He may be a Spuds Spurs fan, but Red C Account Director Steve White is not completely useless. He knows an awful lot about Email Marketing for one thing. So when he gave me a 700-page document from MarketingSherpa called Best Practices in Email Marketing I thought to myself, this is probably worth reading.*

MarketingSherpa is a research firm that specializes in tracking what works in all aspects of marketing (and what does not.) Their goal: to give marketers of the world the stats, inspiration, and instructions to improve their email marketing results.

According to their Research Manager Stefan Tornquist this guide was written “to provide one-stop guidance on building a ‘best in class’ email program, whether you’re managing an enterprise level marketing department or a small business.”

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For customer engagement, e-mail is fast becoming the most powerful channel available to marketers.  Growing penetration of e-mail addresses on our customer databases, the environmental backlash against direct mail, the increasing preference of customers for online dialogue, the exceptional richness of response data from email – just some of the reasons why UK marketers should be exploiting every opportunity to capture addresses and permissions.  Yet I am surprised by the lack of attention and thought that is going into the sign-up process, especially in these recessionary times. Read more…