Email Marketing Today Podcast

Email Marketing Today is a fun and informative podcast hosted by Listrak's email experts Ross Kramer, CEO, Matt Elliott, Client Services Director, and Brent Shroyer, Product Manager. Each week, Ross, Matt, and Brent get together in Listrak's state-of-the-art broadcast studio to discuss the issues that matter most to email marketers – deliverability, reputation, list acquisition and management, design and content best practices, segmentation, and other ways to enhance campaign performance and increase ROI. Podcasts are generally 20-30 minutes and each one focuses on a specific topic. Creating an effective email marketing strategy just got easier - you don't want to miss a single broadcast! Subscribe now!

If you have any questions, comments,or items you would like to hear us talk about on the show, or even if you would like to be a guest on the podcast, email us at podcast@listrak.com.

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Episode 39 – Tips on eCommerce Calls-to-Action from Herschell Gordon Lewis - Part 2
Now that your subscribers are opening your messages, how do you get them to convert? Herschell Gordon Lewis is back this week providing tips on your email calls-to-action, including fonts, images, copy, and exclusivity. You don't want to miss this one! Download now.
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Episode 38 – Tips on eCommerce Subject Lines from Herschell Gordon Lewis - Part 1
Wondering how you can cut through the clutter of the inbox and make your emails stand out? Herschell Gordon Lewis, author of "Effective Email Marketing" and "Internet Marketing: Tips, Tricks, and Tactics" joins Listrak for a discussion on what works and what doesn't for eCommerce subject lines. Download our latest podcast to learn how you can structure your subject lines to maximize open rates. Download now.
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Episode 37 – Recap from MarketingSherpa's Email Summit
As always, the MarketingSherpa Email Summit conference was packed full of exciting, useful information for email marketers. Brent Shroyer, Karen Nuss, and Dana Hammer-Eden provide their feedback on the sessions and on the discussions held at Listrak's advanced strategies clinic during the show. Tune in to learn about subscriber retention, social media integration, testing, shopping cart abandonment, automated triggered messages, and more! Download now.
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Episode 36 – Selling your new ideas to your old boss
What worked in the good old days of email marketing can be outright dangerous today; but if your boss hasn't kept up with the times, it can be difficult for you to implement best practices. Brent, Matt, Dana, and Megan share their thoughts on how you can prove to your boss that it's time to upgrade your sending procedures. You'll get a bigger return on your email marketing investment, and maybe even that promotion you've been hoping for! Download now.
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Episode 35 – Getting The Most Bang for your Email Marketing Buck
Ross, Brent, and Megan discuss Listrak's latest white paper "Three Steps to a Higher Return on Your Email Marketing Investment." Everyone needs to get the most out of each and every marketing campaign, and with email's enormous ROI, it just makes sense to focus on doing it right to maximize your returns. Download now.
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Episode 34 – Stephanie Miller on Email Deliverability
Brent and Ross welcome Stephanie Miller from Return Path to Email Marketing Today to follow up on her webinar "Five Ways to Increase Inbox Placement and Revenue." They discuss how engagement factors into subscriber reputation and give advice on ways to ensure your emails reach your audience. Download now.
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Episode 33 – Wheel of Deliverability
Brent, Ross, Brandon, and Megan discuss Listrak’s latest white paper “Email Deliverability: Six Steps to Maintain a Positive Reputation in 2010“ and its useful, interactive wheel of deliverability. ISPs use a number of different factors in measuring reputation, and Listrak’s deliverability wheel is an easy tool for marketers to use to stay informed on the latest developments. Listen now, and be sure to let us know what you think of Brent’s sound effects! Download now.
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Episode 32 – Measuring Results in 2010
Laura Patterson, author of “Marketing Metrics in Action” and recent guest on Listrak’s webinar series “Best Practices for Proving Marketing’s Value” joins Ross Kramer, Brent Shroyer, and Megan Ouellet on this exciting episode of Email Marketing Today. The group covers some tough topics, like what it takes to align sales and marketing, and Megan learns what the Listrak marketing team needs to do in 2010 to get an “A” from Ross! Download now.
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Episode 31 – Rethinking Brands in 2010
Jonathan Salem Baskin joins Ross and Matt in this episode of Email Marketing Today to follow up on his webinar "10 for 10: Marketing Ideas for the First Post-Brand Decade." He provides valuable insight that is helpful as you plan your 2010 marketing strategies. Don't miss this episode!
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Episode 30 – Email is Dead. Long Live Email!
This week, Ross, Matt, and Brent welcome Jeanne Jennings, interactive marketing strategist and consultant, to our podcast series. They discuss how the “set it and forget it” mentality can do more harm than good by looking at some crazy welcome messages large retailers are sending out. They also discuss how to correctly use an email series and they respond to the Wall Street Journal’s recent claim that email is dead. (It’s not.) Don’t miss this one!
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Episode 29 – Lessons learned from WWD New Rules of Consumer Engagement
Matt Elliott attended the WWD New Rules of Consumer Engagement conference in NY last week, and he and, during this podcast, he and Brent discuss some of the trends he heard from Zappos, Estee Lauder, Overstock.com, and other large online retailers, including emotional branding, the importance of videos, reviews, and user generated content, and why social media channels should only be used to engage and relate while email should be used as your promotional channel.
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Episode 28 – Bringing Sexy Back to Email Marketing
This week, Ross, Matt, and Brandon review Listrak’s latest white paper "Top 20 Mistakes Made by Email Marketers and How You can Avoid Them this Holiday Season." They discuss why email is still working, what you can do to get more out of your campaigns, and Brent sings!!!
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Episode 27 – Back to the Future – 5 Trends in Email Marketing
Ross, Matt, and Brent discuss five current trends that every email marketer should be doing. They offer up great tips on engagement, abandonment, sharing emails on social networks, testing campaigns, and the need to bury old bad habits – specifically removing the word “blast” from your email vocabulary. If you’re still blasting messages to all of your subscribers instead of segmenting your audience to send relevant messages, you’re killing your list. But don’t worry – help is on its way! Listen to this podcast to learn more.
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Episode 26 - Get your emails ready for the holidays - Insights from Chad White
Chad White, research director at Smith Harmon and author of The Retail Email Blog, joins Ross, Brent, Matt, and Brandon is the study today to discuss his latest guide "The Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season - Email Insights and Inspiration from Christmas Past to Plan your Christmas Future." In the guide, Chad provides tactics on how to make your emails stand out in the inbox, including using video and animated gifs – and strategies on how to turn readers into buyers. The holiday season is right around the corner, don’t miss this episode!
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Episode 25 – Who is Davis Buffington and how can he increase the relevancy of your email campaigns?
This week, Brent, Matt, and Brandon discuss Listrak's latest white paper on building subscriber personas to increase the relevancy of email campaigns. By making up detailed individuals and creating emails targeted towards their specific needs, you can get relevant without spending hours mining your data. It's a new trick for your email marketing toolkit and it will save you a lot of time and hassle so don't miss this episode!
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Episode 24 – What the kids are doing
It's a full house in the studio today! Brandon Brophy, Listrak's deliverability analyst, joins Ross, Matt, and Brent to talk about Yahoo! And, Edwin and TJ, Ross' 16 and 17 year old cousins, give us a teenage perspective on communicating via email, text, and social networks. It's valuable insight into the teen market - don't miss it!
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Episode 23 – Engaging your inactive subscribers
Brandon Brophy, Listrak's deliverability analyst, joins Matt Elliott and Brent Shroyer in the studio this week to talk about his recent blog post "The Inactive Subscribers" (blog.listrak.com). Brandon also gives more insight into Listrak's initial findings in its Shopping Cart Abandonment study.
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Episode 22 – The few, the proud, the brave
Ross, Matt, and Brent talk about the launch of Listrak Conductor and how it brings sophisticated, advanced technology into the mid market. Now, anyone can afford to send event triggered email messages. Listen to this podcast to learn how you can start engaging your audience at a level you never thought possible.
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Episode 21 – Ross's Rants and Raves
Ross, Matt, and Brent are back in the studio for an off-the-cuff discussion about current events at Listrak and in the email marketing industry. There is a lot of great info packed into this 20 minute podcast, including product launch information on Listrak Conductor, logistics about Listrak’s move to a larger facility, and industry info on the Email Standards Project’s Outlooks Broken – Let’s Fix It. If you’re not already involved in this project, listen to this podcast to learn how to take action.
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Episode 20 – More on Email Deliverability
Ross, Matt and Brent are back in the studio for Listrak’s 20th recording! Spinning off of Wednesday’s Webinar with Mark Brownlow, Ross, Matt and Brent discuss the issues of email campaigns commonly being marked as spam with popular email accounts such as Yahoo!, Hotmail and Gmail. Know where your email campaigns are being delivered to in your recipients’ account by tuning in to this week’s Podcast.
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Episode 19 – Sharing and Using Data
Ross and Brent welcome Listrak’s Director of Integration Services, Chris Felpel, to this week’s broadcast. Chris provides valuable insight into how you can use Listrak’s API to automate data synchronization across your entire organization and how you can use it to import subscribers into specific steps in Listrak Conductor. And Ross makes an exciting announcement at the end so be sure to listen to the entire podcast!
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Episode 18 – Listrak Conductor Preview
Ross, Matt, and Brent discuss a very exciting topic this week – our event triggered messaging feature, which we’re calling Listrak Conductor. This is the first triggered email program available at mid-tier pricing so you can send emails like the pros at a fraction of the cost! They also announce the details of a special contest for our podcast listeners. You don’t want to miss this one!
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Episode 17 – Wisdom of the Crowd
Ross and Brent welcome Brandon Brophy back to the studio as they share their viewpoints on the worst email salutations and how to overcome the dreaded and meaningless “Dear ,”. They also talk about easy ways of adding social aspects to email campaigns that help you measure subscriber engagement.
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Episode 16 – Rants, Raves, and Other Useful Information
Ross, Matt, and Brent are back in the studio and they have a lot to say today! This episode kicks off with Ross discussing his switch from Eudora to Outlook and why he found it necessary to unsubscribe from a number of email newsletters during the process, and why he was still receiving several of the newsletters after years of ignoring them. Next, Brent discusses lazy email habits that are not only annoying but damaging to the sender’s brand as well. Don’t miss this candid discussion.
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Episode 15: Invite, Engage, Nurture
Ross, Matt, and Brent are back in the studio this week discussing the importance of interacting with your email subscribers. Email doesn’t have to be, and shouldn’t be, a one sided conversation. When used properly, email is one of the best tools you have to build lasting relationships with your audience. Tune into this podcast to learn how.
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Episode 14: Exciting Profiling Features
Listrak 4.5 launched today and Listrak’s experts Ross, Brent, and Brandon are in the studio discussing the new features. The six new profiling features top the list. Listrak 4.5 has three new engagement profiles – you can now automatically filter by last open, read, or click date - to help you filter your most active subscribers from your least active. It also have three new geographical profiles – country, region, and zip code – which automatically filter your subscribers by location. It’s pretty exciting, so listen in to hear how you can put these profiling filters to good use! Hear what they have to say.
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Episode 13: Expert Email Advice
The studio is full today as Ross and Brent welcome Keri Palasz, Karen Nuss, and Brandon Brophy, three of our account managers, to the broadcast. They have been up to some pretty interesting things – they are currently researching shopping cart abandonment tactics by abandoning hundreds of online carts. It’s early in the process but they have already started to notice some fascinating trends which they discuss in detail. They’ve also been putting this knowledge to good use and they’re helping Listrak customers get incredible results through re-engagement campaigns. Hear what they have to say.
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Episode 12: Talking about Social Marketing
Sandy Carter and some members of her team join Ross and Matt on this episode of Email Marketing Today. Sandy is IBM's Vice President, SOA & WebSphere Marketing, Strategy and Channels, and recent guest on Listrak's webinar series. The response to her webinar has been tremendous so we invited Sandy to join us on a podcast to answer even more questions. She addresses the best ways to implement social media into your marketing mix, what to do if you make a mistake, and what you should look for when hiring an SEO specialist. You should be following Sandy's expert advice, so don't miss this podcast!
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Episode 11: Turning a Mistake into an Opportunity
Ross, Matt, and Brent use the email blunder created by A&W Rootbeer's marketing agency to discuss the importance of maintaining visibility across every subscriber and customer touch-point. If you can’t see everything your customers will, big mistakes can happen. But, every mistake is an opportunity to build stronger relationships and this podcast focuses on how you can turn lemons into lemonade.
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Episode 10: Email Summit Recap
Brandon Brophy, one of Listrak's account managers, joins Brent in the studio for a candid discussion on what they learned at MarketingSherpa's Email Summit. Brandon is a stats guy and he shares a lot of interesting data during this podcast!
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Episode 9: Advanced Strategy
Ross, Matt, and Brent are back in the studio. Don't miss this podcast as the dynamic trio banter, share fascinating antidotes, and entertain the audience while providing important information that will help you overcome the challenges of implementing advanced features and best practices. They also discuss the need for everyone to attend Matt's deliverability webinar as someone asked him how to purchase CAN-SPAM compliant email lists. If you aren't sure what’s wrong with that question, listen to this podcast and then sign up for the deliverability webinar immediately!
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Episode 8: Practical Advice - Don't Abuse the Power of Email
You don't want to miss this episode! Peter Martin, Founder and CEO of Cactus Sky Communications, joins Ross, Brent, and Karen in Listrak's studio. Peter shares his insight into the importance of using email as a marketing tool, not a just sales tool. Your subscribers trust you enough to give you their email address - you must value that trust by emailing them useful, relevant information. If you are asking them to buy something in every email you send, they'll soon stop listening to you and the relationship will be broken.
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Episode 7: What we learned at the Email Evolution Conference
Matt and Brent welcome special guest Karen Nuss, one of Listrak’s account managers, to the podcast series. Matt and Karen attended the Email Evolution Conference and brought back lots of exciting tips. If you weren’t able to make it to Scottsdale for the show, or if you want a recap on some of the sessions you weren’t able to attend, this 30 minute podcast discusses the most important take-aways from the conference. Now is the right time to be in the email marketing industry. Matt, Karen, and Brent discuss what you can do to drive prospects to your site using the email tools you already have in place.
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Episode 6: Now is the Time for Best Practices
Ross, Matt, and Brent provide insight on what you should be doing differently to survive the recession. Instead of just reacting, stop and take a close look at your processes – short term thinking can lead to long term ramifications that have an even bigger negative effect on your business. Now is the time to focus on your messages and to implement best practices so you keep your audience engaged with each email you send. To find out how, listen now.
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Episode 5: Why You Need to Pay Closer Attention to Gmail
Ross proves once again that he is a master multi-tasker - even at 3:30 in the morning! In this podcast, Ross, Matt, and Brent discuss Gmail's rise in popularity, how its technology differs from other ISPs, and why email marketers need to pay attention so they reach their growing list of Gmail subscribers with emails that are delivered to the inbox intact. Listen now.
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Episode 4: Current Events in Deliverability and Split Testing
Listeners will enjoy this off-the-cuff discussion between Ross, Matt, and Brent as they talk about the latest news from Return Path and how it directly affects the deliverability of your messages. This candid discussion leads to tips on how email marketers can increase not only the deliverability of messages, but the responses they receive by doing some simple split testing prior to deployment. This 20 minute podcast is full of insightful information that can impact the success of your email campaigns. Listen now.
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Episode 3: Listrak 4.4. Feature Updates
Ross, Brent, and Matt review Listrak's latest features, including an easier way to perform A/B split testing and a more efficient way to import segmentation data. They also discuss opening a can of worm holes, action hero shots, and Brent unveils the release data for Listrak's Event Triggered Messaging system - July '09!!! Listen now to learn more!
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Episode 2: List Acquisition Part 2
In this broadcast, Ross and Brent continue the discussion surrounding good list acquisition tactics and how poor practices negatively affect your reputation and deliverability. This session focuses on best practices for welcome messages and it ends with a surprising confession from Ross. You don't want to miss it!
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Episode 1: List Acquisition Part 1
In this broadcast, Ross, Matt, and Brent discuss online and offline list acquisition best practices and how your procedures directly impact the deliverability of your messages. The tips they offer are fresh and exciting, and you're sure to gain valuable insight into your list acquisition strategy and learn ways you can enhance and improve your processes.
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