New York SBDC Research Network

By Betsy Mikel. Owner, Aveck From INC I'm sure I'm only one of many people who feel as if they're drowning in a sea of email. There are countless tips on how to manage your inbox if you're on the receiving end and how to write better emails if you're on the sending end. Yet still, sometimes emails simply go unanswered. I'll admit I'm guilty of the nonresponse, especially when my emails start piling up after a few days away. This isn't very hopeful if your day-to-day involves a lot of emailing -- especially if it's critical that you get a response. Thankfully, the folks at Boomerang, a plug-in for scheduling emails, did a little study to see if the language people use to close their emails has any effect on the response rate. "We looked at closings in over 350,000 email threads," data scientist Brendan Greenley wrote on the Boomerang blog. "And found that certain email closings deliver higher response rates." But do all ema...

From Camille at superhuman.com Email marketing is one of the oldest strategies for marketing on the internet. This leads some to wonder whether it’s still worth spending all the time and effort required to run campaigns. The truth is that while email may not be the newest or most exciting tool in digital marketing, it still has the potential to be one of the most effective. In 2018, nearly 90% of marketers list email as one of their top three priorities, with 45% saying it is their top concern. Furthermore, it still offers of the best returns on investment when compared to other marketing channels. Numbers like this make it easy to see that email marketing is not going away anytime soon. However, if you want to produce competitive email marketing campaigns, you have to make an effort to develop a strategy that can meet the demands of the modern market and use tools like an email verifier to ensure the highest possible deliverability and conversion rate. If your tactics are old...

The problem: You worry that members of your sales team are not following the right messaging guidelines in their cold outreach to prospects. The solution: You can give them templates to one-click insert. Giving cold-email templates to your sales team guarantees two things: (1) You can rest easy knowing they're using the right positioning; and (2) Sending emails with proven copywriting techniques will increase their open and reply rates. Remember: cold emails aren't about the sale; they're about initiating conversation and getting the ball rolling. Sounds familiar to what you do every day, right?

From Marketing Profs : If you live in the world of marketing, you've likely wanted to find someone's contact information but had no idea where to start looking. Whether you're trying to cold-call a lead, pitch an investor, email a press release to an editor, or strike up a conversation with a potential employer, there are plenty of reasons to dig up contact information. Email is one of the best ways to reach someone you're trying to connect with for the first time. It's less intrusive than a phone call and gives the recipient a chance to chew over whatever you're proposing. Knowing where and how to look for information is the first step in finding critical contact information. In 2017, there's no better tool for finding information than Google—which processes over 40,000 search queries every second (see this nifty Google search counter ). With the help of a few tools, you'll be able to find just about anybody's email address. Most users don...

From Business Wire : One in five commercial emails worldwide fails to reach its intended target, according to the 2017 Deliverability Benchmark Report from data solutions provider Return Path. This new research reveals that just 80 percent of email is delivered to the inbox, while the remainder—a full 20 percent—is diverted to spam folders or gets blocked altogether. The report’s findings are relatively consistent with the company’s 2016 and 2015 benchmarks, which reported a 79 percent global inbox placement rate. While this rate has improved slightly in the past year, the significant percentage of filtered messages means that marketers are still missing out on a valuable opportunity to drive meaningful revenue from the email channel. "Email remains the most popular and effective channel available to marketers, so it’s more important than ever to get it right. If your emails aren’t reaching the inbox, you’re missing out on an opportunity to build relationships and generate ...

From MarketProfs : Email has come a long way from rich-text messages and hidden images, and today some emails are works of art. They contain animated gifs and they're responsive by device. So if that's the present, what does the future of email design look like? The folks at EmailMonks took a stab at answering that question in an infographic that looks at email design trends over the past year and predicts what we can expect to see as 2017 moves along. Some throwbacks from 2016 that we're continuing to see are lightweight animated gifs in emails, flat design, and design that builds suspense as the user scrolls on a mobile. Last year also gave us some technical updates to email, such as how emails render in Gmail, and iOS 10's allowing embedded video, the infographic explains. Moving forward, EmailMonks predicts, we'll be seeing...

From Marketing Profs Only 15% of Americans say the emails they receive from marketers are frequently or always useful, according to recent research from Fluent. The report was based on data from a survey of 1,900 consumers age 18 and older who live in the United States. Some 7% of respondents say the marketing emails they receive are always useful, and 8% say they are frequently useful. In addition, 29% of respondents say marketing emails are sometimes useful, 33% say they are rarely useful, and 24% say they are never useful. Younger respondents, those age 18-29, find marketing emails more useful in general than do older respondents (age 30+).

From MarketingProfs : Businesses depend on email as the glue that pulls marketing tactics together, yet many otherwise-savvy marketers misuse email in a way that ultimately alienates customers. Years ago, one-size-fits-all communications worked fine, and you might well have created one email for everyone and sent it once a week. Though it still happens, it's no longer the norm now that merchants can take advantage of more sophisticated customer intelligence. Attention to the details can pay off. Email the right message to the right people, and you'll engage and delight your customers while driving more opens, clicks and sales.

Employees spend nearly one-fourth of their workday, on average, sorting through their email inbox, a study by McKinsey found. Email is the most used form of communication in the workplace, but it's also easy for the emails you send to be quickly deleted or marked as irrelevant. Salespeople, particularly those who rely on email as their first point of contact with prospects, need to ensure their emails are relevant, appropriate, and able to cut through the noise of a busy inbox. Needless to say, so do marketers. Here are my top tips for crafting an email that will encourage opens, generate interest, and warrant a response. 1. Perfect the subject line A subject line is the gateway into your email. It needs to instantly grab the receiver's attention to ensure your email doesn't end up in the dreaded junk folder. First, keep it short: A recent analysis by MailChimp suggests fewer than 50 characters—but still descriptive. Place the most descriptive words at the beginnin...

$100,000 Scholarship Program In April, we started partnering with Skillshare on  a series of educational classes about email marketing . It’s been fun and effective, so we’re excited to help Skillshare with a new project to further empower small businesses. Together, we‘ll be  awarding $100,000 in annual scholarships  granting small business owners access to Skillshare’s full educational catalog. Skillshare offers hundreds of business courses with experts like Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, and Lisa Congdon—plus 4 courses from MailChimp all about email marketing. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, small business owner, or a marketer, investing in education is a great way to grow your business, and Skillshare can help.

Few would argue that a finely-tuned message is key to the success of an email marketing campaign. At the same time, the styling and delivery of the message can be equally, if not more, important than the message itself. The way your email appears to both people and spam filters can make or break your campaigns. Unfortunately, the preferences of users and spam filters are directly opposed in some cases. The only way to ensure that your email gets delivered and received well is to create email content with both sets of preferences in mind. For your convenience, here are our set of email content do’s and don’ts. Do Proofread Your Content – This one should be self-explanatory. Spam filters key in on typos and sentences that don’t make sense as signs of spam. For human recipients, errors look unprofessional and careless. More from HiP

An article from Expanded Rambling . Also, Infographic: The history of online advertising from My Customer.

Boost your email's chances of being opened by following these quick tips from Sikich. "Before sending your emails, tell your recipients what type of content they can expect and how often they'll be hearing from you," states Sikich. When you do send the email, send it from a real person. Avoid impersonal info@company.com email addresses. Also, spend time crafting an engaging subject line: "64% of people say they open an email because of the subject line," states Sikich. Find out more about critical email elements and how they increase your email's open rates by checking out the infographic from Marketing Profs

But, pitching can come in different forms, and one of the most common ways to pitch your business—even in our technologically advanced age—is the “pitch email.” Email is everywhere. It’s used by nearly everyone, it’s more personal than social media, and it’s less obtrusive than a phone call. When you need to introduce yourself and your company to someone, email often just makes the most sense. So what’s the best way to go about pitching your business by email? After all, you want to be sure you aren’t just sending emails into a black hole where they’ll be deleted without a second thought. Even worse, you want to make sure you’re writing in such a way, or pitching in a way that won’t end up annoying the very recipient you’re trying to entice. A bad email can actually “burn bridges.” Here’s where you can start. Read more from BPlans

While we are knee-deep in the holidays, 2014 is right around the corner. And if you’re like the majority of small businesses, email marketing will play an important role in your promotional efforts throughout the New Year. Don’t let the following small but common mistakes keep you from achieving your marketing goals! Making it difficult for people to recognize you For 68 percent of consumers, familiarity with the person sending the email is the top reason why they decide to open. Take the time to double check the “From Name” and “From Email Address” you’re using to send your emails. More from the ASBDC .

From Step by Step Marketing : Amazon.com, 1800flowers, Zappos, Lands End, and other online retailers all send emails to confirm that orders have been shipped. If you analyze their emails, you will notice that they contain a lot of “extras” that include a word of thanks, a clickable link to package-tracking information, and incentives to click through to visit the company’s webpage and shop again. There’s a reason why these top retailers add these extras to what would otherwise be utilitarian order confirmations. They understand that confirmation emails offer an opportunity to improve the overall customer experience and build loyalty.

The USPS will be displaying this poster nationwide from Feb 19 - May 31, 2010. When a “warning” from the Better Business Bureau (BBB) about how to avoid census scammers started circulating on the Internet, many educated and otherwise savvy people bought the message and passed it along. Several well-meaning friends sent the missive to me, asking in an innocent effort to be helpful (and maybe to impress their census-crazed friend), “Is there anything we should add before sending to our e-mail list?” My answer: TRASH IT, before this doctored message hoodwinks more unsuspecting readers! More here .

According to a May 2009 report from The Radicati Group, there are 1.4 billion email users in 2009, with some 247 billion emails are sent each day in 2009. But how many of these emails are effectively communicating the intended message? We have all heard about problems that can arise from using email, including loss of context and information overload. Writing an email that not only makes the point that you were going for, while also being short and sweet, is an art form. Below are articles that can help you write an email to deliver the intended message. Email Writing Tips Five Tips for Writing Email that Gets Read What Your Sign-off is Really Saying

These are resolutions to improve one's e-mail marketing campaign in 2009: 1. Clean your email list. Can be used for your personal use as well.

" Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast " is an article that appears in last Saturday's New York Times . While its premise (that desk-bound workers have their productivity affected greatly by a steady barrage of email throughout the work day) is hardly new, I was intrigued by the technology implemented by Google Mail. I don't have a Gmail account, but I like the idea of clicking a button & having my email made inaccessible to me for a fifteen-minute period. I might have to switch over to that service, just so I can catch my breath. *** Just so you know, Research Network turnaround time is down to five days.