Social media is all the focus of marketing talks these days. But here you go… Research shows that yes, the well known email is the most effective form of digital marketing and is still far more effective than social media in attracting customers to your business online. Period.

There are multiple studies in the recent years showing that customer acquisition via email has grown exponentially year over year. Organic search is the most powerful acquisition channel, but only a miniscule percentage of customers purchase via Facebook or Twitter.

Working with a variety of businesses for years, we have discovered that customers who come to businesses via email tend to shop more and spend more.

Don’t get me wrong – social media is valuable for customer engagement, but it turns out email beats it in driving sales.

Email is effective for many reasons. First, it’s opt-in-based when people who subscribe to your list give you their consent to send them messages. Secondly, it is as personal as it gets, as it arrives in the customer’s hands directly. Who has time to go search for your business online or for your social media accounts? This puts you front and center, and your message is as close as it gets.

A primary reason why email is now a more powerful customer-acquisition channel is mobile devices. In fact, email is known to be the number-one activity for people on their phones. I know, I do it constantly! People check email all the time, wherever they are, and whenever they have a spare moment. You are right: this gives your business the opportunity to stay connected.

But you have to be smart, because the window is narrow. When people read email on a mobile device they do it quickly. So make sure your emails contain a powerful message and grab attention.

How to ensure you grow your email list at a constant pace? Some businesses find website pop-up messages and checkout messages very effective for building their email lists. For example, a message at the checkout counter saying: “Enter your email address and get 15% off your next purchase.” Or a message to your website visitors, saying “Subscribe to our newsletter and get a free delivery on your next order.”

More than forty percent of all emails are now viewed on smartphones, which means your messages must be coded to be attractive on a phone screen. But do not worry! With Nouri.sh eNewsletter you do not need any coding. Nouri.sh takes care of that for you.

So would you rather chase social media tactics that you are not too sure about, or invest in the thing that really works, which is email? Email is more important than ever, not less. Partner up with us at Nouri.sh and join the winners who leverage email most effectively!

Why use Nouri.sh you say?
We’re helping businesses improve how they communicate with their customers, so we take care of enabling you to share the stuff that you really care about and want your customers to know and eventually also care about. We help you tell clear and meaningful stories and connect with your audience whenever you want, wherever you want.

So if you don’t already have a Nouri.sh account sign up now. It is free and takes only a few moments to register and set up your first automated online campaign.

And what is more – we are always here to support you! Give it a try and see for yourself!

Then email my[at]nouri.sh for the chance to have your newsletter featured on our blog for all to learn about you!

Yes, we are renewing the Featured Newsletter series!

Yes, we love helping our customers in any way possible!

Yes, we would love to have your entry and generate more awareness and exposure for you and your business!

And Yes, You win!

There is no deadline for this, but why wait!? This is a fantastic chance to get showcased and gain more subscribers, so send your newsletter now.

Don’t forget to join us on Facebook and Twitter and share your tips on how to get the best from you eNewsletter.

And last but not least, if you need any support with getting your newsletter as bright and powerful as you want it, just drop us a line! We will be more than happy to help 🙂

have introduced a new policy where they will reject emails that are sent from Yahoo addresses, but that do not originate from Yahoo servers.

Unfortunately this will affect some Nouri.sh users as the emails are sent from our server. However, this can quickly be overcome.

If you continue to use your Yahoo email address in the From Email field, you risk your email being rejected. Please edit your Campaign Basics, so that the From Email address of your eNewsletter is NOT a Yahoo address.

This change is currently being debated, and as a result we are unsure if this policy will be permanent. But, we kindly ask that you amend your email address anyway to avoid damaging your campaigns.

For further information about the changes see here:

http://yahoo.tumblr.com/post/82426971544/an-update-on-our-dmarc-policy-to-protect-our-users

To contact a member of our team, click here.

Thank you,

The Nouri.sh Team.

No-one can compete with our pricing
We are proud to offer our flexible and fully customisable eNewsletter solution from £209/$319 a year.

If there is something we don’t currently offer that you would like to see available, just let us know. Our developers will be happy to implement your ideas making Nouri.sh the most bespoke solution on the market. Currently in the pipeline are dynamic newsletters, dynamic titles and a newsletter preview 24h before the mailing.

Not only can you send up to 5,000 emails a month, you can create an unlimited number of campaigns and you can manage an unlimited number of subscribers.

Make the most of our unique features
For example combining multiple RSS feeds. I recently helped a client to set up a newsletter that combined their blog posts with their Facebook updates, allowing their clients to receive all the business news in one handy newsletter!

With a starter package you can customise the content for multiple subscriber groups, ensuring everyone gets super relevant content that interests them. The Nouri.sh team are also here to give you tips and advice; how to improve your newsletter, how to increase the number of subscribers, how to track the progress of your newsletter with Google Analytics the list goes on…

You also get advanced subscriber management. If you need access to a list of subscribers you can download this at the touch of a button. You can edit or extract the data and re-upload it to your back office. Effortless!

Another great benefit of the starter package is access to custom templates. Unlike the free level with Nouri.sh branding, the templates in the starter package give the newsletter that extra professional flair.

You can upgrade here or contact us for more information.

Nouri.sh is a unique email newsletter solution. You can tailor the content and the look of the newsletter to fit your specific needs. Nouri.sh is a great way for sharing blog posts with your aficionados and is an equally good solution for internal email as you have the option to create multiple campaigns to target specific groups.

Yes, there are other similar products on the market but here are just some of the reasons why we stand out from the crowd.

WordPress Plugin

We have our very own WP plugin that adds a widget to your WP blog, allowing people to subscribe to your Nouri.sh newsletter campaign. You simply choose which campaigns you want to make available to your visitors.

To install, simply download this file, unzip and upload to your plugins directory within WordPress. Once installed you will see a Nouri.sh link in the menu, you simply input your username and password, choose the campaigns to make available (if you have more than one) and away you go!

Subscribe Forms

Getting new subscribers is important to the growth of your campaign. This is true whether you are an eCommerce business looking for an instant conversion, or whether you are just looking to remind someone about your brand. Here at Nouri.sh we have 3 different subscribe forms to help you grow your campaign.

For more detailed information about subscribe forms see here.

-Simple

The simple subscribe form is perfect for adding in to emails or posting on social media sites. Another great place to put this form is in your email signature.

-Customised

You can provide individuals with a customised link which will automatically subscribe them to the campaign when clicked on. Be sure to edit the URL to include their real email address.

-Advanced

The advanced subscribe form is better suited to a webpage or blog page. In fact you can add this form in to any page that you wish by pasting the code in to your newsletter template.

Measurable Success

When you login to view your campaigns you have access to a variety of statistics. You can see how your subscriber base is growing and view metrics such as the open and click-through rates.
You can also measure the success of your newsletter using Google Analytics by editing the newsletter template to enable tracking. This allows you to dig even deeper in to what content your readers find the most relevant.

Nouri.sh is FREE

With Nouri.sh you can subscribe to our free plan and send up to 1,000 emails a month. You can also combine multiple RSS feeds to ensure content is highly relevant to your readers.

Unlike any other similar service out there Nouri.sh does not force you to upgrade to a paid plan after a 15 or 30 day trial. You can test Nouri.sh for free as long as you like with the same great support and customer service as you would expect from the paid plans.

Customisable Nouri.sh Plans

We also offer a selection of paid plans which we can help you to customise to meet your specific needs. The main benefit of signing up to a paid plan is that you can set up multiple campaigns, allowing you to segment your subscribers. This is imperative for creating reader specific content and allows you to tailor make emails for multiple subscriber groups.

Other great features include:

– More emails. You can currently send up to 100,000 emails per month on our Professional plan. If you are looking for an even higher volume please contact us: sales@nouri.sh

– Advanced subscriber management. You have enhanced management features giving you the ability to download/export subscriber lists for easy management

– Nouri.sh is flexible; it can be tailored to suit bloggers, businesses and is even a useful internal eNewsletter solution. Our team is here to ensure users make the most of Nouri.sh, so if there is something you would like that we don’t currently offer then drop us an email to let us know.

The 2010 Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season includes a lot of predictions based on activity in previous years, but those predictions are all relatively safe. Here are Chad White’s top five predictions:

1. Social and rich-media campaigns won’t get much traction after mid-November. Once we get into late November and December, folks are just too busy running around and fighting traffic and the weather to spend much time with social campaigns. Same goes for rich media like video. A couple of years ago when video was all the rage, email campaigns anchored by video content evaporated once we got into the core of the holiday season. Not only are folks too busy, but during the holidays consumers turn to email for discounts and gift ideas more than anything else. Play to the channel’s strength. 

2. Discount codes will become more prominent in preheader messages and subject lines. Discount codes are highly relevant to shoppers during the holiday season. Activity last year certainly proved that. So if you’re promoting a discount code, make it super-easy to find. Instead of burying it at the bottom of the primary message, elevate it up into a preview pane banner, into your preheader message, or into your subject line. I’ve been seeing a fair number of retailers promoting discount codes in their preheaders this year — and the next step up is the subject line. Especially during the Black Friday to Cyber Monday time span when inboxes are deluged, discount codes in your subject line could attract subscribers to your email over a competitor’s. 

3. “Share with your network” (SWYN) functionality will be used more strategically. Right now SWYN links are found in the headers, share bars and footers of many emails, which is fine in general. But during the holiday season — and especially on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when you’re likely promoting your best deals of the year — consider giving your deal a viral boost by adding another SWYN call-to-action right next to the “Buy Now” button. Make SWYN a strong secondary call-to-action, not an afterthought relegated to the margins of your email design. 

4. Designing mobile-friendly emails is more important than ever. With the rapid adoption of Android-powered phones and the continued adoption of iPhones — both of which render HTML email pretty well — the distinction between email and mobile email is falling away. Soon mobile email will just be email. Couple that with the fact that email is the No. 1 activity on smartphones, according to a recent study, and this market segment is becoming impossible to ignore. Make your emails more mobile-friendly by (1) using an informative preheader message and putting it ahead of “view with images” links and other preheader elements, (2) narrowing the width of your email template to 650 pixels or less, and (3) using larger font sizes to counteract the effect of your emails being scaled down for mobile’s small screens. 

5. At least 50% of retailers will send an email on Thanksgiving Day and at least 70% will on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. With email volume per subscriber continuing to rise, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are pretty much at the saturation point. Last year, many retailers began their Cyber Monday campaigns on the afternoon of the day before, giving rise to Cyber Sunday. I expect that phenomenon to repeat this year, plus I expect Black Friday emails to spill over into what I’ll call Black Thursday (a.k.a. Thanksgiving Day). Similar to activity on Cyber Sunday, retailers will increasingly make their Black Friday offers valid on Thursday afternoon, looking to lock in sales before the crush of email on Black Friday. 

Courtesy of Media Post 

 http://bit.ly/bnsQBV

Email marketing is relatively new to the marketing field. Keep this useful glossary to hand and your email campaigns will go with ease! 

Above-the-fold
The part of an email or web page that is visible without scrolling down.  Typically represented by the Preview Pane.

Bounce – Hard/Soft Bounce
A hard bounce is the failed delivery of an email due to a permanent reason like a non-existent address. A soft bounce is the failed delivery of an email due to a temporary issue, like a full mailbox or an unavailable server.

CPA (or Cost Per Acquisition)
A payment model in which payment is based solely on sales or registrations.

CPC (Cost per Click)
Rather than paying a cost per 1000 emails delivered, or a cost per response, some suppliers charge a sum for all the recipients that click through the email.

CPM (or Cost Per Thousand)
CPM commonly refers to the cost per 1,000 emails for distribution.

CPR (or Cost Per Response)
This term is used to track responses, where the desired result is not purchase, click-through or cost per number of emails for the campaign).

Click Through Rate (CTR)
The number of people per 100 (expressed in percentage terms) who click through to a URL in an email, banner ad, text or graphic, to view a specific web page.

Conversion Rate
This reflects the percentage of people converted into buyers (or whatever action is desired) out of the total population exposed to the conversion effort i.e. email.

Distribution (Gross)
The total number of emails sent as part of a single campaign/distribution to all (SMTP) addresses on the distribution list.

Distribution (Net)
The total number of emails sent and successfully delivered as part of a single campaign/distribution to all (SMTP) addresses on the distribution list.

HTML Email
An HTML email is perhaps the standard form for email marketing. They are rich with colour and images and contain embedded links, banner ads etc. Marketers have to keep in mind that some recipients do not want to receive their emails in HTML. However, HTML messages often pull a higher response than plain text messages.

Landing Page
The page on a website where the visitor arrives. With an email campaign, it can be the page to which the email directs user via a link.

Links
Text links, hyperlinks, graphics or images which, when clicked direct the user to another online location.

Open Rate
The percentage of emails opened in an email marketing campaign.
Opt-in (or Subscribe)
Where an individual has positively indicated that he or she wants to receive email marketing from your company.
Opt-Out (or Unsubscribe)
Where an individual requests not to be included on an email list i.e. unsubscribe.

Personalisation
The practice of writing the email to make the recipient feel that it is more personal and was sent with him or her in mind. This includes using the recipient’s name in the salutation or subject line, referring to previous purchases or offering recommendations based on previous buying patterns (like Amazon).
Preview Pane
Here you can see a snapshot of your message without fully opening the it.  It is important that you are aware of this and do not include images within the first 5-7 lines.

Privacy Policy
A clear description of a website or Data User’s policy on the use of information collected from visitors and including what they intent to do with the data.

Segmentation
This is where you separate your email list so that recipients get different content/offers based on their demographics, buying patterns etc.

Soft Opt-in
Where an individual is considered to have opted-in, on the basis that they have provided their email address during a sale or during the negotiation of a sale and other conditions are met, including that the individual was informed of how the information they provided would be used and were provided with an opportunity to opt out.

Solicited email or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email)
Where an individual has actively invited the Data User to send the individual commercial email.

Spam
Spam is random, untargeted bulk email where recipients did not request communications from that company.

Split Testing
When the list is divided into a number of discrete cells to allow for a robust test across multiple variables such as subject line or email design. To determine optimum response, response rates are measured for each cell.

Targeting
Selecting a target audience or group of individuals likely to be interested in a certain product or service. Targeted campaigns tend to yield greater responses and fewer unsubscribers.

Tracking
Collecting and evaluating the statistics allowing you to measure the effectiveness of an email or an email campaign.
URL
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL i.e. web address) is a sequence of characters conforming to a standardized format, used for referring to resources by their location, shown in the address bar of a browser.
Viral Marketing
A type of marketing that is carried out voluntarily by a company’s customers i.e. word-of-mouth advertising. Tools such as send this page, article or website to a friend encourage people to refer or recommend your newsletter, company, product, or specific offer to others

While the recession is still in full blow online sales have gone up 15% to £50bn. Yet to really  secure  those sales retailers have found that they just have to go one step further and this time it’s personal!

Echo E-Business Management’s managing director Deborah Collier says “Personalisation gives any etailer the competitive edge. Branding is important but the ability to engage customers and understand them is crucial in tough times.”

Personalisation has been a hot topic for some time, helping brands improve one-to-one marketing, customer segmentation, up and cross-selling. But today, it’s all about predicting what the customer wants before they even know they want it and then making them think it was their decision in the first place.

One etailer springs to mind as a brilliant example of personalised shopping: Amazon. Each time you log in they suggest new books, CD’s or DVD’s according to your previous purchases. But personalisation is more complex than this.

Guy Westlake, senior product marketing manager EMEA at ecommerce provider Vignette, suggests: “The most cutting-edge technologies track customers’ actions on your site and build a profile of their wants and behaviours from there. Within one or two clicks on the site, you can build up a picture of the consumer.”

Three-step process

However, in what may be seen as personalisation heresy, Westlake explains that, as a rule, our behaviour is never that individual and even if it were, you could never give every single person exactly what they wanted. Instead, he advocates a three-step process:

• Use technology to harness the wisdom of crowds and understand your consumer to personalise the product offering. “It’s low cost, high return and has a short lead time to implement,” Westlake says.
• Personalise the online experience taking the lead from social networking. “Retailers underestimate that customers love talking to each other. They like to have ownership of brands and it creates advocates further along the loyalty ladder,” he reveals.
• Allow users to add their own further levels of personalisation. Westlake explains: “Sites such as the BBC’s draw users into the experience, create ownership of the online environment and make it a port of call rather than a sales channel.”

The biggest problem etailers face is people abandoning their baskets moments before checking out. One suggestion is to introduce a ‘Click to Call’ button allowing customers to talk through their purchase with an assistant. Customers feel reassured that they are getting the same level of service online as in store. Also, another problem is people spending a lot of time clicking through pages and abandoning the site leaving it inactive. One way to combat this is to include pop ups to remind the customer that they have un-purchased items in their basket.

Another problem is the log in procedure made simple by using Facebook connect- one click allows the site to use the data on Facebook to automatically create an online account- this speeds up the purchase process as this is where many people abandon their baskets.

Personalisation is now the new differentiating factor as retailers boost their websites and niche etailers pop up out of the blue. You want to stand out from the crowd- then make it personal.

Check out the new 2 minute video on the homepage, this will give you a quick overview of what Nourish does, how it works and how easy it is to use.

We’ll soon be adding various screencasts to help you make the most of setting up and configuring your campaigns.

We’re delighted to announce that Nourish has recently been acquired by Web Translations, a UK-based web company with a passion for Nourish.

Nourish will be back online from Monday 29 June. Woop! Woop!

Over the coming weeks, we will be adding some new features, if you’ve not already done so, please complete the survey online to give us feeback about what you like, dislike and would like to see over the coming months.

We will also be working our way through and fixing bugs that have been a cause of frustration for many users. Sorry about the recent downtime, but look forward to bringing you a new and improved service.

The New Nourish team