Customer Reviews

Sign Me Up!: A marketer's guide to creating email newsletters that build relationships and boost sales (Return Path Books)

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I read this book because our company has been disappointed with the results from our email marketing efforts to date. Unlike many business books out there that can seem generic and "fluffy," I was very pleased to discover detailed recommendations and examples of best practices throughout the book on key topics such as building our list, crafting our content, and ensuring that our email is being viewed by our customers. The book gave us specific and actionable recommendations for how to improve our results, and we are already beginning to see the improvements! I recommend this book to anyone involved in email marketing.

I don't normally write these things - but I feel like I owe something to the author. I bought this book and another (also on newsletter marketing) - and while I'm not crazy about the second one, I can tell you that I read this book with my yellow marker out. You might go a couple of pages before underscoring something - but then you'll come upon a page (and this is frequently, mind you) where the book pays for itself over and over. Also, if you're in the mode to buy this book, one of the best books I've ever read (on sales/marketing/the science behind it) was written by Paco Underhill and called "Why We Buy." Anyway, you should probably also know two things (about the book "Sign Me Up"): 1) It doesn't have that "get rich quick feel" that some other books in this vein have (thank goodness) and 2) as I write this (Nov '05) this book is current - as opposed to picking up one of the Guerrilla books that doesn't mention the internet because it didn't exist when the book was written). Anyway, great book, you should buy it and cross "newsletter books" off your list.

This is an outstanding book on permission based e-mail. Anyone considering doing or who is doing a newsletter should consider getting this book. It contains excellent insight and ideas on how to execute and improve an email newsletter program. The Team at Return Path has valuable expertise and experience in optimizing e-mail strategy and tactics.

One of the keys to a successful program is Relevance, Relevance, and Relevance. If you provide something useful or interesting to a client or customer they will give you permission to send regular communications. By its nature e-mail allows for personalization, customization, and targeted marketing. This is a great opportunity to build a relationship and better communicate to the needs of any client or customer base. Personalized product and content recommendations are what people are interested in.

If you are looking for a way to add value to your marketing efforts, this book will help with the ingredients to create, launch, and sustain an e-mail newsletter strategy and campaign. The book gets into content, list, and optimization strategies. The team at Return Path covers topics like:

1. Creating E-mail that People Want to Read
2. Writing and Managing an Email Newsletter Program
3. Designing and Formatting Emails for Maximum Performance
4. Building a Large and Responsive E-mail List
5. Keeping Your List Clean and Well-Maintained
6. The Importance of Testing
7. Make Sure Your Message Reaches the Inbox
8. CAN-SPAM and Other Email Legislation

The books covers tidbits of information like, "Research has found that newsletters with several short stories typically get read more than emails with one long story." Another good quote is, "People will gladly accept advertising in exchange for information and entertainment, so the creation of a content-filled email newsletter is the best strategy to deliver your advertising message to your audience with success"

As someone who works in the direct marketing industy, I highly recommend this book to anyone in the advertising and marketing industry. As a friend of someone who has MS I appreciate the fact that 10% of the purchase price of this book is donated to The Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis.

This book provides a very comprheisve coverage about email marketing, such as permission-based list generation, the optimization techniques about the subject line, email content, coupon, etc, campaign metric montoring such as open rate, CTR, bounce rate, etc. Unlike other books, this books is right to the points withouth unncessary stories or lengthy and verbose paragraphs used to strech the length of the book. A very good book for people who have little time to read!

This book was truly a great help. I needed some ideas for the designs of my monthly newsletter. I am not a creative guy so this book was very helpful!

A book review by Susan E. Fisher

Permission marketing is just what it says it is. It's marketing centered around customer consent. You secure permission from your customer and prospective customers to market your products and services to them. Permission is a covenant: As long as you give customers something they want, mainly information they find valuable, they will accept your marketing messages.

The advantages to a system built upon mutuality are obvious. You actually manage to get the ear, and hopefully the mindshare, of customers who are bombarded daily with hundreds of both stealthily subtle and blaringly blatant marketing messages.

The disadvantages are equally obvious: How do you gain consent? How do you get your customers to not only say "Okay, fine," but to exclaim "Sign me up!"? Once you gain permission, how do you keep it? How do you build a strong relationship through these communications, rather than end up as an annoyance and be perceived as one more interruption in a busy day?

Here's a simple answer that should be considered the golden rule of e-marketing: "Create Email That People Love to Read." "Content is king: If recipients don't read your email, it has no chance of building your business, and no one will read it unless the content is relevant and interesting to them."

That's "Rule #4" in "Sign Me Up!: A Marketer's Guide to Creating Email Newsletters that Build Relationships and Boost Sales." Written by a team from email services firm Return Path, "Sign Me Up!" addresses those basic e-newsletter development questions in a practical way. It offers a primer on:
1. content strategy (really the basics on how to write and design a newsletter, rather than tie newsletter content into a greater marketing communications or sales strategy)
2. list strategy (how to build a very basic list; there's not much on list segmentation - which we at BeTuitive Marketing find critical)
3. optimization strategies (how to improve response and measure how the email program is working in a very general way.)

The points are reinforced by examples from Kimberly-Clark, eBay and other companies with well-known brands.

One of the best features of the book is that it clearly states points that should be obvious but, from our experience, unfortunately aren't. For example, here is advice about email customer service that we also emphasize to our customers.

* "Have a real, live person monitor all incoming mail."
* "Don't tell your customers not to reply to the messages you send."
* "Ask for feedback."
* "Handle spam complaints the right way."

Quite frankly, as the editorial director at BeTuitive Marketing -- which creates email newsletters to build relationships and build sales -- I found little new in the book. It did not break any new ground or offer any insight particular to B2B marketing, which is a slightly different animal than B2C communications. Most importantly, experience tells me that a 164-page book can only scratch the surface of the exacting and sometimes grueling - but always rewarding -- effort it takes to get an email newsletter off the ground and to keep it high flying, so customers get what they want to hear along with what you want to tell them.

Nonetheless, the book and its helpful glossary offer a solid introduction for email newsletter novices and a helpful re-introduction to the process for businesses that have tried email newsletter campaigns and ended up with less-than-stellar results. At $6 for a pdf version (and $17.95 for a trade paperback), it's worth the download or the dollars for the paperback. Plus, the authors promise to donate 10 percent of the purchase price to the nonprofit The Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis. So, read the book, and then come to a professional for a deeper level of expertise.