toptable.com have added an extra dimension to their already fantastic emails. Not only do customers receive emails tailored to their location and usage frequency, but now they can even smell before they book!

This may seem a strange innovation to make but when you consider that “Flavor is recognized primarily by our sense of smell,” (Paul A. Kedeshian*) things starts to become more clear.

This feature is obviously just a tongue in cheek gimmick for most recipients as their computer screens cannot actually produce smells, but due to the launch of the iPad and the next version of the iPhone with their scent omitting capabilities, scratch and sniff emails may become more common place.

Stay tuned for further developments!

* (Paul A. Kedeshian MD, assistant clinical professor in the division of head and neck surgery at UCLA)

The traditional email a friend has a few flaws, namely that it is always easier to hit forward in your email client than actually finding your friends addresses and copying and pasting them into the form you have provided. Secondly many people don’t have their friend’s addresses anymore and prefer to communicate via the likes of Facebook.

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At a recent event the question was raised how does social networking fit in with your email marketing strategy?
There were some obvious things – many pointed to putting links to their Facebook or Twitter page in their email newsletters. On the whole most people still don’t understand how to use the social networks and are finding their way. Indeed it reminds me of 6 years ago when everyone knew they “should be doing email marketing” but had no idea why, they just heard it was the thing to do and there was lots of money in it!

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Have you ever looked into how many of your email list ‘never’ open your emails? From our experience it can be anything from 40% to 70% of your list that do not open any of your emails, in many cases for 6 months.
So what can you do with this massive potential goldmine? Here are the options:

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R.O.A.D. is a tool for planning analysing and reviewing email marketing programmes.

Developed by the experienced email marketing consultants at Emailcenter, R.O.A.D. is a framework that encompasses what we believe are the 4 key elements needed to run a best in class email marketing programme:

• Relevance
• Optimisation
• Analysis
• Deliverability