ChannelAdvisor plans to discontinue an eBay management tool

The vendor’s MarketplaceAdvisor Standard mainly served merchants who only sell on eBay.

Online marketplaces are like stocks, which means retailers should diversify the channels they sell on, says Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor Corp., which helps retailers sell via web marketplaces like those operated by eBay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

“Today eBay is lagging and Amazon is doing well,” he says. “But chances are that won’t last, so you need to broaden your portfolio to reduce your risk.”

The vendor has adopted that approach over the last few years, which is why it plans to eliminate one of its older products, MarketplaceAdvisor Standard, which was mainly used by merchants who only sell on eBay.

ChannelAdvisor acquired MarketplaceAdvisor Standard, then known as Marketworks, in 2007. Even at the time of the acquisition, Wingo emphasized the difference between the two companies—Marketworks’ business was primarily serving eBay sellers, while ChannelAdvisor focused on helping larger retailers sell across a number of channels. Roughly eight years later, ChannelAdvisor decided it no longer made sense to support sellers who just focus on eBay, says a ChannelAdvisor spokesman. “This single-channel solution is no longer a fit for our platform,” he says.

The move comes amid growing evidence that eBay consistently is trailing the growth rate in online retailing.

ChannelAdvisor Corp. last week reported that e-commerce sales for its clients via eBay’s marketplace grew 7.3% in March, up from February’s 5.1% growth rate. That growth was far below Amazon’s 24.6% growth rate for ChannelAdvisor clients selling on the Amazon Marketplace, which jumped from 22.7% in February. EBay’s growth rate was also just over half of e-commerce’s roughly 15% growth rate during the past year. And another report, by Robert W. Baird and Co., found that eBay’s marketplace sales grew 2% to 3% in March, slightly below its February growth levels.

ChannelAdvisor says that as of July 15, eBay sellers will be unable to list items via MarketplaceAdvisor and that it plans to disable storefronts on Aug. 17. It will shutter all access to data on Sept. 14.

ChannelAdvisor plans to discontinue an eBay management tool

How Would An Email Tax Change Email Marketing?

On April Fools’ Day, Forbes ran a story about how Congress was considering a tax on email by amending the Internet Tax Freedom Act the next time it comes up for renewal. It was a great gag, and while I think there’s zero chance of any kind of email tax coming into being, it’s interesting to think about how the email marketing industry would change if some kind of tax were levied.

Possible Tax Schemes

About 10 years ago, I thought the email industry might actually benefit from having additional costs associated with sending. At that time, malicious spam was still a significant problem. Since then, ISPs have done such a stellar job of eliminating traditional spam from inboxes that the definition of the word “spam” now means something entirely different: email consumers no longer want, even if they opted in to receive it.

That said, illegitimate email still represents 95% of all email volume. That’s a lot of email for ISPs to filter through to get down to the 5% that’s legit. Even a tiny tax on each email sent would collapse any centralized sending of spam; however, it might be less effective in tackling the bot networks that are responsible for much of the spam that’s sent today.

Of course, part of the trick is how to actually implement a “tax” on email. One way would be through a bonded sender program, which would allow a few different schemes. For instance, each sender would post a bond, and every time recipient complaints exceeded an established threshold, money would be taken from the bond. When your bond runs out, all your emails get blocked until you replenish it. So essentially this would be a tax on spam and unwanted or irrelevant email.

Another way of using a bonded sender program would be to charge a tiny amount for each email delivered. That would instantly change our tolerance levels of inactive subscribers.

A twist on these ideas would be for the U.S. Postal System to start a white label email system. Just like with snail mail, you’d pay for postage –and through a revenue-sharing program with ISPs, you’d get guaranteed 100% deliverability.

In all of these cases, you pay money upfront to avoid potential deliverability problems that would otherwise directly cost money to fix through remediation, and indirectly cost money through the revenue lost from blocked messages to your subscribers.

The Current Tax on Email

The central tension in email marketing is that our subscribers’ time is far more valuable than the pittance it costs us to send them email. In my book, “Email Marketing Rules,” I refer to this as email marketing’s cost-value gap. Marketers fill this gap by sending relevant emails to subscribers who want those emails.

When marketers don’t fill that gap, they invariably suffer deliverability problems from high complaints and low engagement. This is essentially a tax that subscribers impose on marketers for wasting their time. And it’s a tax that marketers can largely avoid by (1) putting in place sensible permission practices and sound collection processes across all their email acquisition sources and (2) using personalization, segmentation, triggered emails, and other tools to consistently send individually relevant emails.

It’s this ever-rising tax imposed by subscribers that’s the reason email marketing is no longer cheap. If you focus on making your emails smarter and more relevant, you not only reap the benefits of higher returns and higher customer satisfaction, but also minimize deliverability taxes.

How Would An Email Tax Change Email Marketing?

"I Am Groot." What's Your Email Marketing Really Saying?

“I am Groot.” Those are the only three words Groot says through most of the Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy film. Rocket’s the only character who “gets” Groot. While it certainly makes for an element of humor in the film, it’s not the way you want to operate your email marketing campaigns.

Point is, simply repeating your message over and over “at” your audience won’t get you anywhere. You’ll get lost in the noise on the Internet, and if your customers even find you in the first place, they probably won’t stick around for long.

Make Your Email Marketing Campaigns Work for You

Nearly three-quarters of adults prefer email communication from businesses, compared to just 17% who prefer social media and in-person communication.

Recommended for YouWebcast: Zero to Millions: The Secrets Behind Building a Business and Growing a Digital Audience

Make the most of your email marketing with these tips:

● Write all your emails as if you were speaking to one person, rather than your entire list. This instantly creates a more personal message.

● Make sure your emails are useful, offering something of value to your customers. Don’t waste their time.

● Keep messages short and sweet.

● Write engaging subject lines with power words to pique curiosity.

● When selling, highlight product/service benefits and what the customer will be missing if they choose not to buy.

● Use clear and concise calls to action. Tell your readers exactly what you want them to do.

Integrate Your CRM and Email Marketing

Your CRM puts tons of information at your fingertips that will make it easier to customize your email marketing campaigns. Using the same message for all your customers isn’t an ideal approach because it won’t “speak” to everyone the same way. The more personalized your messages are, the better your results will be. Emails with personalized subject lines have an average of 17% higher click-through rates, and 81% of consumers say they are “at least somewhat likely” to purchase from businesses that send personalized emails based on their previous shopping experiences.

With an integrated CRM and email marketing approach, you can see customers in each stage of the funnel to tailor your email marketing to customers in each segment. You’ll see who’s opening your emails, who’s clicking through from the emails to your website, and who’s ignoring you. Then you can fine-tune your marketing strategy to make the most of customers who are responding and do more to capture those who aren’t.

Insightly integrates with MailChimp to make it easy for you to manage your contacts. Insightly contacts can be exported to MailChimp, and MailChimp contacts can be imported to Insightly to ensure all customers and prospects are in the same place.

Your sales and marketing teams will be working with a single database, meaning there’s no lag time while the marketing team waits for the sales reports to gauge the effectiveness of their latest campaign. As soon as marketing messages go out, the sales team can focus on qualified leads coming in.

Recent data shows clients who communicate with your brand are twice as likely to do so via email, rather than via Facebook. Considering Facebook’s organic reach is now down to about 2%, and your email will always be delivered, it’s a good time to invest in email marketing campaigns. Remember, about ⅔ of email is opened on a mobile device. Concentrate efforts on delivering mobile-friendly, personalized, and timely email marketing messages, and you’re on your way to increased sales and brand loyalty. Leave Groot behind to spread his poorly understood message while you deliver the goods.

Image via Shutterstock

"I Am Groot." What"s Your Email Marketing Really Saying?