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ALCHEMY WORX INSIGHTS

Using Last-Click Attribution? You’re Hurting Email: Part 3

A simple review of daily sales figures has just shown that on days during which the company sends a lot of email, there is a significant boost in sales across all channels that can’t be accounted for any other way than email’s so-called halo effect. Since everyone in the organization presumably leaves their warm bed in the morning to make as much money as possible, the next move is simple, at least in concept: Make every day a high-volume email day.

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Why Do Consumers Buy? (Part IV: JCPenney’s Pricing Fumble)

Consumers like to feel smart. Any sense of achievement when shopping is a feather in their cap. The science of the sale is simple – it hypes consumer emotions. When people have emotional reactions, it’s something they want to talk about it. In retail, when they talk about it, it generates a buzz. It’s a simple process: Show value to your customers. They’ll engage and feel accomplished.

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Hey, It’s Just One Email a Week

When it comes to commercial email there are usually two camps in a typical organization: the folks in sales who need to make their numbers and who tend to want to send more email, and the folks in marketing who want to protect the brand and who get squeamish about the possibility of annoying customers with too much messaging.

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From Peas in the 1890s to Email Today, 80/20 Applies

What do peas, Italian wealth in the early 1900s and email house files have in common? The 80/20 rule.
Unfortunately, the 80/20 rule leads a lot of email marketers to punish 80 percent of their file out fear of disrupting the behavior of the 20 percent. Marketers learn early in their careers—often in business school—about the 80/20 rule and how it applies to business: 80 percent of a company’s revenue is typically driven by 20 percent of its customers.

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Increasing Engagement is Good, But Probably Not the Way You Think

Engagement. With the possible exception of relevance, it is arguably the most overused word in email marketing. Engagement became a hot topic in 2012 when deliverability professionals began touting it as a necessity for continuing to reach subscribers’ inboxes. Their argument went that the criminal spam issue had largely been solved with filtering technology. As a result, they said, email inbox providers were going to turn their attention to the next problem: commercial senders with large, largely inactive files.“

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GDPR: Dramatic Change in Permission Requirements

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation goes into force in May and will be a permission game changer for many organizations that serve Europeans. It requires, among other things, explicit, provable permission from individuals to use their personally identifiable information to send direct-marketing campaigns to them. The GDPR also requires clear unambiguous explanations as to what the information will be used for, and the collection of no more data than is necessary to execute the campaigns for which permission has been granted.

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Three Possible GDPR Scenarios, says Expert

When the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation goes into force, the big unknown is how European regulators plan to enforce it, especially since there are 28 independent Data Protection Authorities or one for each member of the EU.

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Putting DM Basics Back in Your Email Program

The “Father of Direct Marketing,” Lester Wunderman, once said the best DMers all have one trait in common: curiosity. And while any marketing program can benefit from its practitioners having a strong sense of curiosity, email can benefit from it most. Email’s cheapness allows for sloppy practices that would have Wunderman crawling out of his skin.

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