The Top 10 Online Retailers That Shoppers Like Most

This list is a good way for ecommerce companies to compare their website design and user interface with the biggest online retailers.

1 Amazon.com

2 eBay.com

3 Wal-Mart.com

4 BestBuy.com

5 JCPenney.com

6 Target.com

7 Kohls.com

8 Overstock.com

9 Google.com

10 Sears.com

Source: STORES Magazine's Favorite 50 survey. STORES is the official magazine of the National Retail Federation.

Webinar provides look at future of email marketing

Forrester Research discussed the future of e-mail marketing during a webinar titled “The ABCs of ESPs.”

Among the highlights:

• More than 97% of Forrester Research’s panel of 700 marketers is using, piloting or expecting to pilot e-mail marketing by the end of the year.
• More than 35% are sending promotional messages, while 28% are sending out newsletters. Another 17% are marketing through service—embedding marketing communications in their transactional messages to cross-sell or promote a completely different product, said Shar VanBoskirk, senior analyst at Forrester.
• 26% of a marketer’s e-mail spending goes toward delivery, 22% towards creative, 11% to data management and 10% to analytics. Going forward, marketers should plan on spending less on delivery and more on analytics, strategy and data or technology integration, VanBoskirk said. “I think this represents a maturing of the e-mail medium,” she explained. “The focus becomes less on sending out as many messages as you can and instead on running analytics to figure out whom you should be sending messages to, or tech integration so that your e-mail program is better aligned with your customer service or your database marketing efforts.”
• About 41% of all companies have two or three full-time employees focused on e-mail; 22% have a single person running the entire e-mail show.
• Another big change in the e-mail marketing landscape: CPMs are going to stop declining, and e-mail vendors will start charging for analytics as additional providers step into the fray. You may also start spending money outside your current ESP each month, VanBoskirk said. “You can also expect to see additional providers stepping in to aid marketers in e-mail,” she said. “E-mail service providers today provide a lot of delivery solutions—actually just sending the messages. But there are a lot of other specialists—consulting companies, ad agencies—that are really good at strategy, and analytics and the kinds of services where e-mailers are going to need more help going forward.”

How Social Networks Will Impact Marketing Automation

According to the Wall Street Journal article Will Social Networks Make Email Sexy Again, more people are ditching traditional email accounts for social networking email. Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit are adding features that allow users to perform such sociable functions as tracking friends and creating personal-profile pages for others to see. Social networks like Facebook and MySpace have upgraded their messaging services, enabling individuals to send emails to the outside world from their accounts, transmit video greetings to friends and make voice calls from their computers.

In August, there were 542.9 million users of email that is accessed primarily via Web browsers. That compared with 483.7 million social-networking users world-wide, according to comScore Inc. Including non-Web-based email such as accounts that businesses provide to their workers, there will be 1.4 billion email accounts in active use world-wide at the end of this year, estimates Radicati Group Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., research firm.

Such changing habits could have implications for marketing automation as these social networking sites have functionality not available for traditional email accounts. For example individuals create profile pages, communicate with friends and share photos and other digital content.

What Makes Facebook Addictive?

Some estimate that Facebook's revenues in 2007 at only $100m, mostly from selling ad space, with tiny profits. Nevertheless, the internet's giants—Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google—are offering to buy Facebook or a stake in it for a price that would value the firm at many billions. At a Facebook conference on “Graphing social patterns,” panellists said the firm may be worth $100 billion and that it is the new Google.

So what makes Facebook so additive to new and existing users? I believe the secret lies in Facebook's “mini-feed”, an event stream on user pages that keeps users abreast of what their friends are doing—uploading photos, adding a widget and so on.

For many users, this is addictive and is the main reason they log on so often. This “data exhaust” that gives Facebook users a vision nto the lives of people they know only casually.

Top Five Excuses To Email Your Customers

Here are the five functional reasons to communicate with your customers via email marketing...

5. To fulfill or confirm an order. Can you add some creativity to standard emails? This can be as easy as modifying your template with a holiday theme, or having fun with the messaging.

4. Promote your site, product, or service. When you promote your company, do you tie your USP to a theme? A creative voice gets the most attention in the inbox. Try a few options with your p romotional strategy.

3. Deepen the loyalty to your site or brand. Think about the considerations involved in making your consumers enthusiastic supporters and evangelists of your brand. They need a "container" to carry your message and build on it in their own social mechanisms. Is it a refer-a-friend / share component or an incentive to share?

2. Introduce your brand or acquire a customer. It's tough to brand amidst the noise of the holiday season. This puts more pressure on you to create great acquisition messaging and programs that are fun, engaging, and have the ability to be shared and syndicated. Whether it's a list rental, partner email, sponsored email or your own prospect list, this is the time to be creative with themes.

1. Thank them for their patronage. Did you know that the type of email that gets the highest open rate is an apology letter? The personal touch is widely appreciated, yet we reserve it for mistakes only. We all want to be recognized, so personalized notes thanking customers for their patronage to your brand is a worthwhile effort.

The most successful opt-out page I've ever seen was for Milwaukee Best Beer. It had a super-attractive female asking if you were sure you wanted to opt out. For men, that was a reaffirmation of why they were on the site in the first place. An opt-out page doesn't have to be a lost cause. You could have Santa ask them if they are sure they want to be taken off his list. Satire and humor give color to your brand. Play with it and you'll be amazed at the feedback you get.

Three Simple Ways to Humanize Your Email Marketing

All too often, emails to our customers and prospects are written in a hurry, without much thought given to making a personal connection with the reader and building a lasting relationship.

Time and again the emails I receive from companies have clearly been written without any effort being to connect with me as an individual.

This lost opportunity is most evident when I provide my email address to a company for the very first time. Maybe I sign up for a newsletter, maybe I register for some kind of service, maybe I buy a product.

Almost without exception, the automated emails I receive to confirm the action I have just taken are uniformly drab and impersonal.

When a customer first gives you his or her email address, you have a small window of opportunity. Customers are expecting a confirmation email from you. They are waiting for it. And when it arrives, almost 100% of people will open it.

In other words, this is your first and best chance to make a great impression. Do you or your company take full advantage of that opportunity?

Here are three things you can do to give some "personal power" to any email communication.

1. Declare your humanity: Write as an individual, not as a corporation

People don't want to hear from your computer system. They want to hear from you.
So include some elements in your email that are one-to-one—from one human being to another.

That doesn't mean that you should write in some insincere "you're my new best buddy" tone or style. It's just a matter of finding a way to connect in a way that is genuinely human.

Here's an example of a single sentence used in a welcome email that I received recently after I signed up for an e-newsletter.

"I am fully aware of how full your inbox can get some days... mine does too! So with that, I wanted to say Thank you for the compliment of your subscription."

It's not written very elegantly. But that doesn't matter. It's personal. It's human. And it says, "I'm a person just like you."

2. Add a real name at the end of each email

Many emails are signed by "The Domainname.com Team" or something like that.
Well, if the head of that team is called John Frost, sign the emails with the name "John Frost."

Make it from a person. There is no power in sending an email and signing it as a corporation or a team. There is no connection there. When you do that, every opportunity to take advantage of this most personal of online media is lost.

Somebody in your company is responsible for the email, so use his or her name in the sign-off.

3. Add your real address and other contact information

When I receive an email that closes with the complete mailing address of the sender, it immediately boosts my feelings of trust and confidence in that company.

When "John Frost" also adds his own email address and phone number, then the connection I feel with that company rises immeasurably.

When I get complete contact information, I know that I am being valued as an individual. And I know that the company is taking full and complete responsibility for its communications.

I have trusted them by providing my own email address. In turn, they trust me with their own, personal contact information.