Valentines e-marketing woos SMEs

Using Valentine's Day as an incentive, GraphicMail is assisting small businesses to get started with e-mail marketing by offering free credits and relevant e-mail newsletter templates, focused on the occasion, says Bizcommunity.

Its system is designed to offer SMEs what they need the most: time and low-cost marketing. Its automation system allows businesses to schedule a send, set up an auto responder campaign, and segment a list by gender, interest, or location.

Small businesses with long mailing lists will find it easy to upload, import, edit, and manage mailing lists. Additionally, the email-marketing provider urges users to obtain opt-in permission.

An Ohio gas company is trying to encourage customers to 'go green', reports WFMJ.

Columbia Gas will donate $10 to the Nature Conservancy for every customer who switches to paperless e-billing up to $200 000.

The Nature Conservancy works to rebuild the Atlantic Forest in Brazil as a part of its Plant a Billion Trees programme. Columbia's minimum contribution will be $100 000 and it plans to present a cheque to the Conservancy programme by 22 April, which is Earth Day.

Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks are forcing e-mail marketers to change their ways - and consumers and businesses stand to benefit, says ClickZ.

At the Email Evolution Conference in Miami, e-mail marketers explained how they are striving to improve campaign performance, from pruning e-mail subscriber lists to re-evaluating success goals and the metrics they track.

There are three ways that social media is changing e-mail marketing. E-mail now complements social media in referral campaigns and incentive-based promotions to acquire new customers. E-mail marketers will need to segment and personalise e-mail campaigns since they must compete with personalised messages shared among friends and followers on social networks. Lastly, this requires marketers to reassess the metrics they collect and analyse.