I recently read some advice from a fellow website effectiveness consultant that recommended the use of pop-up windows to advertise sales or generate email newsletter subscriptions. While most designers detest these, they are very effective. The common argument you’ll hear executives and designers make is that most people block pop-up windows. In fact, research shows that less than 10% of web users block pop-up windows.

Pop-up windows are great tools to have in your marketing arsenal since they are so effective and inexpensive to implement. Pop-ups can be used to bring attention to sales/promotions, recover abandoned shopping carts, lure users back after they exit your web site, generate leads/email newsletter subscribers and much more.

Why not test them on your site? I will be providing a case study on pop-ups in the coming week or two. I’ll be running a test on a client site, the goal of which will be to collect email addresses for the email newsletter list. After the test is complete, I will report the method, process and results of the test.

eROI recently released its first quarter 2006 study on email marketing. The results indicate that Tuesday and Sunday are the best days to send email marketing campaigns.

Typically, mid-week has been the best time to send email marketing campaigns as these days typically have higher open rates and click rates. The weekend typically has been the least desirable time to send email. This study, however, reports that Sundays have the highest clickthrough rates and the second highest open rates. Tuesdays see the highest email volume.

If you are contemplating sending an email campaign on Monday, you should probably wait as Monday has the lowest clickthrough rate of any day.

The following chart (from eROI) shows the data for each day of the week.

I’ll be the first to admit that this is a “geek” link, but very helpful for those of you who create email marketing campaigns for yourselves or for your customers. Campaign Monitor has recently published a Guide to CSS Support In Email that is very informative. If you’re using cascading style sheets in your email marketing campaigns, you can compare results of CSS designs on web-based email environments like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. You can also compare support for CSS on popular Mac- and PC-based applications.

A new study by Silverpop reveals that most marketers can take care of low-hanging fruit to improve their email performance.

If you’re looking for an edge on your competitors, try taking a look at your confirmation message, or the message you send a customer that has just subscribed to your email marketing program. Including an exclusive offer or coupon in that message could lead to an instant sale.

Anther study from Jupiter today found that targeted, personalized email yields a greater return on investment. This is what I wrote about in 2002 in an article for Workz.com on email personalization. The issue with “personalization” is that it means different things to different people. If you’re interested in reading more about this, see my article.

There’s new research from eROI concerning the best day of the week to send an email marketing campaign. For some time now, the best practice has been to avoid sending on weekends since you miss people surfing at work, perhaps the best place to reach an online buyer.

The new research supports this notion, and also finds that midweek continues to be a good time to send an email campaign. Mondays and Fridays have the lowest response rates, with Wednesdays ushering in the highest number of clicks.

One other finding of the study is that quarterly response rates to email marketing campaigns have decreased year-over-year.

There are certainly ways to combat low response rates. First, make sure your list is sanitized (make sure you handle bounces properly, handle unsubscribes in a timely manner, etc.). There will always be a subset of people that subscribe because they like the products you sell or the information you publish, and many email marketing recipients are what I call “lurkers”‚Äîthey receive and open the email, but only skim it and get rid of it.

A couple of ideas to convert lurkers to buyers is to catch their attention. One method that’s worked well for me is to make a list comprised of only lurkers and present them with a percent-off coupon good for the next 24 hours or two days. Of course, you will also want to include some products that are popular, but don’t take the focus away from the coupon/offer.

Another method to improve response rates is to simply mix it up. There are quite a few online retailers out there that simply put their newest products in email. Others only run the same top sellers over and over again. Nothing draws attention like a hot offer, exclusively for email customers, or a free gift with purchase. Mix it up a little and be original, and always remember to track your results.

I was reading some news today from the ad:tech conference and read that while some chief marketing officers sitting on a panel were hesitant to reveal their online marketing budgets, Eloan spends $20M and Purina sets aside 5-7% of their budget for interactive marketing.

I learned a few years back during my Fortune 200 days that large brands should spend between 5-10% on online marketing. But does this apply to the small business owner? Sire, but you might want to consider shifting more money online.

Online marketing can be very cost effective if a campaign is properly run and the proper media is bought. Small businesses can get a lot of exposure from marketing online, and I would encourage most small businesses, especially small online retailers, to shift more of their media spending online.

One thing from the ad:tech panel stood out — most companies use outside firms to manage their online marketing. Why? Companies do this so they can keep a “skeleton” staff in-house and contract experts to manage the campaigns. Whether you’re a large company or a small company, having a pro to manage your marketing efforts is good marketing practice and makes good financial sense.