Shhh… Here’s How to Get Email Marketing Secrets from the Pro’s

Don’t just pay attention to the email marketing experts – pay attention to the email delivery experts too!

In addition to this here Mequoda blog, there are some hidden gems that I always look to when I’m doing email marketing research. These gems are actually the blogs of the email service providers (ESP’s) themselves.

Some ESP’s will simply give you updates of their services, while more progressive ones will actually give you insight into how to create better email marketing campaigns. I like companies that help me do my job better, so here are a few of those blogs:

• Constant Commentary from Constant Contact
• Mad Mimi Blog
• Inbox Ideas from AWeber
• Email Responsibly from Cheetah Mail
• Email Marketing Strategy from Blue Sky Factory
• Email Marketing Blog from MailChimp

I find the MailChimp blog to be especially helpful. For example, where else can you learn the average email campaign stats of your industry? These are of course limited to the MailChimp’s clients, but they have over 500,000 clients to sample from, so that’s no small case study.

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So if you’re looking to compare yourself to others in the “media and publishing” industry, how do you stack up to the above numbers?

MailChimp also offers some tips for improving these numbers:

• When you write your subject line, don’t sell what’s inside—tell what’s inside.
• Avoid using spammy keywords and phrases, and avoid using ALL CAPS or too many exclamation points.
• Make sure you keep in touch with your list regularly (at least once a quarter) so they can stay subscribed to your list.
• If you see an abnormally high number of bounces after a campaign, you should read your bounce back records for any messages or “clues” from spam filters.
• Make sure your “From:” and “Subject” contain your company name (so they’ll instantly recognize you).

This isn’t the first time we’ve sourced MailChimp though… They wrote a particularly great article on how to structure your email subject lines back in 2007 too. There’s been plenty of great stuff in between too, including case studies that have helped us shape our best practices tremendously.

They even give away stuff like free email templates. Sure, you won’t be able to unwrap them out of the box and use them, but if you’re looking for some solid code to start with that will work in any browser, they’re a good start.

How about you? Do you have any good email marketing resources to share?