“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”!  During this holiday season we at eConnect Email will be enjoying some time with our family and friends.  And we hope that you and yours have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  We are so thankful to all of our wonderful clients this past year and we truly appreciate your business.  Looking forward to an awesome 2012!

Holiday Hours:

We’ll be closed December 23rd – 26th…until the start of the day Tuesday, December 27th…and again Dec 31- Jan 2…until the start of the day Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012!

As 2011 draws to a close, email marketers should already be planning their strategies for the 2012. While 2011 saw the establishment of new technologies as mainstream, 2012 will enable us to deepen our engagement with these technologies, thereby catering more effectively to an ever more mobile and connected audience. Without further ado, let’s dive into the top email strategies for the new year.

• Deeper Customer Engagement

By engagement, I mean two-way conversation. Email marketers must focus more stringently on involving subscribers in dialogue, speaking with them, rather than at them.

• Relevant Content

List segmentation will take top priority in 2012 as subscribers expect email messages to increasingly reflect their personal preferences and needs. Creating targeted lists based on subscriber behavior such as email clicks, website browsing, and previous purchases will enable businesses to send content that remains high on the subscriber’s priority list.

• Mobile Optimization

As people increasingly use mobile devices to check email, businesses will need to create messages that acknowledge the unique aspects of mobile design. Single columns, larger fonts and buttons, and increased space between clickable elements all make emails easier for mobile users to navigate.

• Automated Campaigns

While many businesses already use triggered responses for email receipts and welcome letters, automation will gain a whole new level of sophistication in 2012. Increase customer engagement with your brand by using automation for cross sell and up sell offers, birthday/anniversary greetings, purchase recommendations, and more. By utilizing multiple triggers for your automation campaign, you can keep loyal subscribers engaged on a consistent basis.

• Social Media Integration

No longer will email and Facebook operate in parallel universes. Social sharing will become an intrinsic part of email marketing strategies in 2012 as businesses seek to create multi-channel communication. Enabling subscribers to share message content via social media icons will increase the likelihood of your message reaching an ever broader audience of targeted prospects.

• Email Marketing Becomes More Important, Not Less

Ultimately, despite speculations that email is dead, email marketing will gain greater importance in 2012 than ever before. Email messages will be more personal and relevant based on subscriber data, making them an integral part of a multi-pronged approach to overall customer engagement.

eConnect Email remains on the cutting edge of email marketing technology and stands ready to help you incorporate these vital elements into your strategy. By starting out on the front edge of evolving email technology, you’ll be ready for whatever new developments 2012 brings your way.

This upcoming Saturday morning, December 10th eConnect Email will be experiencing some downtime due to a planned database server migration. To minimize disruption, the migration will begin at 11:00 PM (PST) and will run until complete – during this period the application will be unable to create or send emails. We’re expecting it to take 24 hours to complete and you will be able to resume sending as soon as it’s live again.

In preparation for the move we will be trying to minimize any campaigns in the sending queue by Friday evening. Please plan to send any large volume campaigns at the start of the the day Friday and plan to taper off by the end of that day.

During the migration, we will be implementing some new security enhancements. We’ve recently discovered some areas that we’d like to update and this database move will be a good opportunity to do so.

This migration is a milestone in bringing you all the greatly improved features we intend to offer our clients on eConnect Email and will be the only disruptive maintenance we require during the migration to our new infrastructure. We appreciate your understanding and co-operation!

Thanks!

We’re excited to introduce you to the newest member of our team, Anna Clendennen! Anna, a St. Edward’s University alum, joins eConnect Email as a Business Consultant. Formerly she was a project manager, copy writer and social media star for Huckleberry Creative. Apart from her creative endeavors she is also perusing a Master’s degree in Global Policy Studies. Check her out on Twitter @annaclendennen

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We’re excited to introduce Amy Kauffman, the newest member of the eConnect Email Team.  Amy, a University of Texas alum, comes to eConnect Email with an extensive communications background and agency experience. She previously headed up a boutique public relations firm in Dallas and has worked for clients and companies in a variety of industries, ranging from the from nonprofit, real estate to technology space.  You can follow Amy on twitter @AmyKauffman

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