Return Path

We took a look at email marketing trends from Mother's Day 2014 across major floral brands (ProFlowers, 1-800-Flowers.com, FTD, Teleflora, FromYouFlowers) and found similarities and differentiators in key areas — subject line, body and call to action (CTA).

Email is still a top communication channel for retailers looking to stay in touch with customers and prospects. In fact, 98 percent of retailers collect email addresses through a variety of channels, with the most popular being their websites and point-of-sale locations. Retailers use these email addresses to send a high volume of messages to consumers for operational and marketing purposes in an effort to drive additional revenue. However, many retailers aren't capturing accurate emails or managing their email database effectively.

More marketers are beginning to focus on new strategies to drive increased revenue in a changed email environment. The keys to success will be to send less email; leverage new data sources from channels like social media; better design for mobile devices; and extend personalized messaging in email beyond the inbox.

Q: "What's your opinion on using an affirmative opt-in email strategy versus an assumed opt-in strategy, when the subscriber groups include existing customers only (no prospects, leads, etc.) and email addresses have been pulled from a CRM system? These subscribers have not necessarily signed up to receive email on a website or through any other method."

By Matt Griffin Follow these six steps to test along the conversion funnel. As a cataloger, you spend time testing your circulation strategy, developing creative that will be a hit with your audience and building an image with which your customers can identify. But are you applying the same rigorous work to your e-mail campaigns? "Merchants test around their catalogs because catalogs are expensive to produce, and they don't want waste," says Eric Kirby, senior vice president and general manager for e-mail solutions at DoubleClick. "But because e-mail always has been cheap, they don't bother to test it as much as they should."