AdTruth Wants to Be Sta...

The company held workgroup meetings with agencies, ad tech firms and developers.

Hubspot adds ESP functi...

Marketing software provider Hubspot has added functionality that effectively turns the company into an email service provider (ESP), said Laura Fitton, Hubspot's inbound marketing evangelist.

So Email Marketing’s De...

Everyone seems to be real quick to throw dirt on email marketing’s grave these days. Why? Because it’s not social media. Well, not to sound blunt (although it will), that’s stupid. If you need more evidence that email is indeed alive and well you should consider what HubSpot (a Marketing Pilgrim sponsor of our inbound marketing channel ) has added to their suite of, you guessed it, e-mail. OK, so if a company that has managed to get over $65 million in VC backing (included in that is Google Ventures) and currently boasts just shy of 7,000 users of their inbound marketing tools decides to incorporate email into its offerings can it be that dead? The Boston Globe reports When Cambridge [MA] marketing software firm HubSpot Inc. launched in 2006, e-mail pitching was considered old-fashioned and spam-riddled. Consumers struggling with e-mail overload were often not receptive to more electronic clutter. HubSpot didn’t even build e-mail marketing products. That changes on Tuesday, when HubSpot will at last offer its own tools to manage, create, and track e-mail marketing campaigns in its standard menu of services. It’s a mark of how much life the company thinks is left in the old Internet standby. “A lot of people think that e-mail marketing is dead,’’ said HubSpot marketing manager Jessica Meher, “but we think it still has a lot of power if it’s done right.” Ok, so to say that HubSpot has its pulse on everything that is correct is a bit presumptuous. I get that. But why would a company that has already grown at a dizzying rate with a new concept (inbound marketing) and momentum in the marketplace use resources to build something into its platform that is failing? Email marketing is not what it used to be and that’s why it is more effective than ever. I personally have undervalued email marketing and I am kicking myself for it. It can be dangerous to buy into conventional (or crowd) wisdom about things. With everyone barking that spam and phishing had ruined email it almost become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The difference with email marketing today is that now that there is SO much noise in the online space, it is actually a way to step away from that fray (which I liken to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange where everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs but somehow business still gets done) and be set apart from the craziness that is social media. HubSpot had their epiphany of sorts pretty recently HubSpot’s Meher said the company began to seriously consider adding e-mail marketing services last year after it purchased Cambridge start-up Performable, which had been developing analytical tools to measure the effectiveness of online campaigns. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Performable’s 18-person team moved over to HubSpot. One of the team’s first projects, according to Meher, was to develop an e-mail marketing platform that was tightly integrated with the rest of HubSpot’s offerings. “We weren’t interested in e-mail marketing as a silo,’’ Meher said. It’s this tight integration with other areas of a company’s marketing efforts that is the key. Email, just like any other single marketing technique or tactic, is not the only thing that will win the day. In fact, what may be happening is that rather than the “buy a list and hope someone responds” days we are simply looking at a more mature approach to email marketing. That maturity shows itself in more direct campaigns with very specific goals that go to only the right people for the right reasons. In the process it can promote all the other marketing activities (blogs, social and more) that a company is engaged in to reach their target market where they are rather than where the marketer thinks they should be. Where are you on email marketing? We are seeing more and more talk about its effectiveness in light of the social and mobile Internet age. Are you? Are you using it strategically? Are you finding how it dovetails with the rest of your marketing campaigns and thus becomes truly effective? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Also, would you like to see email from us here at Marketing Pilgrim?

Most Popular Digital To...

What’s old is new? Often in life, we find that upom leaving something that has been proven to work well for a different thing that simply looks newer or is pitched as being the “hottest thing” in the market, we ultimately come back home. We come back to the stability and common sense of a technique that has a proven track record even though it is not the sexiest option out there. It’s called making a business vs. an emotional decision. We are getting deep enough into the Internet era to now see what is effective, what is real and to hopefully sniff out what is BS. Oh sure, there are plenty of shiny objects for marketers to chase and we will. That’s the human nature part of this whole thing. But what we are seeing now is that there is something that, while not sexy, simply works in the digital world. That thing is e-mail. Take a look at the findings of research by Chief Marketer as reported by eMarketer . The chart has a lot of other very interesting techniques that marketers use and it can be argued that they are all critical. In fact, if you are a strong marketer in the digital age you recognize that there is no silver bullet technique that will win the day. It is the right combination of marketing options that you put together to attract, convince, support, inform and nurture your target market that wins the day. As for the right combination for you? Well, let’s just say that’s your problem to solve. What e-mail seems to offer marketers is the ability to measure (with a relative degree of confidence) just what is accomplished through that particular channel. Open rates and more give marketers a decent feel for what is happening with their message. More importantly, it seems as if the pendulum may have swung back in the other direction with e-mail. What do I mean by that? Well, the supposed death knell for e-mail was spam. While email spam is still a problem, email providers have done a much better job of filtering out that spam which now makes email something that cuts through the clutter rather than adding to it. I personally make sure that anything I feel I HAVE to read or attempt to know must arrive in my email inbox. It’s my way of separating that message from all the other increasingly annoying noise that is today’s social media. As with any good thing it’s not perfect but guess what, neither are the rest of your marketing options. How do you view email in light of these findings? How do you use it? Is it something that you rely on differently than other channels both as a marketer and a consumer? We always love to hear our readers opinions because it’s these comments that often uncover the real information our other readers can use. How about joining the fray today ?

Europe’s ‘OpenTable’ Li...

Livebookings , the restaurant booking and marketing service that competes with services like OpenTable, is announcing today that it has picked up another $24 million (£15 million) in funding to continue growing its business in Europe and beyond. The news highlights two trends we’ve seen emerging recently around here: companies dedicated to eating out are not going hungry in the current economic climate; and the more local, European counterparts to U.S.-based tech companies are getting a lot of attention from investors and consumers. Today’s round of funding, Livebookings’ fourth, is being led by existing investors Balderton Capital, Wellington Partners and Ekstranda and takes the total amount raised by the company to about $62 million . Colin Tenwick, CEO of Livebookings, has said that the funding will be used to fuel further growth. Existing business areas include online reservations and other restaurant services such as customer database management, email marketing campaigns, and the creation of special offers, and that menu of services may be getting longer: “Over the last 18 months we have put in place the engines that drive growth by investing in the development of new products, building a larger sales force and implementing new customer support systems to facilitate the growing customer base,” Tenwick said in a statement. “The market-leading increase in dined covers, customers and revenue is testament to this strategy and the new funds will help us to increase our market leading position, deliver the most innovative products to the marketplace and drive even more incremental revenue for our customers.” The company, headquartered in London, has operations in 23 countries including the U.S. and across Europe. Livebookings offers booking services directly to consumers, as well as through 300 distribution partners, including tastecard, Afternoon Tea and Eniro.se. In all there are 9,000 restaurants and chains powering online booking and other services through Livebookings. Livebookings does not disclose current revenues, nor whether it is yet profitable, but it notes that in Q1 it saw record sales numbers, with revenues up 34 percent compared to the same quarter a year before. At the same time, the number of seated diners booked through the site went up 65 percent to 3.8 million; and Bookatable, its consumer-facing website, exceeded one million visits for the first time in the quarter for its service that operates in nine languages across 19 countries. While it almost seems counter-intuitive for a businesses dedicated to eating out and spending more money to be thriving in the current economic climate in Europe, this isn’t the first time this has been noted. Just-Eat , a service that aggregates take-out/food delivery services from different restaurants, picked up $64 million in a third round of funding in April. Just-Eat said at the time that it was generating $750 million in sales generation annually. And while U.S. companies are also taking a big bite out of European business, they are not taking it all. Just as Qype is claiming that it is actually doing significantly better than Yelp in Europe, Livebookings is also giving OpenTable a run for its money and claims to be the European leader in the field. Still it should be noted that while growth is still coming for Livebookings, it looks like it may be slowing down somewhat: when the company announced its last round of funding, $10 million in April 2011 , it noted that restaurant reservations went up by 92 percent over the year, compared to 65 percent growth this year.

Twitter hires RestEngin...

Twitter has hired most of the team of employees at San Francisco-based RestEngine, an email marketing company that describes itself as a "social marketing automation platform," said RestEngine cofounder Joe Waltman.