Week of October 11, 2012:

This week, we look at welcome email series in depth, as well as share some lessons learned about perspectives in email marketing from the MarketingProfs conference.

You’ll also notice that you’re receiving this on a Thursday again. We ran a test last week on a Wednesday and found that for us, Wednesday performed less well than Thursday. Always be testing!

Christopher S. Penn, Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

Email marketing is a critical part of every company’s fourth quarter, from B2B companies trying to close deals before the holidays to B2C companies looking to get consumers lining up for holiday sales. In order to maximize the impact of your holiday email marketing program, you need to make sure your email is being received! Download our free white paper, How to Get Your Email Marketing Delivered, and learn what you need to do to get in the inbox.

• Click here to download How to Get Your Email Marketing Delivered

Want to get even more insight and access to great discussions about email marketing? Join our LinkedIn group, Enterprise Email Marketers, and catch discussions, polls, and debates about what’s happening in email marketing now.

Want to meet members of the WhatCounts team and share your experiences finding and growing your email marketing ROI? Here’s a list of upcoming events where you can interact with the WhatCounts team.

Nov. 1, CloudForce Atlanta: WhatCounts will be attending. Meet up with our team, and if you’re in the area, stop by our metro Atlanta office in Buckhead to say hello!

Nov. 13-15, Travel Innovation Summit, Phoenix, AZ: WhatCounts will be attending. Say hello to members of our team!

WhatCounts is hiring EVEN MORE PEOPLE!

We’ve got a whole careers page full of opportunities for you to showcase how well you know email marketing, and more positions being posted every day. If you know email marketing, come work for WhatCounts!

Marketing Education

I just got back from being on the road at MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston, MA, and I’m truly astonished at how, 25 years after email marketing became generally available, there’s still so much room for opportunity and so many areas people don’t have a ton of knowledge about.

Without question, the number one area people don’t understand about email marketing is deliverability – how to get your emails past spam filters. There’s a reason we’re promoting our How to Get Your Email Marketing Delivered eBook. It’s filled with useful advice for getting those emails through, and it answers many of the questions people had.

After questions about deliverability, the next big area which was a frequent source of discussion was where to get content in order to have a regular email program. The good news is that you’re swimming in it. You’re surrounded by it. Go look at sites like Ask.com and Quora.com for questions people are asking about your industry and vertical. For example, here’s a selection of questions about the topic of coffee from Quora.com:

• What machine makes the best coffee?
• What is the purpose of foam on the top of coffee drinks?
• What is the difference between cafe con leche and latte?
• What happens to used coffee grounds in coffee shops?
• Is drinking coffee better than drinking soda?
• How do you explain the seeming success of coffee houses over tea houses?

If you’re a coffee retailer, you’ve got your next six blog posts, email newsletters, and social media updates already laid out for you based on real questions that real people are asking – and that you have credible, expert answers to.

The final lesson from my experience at MarketingProfs is this: if you don’t invest the time and effort into your email marketing program that you invest in other channels, you won’t get the same or better results as you get in other channels. Email needs as much love and attention as social, direct mail, SEO, and everything else in digital marketing.