Geoff Ramsey, Senior Analyst at eMarketer, offered his thoughts today on staying competitive in a tough market. In a webinar entitled Digital Marketing Now: Seven Strategies for Surviving the Downturn, Ramsey stated that a key strategy is to “Stay Close to Customers” – and tactic #1 to achieve this closeness is through email.

Calling email “a great medium for staying in touch,” Ramsey says, “As a marketing tool … [email] works and it is cheap.” He recommends that marketers increase their email budgets in the down economy, particularly for retention.

        

Great new study done by Razorfish and CafeMom - The Digital Mom http://digitalmom.razorfish.com<< MORE >>

I haven't published in a while and make a commitment to update this more regularly after the holidays, but wanted to post this as it's something that is dear to my heart and I love the direction we are taking it as a company. An exerpt from Shiv Singh (VP of Social Media at Razorfish) "Go Social" Blog on how we are approaching measuring Social Media: http://www.goingsocialnow.com/2008/12/tracking-social-influence-razo.html << MORE >>

I get continually caught up in the complicated world of online marketing, looking for all the hooks and ties to a customer experience and what really drives what. In many respects this can be a meaningful exercise, but in the world of most email marketers it's a daunting challenge. The phrase, "Think globally, plan locally and panic internally" comes to mind when I think about the email marketing teams out there. << MORE >>

I LOVE TO SPEAK ABOUT and solve complex business problems, love multichannel marketing, love analytics, and find it fascinating to dig into the operations of email programs in large corporations.<< MORE >>

WHAT IS LOYALTY MARKETING TODAY? Over 75% of the consumers we know and love participate in one or more programs (Source: Jupiter). Our parents' loyalty programs were simple programs with simple rewards: you buy something, and there was a degree of personalization in the product buying experience.<< MORE >>

TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY? WHEN is the right time to send an email? That may be the right question, but is the answer what you are really looking for? This is probably the most widely asked question that email marketers will face.<< MORE >>

My article from Today's Email Insider<< MORE >>

E-mail to house files is the No. 1 marketing tactic used by online retailers with 92% saying they use it and 93% saying they plan to give it higher priority in 2008, according to Shop.org’s State of Retailing Online 2008: Marketing Report.

And it’s no wonder. The metrics speak for themselves.

According to the study of online retailers with average house files of 2.8 million names, an average of 50% of address holders on these lists have made at least one purchase from the retailers’ Web sites.

Also, retailers in the study said an average of 52% of their customers have opted to receive marketing e-mail from them, just 6% opt out annually, their average click-through rate is 11%, and their average conversion rate defined as percentage of total click throughs is 4%, the study conducted by Forrester Research on behalf of Shop.org said.

Not surprisingly, e-mail to house files is also one of the least expensive tactics in terms of cost per order, with an average CPO of $6.85 at an average dollar value of $120.27 per order.

The only online marketing tactic driving lower costs per order was “new portal deals,” with an average cost per order of $5.41 and an average order value of $42.50, the study said.

Comparatively, paid search delivered sales at an average $19.33 cost per order with an average dollar value of $109.17 per order, the study said. Also, affiliate programs average cost per order was $12.24 and average order size was $122.51, according to Shop.org.

Meanwhile, the most popular e-mails retailers use are transactional, with 95% of online retailers saying they send e-mail to confirm product shipments and 94% saying they send purchase confirmations via e-mail.

Meanwhile, though marketers have long given targeted e-mail high marks, relatively few have yet to do it.

Though 73% of those who said they use the tactic rated sending customized e-mails based on customer behavior or purchase data as “very effective,” just 42% said they do it, according to Shop.org.

A somewhat higher 58% said they segment e-mail files based on stated preferences and purchase data. Of those, 67% rated the tactic as very effective.

In the same report, Shop.org predicted online sales excluding travel will hit $204 billion in 2008, an increase of 17% over last year.

The top three categories will be apparel at $26.6 billion, computers at $23.9 billion and autos at $19.3 billion, according to The State of Retailing 2008 Marketing Report.

Online commerce is expected to account for 7% of all retail sales in 2008, and will top $300 billion in five years, the report said.

The survey was conducted in February and March by Forrester Research. The effort resulted in 125 complete and partial responses across a variety of industries, according to Shop.org. Thirty seven of the respondents had been operating online for nine or more years, 24 said their online sales were more than $100 million a year, and 50 said the Internet was the primary channel of interaction with customers, Shop.org reported.

        

Interesting study produced by Merkle on the behaviors and opinions of consumers on permission based email.  While I love these types of studies, I caution this as a market view of behaviors with such a small sample size (2,000), so take it with a grain of salt.

You can view a copy by following the link:

http://www.merkleinc.com/user-assets/Documents/WhitePapers/ViewFromThe%20Inbox2008.pdf