No man is an iland

May 16, 2008

Part 3 of an ongoing series: Part 1 | Part 2.

(We're looking at the strategies and tactics that distinguish a smart email marketer from a bulk email marketer.)

A natural extension of the relationship approach described in part 2 of this series is the need to accept accountability for your emails.

Accept and welcome accountability for your emails.

Again, you may find the word "doh!" rising inexorably to the front of your mouth. But wait...accountability in modern email marketing means much more than just taking responsibility for the results of your campaigns.

Both recipients and those who provide their email address service (ISPs, webmail services etc.) face a continual challenge when processing incoming mail.

This challenge is to distinguish between the good, wanted email and the bad, unwanted email, so they can deliver/read the former and delete/block the latter.

Many things distinguish spam from non-spam. But a big one is accountability. Spammers and other denizens of the email underworld do not, by definition, want to be held accountable for their actions.

If you run a good email program, delivering value and respecting permission, then you are prepared to stand up for that. You are willing to make yourself accountable to those two key audiences: ISPs and your subscribers.

Why?

Because accountability communicates trust. Trust helps you get past delivery barriers. And trust drives response.

So what practical form does this all take?

In a comment on a previous post, J.D. writes:

"These games -- in effect, trying to pretend that your mail isn't really from you -- just make you look like a spammer. Be proud of your brand!" (The games he refers to are switching IP addresses and similar deliverability tricks.)

Incoming mail processing technologies grow ever more sophisticated. Rather than become involved in a complicated arms race to "trick" the system, it's now better to clearly identify yourself to all and sundry. Let your long-term reputation as a sender of good email gain you access to inboxes.

One step is implementing authentication, which enables email receivers to reliably identify the source of the email.

A second step is to ensure there are no loose cannons in your email program. No emails going out without the same care, attention and accountability you give your main campaigns. Jordan Ayan has some details on this.

But accountability isn't just about identifying yourself to the technological systems that manage email Accountability also implies ensuring your emails are recognized by recipients.

Recognition contributes to trust and is itself a driver of response. Studies show time and time again that recognizing the from line, for example, of an email is a key factor in deciding whether to open that same email.

The from name gets most of the attention when it comes to driving recognition, and you'll find some interesting insights in recent articles at the Emma blog (on political emails) and from Chad White (retailer use of sender lines), as well as in previous posts here.

But ensuring recognition is about much more than using an appropriate from name. This earlier blog post covers the ground well, describing how numerous elements of your emails and wider email program can ensure you get recognized in that inbox.

Accountability works in an online world where trust and recognition are critical elements driving positive responses to your messages. But only, of course, if you're a good mailer. And we'll look at more definitions of what makes an email "good" in subsequent articles.

Part 4 coming soon...

Related post:
Email marketing 2.0 is accountability

Tags: email marketing, email authentication, email recognition

Just a couple of quick links for US marketers looking for insight on the Can-Spam changes. Insight that goes beyond regurgitating the press release:

1. MarketingSherpa has a seven minute podcast on the topic with Jeff Mills of eROI.

2. Ray Everett-Church of Habeas has a long blog post which goes into detail on the new definition of a sender.

3. Datran Media's Chief Privacy Officer gives his recommendations in another post.

(Also contact your email marketing service provider...I've heard several are producing useful documents for their customers.)

Please do recommend any other useful interpretive resources in the comments.

And those FTC docs again: press release | detailed notice

More on anti-spam laws | Tags: email marketing law, can-spam, anti-spam, spam laws

May 15, 2008

In recent months, adding video to your emails has threatened to go mainstream. And we finally have a broad consensus on how best to do it...

Don't let the coolness factor seduce you

While it's still somewhat edgy and cool to have online video, the buzz factor diminishes with each passing day. Video is no longer quite so cutting edge.

Before you add video to your emails, assess it like any other element of your content. Video in email must...

• ...serve a business purpose (build awareness, build engagement, better showcase products to improve sales, educate, etc.)
• ...deliver value to the recipients (a video of your new offices is not cool, not relevant and not valuable.)
• ...match the brand and business behind it. Amateur "talking head" videos are fine for little independents like me. Not so fine for big corporations with a brand to protect.
• ...display properly.

This last point was the hurdle for much of email marketing's history, but the consensus is that you should avoid video/email compatibility issues by putting the actual video on a web page and using the email to drive traffic to this page.

Get people to view the video

This is where creativity is required with the call to action that gets people to click on a link and view the video at the destination landing page.

While you can apply established copywriting principles to this call to action, most "video emails" now take the screenshot route. The call to action is a clickable image of the video:


Even better, a clickable image of the video as if it were ready to play:


(You'd want text links somewhere too for those unable to see the images.)

The Email Standards Project newsletter took this approach and reported that the "...screen grab was clicked on more than 5 times as often as the text link."

If you want to see some good examples, see this post from Dylan Boyd.

And David Baker suggests a creative alternative might be to use animated .gifs to simulate the start of a video and then encourage people to "click to continue viewing."

What about embedding the video directly in the email itself?

Despite various vendor claims to the contrary, I've yet to see any independent verification that this works effectively. As David puts it:

"I've seen many samples, and the vendors specializing in this claim they can deliver this experience, but I have yet to see them perform consistently enough in our test environments to suggest it to our clients."

Related post:
Videos in email: case studies and resources

Tags: email marketing, video emails, video in email

According to a recent SubscriberMail survey, the problem most cited by email marketers is "swamped inboxes." Getting attention in a cluttered marketplace is not a new challenge, but an irritatingly persistent one.

One solution mentioned with predictable regularity is to make emails more relevant to the recipient. In fact, the word relevant comes from the Latin relevare, meaning "to raise up." Which is exactly what we want to do with our emails.

But relevancy is itself a challenge if you don't have funky databases and targeting technology whirring away in the background. Or is it?

Relevancy implies making a connection between the recipient and your email.

Email marketers tend to think of this too narrowly, seeking to relate the next email directly to something the recipient did before (past purchases, past clicks, ticked content fields on a sign-up form, etc.)

"You bought a book on religion so this email contains offers on other religious books."

Which works.

An alternative and simpler approach is to pursue relevancy by exploiting different kinds of connections...

Connect to the recipient's wider environment

What is likely occupying the mind of the recipient these days? Think expansively - cultural trends, changing seasons, upcoming TV or sporting events. How can you make a connection there?

This is largely what Nick Usborne calls giving your emails a sense of now.

Nick writes:

"...it is essential that you make a connection with what's important to them right now...That connection with now could be about the weather, the news, a holiday or anything else you can think of."

This approach is implicit in seasonal offers and content, like those suggested by Evan Adlman for the summer.

You do, however, need to be aware of issues raised by different time zones and geographical locations.

Summer in Wellington, Florida is winter in Wellington, New Zealand. The Superbowl is a big deal in the USA, but passes without comment in most of Europe.

Connect to the human being

Really. There's a man or woman sitting in front of a PC, laptop or mobile device with all the needs and wants typically associated with a selfish lump of sentient bone and muscle.

Now it becomes obvious that your newsletter editorial, for example, should talk to the subscriber as an individual not as one of a group.

If you send out an email on a Friday afternoon on a hot summer's day, you can imagine the kind of mood the typical recipient is in at that time and adjust content and tone accordingly.

Connect to a representative of your wider audience

If you don't have sophisticated data on subscriber preferences and past actions, simply extrapolate from what you observe of your wider audience.

What products and content are "hot" right now on your website? What search terms are people using to find your site at the moment (or to search within your site)? What are people talking about in relevant forums and blogs?

That's all useful intelligence for planning relevant email offers and content.

Any other tips on making your emails more relevant?

Tags: email marketing, email relevancy, email copywriting, targeting

May 14, 2008

One of my favorite email marketing columnists (Simms Jenkins) has written "The Truth about Email Marketing," which is due out early August but was announced today and can be pre-ordered now at Amazon.

I had a small input to the project so I'll let others do the reviews. But there are two interesting points about the book of interest to us all.

First, the publisher is FT Press, which belongs to the same publishing stable as the Financial Times. The quality of the publisher is further mainstream recognition of the importance of email marketing.

Second, the book is not simply another nuts and bolts how-to, but addresses many wider aspects such as organizational strategy, outsourcing, etc. Again, a positive sign that the industry as a whole is maturing.

Other books | Tags: the truth about email marketing, simms jenkins

May 13, 2008

Important movements on the law front in both the USA and Canada...

Can-Spam latest

You may have seen the news that the USA's FTC has issued new rulings and interpretations on Can-Spam, the national legislation that defines what you can and can't do with commercial emails.

The press release is here, the related 109-page Federal Register Notice here.

Perhaps the most far-reaching clarification is that senders cannot require subscribers to log in to an account in order to remove their address from a list.

Which might mean subscription options need to be accessible without a username and password.

That has long been a best practice in the email marketing world. So there's a lesson here. Best practices are best practices for a reason. They make marketing sense AND they can often protect you from future changes to legislation.

Canada catches up

Canada was perhaps the most notable industrialized nation not to have specific anti-spam legislation in place. This is now changing.

The S-235 Anti-spam Act ("concerning unsolicited commercial electronic messages") got its first reading in the Canadian Senate on May 7th. Status and text is available here.

As far as I can tell, it requires an opt-in (with some exceptions) before you can send someone commercial email.

And now for the traditional addendum: these laws (actual and proposed) simply state what you have to do to be legal. ISPs, webmail services and individuals use different criteria to decide what is and isn't spam.

Relying on legal compliance alone to keep you in good standing with these entities is like turning up to a Viennese ball in a bikini; legal, but unlikely to meet with a positive welcome.

More on anti-spam laws | Tags: email marketing law, can-spam, anti-spam, spam laws

May 12, 2008

(Part 2 of an ongoing series. Read Part 1 here.)

So we're looking at the tactics and strategies that define the new email marketing. Let's begin with the R word. Now don't scream, but here it is...relationships.

Finished screaming? Think you might have heard it all before? No, you haven't. Here's why...

The new email marketing demands a mindset that pays more than lip service to the concept of relationships.

We can all tell the difference between customer service mandated from above and customer service that results from a true willingness to please the customer.

So it is with email and the relationship. If you truly value the email relationship with recipients, then that attitude pervades all your activities and lets you employ winning tactics (see below) you'd otherwise not think of.

Here's what I wrote to a friend earlier today in a conversation about different communication technologies:

"At the end of the day what really drives success is the quality and value you deliver. That's all that matters. If you have a niche and strive constantly and consistently to deliver this quality and value, it will pay off in the end."

"People's ability to take in information hasn't magically improved. So however you cut and dice it, there's only room for a few voices to be truly heard. And the quality voices will rise to the top."

Delivering quality and value comes naturally when you are relationship oriented. Or as Al DiGuido puts it, think of subscribers like family:

"Your family members don't want to see themselves as a segment or target. They want communications that are personalized, relevant, and meaningful to them..."

Once you see recipients as people you want to keep happy and loyal, best practices fall out naturally.

The relationship mindset encourages you to think of email in terms of dialog and interaction, which leads to tactics that boost the customer engagement we're all supposed to be chasing. Stefan Pollard has some ideas for you on that topic.

It changes your tone of voice to one that resonates better with those you are trying to reach. So you automatically add more value to (and generate more value from) such things as:

• Technical messages like error pages and subscription confirmations (Wendy Roth shows how you can benefit from replacing the technobabble with real speech.)
• Transactional, trigger and one-to-one emails (Aaron Smith describes some best practices for those messages.)
• Welcome emails (Anna Yeaman offers her favorites here.)

And it drives other best practices certain to boost the right numbers.

It stimulates you to send timely messages based on what you know of the end receiver, such as birthday greetings. It encourages you to deliver valuable content. It stimulates you to send personalized email based on the recipient's unique needs or characteristics.

All of which drives trust, relevancy, credibility and a host of other buzzwords that summed up lead to one clear outcome: more and better responses to your email.

Watch out for Part 3 later this week.

Tags: email marketing, relationship marketing, transactional emails, email strategy

Bounces are like parking tickets. You don't really want them. They're hard to avoid when there's a lot of traffic around. A few of them won't get you in too much trouble. Get too many and you're up before the spam courts.

You're less likely to have bounce-causing dead addresses on your list if you don't add dead addresses to your list (surprise!)

MarketingSherpa have four interesting practical tips on how you can avoid typos and misspellings in submitted email addresses and thus lower the bounce rates of your welcome messages or sign-up confirmation emails.

Two other common ways to introduce dead addresses to your list are if you lose the capacity for rational thought and buy a list of email addresses. Or if you wait too long before sending email to an address.

How long is too long when emailing old addresses? DJ Waldow has a good stab at answering that question for you in this pair of posts.

In both these cases, dead addresses may be the least of your worries. People won't expect your emails and you'll hear the sound of "report spam" buttons being pressed in response.

More on bounces | Tags: email marketing, bounce management, subscription forms

May 09, 2008

When you understand why people might want to leave your list, you can take steps to keep them on board and content.

Here's a new article from the main site with 14 tips on how to keep people happily married to your email program (and how to make the most of those that do leave).

May 08, 2008

The mediocrity of the masses has a powerful pull. Which is why so much "ordinary" writing or design is excused because "that's what everyone else does."

The problem is compounded in email marketing by the use of the term "safe" as in "safe" design. The sentiments are valid: design your emails so they render properly in a range of display environments.

This is a positive thing. But a side-effect is a drift toward uniformity. And the misapprehension that safe means boring. All emails start to look and sound pretty similar. Eyes may soon begin to glaze over.

So perhaps it's time to get a little edgy again, a sentiment echoed by eROI's Jeff; though for different reasons.

This need not mean "unsafe" design.

In recent articles, both David Baker and Loren McDonald suggest using open rates to identify those customers who will likely see images, allowing you to make more (creative) use of graphic elements when sending to that segment.

It's a concept I raised a few weeks ago, albeit to a mixed response.

David goes on to discuss the role of animated images in email, which are enjoying something of a renaissance. Just about every email client and webmail service supports animated gifs in emails.

Animated images had a bad reputation for a while, largely because marketers traditionally used them simply to attract attention. This quickly became annoying.

Anyone who remembers the ubiquitous punch-the-monkey banner ads of yesteryear will have a pathological hatred of animated gifs.

Since email is about delivering value to the recipient, animated images can work if (and only if) they enhance that value. For example by displaying a product in different colors or configurations.

Suzanne Norman has some advice on how to use them in email. And you'll find some inspiring examples from the retail world at Style Campaign and around the RetailEmail.Blogspot blog.

Tags: email marketing, email design, animated gifs, animation in email

In his crusade to help free us of our unhealthy obsession with open rates, Loren McDonald proposes some alternative approaches.

Among them, the idea that we should call it the "email render rate" to reflect the fact that all the open rate actually measures is whether or not a tracking image in the sent email was displayed.

Neither Loren nor I would expect the wider email marketing industry suddenly to start using the "render rate" term. But there's nothing to stop you from doing so.

Why bother?

Because words have power. Call something an open rate and people assume it indicates someone opened (read) an email. Even if you know better, it introduces subconscious bias into how you interpret open rate numbers.

Think of it as a render rate, and that subconscious bias disappears. This allows you to focus on what the number truly tells you about your email efforts and encourages you to look elsewhere for the numbers you really need to measure success.

Open rates guide | Tags: email marketing, email open rates, email render rates

Sign-up for the Email Marketing Reports NEWSLETTER
Twice a month, free, packed with email marketing advice and all the posts from this blog.

Email:      First Name:     
    More info and sample | Your privacy is guaranteed

Email marketing search engine
Introduction to email marketing and email advertising basics
Listings for email marketing services
Sources of email marketing statistics
Advice on email design and delivery issues

Top 21 email marketing info sources
Outlook 2007 and HTML design
Events and webinar roundup

Visit the main website for everything email marketing.