Over the last week, I have been posting the impressions, takeaways and insights from our man at MarketingSherpa’s Email Summit ’10.
He managed to send me a final post summarizing his impressions from the event.
What was the general tone of the event? What were the major takeaways? And in the end: what has he learned?
This is what our man writes.
I must say, again I was surprised about the quality of the summit. There were a lot of very interesting cases to dig into and a bunch of interesting people to meet. This is by no doubt one of the best email marketing events in the world.
Retention, customer experiences, permission and social media integration
The pre-workshop with Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of Marketing Experiments was a must for every self-respecting email professional. Even if this was the third time I attended one of his lectures, I still learn from each new session. Flint is a tremendous speaker and his mathematical approach on all email marketing aspects based on serious testing is amazing, no less.
Keynote opener Joseph Jaffe immediately set the tone. Retention, customer experiences, permission and social media integration: that’s what this 2010 summit was all about.
The following days were filled to the brim with cases, split into two main tracks: B2B & B&C.
Just to give you an impression of the quality of the cases and speakers: Dell, S&S Worldwide, IDG Connect, Parenting.com, SalesForce.com, Returnpath, Expedia CruiseShipCenters, … and last but most definitely not least, another keynote by Dela Quist.
In his own quick, direct and motivational style, Dela talked about the importance of permission in a multi-channel world. One of his famous quotes I won’t easily forget: When you buy an email list your thought is “rape and pillage”, not “nurture”.
My overall feeling of this summit? Social media are very hot in the US right now and permission in this opt-out regulated country becomes more important by the day. No doubt deliverability will benefit from this.
Here a few thoughts you might consider when designing the ideal flow:
- Get your customer engaged with your brand through the social world.
- Gain their trust and convince them to subscribe to your list through a well-constructed subscription form.
- Follow customers in your email program respectfully offer them relevant customer lifecycle campaigns.
- Manage your lists well. Remove bounces and unsubscribes regularly.
- Monitor your IP’s own reputations and deliverability and use the proper infrastructure.
But hey, if your permission-based program is already built upon these foundations, you won’t have to worry about deliverability.
And what’s more: your customer will thank you for taking some time to understand his needs and give him the respect he so rightly deserves.
That’s it folks, thanks to Kenny, you can follow him further on his blog, where he of course also posts his opinions on the event and provides good email marketing tips.
Did you post about the event and want to add your link or do you want to share your impressions if you were there?
Then please comment on the event page I created and that you can find here.
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