According to DM News-Responsys survey on 100 handpicked of their retail clients, one out of two respondents plan to increase their e-mail frequency 50 percent to 100 percent this holiday season compared with the previous months this year. Twenty seven percent plan to increase their e-mail frequenty by 10 to 50 percent for holidays and 17 percent plan to maintain the same frequency.

“We will emphasize the ability to print gift certificates online for next-day gift giving,” Perez said. “We did similar campaigning with gift certificates last year that encouraged us to repeat.”

Eighty nine percent said they expect an increase in e-commerce activities because of escalating gas prices, but for retail store which has most of their customers purchasing from the Net, there should be little or no incrase in e-commerce purchase because of higher gas prices.

Source: DM News: Half plan to send more e-mails for the holidays.

Holidays are a big gift to small businesses who know how to tap into seasonal spending spikes. Despite rising gas, oil and energy prices, consumers still feel generous when it comes to gift-giving and merry-making, writes Gail F. Goodman for Enterpreneur.com.

If you already have an existing e-mail list, you can implement the following 3-step strategies:

• Solve a customer’s problem - Recommend gift ideas and price ranges based on existing purchasing behavior.
• Time your offer right - Start offering specials now so that customers have a lot of time to plan. Free overnight shipping for others who wait until the last minute. Craft your subject lines to tell them what you’re promoting.
• Target their needs - Promote relevant, timely and valuable products to the list.

The strategy applies well to other events throughout the year. Customer will much appreciate your offering if you try to solve their problem first instead of merely promoting your products.

Source: Enterpreneur.com.

What if your company wants to start sending a newsletter to the list of customers you’ve been collecting for years but never keeps in touch with? Loren McDonald has a solid and practical approach on how to handle the problems and still cultivate the most out of the list.

Three critical problems need to be solved:

1. Permission - Many of them haven’t explicitly permitted you to send promotional messages.
2. Bouncing and other old list issues - A typical consumer list has 20-30 percent turnoever every year.
3. Relationship - They may be customer of yours years ago but forget about it.

Safe practice is very important to prevent unnecessary spam complaints and message blocking by other networks. Loren suggests that one can still get some use of these old lists by following the right procedures:

• Run an opt-in campaign, rather than opt-out - Invite old customers to join your newsletter. Opt-out campaign generates high bounces and complaints.
• Address privacy concerns - Link to privacy policy and mean it.
• Sell your newsletter’s benefits - Offer specials not available anywhere. A teaser urges them to subscribe.
• Segment your mailings - Deal with bounces without raising red flags at ISPs. Use segmentation as a chance to test out content and response rates on the subscription invitation.

Bottom line, go for high response rate for future campaigns instead of large list. The former will generates far less complaints, easier to build relationship with and are probably ready for purchases soon.

Link: EmailLabs.

Lyris has released Q3 2005 ISP Deliverability Report Card, reporting that the combined average rate of gross email deliverability of permission-based email marketing messages for U.S. and European ISPs and ESPs fell slightly this quarter from a Q2 rate of 90 percent to a rate of 85 percent in Q3.

Inbox deliverability fell due to a rise in amount of blocked and undelivered messages among European providers, resulting in an average of 86 percent overall in Q3. U.S. providers enjoyed improved delivery of opt-in email in the same period, raiding b a full 4 percent to 89 percent.

Lyris also reported the result of monitoring 28 of U.S. domains. Concentric ranked the first and Gmail second for overall rate of false positive filtering at 42.47 and 7.17 respectively. Gmail ranked second for delivery of opt-in email messages though.

Download: Lyris Deliverability Report for Q3 2005.

In B-to-B e-mail marketing, there’s little room for failure. From the list, subject line to copy, landing pages and follow-up, all have to be planned carefully. Direct Marketing News has posted a 6-point guide to B-to-B e-mail success.

• Rent e-mail lists that minimize waste - Rent from trusted source with clear opt-in process and source.
• Create e-mail advertising, not e-mail memos - Follow direct marketing principles and with great ideas.
• Go from off-the-shelf to out-of-the-box offers - Prepare reasonable budget for the offer and innovate.
• Trest the landing page as a make-or-break element - Build a well-designed landing page that qualifies leads and simplifies the job for the sales reps.
• Use a reputable e-mail platform - Trusted platform ensures high deliverability and compliance with CAN-SPAM.
• Nail the follow-up process - Keep the leads warm by regularly follw-up with educational series.

Test various components and monitor closely how it compares to previous campaigns. Pick up the winner and test the control with new ideas. One at a time.

Link: In BTB E-Mail, Failure Is Easier Than Success.