09
• Why Email No Longer Rules… - Wall Street Journal – Oct ‘09
• 10 Reasons Social Media isn’t Replacing Email – WebPro News – Oct ‘09
• Email Losing out to Social Networking – Marketing Pilgrim – Sep ‘09
• How Social is Your Email? – Duct Tape Marketing – Sep ‘09
• 11 Steps Toward Social Media and Email Convergence – Jay Baer – Oct ‘09
• Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email? – Nielsen Wire – Sep ‘09
• Email: The First –and Largest– Social Network – Jeremiah Owyang – Jul ‘09
• Where is Email Communications Headed? – Marketing Tech Blog – Oct ‘09
• Email marketing stats round up – Econsultancy – Oct ‘09
• How Email Drives Traffic to Other Channels – Smith Harmon – Jul ‘09
• How Email Marketing Is Different from Direct Mail – Smith Harmon – Jun ‘09
• Top email marketing info sources for 2009 – Email Marketing Reports – Sep ‘09
• 2 Email Tips from SmartBrief – Smart Blog – Aug ’09 – ‘Do unto others’ and ‘Optimize your subject line’
• Five Ways to Make Your Email Marketing Work Better – Copyblogger – Aug ‘09
• What Do 73.9% of Email Newsletters Have in Common? – Aweber – Sep ’09 – Article about HTML
• How To Make Your Plain Text Emails Hard to Read and Use – Aweber – Aug ‘09
• Free Email Marketing Guide – Mail Chimp – Design, track, avoiding spamming, and more.
• Subject Line Testing in Email: Just Do It! – Email Moxie – Sep ‘09
• 29 Ways to Collect Email Addresses for Your Business – Vertical Response – Sep ‘09