The Istobe eCommerce Analytics Blog

eMarketer has an interview up with Bill Nussey of Silverpop in which he warns against badgering customers with email marketing that is too frequent or irrelevant to their interests.  The phrase he used is to describe this more tailored, moderate approach to email marketing is “keeping it in the green zone”.

The phrase resonated with me — perhaps because the “green zone” is how we visually depict customers who are likely to respond favorably to given email content in our new product.  

Read The Email Marketing Green Zone »

I’m sure many of you, like me, will be watching the inauguration on television today or possibly following it through one of the many websites that will broadcast it live. While this is certainly an exciting and interesting time in American politics, the presidential inauguration also marks an important event for mobile carriers. Millions of people intent on following the day’s events will chose SMS and text messaging as their primary media outlet of choice today. Verizon alone is expected to see over 1.4 billion text messages sent today (yes, billion) which will shatter the previous record of 803 million messages set on election day.

Read Inauguration May Be Dawn of New Mobile Age »

I’m a firm believer that SMS marketing as my blog posts such as Mobile Marketing - Five Steps to Start the Art and Master Targeted SMS and The Beginning of SSPs: SMS Finally Getting the Email Treatment attest. So I talk about it a lot as a great, new channel, even if only used as a higher form of email marketing. One thing I note to marketers is the fact that double opt-in gives you an automatically targeted audience. After all, the sheer work needed for a customer to double opt-in filters out - for the most part - those customers who will be offended by too many touches via their mobile phone. This, however, leads to the inevitable question: “Can you explain double opt-in to me? I’ve heard of it but I don’t exactly know what it is.” Understandable. Mobile marketing, after all, is still new. Well, today, you’re in luck. I’ll join the PacSun Mobile Alerts program and let you follow along so that you know exactly what double opt-in is…and what it looks like when initiated from a web site.

Read SMS Marketing: Double Opt-In Explained »

We pontificated Monday on what we perceived as the reluctance of the big Email Service Providers to hop aboard the SMS marketing train.  We pointed to ExactTarget as a prime example.  Boy, are our faces red.

Read Our Bad: ExactTarget in the SMS Biz After All »

One of the questions that we ponder daily at the Istobe HQ is why oh why email service providers (ESPs) like ExactTarget haven’t really jumped on the SMS marketing bandwagon. After all, it seems as though SMS marketing would logically be the next email and that the ESPs would be uniquely positioned to capitalize on this new market by leveraging their customer base to help establish the new marketing channel. Alas, it still hasn’t happened for major players like ExactTarget. Just the opposite. It seems that ExactTarget is actually trying to downplay the effectiveness of newer technologies (witness their new white paper that claims “Email Works Better than Social Networks”). But there are other ESPs out there that aren’t just trying to milk their lead in the email space and are instead embracing technological changes that are already afoot. Let’s take a look at two companies who are taking the ESP model and moving it into SMS marketing.
Read The Beginning of SSPs: SMS Finally Getting the Email Treatment »

Let’s hope the aroma of coffee from the West Coast can wake up Mobile Tuesday because we’re still sleepwalking through it here in sunny Boston. Yesterday, I wrote about the potential - and potentially bad timing - of Mobile Tuesday. We definitely need a push for mobile marketing, but is this really the push we needed? Let’s take a look at the Mobile Tuesday problems at the present hour of 10:50 AM EST on this December the 2nd.
Read Mobile Tuesday Staggers Out of the Gate »

First Black Friday - formerly known as the after-Thanksgiving sale - then Cyber Monday. Now Mobile Tuesday?

We all know the story behind Black Friday and Cyber Monday: two days devoted to the most price-sensitive, deal-hungry consumers out there. And this year, more than any year in recent memory, the entire nation has watched and waited, hoping that the consumers really were rarin’ to choke down some bargains. The economy, after all, depends on it. (Don’t believe me, just look at all the Twitter discussion about Cyber Monday deals courtesy of CheapTweet). Well, never fear Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you have a new sidekick this year to help with the economic recovery: Mobile Tuesday.

Read Will Retailers Really Buy Into Mobile Tuesday? »

With so many reports out there talking about why retailers are going to be taking such a hit this year, I thought it might be worthwhile to focus on the positive. The down economy has opened up several opportunities for retailers to try out new and interesting ways of reaching their customers.  I wanted to share a few of these with you.

• Read Surviving the Holidays: 5 Marketing Tips for Retailers »

Everyone agrees that SMS marketing - text marketing - is growing by leaps and bounds. A new Verisign report notes that SMS traffic will grow to 5.5 trillion - yep, trillion - over the next four years and that messaging from businesses increased by 115% last year. This codifies even further what is obvious to most: SMS is the next big direct marketing channel. Sure, there is A2P, P2P, and MMS to boot. But, for now, let’s limit this conversation to SMS and how your company can enter this channel with a flourish.

Read Mobile Marketing - Five Steps to Start the Art and Master Targeted SMS »

We write a lot about email on this blog and that’s largely because our clients tell us that the product predictions that come out of our customer prediction database makes the most monetary difference when used for email relevance. (It’s hard to argue with the 64% increase in revenue per email that we get with those predictions.) But the email-centricity is also indicative of the Baby Boomer and Gen X markets that our clients serve. And now that we’ve started to engage with companies that cater to younger markets (namely Millennials), we’ve gotten a chance to deal with newer communication channels (namely SMS text). SMS text marketing is arriving sooner than we’d ever imagined. And I have four numbers that prove it.

Read Four Numbers that Tell Me Why SMS Marketing Is About to Blow Up »