Small Business Trends

E-mail marketing has long been and continues to be a powerful force in online marketing. But today with the emergence of SEO and social media there has been an evolution in how e-mail marketing can be done. In addition to the business applications of e-mail itself, it can be used in conjunction with social media to drive sales and can be measured far more accurately for success metrics using SEO tools like Google Analytics. Here is a collection of the way entrepreneurs are using and thinking about e-mail today. We welcome your observations as well in the comment section below. 

Tactics

How much is too much? E-mail marketing remains a powerful form of outreach and if your customers or audience have opted to receive regular updates from you, this kind of marketing communication can achieve even greater heights. But is there a limit to the number of e-mails you should get in the habit of sending to your e-mail list? The answer is that it depends on your content and your audience. ScottFox.com 

Success Story

From e-mail marketing to revolutionizing the greeting card industry. When Adam Weinstein was assigned to research printing options as part of an e-mail marketing startup he was involved in, he never imagined the information he learned could be put to use for innovation in another very different kind of business. But, in the end, Weinstein’s success with revolutionary greeting card startup enGreet was also the result of constantly forgetting to mail cards for special family occasions. Beyond the Pedway 

Tools

What form will your e-mail marketing take? Make no mistake. Not all e-mail systems are created equal. And in a world with tight competition, companies creating solutions for online marketing are burning the midnight oil as they struggle to best each other. See an example of the features available in this product overview, but remember that the e-mail tools you choose must be best for your business and your market. Shop around and don’t be afraid to ask others for recommendations as well. Inman News 

Integration

Measuring your e-mail marketing campaign. Though many online marketers know intuitively the value of e-mail marketing to their business, a significantly lower amount apparently, spend any time or energy trying to understand the metrics of their e-mail marketing campaigns even though a familiar tool can easily help businesses track every nuance of their e-mail marketing efforts allowing them to tweak the program as they go. ClickZ 
E-mail marketing and social media: perfect together. While e-mail remains a very viable technique for marketing your business online, a new set of tools, social media, has rightly gained considerable attention as a powerful method of marketing as well. In fact, there are many ways e-mail marketing and social media can work together very effectively to double your marketing impact online. Business Insider 

Tips

How to enhance your e-mail marketing campaign. No matter how great your e-mail marketing campaign may be, it could, of course be better. But how do you take your efforts to the next level building on your present successes as you move into the future? Here are five tips that should help you do things just a bit better. All Business 
Tips from the big guys. If you’d like to know how heavy hitters at multi-billion dollar companies map out successful e-mail marketing strategies, wonder no longer. Gene Marks has these exciting suggestions to get you started on the road to better and more profitable e-mil marketing campaigns in the future for your small business. Forbes.com 

Hybrids

Is social media killing e-mail marketing? The short answer, according to contributor Steve Rubel, is no, but it is forcing e-mail marketing to undergo a considerable evolution. You can read all Rubel’s points about this potentially huge shift at the link above, but suffice it to say that e-mail marketers have learned the power possible by linking their e-mail marketing campaigns with the new power of social media. Advertising Age 
Integrating e-mail marketing with SEO and social media. Continuing with the theme of better together, this overview of a recent marketing boot camp looks at the idea that three of the most important online marketing techniques function better as a unit than separately. There are some really neat takeaways at the bottom of the post as well. Solid Cactus Blog 

Operations

How is e-mail marketing like dating? Can e-mail marketing and lead nurturing be compared to any other relationship building process? Absolutely, says marketing consultant J-P De Clerck. Build profiles and relationships progressively and learn more about how to play this new kind of dating game. Conversion Marketing Forum