Melon Corporate Blog

Email Marketing Resources

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 06, 2008

I review a lot of magazines, blogs, websites and newsletters - relating to online marketing and business in general.

I thought instead of providing an exhaustive list I will review a few of my favourites every so often.

3 online resources relating to email marketing that I regularly make use of include:

• MarketingSherpa : a great source of research material, trend analysis, case studies and industry updates



• Email Marketing Reports: a collection of well researched rigorous articles on email marketing - it is a breathe of fresh air to read solid articles about email marketing as opposed to the self interested "fluff" that is so common on blogs



• Clickz Email Marketing Newsletters: a choice of many focussed industry newsletters written by experts in each field

Please feel free to leave comments with some of your favourite email marketing resources.

Next week I will discuss some of my favourite magazines.

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BRW Digital Survey 2008

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 05, 2008

BRW Magazine has published results of their Digital Survey on page 37 of the latest edition.  It is available online if you are a paid subscriber.

I have scanned in a version from the print version - you can see it here.

There is also an audio discussion of the results here.

The survey presents some interesting results including:

1. 17% of companies have their own blog. 


2. 54% of companies currently use email marketing and 67% of these increased their spend in 2007 and 65% will lift spendng in 2008. 


3. 43% of companies made use of search engine optimisation services (SEO) and 40% of these increased spending in 2007 and 44% will lift spending in 2008.

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Web guru coming to Australia

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Mar 04, 2008

Jakob Nielsen is considered by many to be the father of usability and has been around for a long time in the web world.  He has been called “The guru of web page usability,” by The New York Times.

His organisation is presenting some workshops in Melbourne later this year.  They will be very worthwhile for the online marketing/web professional.

More info can be found at http://www.nngroup.com/events/melbourne/agenda.html

They will be having sessions on a wide variety of web usability issues including “Email Newsletter Usability”.

I will probably be heading to one of the sessions myself so drop me a line if any of you are going and we can make contact.

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Do you love your lawyer?

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Feb 29, 2008

by Kevin Garber, General Manager 

In her article ”Subscribers Speak: Email Connections are Still Welcome, but Increasingly Fragile“

Stephanie Miller from Return Path makes a good point about lawyers: that we all tend to love our own lawyer, but don’t think much of lawyers in general.

She goes on to state that recent research indicates that email marketing is evolving into a similar “love hate” scenario -

“When email connects, it really connects. Yet, still so much email marketing is tired, old batch-and-blast.”

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Beautiful on the Inside - HTML code and your emails

Dain Saxon (Digital Producer) - Feb 08, 2008

It’s not difficult to create great looking emails <start shamless plug> especially if you choose Melon Media to create them for you </end shamless plug> but how do your emails look ‘on the inside’?

The code that makes up your HTML email is an important, yet often neglected, aspect of email creation. It dictates to the Outlooks, Hotmails, Gmails and MacMails of this world how the email should be displayed, and though the concept may be difficult to appreciate, these browsers ‘see’ the code and then render it as it sees fit. So where you see the colour red, the browser sees #FF0000.

Therefore if your code is not clean, or has parts missing, or is extraneous, or uses deprecated tags - then there is every likliehood that this messy code will translate into a messy email.

If you want your clients to see a clean, well designed email when they receive it - read on.

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The perils of using BCC for email broadcasts

James Peter (Chief Web Systems Architect) - Jan 25, 2008

A question we hear frequently is: “Why should I use an email marketing tool such as melonMail when I can just copy and paste the addresses into my email programs BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field or just use Mail Merge?”

One of the easiest mistakes many marketing staff make is misunderstanding how broadcast emails are in fact very different to the normal emails you send around the office.

There is unfortunately a misperception frequently from managers that email marketing is an amazing breakthrough not because of its convenience and effectiveness compared to other mediums - but because its FREE compared to traditional “snail-mail” campaigns.

It is true that the overall cost of an email campaign can be significantly lower than a paper campaign however, if you want any level of success from your broadcast its important to understand that its not as easy as copying and pasting then clicking send.

The very existence of the multitudes of specialist email broadcasting providers speaks testament to this - how could they stay in business if it were that simple?

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5 Easy Ways to Improve your Email campaigns

Dain Saxon (Digital Producer) - Jan 23, 2008

I have been assisting organisations with their e mail campaigns for many years - first in an in-house role and subsequently for clients at Melon Media.

Over this time period I have noticed that several common issues with campaigns regularly present themselves.

Most of these issues are quite straightforward to address - considering these issues and fine tuning your campaigns will have a big impact on your results long term.

Below are 5 often ignored issues that you should consider in your next email marketing campaign.

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Online Spam Analysis Tool - Melon Stork

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Jan 18, 2008

We are very excited to announce the launch of a free online spam analysis tool - Melon Stork.

You can find the tool here and an FAQ for the tool here.

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Melon Media 2008 - New Offices | Introduction to Some of the Team

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Jan 16, 2008

We thought that we would give you a quick introduction to some of the team and a snapshot of our new offices.

Our offices are right in the heart of the Sydney CBD - we enjoy the buzz of being around the epicentre of Australia’s economy. The food choices also help to keep lunches interesting.

We have lots of glass walls in the office. Adam one of our developers found some "liquid chalk" that we can use to write on the glass. So we have ample space to write thoughts down on.

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Have You Experienced Sendphobia?

Kevin Garber (General Manager) - Nov 29, 2007

If you are an email marketer who has sent out a campaign to a sizable database, then you are a likely candidate who has suffered what I like to call ‘Sendphobia’.

Sendphobia is that feeling that you get just before you hit the send button on a large (or sometimes small!) campaign. That deep feeling of fear and anxiety. The little flutter in your belly that makes you squirm in your seat. The beads of sweat that form on your brow.

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