Every once in a while a great book comes along to help people be better at their jobs. Recently a new book from Jeanniey Mullen and David Daniels was released that is positioned to help us with our approach and understanding to email marketing. Now I have been working in email marketing and interactive since 1996 and I have seen many changes in how campaigns can be created to be more effective. I am not going to lie to you as back in the beginning we were all just creating the rules of the game as we went along. But over the years we have, as an industry, taken steps to set rules, laws, guidelines and best practices. 

Now this book (Email Marketing One Hour a Day) is one that I wish would have been around when I first got into using email for the companies I worked at. There were not blogs like this, conferences, and a community of email marketers that were so open and willing to help. I have been slowly digging through chapters every few nights (sorry about not following the title rules of not spending an hour a day on it, but I have a few other things going on) and have found some good thoughts and lessons to not only apply, but to share with the team @eROI. 

In taking some time to go back to the basics and learning some approaches outlined in this book I am finding that I am thinking more about the overall approach as opposed to simply the execution of email campaigns. 

I encourage all of you to get either the digital copy or the print copy and not only take some time to read it yourself, but to either share your knowledge or pass your copy over to others on your team when you are finished with it. 

Here is to 2009 and having people that are passionate about what they do, how they approach email, and striving to drive the best results you can for your clients or company.

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ONLINE advertisers are being urged to find ways to let people register interest in an ad without leaving the web page, as consumers become increasingly unwilling to chase advertising links.

A study by online campaign manager Eyeblaster, which looked at 2000 online campaigns representing more than 29 billion page impressions over the past year, revealed consumers were ignoring ads because they took them away from their chosen destination.

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Citigroup Inc. has partnered with Amazon.com Inc. to add select Amazon merchandise and services to its loyalty offerings.

Members of Citi’s ThankYou Rewards Network can use points accrued through the loyalty program to purchase products offered on and fulfilled through Amazon.com. Rewards redemption takes place on Citi’s recently-renovated online interface, ThankYou.com — which allows searching and browsing by point range and category.

“We’re really focused on providing value to our members, especially ones that are highly engaged, and we want to nurture our relationship with them to build long lasting relationships,” said Nancy Gordon, EVP of ThankYou Network. “We felt that partnering with Amazon, one of the largest online retailers, would provide a better customer experience.”

The range of products offered on Amazon.com should help make ThankYou more appealing and relevant to a wide cross-section of Citi customers. With Amazon, ThankYou Network should be better able to differentiate itself from the glut of loyalty programs bombarding today’s consumers, Gordon added.

“Customers want choice, and they want the immediacy of being able to redeem for rewards,” she said. “Amazon helps provide a huge assortment of rewards at lower point options like books and DVDs and allows people to actually redeem for rewards quicker. They also provide for fast shipping, which means customers can get rewards quicker.”

Citi is promoting the new offering on its Web site and is gearing up for a more elaborate marketing campaign that may include e-mail, print and transpromo.

The ThankYou Network’s 13 million members earn points through using Citi cards, booking travel on Expedia and using Smith Barney debit cards.

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Everyone is kicking off new marketing plans, continuing successful initiatives and evaluating last year’s results.Inspired by my winter vacation reading material, David Meerman Scott’s “The New Rules of Marketing & PR,” one of my “marketing resolutions” this year will be to focus on enhancing the value of content offered on Pardot’s website while continuing to build more. When we work with new clients at Pardot, we always encourage people to give careful thought to the content that will be “locked-down” with registration forms. Ensuring that you are offering content that is truly useful to your target audience not only improves your reputation as a thought-leader, but keeps them coming back for more. The more valuable content you have out there, the more opportunities you have to build your prospect database through progressive profiling.However, before you churn out five new whitepapers and create a few new forms, keep in mind the principles Pardot staffer TJ brought to the table in last week’s blog post - as well as some tips from Adam - on balancing friction to reduce form abandonment. This is where the importance of creating valuable content comes in. Anyone else have “marketing resolutions” for the new year? 

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