We know the value of market research when it comes to developing marketing strategies.  We know marketing departments spend a fair amount of time on email campaigns.  We also know that marketers are busy people.  That is why we have put together a list of downloadable email marketing reports.  Below are 7 resources from top industry analysts for you to look at on the state of email marketing.

TheAGA needed an easier, smarter way to manage member email sends, one that allowed for message customization, the use of different templates, provided meaningful metrics and integrated fully with its AMS. These enhancements would allow the AGA to serve its members better while eliminating the need to constantly upload address files and manually run reports just to get basic metrics, like open rates. 

AGA chose HighRoad as the agency to put together a marketing stack that would allow them to connect their association management database to their email marketing platform. Following implementation of their integration, AGA's deliverability soared and their staff labor time fell. As AGA freed up time from pulling and uploading lists, the VP Communications got to thinking about how they could do more with email. He turned to his staff to collaborate on thinking about new ways to deliver highly relevant content to members so that anything extraneous fell by the wayside--an important consideration when serving a membership of physicians and scientists.

“One of my first projects for the AGA had to do with personalization,” said Aaron White, senior director of digital communications strategy for the AGA. “We were looking for ways to specialize better, narrowcast more. We’ve been sending the weekly enewsletter for 10 years, every Thursday, to every member, and every member got all the same content. So if you’re a member, for example, from Germany, you really don’t care about CMS rules for Medicare reimbursement – but you got that article because everyone has the same newsletter.”

Transactional email is a personalized email that is system triggered in response to some type of online transaction by a subscriber with your organization.  Transactional emails are an excellent way for you to increase engagement with your subscribers by offering them personalized content and offers based upon their previous transaction.  Multiple surveys have shown that this type of email is far more effective in engagement,  result in greater brand loyalty, and deliver higher ROI. Unfortunately, according to Experian, only 40% of all marketers are sending transactional email.  If you are in the 60% of marketers who are not yet utilizing this type of email, Kevin George at Marketo, has written a great article that you should read.  In the article, Kevin lists some best practices when developing a transactional email campaign and six types of transactional emails you can send to your subscribers, based on their unique behavior.

Jenny Lassi was recently interviewed by Mizz Information, herself, Maggie McGary on email marketing. Maggie recently found herself in charge of her org's email marketing program and realized it was time to bite the bullet to learn more about why email marketing is so painful. Maggie reached out to us to help her understand where the areas of the most complexity lie and why they're so tricky to navigate. 

In her article, Maggie provides a great explanation of the 5 biggest pain points and chiefareas of misunderstanding about email that association marketing professionals need to know:

1. Reputation: Email address is bouncing and/or continually being flagged as invalid/ineligible 
2. Authentication: Emails going directly to the spam folder abyss, 
3. Filter: Email getting delivered but member says they didn’t get it,
4. Feedback Loops (or FBL for those in the know): Email address mysteriously disappeared from the system, 
5. List Hygiene: Prospecting new members 

Do you think sending a mass email using Outlook is a good idea?

Many email Marketers are using Personalization to better reach their members, however not all are using best practices to help maximize their potential.  Personalization goes well beyond using a customer’s name.  There are many different was marketers can personalize. Are you asking the right questions to help get to the information you need to improve your personation?