Henry Hyder-Smith's Blog

In the excitement of the latest email marketing buzzwords such as using dynamic content, triggered campaign sends, improving deliverability rates and integrating databases, many email marketers are forgetting one of the most powerful uses of email marketing. 

Email is excellent at driving people to surveys and gathering essential customer intelligence.

B2B or B2C, the chances are that you are relying on delivering a significant number of emails into web mail. New versions of web mail systems are being released with different methods of filtering and handling messages. 

We’re recommending you conduct an audit of your database, to understand how concerned you should be about web mail. 

What a horrid, wet and cold bank holiday that was. It probably gave you the same problem I faced; what were we going to do?

Let’s face it; most of us plan something for our bank holidays. But when bad weather comes along, you have to find something else to do, indoors.

As April arrives, it is always accompanied by the first warm weather of spring and a number of bank holidays.

As the rays of sunshine creep through, the office is looking slightly more empty than normal as people take extended weekends, and this led me to think about ways that email marketers can be more efficient in their promotions, and enjoy their bank holidays more.

After a long day in meetings across London with some of our key agency clients, I’ve been reminded how much email marketing is done in a rush. 

Timelines are tight, and agencies' clients can be very demanding. As I write this, I’m returning to Oxford on the train with a grumbling stomach, a victim of a packed schedule and over-running meetings.

Bad salutations, not working off feedback and static timing schedules: UK email marketers are slipping back into the bad habits so prevalent in 2006, writes Henry Hyder-Smith.

A member of my team has just conducted a seminar at the local University for Marketing Students. Interestingly, one of the major discussion points was “who is to blame for spam?”

Following my presentation at last week’s ECMOD event on email marketing, I noticed that most home shopping and e-tail email marketing strategies centre around offering discounts or promotions. 

This is despite the fact that one of the major benefits of email marketing is that it is measurable. You can use this information to learn and further refine your communications.

Last week, I moderated an interactive seminar on email marketing at ECMOD, the home shopping and catalogue event.  At the end of each session, we discussed the presentations and the attendees asked any questions they had on email marketing. 

I’m in the process of moving house at the moment. In my infinite wisdom, after spending my life’s savings on the bricks and mortar, it is the turn of my own wallet to finance a range of home improvements. 

To help in this arduous task, I’ve signed up for a number of relevant newsletters including B&Q, Screwfix Direct, Comet and more. 

Strikingly, the majority of the email promotion focuses on discounts and offering deals...