No man is an iland

November 29, 2005

(Enlightenment) Statistics and rabbits
Every now and then I come across quotes or concepts that make me sit up and think, and I might pass on a few that seem relevant.

For those who spend their days poring over email marketing metrics and worrying about benchmarks, here's something to ponder over. I read about it in Vienna's street newspaper.

A hunter fires two shots at a rabbit. The first misses to the left by exactly one foot, the second misses to the right by exactly one foot. The rabbit walks away uninjured. But statistically, it's dead.

Think about it.

(Spam) Technology winning the spam battle
Researchers from the FTC had fun creating some undercover email accounts, publishing the addresses on various websites, then sitting back to watch the spam roll in.

And roll in it did, in its thousands.

But considerably less spam rolled in to those addresses at ISPs using spam filtering technology. And those addresses that were posted online in disguised form (readable to humans, but not machines) only got one piece of spam in total.

The obvious, but still worthy, conclusion: don't post your email address online carelessly and use an ISP that has filtering technology. (Unless, like me, you don't trust filters to let all the important mail through, too).

(Metrics) New stats source
Vendor Bronto now publish a rolling weekly update of the last three months' worth of aggregated statistics from their clients' email marketing efforts. Delivery rates, open rates and CTR are listed across a range of industries.

Of interest to stat freaks and anyone who wants to know how the numbers are calculated, Bronto also provide some explanations of the math behind the numbers.

That's a welcome move, given that so many vendors just pump out benchmarking stats without any indication of how they were gathered and what they represent.

(State of Industry) Q&A with Jim Herbold
The abovementioned Mr. Herbold of vendor EmailLabs answers a few general questions about email marketing and the role it plays in companies.

In doing so, he covers such issues as typical mistakes, best tactics, trends, the spam challenge and the future of the industry.

November 25, 2005

(Deliverability) Understand SpamAssassin...
One of the most common filter technologies is a piece of software known as SpamAssassin. Here Kirill Popov and Loren McDonald explain how this software analyses and rates emails for filtering purposes.

Once you know what makes you look like spam, you can change things so your email is scored for what it is: an opt-in message. Let's hope spammers don't read this stuff.

November 24, 2005

(Tactics) Subject: Email Ads Grow Up
The Wall Street Journal with a very positive look at how fashion retailers use email marketing successfully.

Apart from the discussion of various strategies and tactics used, it's refreshing to see such a non-cynical view of the medium. In particular, there's credence given to the idea that customers actually like getting the emails.

In other words, it's not a cheap form of marketing foisted on unwilling recipients by money-grubbing companies, but actually a win-win for sender and recipient.

November 22, 2005

(Deliverability) How to Get E-mail Delivered
The title might overpromise somewhat, but Tom Kulzer has a useful overview of various issues to watch and tactics to use to help improve deliverability rates.

The only option raised I'd take strong issue with is the possibility of disabling open rate tracking to avoid being filtered for image content. Seems like that cure might be worse than the problem.

(Spam) Meet a spammer
Goodness. Know thy enemy they say and this interview with a spammer certainly gives some insights into life on the dark side.

It does raise some key issues, too. For example, it appears as if the incentive to spam grows less and less. And the spammer suggests that the success of filters and lawsuits means his colleagues are leaving the business or sending more emails to get the same results.

So the growth in the number of spam sent might actually be a good sign, suggesting the war on spam is working.

Remember, the numbers sent and the numbers arriving in inboxes (the important number) are not the same thing. A lot of spam doom and gloom prophets only look at the first number, not the second.

(Tactics) Advice on how to make your email newsletters festive
A little off the wall, but here's a list of 10 things you can do to introduce seasonal themes to your email newsletters, including warnings about when it's really not appropriate.

November 21, 2005

(Tactics) Get More from Your Email List
G. Simms Jenkins joins the rallying call for more thoughtful approaches to email marketing, particularly in moving away from generic broadcast messages towards segmentation and beyond.

In doing so, he offers up a few examples of where to generate more value from email and how to set about splitting your customer base in a way that makes sense in terms of generating more content-driven revenue.

November 17, 2005

(Format) Six Tips to Make HTML Email Look Right
Wendy Roth pulls out some tips that should help you get your message across in HTML and avoid your email looking like a 1999 high school project.

Simple and straightforward advice for anyone sending any messages that aren't text only.

(Misc) Mad As Hell
Bill McCloskey rages against the inability of the email marketing establishment to do something about the bad press, bad laws and bad blacklists that plague the industry.

I'd add the following to that list, too: "the bad business practices" of those email marketers who treat email addresses like 19th century Victorian industrialists used to treat child laborers.

(Metrics / list mgmt) It's raining reports
Three useful reports out from MarketingSherpa on email marketing topics.

The first is the 2006 edition of their Benchmark Guide. This features over 300 charts, tables and heatmaps with benchmark statistics concerning email marketing practices, budgets and success metrics. There's an executive summary to give you a taste of what you get for your $200+.

Also from MarketingSherpa are their two Buyer's Guides to Email Service Providers and Independent Email Deliverability Firms. Behind that mouthful is in-depth and exclusive comparative data on dozens of relevant companies and services. Data that helps you decide which service is right for your needs.

I believe this is the first time that deliverability services have been covered in this way by anyone (but correct me if I'm wrong).

(Misc) Email Marketing Blog Roll
Standard Internet practice would be to copy this list and pretend it was my own work. But let's keep fighting the ethical fight and give due praise to Brent and eINFO for assembling this long list of current email marketing blogs. (To which you should add Brent's, too.)

35 topical blogs for your entertainment. Which indicates the next challenge facing the blog and RSS world - information overload. And spam. Because once you get automated aggregation tools to solve the overload problem, you get people trying to spam them. It's the Internet people.

November 16, 2005

(Law) Update on Michigan and Utah Registries
Tom Bartel of Return Path has a useful summary, with links, of the current state of play with regard to those "child protection email registries" operating in Utah and Michigan.

November 15, 2005

(Misc) Another blog resource
Tom O'Leary writes this blog on messaging, with a strong emphasis on email marketing (Tom works in the field). It's a nice mix of news, insight, opinion and self-penned resource articles on relevant topics, regularly updated.

In his most recent article, for example, he has advice on three key elements of your commercial emails: the subject line, the call to action and the unique proposition.

(Strategy) Never Send An E-mail On Saturday...And Other Rules To Break
David Baker uses the "best day to send" debate to illustrate a point about avoiding the seductive attraction of always following "norms" or "averages".

He suggests relevancy is as much about timing as content, and that you can never find a single, ideal solution to a particular communication issue (like send day) because the recipient base changes and represents a range of preferences.

In other words, there are now so many ways of getting communications from a company, and so many different (and changing) behaviors with regard to response and reading patterns that you can't rely on simple "one size fits all" approaches.

November 14, 2005

(Misc) Tesco unleashes email marketing blitz
A few insights into how UK supermarkets are using email marketing. It's interesting to see how much they differ; one might send two emails a month, another several a week. Nor do they seem to agree which day is the best to send on.

November 11, 2005

(RSS) Extra, Extra, Read All About it - Blogs and Email Coexist!
Janine Popick of VerticalResponse takes an author to task who suggests blogs are a threat to email marketing services.

If anything, she doesn't go far enough in her correct argument that blogs and email are not mutually exclusive.

The fault lies with the original author who falls into the common trap of comparing blogs with email, when really it's RSS that is the issue.

Suggesting -- as the original author did -- that a blog makes an e-newsletter unnecessary is nonsense because the whole point of email in the beginning was that you didn't have to rely on people coming back to your website to get your message to them.

A blog is just web content - it no more competes with email than a website ever has.

The more interesting question is RSS, the web feeds often associated with a blog. They do a similar job to email in that content (marketing messages) get delivered to the recipient's desktop, albeit in a different way and with different people in control of when and whether the message is delivered.

Janine's argument holds true here too. She says, "...not everyone likes to blog nor do they subscribe to RSS, and not everyone likes to email...it's all about marketing vehicles complementing each other."

Exactly. As I've banged on about enough here, email versus RSS is not an either/or issue. The more choice you give people in terms of communication vehicle, the more likely they are to find one they want to use. And the more likely you are to get your message to them.

(Case study) Great Email Follow-Ups to Qualify New Leads
A look at how a combination of staggered emails and print messages qualifies leads so that the salesperson knows where to focus his or her attention.

The key is in the dual on- and offline approach and the use of email copy to get leads to qualify themselves by taking appropriate action (or not).

Worth a read if you're in the lead generation and sales business.

(State of industry) Live From Ad:Tech New York
Bill McCloskey reports from the floor with his views on consolidation in the industry and some revealing statistical tidbits on email, marketing and email marketers.

(Deliverability) 5 e-mail marketing pitfalls to avoid
Karen Bannan picks the brains of Pivotal Veracity's Deirdre Baird to get tips on infrastructural problems that might harm your deliverability.

Some of these issues concern things outside your control if you're using an email service provider to deliver your emails. Talk to them about it if you have reason to be concerned.

Hey, it's Friday, nobody should have reason to be concerned with the weekend approaching.

November 10, 2005

(Copywriting) The Red-Headed Stepchild in Your E-mail Budget
Melinda Krueger bemoans the lack of resources invested in copywriting and outlines some broad things you can do to make life easier for your writers and improve the quality of their output.

(Strategy / tactics) E=B-to-B-to-B: The Need for Multi-Tiered Newsletters
David A. Fish of IMN presents a clear and detailed explanation of how newsletters can help solve the problem of how vendors can get closer to end users without stepping on the toes of resellers.

What he outlines is an email marketing approach similar to that used by some franchise companies.

A central organization (vendor) develops a base set of generic newsletter content. The local reseller takes that content and customizes it by adding their own content or details, before sending it to their house list.

The aggregate metrics generated by the email get seen by both vendor and reseller.

There are all sorts of advantages for both sides in this solution, which David describes very well.

November 09, 2005

A survey from ExactTarget suggests the typical list grows at about 3.2% net per month. That's 5.2% growth (new addresses) with 2% shrinkage (addresses going bad, unsubscribes etc.)

More importantly, the press release announcing the results also includes ten tips on how to get more email addresses. Some of them are obvious, but others are bound to set a few lightbulbs off in your head.

November 08, 2005

(Tactics) Fine Tuning Your Email Strategy
Michael Pridemore invites us to do more to realize the benefits of email marketing.

He begins by suggesting segmenting by customer relationship and explains how you might tempt those different segments.

Then he has some suggestions on when you should send the message and how often.

(State of industry) E-Mail: Online Marketing's Overlooked Stepchild?
Jeanne Jennings is not happy about the lack of respect online marketing and marketers give email (a complaint I hear frequently BTW).

After explaining why she feels it's a problem, she runs over some basic advice on how to start improving your email efforts.

It's a shame email still needs to fight its corner. I suspect it's a combination of issues. Too many people burn their fingers with poor execution and then blame the tool, not the worker. And that's partly because it needs intelligent application to harness the real benefits - point, click, blast is increasingly less effective than ever before.

November 07, 2005

(Case study) Intrawest
As well as a few insights into useful tactics and list management practices, it's interesting to see how an organization copes with managing email marketing across disparate business units throughout North America.

As seems so often the case, lifecycle emails (triggered by where a recipient is in the purchase cycle) get a big thumbs up.

(Law) Minor Protection
A long overview of the background and current situation regarding email registries designed to protect children from nasty email. The perspective is very much that of the state and federal bodies involved, with limited input from marketers.

Probably not the first thing you want to read on a Monday - wait until you've had some coffee.

November 03, 2005

(Misc) New discussion list - The Inbox Insiders

I learnt today of a new, exclusive discussion list for email marketers set up by Bill McCloskey, CEO of Email Data Source, Inc. I asked Bill for more info, and here's what he says...if you think you might qualify for an invitation, you can found out more in this MediaPost article.

"The Inbox Insiders is a private, invitation only, email discussion list designed to provide leaders in the Email Marketing industry a place to discuss the issues facing email marketing in a private closed door setting. Top agencies, brands, email service providers all contribute to these behind the scenes discussions. There are only three rules to membership:

>> Email marketing must be your main focus and you must be invited to join.
>> Whatever is said on the list stays on the list. Nothing said on the list can be forwarded to any person not part of the Inbox Insiders. Violators will be immediately expelled.
>> This is not a list for lurkers. Members who have not posted within a reasonable period will risk being purged from the list.

Other than that, it is a no holds barred discussion. There are no rules as to what can be posted. Initial membership will be capped at 100 people."

(Law) FTC comments on child-protection email legislation
Follow the link to find the FTC's comments regarding proposed legislation in Illinois which would establish a child protection registry not unlike the ones in Utah and Michigan.

The FTC's opinion is pretty clear that they think this kind of legislation is counter-productive. In brief, they think it would possibly lead to more dodgy emails reaching children and would also place unnecessary burdens on legitimate email marketers.

It's actually hard to find any informed opinion that thinks these laws are a good idea. But it's also hard to argue against legislation ostensibly designed to protect children from the seedier side of the Internet...

(Basics / List mgmt) The Importance of Expectations
Derek Harding outlines two of the biggest traps that marketers fall into when building their house list of email addresses; being too vague about what they send people and how often, and being too slow with that first communication.

The result, he says, is a mismatch between recipient expectations and what you send them. The result -- cue scary music -- is spam complaints from your opt-in subscribers. Whoops.

Harding then offers some solid practical advice on how to get the expectation balance right.

(List mgmt) How Do I Re-Opt In My Email List?
Loren McDonald offers advice on how to deal with a list of opt-in addresses that you've collected, but never used. Is the opt-in still valid? How can you reactivate the list without getting shot down as a spammer?

Loren's suggestions are pragmatic, reflecting the wish to gain the business benefits of an active email programme but also the need to ensure you adhere to privacy and email marketing best practices.

November 02, 2005

(Misc) Good Grief, You Haven't Got A Brief?!
David Baker makes a plea for the creative brief that precedes every campaign, dismissed by many as overkill or a waste of precious time.

He outlines the benefits for keeping teams and processes on track and focused on the right priorities, and suggests some of the things that should go in one.

(Case study) Timely Email Reminder Boosts Survey Participation
This short article confirms the lessons from the case study I mentioned yesterday. Namely that follow-up emails to those who didn't open or respond to a first send out can significantly boost responses.

In this case, a survey reminder accounted for about a third of total responses.

This concept seems capable of application to various types of promotion and email initiatives. Time to put the thinking cap on.

(Copywriting) Long Vs. Short
Melinda Krueger suggests that short and sweet may not always be better in email promotions, and explains why.

She also has some snippets of advice on how to present long copy in a way that keeps the attention of the reader.

Like many issues, there is no right answer to copy length; it depends on what it is you're trying to sell and to whom.

November 01, 2005

A long and useful article from Loren McDonald on the impact of image blocking and preview pane use on email marketing.

The article first reveals the results of a reader survey to establish just how big the issue is. It then looks at how you should design and present your email content to minimize the problem.

In doing so, Loren lists many changes you can make or actions you can take. And he looks at the issues from various perspectives, including that of the newsletter publisher, advertisers in third-party emails, and corporate communicator.

(List mgmt) Help for Choosing ESPs
An interview with JupiterMedia on insights and findings from their recent Email Marketing Buyer's Guide. And I do mean an interview with "JupiterResearch," as no human name is mentioned.

It covers such issues as standards within the provider industry, how things have changed, the key attributes of a good service, the different types of marketers using these services and similar.

(You might need a Jargon-to-English dictionary for some of it.)

(Case study) mousehouse
A report on the results from the first promotional newsletter sent out by this online retailer of digital imaging products.

The key take away is the value they got from sending the same newsletter again to those who didn't open it the first time. 31% of the additional orders generated by the email came from that second send.

So that's a near-50% boost to sales by resending based on an observation of who did and didn't open the first email.

(RSS) Prepping RSS for Prime Time
Excellent article from Matt Blumberg on the current state of RSS and what needs to happen before it hits the big time.

He runs through a host of issues, such as personalization, reach, presentation, standards, information filtering and search; all the things that affect the value of the medium to publishers, readers and advertisers.

Let's hope he provides updates in the future.

(Ironic aside: The spellchecking tool incorporated within the Blogging software I use doesn't recognize the term "RSS" - it suggests RSI as a replacement.)

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