eMedia Vitals

Email newsletters and alerts are a staple of most publishers' marketing efforts. Done right, email newsletters can generate both reader loyalty and advertising revenue. Done wrong, well, they simply add to inbox clutter - and can actually hurt your reputation and business. The following resources will get you up to speed on email best practices. Hint: Think relevance.

Email newsletter design best practices
Designing an email newsletter is a lot like designing a Web page in 1996: lots of different browsers and no real standards. Here are some resources to help you make sense of the mess.

IAB releases guidelines for email monetization
The Interactive Advertising Bureau has released "Email Monetization Strategies," a paper that provides best practices for publishers and advertisers looking to optimize their email campaigns.

Effective email subject lines: concise vs. clever content
Writing straightforward subject lines is one way to get recipients to trust and open your email, according to a subject line comparison by email platform company MailChimp.　

The first e-mail engagement metric: deliverability
If your email doesn’t reach the subscriber’s inbox, you can’t earn a response – which is why deliverability should be considered an engagement metric.

How dynamic content improves email newsletter click-thru's
Retail brands are skilled at using behavioral targeting to create successful email campaigns. What tricks can publishers borrow from retailers to deliver highly targeted email newsletters?

How Brooklyn Based built a 10,000-strong email readership
What started as a "bleemail" (half blog, half email) shared with friends has blossomed into a successful hyperlocal business. The newsletter’s co-founder discusses the benefits of using relevant, targeted content to attract and retain an extremely engaged community.

Keep your subscribers responding by focusing on reducing list fatigue

Reduce list fatigue: how to measure newsletter mailing list overlap
Performing a mailing list inventory can be difficult, but it’s a necessary task for reducing list fatigue, increasing open and click-through rates, and enhancing your reputation among customers as well as ISPs.

How to manage and reduce list fatigue
Email subscriber lists are cherished resources that, unfortunately, are usually hammered into inconsequence by eMedia companies. Coordinating lists and campaigns at the brand level is necessary to manage goals and improve conversions.

How email segmentation improves newsletter subscriber retention
Publishers that are serious about leveraging email to improve engagement and increase revenues will need to move beyond their traditional "batch-and-blast" approach. The name of the game now is relevance.

Tactics for reviving dead email subscribers
Every marketer (and publisher) has inactive email subscribers. But relatively few understand how to bring at least some of those email zombies back to life.

Tips and other resources for e-mail marketing
The prevalence of email marketing has led to a seemingly endless supply of Web resources about the topic. We’ve gathered some of them to help you get up to speed, find a service provider, and learn about what works – and what doesn’t – with email campaigns.

6 reasons to fire your ESP
If your email service provider is sitting back and hoping that each time you call it isn't because you're going to flee, then it's time to send your ESP packing. See if any of these six reasons to kick your ESP to the curb strike a chord with you.

Email subject lines: how long is too long?
Subject lines are the most critical element to an email’s open rate. This blog post is a synopsis of an Epsilon survey and details the average number of characters visible on top email clients (AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail account for nearly 57% of the market).

Master the 'targeted' email subject line
When writing a targeted email subject line, the goal is to be as direct as possible to identify your intended audience. This approach will result in fewer clicks but a higher conversion rate.　

Optimizing interactive content for e-newsletters
From employing video and audio content to inserting cutting-edge user polls, the interactive nature of email newsletters is growing. Here are a few tips to improve the response rate of your interactive ventures.