9 Email Marketing Best Practices for Higher Education
When you hear the term “best practice” in email marketing for higher education, your mind whisks away to some magical place for a moment, allowing you to consider what life would be like if you had all of them in place. Then reality hits, and you begin to question if any of those “best practices” are even doable inside your marketing organization. The truth is that “best practices” are simply guidelines written for the masses in marketing and are sometimes not even relatable to your vertical. There are fundamental email best practices like not buying lists, permissioning, handling of data, and ensuring that you comply with privacy and spam laws. However, there are no generally accepted [...]
Avoid These 5 Bad Email Habits
It's fair to say that none of us in email marketing are in it to annoy our subscribers with our email newsletters. We have all read articles about why subscribers leave your email program. This article about five bad email practices to avoid. In addition to frequency and lack of personalization in emails, some things just flat-out drive people nuts. They may be things that you don't intentionally do, but they are things nonetheless. I hope you will take inventory of your program and see if these five things impact your engagement in any way. #1 POOR SIGN-UP EXPERIENCE Imagine you have been invited to a fabulous party where tons of exciting guests will attend, the [...]
Real Time Dynamic Data for Marketing Emails
Using dynamic data in marketing emails is a standard, at this point in 2022. Blog posts and articles are saturated with practices about it, and virtually everyone in the industry uses some type of personal dynamic information associated with their contacts to provide better communication and to improve the quality of the user experience. It’s a given and we at iPost, like so many others, have been using it for decades. That’s why today we want to take the discussion a step further: using real time dynamic data in your emails to fuel business growth and improve your email messaging. Image Source: makeameme.org What Real-Time Dynamic Data is (and what it isn’t) Dynamic data, sometimes also known [...]
Email Marketing Strategy vs Tactics
EMAIL STRATEGY AND EMAIL TACTICS ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. You will often hear the words strategies and tactics used interchangeably in the email marketing world, but they could not be any further apart. I have been asked many times to create a “strategy” when in reality, what was being asked for was a list of “tactics” to achieve the goal for many types of marketing campaigns. As email marketers, we all need to be aligned on what these email marketing strategies and email marketing tactics actually mean and the effect that they will have. If your long-term vision is to have success with your “strategy” then there needs to be a clear separation between words and [...]
9 Current Email Marketing Trends For 2023
Updated May 2023 Email Marketing is competitive. Brands compete for inbox attention, and marketers are as busy as ever. In my 21 year career in email, I have always read about and watched the current email marketing trends that shape our industry, and for 2023, I thought I would give the email world a bit of the Andrew Kordek vision on email marketing trends that should be top of mind in 2023. Please understand that mileage will vary on these trends, depending on what vertical your brand is in and your major corporate initiatives for 2023. Trend #1 - Stop It With Apple's Mail Privacy Protection It’s time to stop talking, blogging, webcasting, and solutions for [...]
Benchmarking for Email Marketing
Welcome to a new digital marketing series at iPost called "Don't do this, do that.", where some of the best minds in email marketing will use dozens of years of both client, agency, and ESP experience to guide you the email marketer with pragmatic advice to help improve your marketing strategy. This week's article is about Benchmarking. What Is Benchmarking? First, let's start with some definitions. According to Wikipedia, "Benchmarking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies." Benchmark is defined as an object, such as a ruler or standard, used as a measure of size, accuracy, or quality. So if you're comparing yourself to [...]
5 Ways to Improve Email Deliverability
Email Deliverability Matters - Email Deliverability Best Practices Email marketing is the most cost-effective way to build brands, relationships, and revenue. When done correctly, the ROI for email marketing is astronomical, so marketers in all organizations love email marketing. One big area which causes some confusion amongst the marketing purist is that of deliverability. Marketers spend countless hours on creative, offers, messaging, subject lines, testing, marketing automation, and numerous other tasks and strategies to ensure an excellent inbox experience for their subscribers, but one thing is often overlooked; deliverability. Email deliverability is different from delivery of email. Simply put, email deliverability is the percentage of emails that reach your subscriber’s inbox. It is the cornerstone of [...]
Testing an email is a waste of time.
Testing an email is a waste of time. I am sick of the words “test it” in email marketing. For the last 15 years, it seems that you cannot go a week without reading an article about the value of testing in email. Thought leaders, content marketers, vendors, and agencies have all banged the drum of just how testing can work and produce results. Unfortunately, in most cases, marketers haul off and test maybe one or two emails, see little if any change, and move on. Perhaps they get discouraged around how testing is supposed to be set up, or maybe they thought it would be easy and find that it takes patience and [...]
Email delivery vs Email deliverability
In email marketing, email delivery and email deliverability are two entirely different things when it comes to running an email program. Unfortunately, they are often used interchangeably, and it causes some confusion amongst non-email people around your organization. So how do you distinguish email delivery and deliverability? Email Delivery Delivery simply means that the email you just sent was accepted by your recipient’s server and did not bounce. It doesn’t mean that the email was delivered to the inbox or a folder; it simply means that it wasn’t rejected. Email delivery rate is NOT a metric you want to use to gauge the success of your campaign or your program. Therefore, the email delivery rate is [...]
Emails From The Client Side – Levels of Engagement
As we continue to grow, we are constantly fielding questions around our solution and its ability to perform strategically no matter what vertical they are in. One common theme from our clients is "levels of engagement." A recent email from the client-side asked us this: My engagement levels have peaked in many of my programs, and I'm trying to determine if it would be a better use of time to build on these or if I should focus on creating new campaigns where I can start with a lower engagement rate but perhaps achieve a higher conversion rate as a result. What do you think? How do your subscribers compare across the various programs you manage? [...]
DMARC: what it is and why you need it now.
With the rise in email scams, it is more important than ever to be sure that your business's emails are authentic. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance) is an email validation system designed to protect your organization's email domain from spoofing and phishing scams. It uses your existing email authentication protocols such as SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) to determine your email message's authenticity. It adds an essential piece of functionality of reports back to the domain owner, who can then decide who is sending email on their behalf. DMARC: what is it? The DMARC tool adds a level of certainty on whether an email is legit. In a nutshell, [...]
7 Hidden Costs of Switching Email Service Providers (ESP)
If you’re switching email service providers, one of the questions that’s likely top of mind is, what will it cost to move from one ESP to another? Although there are steps you can take to make the ESP migration easier, you still might not understand the real costs. Based on anecdotal evidence from watching—and helping—clients switch email service providers, both before and during their engagements with iPost, I’ve pulled together some hidden costs to consider to help you understand those real costs associated with switching ESPs. Please note: This is not a breakdown of the costs of switching email service providers, nor a guide to figuring out if the cost is worth it. It is, however, [...]
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