Promoting Sister Brands without Violating Permission

If you operate more than one brand, it can be tempting to abuse an email opt-in at one of your brands by extending it to your other brands. Because of the dangers of increased spam complaints, the vast majority of brands wisely resist this temptation and many smartly use their email programs…

Email Signup Failures at Crisis Levels

Opt-in failures are costing brands high-quality subscribers and dampening their list growth. More than 15% of homepage and site registration email signup processes resulted in failures, according to ExactTarget research involving more than 160 B2C brands, including retailers, restaurants, manufacturers, travel and hospitality, and nonprofits. This is a worsening from several years…

The Fundamental Imperatives of ‘Email Marketing Rules’

Back in November of 2010, I wrote an Email Insider column titled ‘Best Practices’ Are Dead, in which I argued that the term “best practices” has been much abused and was too broad to cover what I called the never-break “Ethical Imperatives” and the okay-but-unwise-to-break “Recommended Practices.” I didn’t know it at…