I am speaking @MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012

I will be speaking at the Marketing Sherpa Email Summit 2012 on how to Jump Start Your Team with Social Media. Below is the synopsis of the session.

Social media governance and engagement is still a mystery to the business sector. Can your company survive without taking your social media presence to the next level? The Cleveland Institute of Art has implemented the third stage of social media engagement with fervor by incorporating a team dynamic. You need to determine first where your level of social media engagement is, and then implement policies and a triage plan.

The social media Swiss Army Knife can be sliced and diced many ways, but how are your utilizing its tools? Just like restaurants display the MasterCard, Discover and Visa symbols, does your business accept Facebook and Twitter? Email loves social media and your business needs to give love to get love. Are you using your ESPs ability to connect your emails to social media? Do your emails strengthen your social media efforts? Learn tips you can take back to your company and make an immediate impact with your social media integration.

http://www.meclabs.com/training/marketing-summit/email-summit-2012/agenda

Email Marketing: How To Reduce Bounces

The other day I was searching for a free email validation tool and I found this one. In the process, I stumbled upon an article that describes what causes email to bounce, aka not be delivered. The article explains the differences between hard and a soft bounces. What I liked best were the tips on how to reduce mass email bounces. Overall, the challenge is to get email into the inbox and follow these best practices is only part of the battle.

How to Reduce Email Bounces:

• Keep Subscriber Lists Clean – remove invalid email addresses
• Use Double Opt-in – allow subscribers to validate email address before adding to your list.
• Monitor Delivery Rates By Domain – Track your open and bounces rates by major domain, such as AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, Earthlink and others.
• Test Your Emails – Prior to sending preflight your emails visually inspect them and run through SPAM checker.

http://help.campaignmonitor.com/topic.aspx?t=26

Best Buy’s Opt-out Email

Is your marketing email list stagnant? When was the last time you sent a message out to your subscribers confirming their email preferences? Below is a good example of an opt-out email from Best Buy. They recently changed their email offers and are giving users the preference to choose what emails they want to continue subscribe to.

Promote Your eNewsletter

Does your organization have a eNewletter? How are you encouraging new customers to join your newsletter? Are you offering any incentives? Below is a good example of an ad I found from Arthritis Today promoting their eNewsletter. They actually show you the actual image along with key points contained within the newsletter.

Great Year End LinkedIn Email

I received this excellent year end wrap-up email from LinkedIn. What so great about it? The fact that the email is completely dynamic and gives me quick iconic links to my connections profiles. The email is so personal and made me want to click on virtually every image. Nice job LinkedIn on this email campaign!