No man is an iland

...daily blog with email marketing advice, news and best practices
Feed | Latest posts | By Mark Brownlow
Brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing

January 31, 2006
David Baker passes on a colleague's thoughts about email marketing as a dialogue.

He does a nice job of highlighting the different stages in your relationship with a new subscriber, drawing comparisons with the way you'd develop any conversation with someone you met offline.

When you start to think this way, it becomes very clear how you nurture the relationships and how you manage the exchange of information and value between the two participants.

Done right, you have a friend for life. Done wrong, and they'll make their excuses and give you a false telephone number.

January 30, 2006
Derek Harding maps out the vocabulary and techniques behind the idea of dynamic messaging.

Essentially, we're talking about customizing or personalizing outgoing emails. Harding looks at the four basic techniques used, and considers the pros and cons of each.

Useful backgrounder for those planning on moving beyond the "batch and blast" approach to email marketing.

Interesting study by the folks at eROI, tracking changes in opens and clicks between different list sizes and different send days.

Just to pick out a couple of things and highlight a problem or two.

First, there's a strong suggestion that the increase in email volume for the holiday season might explain the drop off in open and click rates compared to the previous quarter and previous year.

The logical conclusion is to be careful not to overburden recipients with email. But there are two problems with that...

1. This doesn't help much if everyone else is still sending like mad. Though it might leave people with a warmer feeling about you. Is there value in scarcity? Or do people simply forget you?

2. Just because open rates and click rates fall, doesn't mean that bottom line success falls too. The number of clicks per send may drop, but the total number of clicks per quarter is perhaps higher (through more frequent sends). If that translates to more sales, is that necessarily bad? Just what is the optimal send frequency?

Then you also have to factor in how your send frequency during the holiday season affects responses to emails later on. How does that customer experience impact how recipients view your emails in 2006?

Did you turn too many people off your emails for the sake of a few extra sales?

Summary: Metrics, analysis and strategy are a heck of a lot more complicated than it looks on the surface.

In other insights, Friday seems to be the best day to send out your emails, in terms of success metrics. But that may not be the case next quarter, as everybody starts sending their marketing emails on Friday in response to this survey.

And there's more evidence that smaller targeted lists -- or segments -- get better results (in case anyone was still wondering if targeting or segmentation was worth trying).

Bill Nussey is CEO of an email service provider, but he's also a parent and a thought leader. In this post he makes a cogent and objective argument against the spread of state email child protection laws in the USA.

His argument centers around two points. First, the laws requiring mailers to scrub their lists against a do-not-email database of children's email addresses will actually achieve the opposite of the intended outcome (a view supported by the US government's own Federal Trade Commission).

Second, it adds a ridiculous financial burden to legitimate email marketers (while, incidentally, those sending dodgy emails won't obey the laws in the first place).

Read his arguments and support his call for action.

January 27, 2006
An opportunity for you or your client to step up and claim the adulation of the assembled crowds, before retiring to do an email marketing residency at Las Vegas. Possibly.

MarketingSherpa are calling for nominations for their 2006 email marketing awards (entries must be in by March 31st).

There's a nomination fee ($125) and numerous categories. So if you think you have a winning newsletter, campaign, creative or even list welcome message, consider putting yourself forward.

Actually nice to see some formal recognition for email marketing as an art and science in its own right. There's an award ceremony and real trophies to be won, too.

Karen Gedney has put together a brief copywriting primer for those crafting marketing emails.

She focuses on the importance of the subject line and the need to consider the email as a holistic whole...making use of all the various locations and resources available to produce a message that achieves a particular goal.

January 26, 2006
Tom Spring of PC World runs through the likely spam trends for 2006, introducing us to the joys of zombie armies, spear phishing, splogs and more.

The good news for email marketers is that it seems the dark side of the Internet is moving away from email in its attempt to take over the web universe.

Vendor FreshAddress conducted an experiment where they attempted to sign-up nine bad addresses (typos, non-existent domain names etc.) to the email lists of 50 top online retailers.

49 sites accepted two or more dud addresses, and 43 sites accepted four or more.

The press release points out that dud addresses mean both lost revenue and bad deliverability.

Lost revenue because if you catch a dud address during the sign-up process, you can often solicit the correct address (for example, by asking people to retype their address). And every additional working email address is a revenue opportunity.

Bad deliverability because dud addresses bounce and high bounce rates can get you blacklisted.

Important to note here (a point missed by media coverage of the survey) that the deliverability issue isn't relevant if you're operating a double opt-in list, since the bad address would never get confirmed and added to your database.

January 24, 2006
Nick Usborne is a long-time permission prophet and a top online copywriter. In this opinion piece, he addresses the issue of value and the sender-reader relationship.

He suggests thinking of your list as a series of relationships with each subscriber, rather than as a financial asset. This change of perspective immediately effects how you treat the list, what content you send them, and how long they stay engaged with your publication or messages.

The concept of value (to the reader, not to the marketer) is particularly critical in e-newsletters designed for customer retention and relationship building. A topic covered in this chapter of the Keeping the Key report.

January 23, 2006
David Baker pops up with three predictions for email marketing in 2006.

Actually, they're as much recommendations as they are predictions. Not in terms of suggesting specific practices, but in inviting you to open your mind to new possibilities in terms of customer communication, metrics and IT infrastructure.

David is one of the top minds I put in my email marketing lens.

Nice overview by Bill Nussey of the first tier of metrics typically used in email marketing, though it does assume you have a little prior understanding of terms like "open rate."

Rather than focus on technological measurement issues, the author discusses how you can improve each of the metrics he discusses. His suggestions range from concrete practical tips to more general ideas you need to go away and think about for your particular situation.

Good value, especially for those relatively new to the field.

How to summarize the framework on which all your email marketing efforts should be based? This article is one man's overview of what email marketing is fundamentally all about, with links to the top reference sites and people who "get it."

I'm the one man, and this is a contribution to Squidoo.com, a co-operative content site started by Seth Godin, the man who popularized the concept of permission marketing. Do take a look, rate the article by waving your cursor over the stars*, and let me know what you think (especially where there's room for improvement).

*I think you have to sign-up at Squidoo before you can rate things. It's free and interesting, so you should consider joining the experiment perhaps. Why not write your own contribution on email marketing?

Rob Sanchez and Dee Castrellon Blohm offer an overview of the criteria you can/should use when selecting...

1. someone to represent your address list on the rental market, or,

2. someone to find you promising email lists to rent for your own acquisition endeavors.

Email list rental appears slowly to be regaining credence as a viable alternative in email marketing. But with the potential pitfalls, the kind of advice offered in this article is valuable in helping ensure you don't fall victim to the dark side of email marketing.

(Aside: Every week I have to block a fresh set of websites trying to use contextual advertising through Google to peddle dodgy spam lists here at Email Marketing Reports)

January 20, 2006
A lovely little piece over at SmartBiz.com which should brighten your Friday even more than the imminent arrival of the weekend.

The article poses the simple question, "Which Strategies Improve the Open Rates Of Marketing Emails?", and then presents separate answers from six experts. Real experts, too (I recognize the names).

Each answer suggests tactics, techniques and approaches to help engage your reader more. These vary from generalities about content to specific tips on subject lines and things to test.

Nice.

January 19, 2006
Just read through the results of Return Path's Second Annual Holiday Email Consumer Survey, which has a selection of insights for email marketers.

Some of the highlights...

The two biggest factors determining whether a consumer chooses to open a mail (according to the consumers) are 1. if they know and trust the sender and 2. their previous experience with emails from that sender.

That reinforces the idea that email is not a series of one-off missives, but needs to be thought of in terms of an ongoing, holistic set of communications in the context of a long-term relationship between sender and receiver.

44% got more email than they thought they were signing up for. Once expectations and reality take different courses, it's a fast track to losing the recipient and attracting the spam label.

Alarmingly, a big chunk of people dealt with this extra email by either unsubscribing or (worse) reporting it as spam (which in their eyes, it was).

The report has plenty of other numbers, combined with interpretation from the Return Path team.

The underlying message coming through from this survey and elsewhere is that the quality bar is rising. There's so much email arriving in inboxes, recipients are forced to be selective about what they do (and do not) read.

Marketers need to do more to stand out (and sending more frequent emails isn't the answer).

G. Simms Jenkins presents a series of articles authored by various luminaries from around the email marketing world. The theme running through the collection is to encourage you to take a step back and review your email marketing strategy and execution.

Most articles are bite-sized, designed to prompt further thought rather than offer specifics on what you should or should not do.

If you have a few spare moments, it's always worth reading through this kind of material. It keeps the important stuff at the top of your mind, and sparks off the kind of thought processes and actions that eventually lead to meaningful improvements in your results.

Arthur Sweetster has ten tips for improving your email address collection efforts.

As well as suggesting some of the practical ways to actually sign people up, he also covers related issues, such as gaining internal support for the email database, collecting demographics, etc.

The article kind of reflects a growing theme concerning email marketing and business. Namely that a lot of the potential depends on getting the whole organization aware of the value of email as a driver of company-wide success. And getting all people in that organization -- regardless of whether they actually work in marketing -- to think of how their actions can contribute to a successful email marketing program.

January 18, 2006
The annual MarketingSherpa compendium of user-submitted nuggets of marketing wisdom is now out and "downloadable" for free from this page.

Around 20 of the -- often quite detailed -- 110 submissions cover email marketing. Plenty of advice from the trenches on such things as newsletter ads, role of RSS, resends, contracting agencies, testing, unsubscribe patterns, localisation, format and copywriting, and more.

This article from Silverpop highlights the value of those recipients who signed up most recently to your house list.

It then suggests ways to exploit the higher level of interest and engagement among these recent names, by changing the timing and/or content of the first messages they receive from you.

January 17, 2006
This article highlights the value of segmentation and testing.

It explains how the resort segments its list of email addresses, based on customer self-selection and click tracking.

Then it looks at how one particular test campaign to a small segment produced fantastic results.

There are also various tidbits about email design, list rental and other aspects of email marketing in there.

The main lesson: think creatively about who you can send to, and what with.

Coregistration* is often touted as a good way of building your list, but not all coregistrations are created equal.

In this blog post, Chris Baggott of ExactTarget passes on the views of one of his staff, who gives several reasons why coregistration is ineffective. (Note that this applies to coregistrations you pay for.)

Interesting insight based on real experiences and numbers.

*Example: somebody signs up for a similar newsletter to yours and on the confirmation page they have the opportunity to sign-up for your offering, too. Or specialist websites present subscription opportunities to their audience - if somebody picks your newsletter, you pay the website a fee.

January 13, 2006
Vendor Truverse just put out a press release with summary results from their survey of email subscriber behaviors and preferences.

It reveals various insights into subscriber thinking. But the overall message is that there is a mismatch between what subscribers want from emails (and subscription management practices) and what marketers give them.

This reflects a current theme that says people are *not* tired of commercial email. On the contrary, they rate such email highly for the value it can give them. But the emphasis is on the word "can".

In too many cases, the low value of what's delivered to inboxes means recipients are frustrated and disenchanted.

The good news is that means there's still plenty of opportunity out there.

Rather than go the conventional "prediction" or "review" route at the change of the year, vendor SubscriberMail instead offer a few challenges to catalyse your efforts over the next 12 months.

They cover testing, list hygiene, subscription practices, attitudes and strategic review processes.

It's always helpful to take a step back and reevaluate what you're doing, why you're doing it, how you're doing it and where you're going.

It's also worth noting how they take a conventional, quasi-obligatory type of email content (the "end of year" review/prediction article) and give it a little twist so they stand out more from the other articles of this nature currently floating around.

A concept we can all apply to our own endeavors.

January 12, 2006
Al DiGuido throws his hat into the ring of predictions for email marketing in 2006.

He covers a lot of ground and the article reads like a strong set of best practices, if you have the required resources and company support. Big marketing for big business.

I still argue that most businesses don't have a chance of reaching the kind of sophistication regularly highlighted by the media (including me). But that doesn't mean they can't still be successful.

With the memory of David Baker's article on classic email marketing mistakes still very much in my mind, I give you...(roll drums)...a screenshot from an email that just popped into my inbox.

dear first name

OK, we've all done it (at least, many of us have). But just to add a little spice to the error, the broadcast mail came from a leading email marketing services provider. Don't laugh - next time it could be you. Be careful out there.

January 11, 2006
The folks at vendor Campaign Monitor just posted a blog entry about their survey of support for Flash content in various email environments (Hotmail, AOL 9, Mac Mail, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes etc.).

They have screenshots of the results. If you're of a nervous disposition and a big fan of Flash, make sure you're sitting down before you look.

I've said it before, but anyone involved in producing email content and creative would do well to follow the Campaign Monitor blog. The articles and tips offer a lot of value without a whiff of self-importance or sales blah blah.

Bill McCloskey offers up an analysis of the impact of email campaigns sent out after the end of the traditional holiday buying season.

The article looks at website traffic through time at various top retail sites and matches the changes to the timing of particular email campaigns, drawing conclusions on the worth of the post-holiday approach.

The graphs are pretty darned convincing. Just a shame for those marketers and fulfillment staff hoping that work would ease off a little at the end of the year.

Ken Magill reviews a successful B2B lead generation campaign conducted on behalf of Extol Business Integrator using rented lists.

It mainly details the contents and design of the actual message, but later morphs into a defence of email list rental itself.

The suggestion is that rental is making a comeback thanks to the growing number of marketers brought up on email and the fact that people are better at writing effective acquisition emails.

Quote of the year so far (from a direct marketer): "Eighty percent of what is going out [via commercial e-mail] is mediocre to sh*t."

Melinda Krueger outlines some best practices when it comes to "forward-to-a-friend" functionality in your outgoing emails.

She covers such things as...

>> whether to incent forwards or not
>> what to put in the automated forwarded message
>> how to benefit from those who just click on "forward" in their email client, rather than use your dedicated "forward-to-a-friend" form, etc.

That latter point is crucial, because many (most?) people tend to forward manually.

The MarketingSherpa article takes a closer look at how one marketing agency actually managed to make the tired holiday email format work.

Obviously the success of such a "campaign" is always going to mostly depend on having a cool idea in the first place. Which is the hardest aspect to replicate. A prerequisite for viral marketing success is engaging creative you want to share with friends or colleagues.

Having said that, there are also lots of little insights into the practicalities of how to distribute the card and gain attention without shooting yourself in the foot on such issues as spam, duplication etc.

January 10, 2006
Jordan Cohen has some suggestions on additional things you can do to enhance your delivery rate to corporate email addresses.

He outlines some of the new efforts by corporate IT departments to block emails using reputation scores for the sender IP address. And then offers ways to ensure that your IP address ends up with a good reputation (or at least avoids a bad one).

Barry Stamos offers his top 10 recommendations for giving your open rates a kick up the proverbial.

It's a useful checklist for those relatively new to email marketing. And because it goes into some detail on such things as "designing using plain text" and "writing good subject lines", it probably has a few little eyebrow raisers for the more experienced marketer, too.

Something to keep handy when writing your next email.

Just caught news of another discussion group devoted to email marketing. The link takes you to a blog posting about the group, which is for marketers only and hosted at Yahoo! Groups.

I say "another," because of the Inbox Insiders list mentioned back in November, 2005. Peer-to-peer interaction and networking is always a good thing.

It's the time of year where various vendors, commentators and practitioners present their reviews of 2005 and predictions for email marketing in 2006.

Here's a recent one from Adestra, and another from ExactTarget.

I've even dabbled myself.

The predictions for 2006 usually include a pretty accurate description of email marketing best practices, and the tactics and strategies described are something to aim for.

However, given that most media attention focuses on all the whizz bang wonderful things people do with email marketing, it's easy to forget that there's a big bucketful of worst practices still going on, too.

January 09, 2006
(Survey) E-Mailers Don't Send What Consumers Want
This Quris survey reported exclusively in DMNews has some interesting insights into the gap between consumer expectations or desires regarding commercial email and what actually turns up in their inbox.

There are various statistics supporting the idea that companies are yet to take proper and full advantage of an underlying interest in getting commercial email.

Equally, there are also indications of continuing consumer mistrust when it comes to handing over email addresses.

Anyway, plenty of little tidbits offering insight into consumer thinking and thus ideas for how to better address their needs for mutual benefit.

(Format) Ensuring your emails work cross platform
This short article from vendor Adestra doesn't go into the nitty-gritty of designing for different email clients and interfaces.

But it does have some general advice which is worth a look, particularly if you only have a small list and/or limited resources.

Sometimes the extra effort involved isn't justified by the likely benefit, an issue the article addresses. And as the authors point out, you can always fall back on your text-only version if you're not sure if the HTML version is compatible with a particular end user.

(Misc) Classic Mistakes Of 2005
David Baker runs through a variety of campaign disasters witnessed last year. Everything from awesome typos to strategic mishits.

It serves as a list of some things not to do, or at least to check for, before you send out your emails. But it's probably more of an opportunity for us to enjoy a nice bit of Schadenfreude on a January morning.

Before praying to the God of email marketing that we never commit the same errors ( and knowing that we probably have at some point in our careers).

See also this cartoon.

January 05, 2006
(List mgmt) Making a stand on permission
Kirill Popov and Loren McDonald outline the various reasons why getting explicit permission to add names to your list is not an option, but a necessity.

More importantly, perhaps, they throw down the gauntlet to those who don't believe in this permission model, inviting them to argue their case and prove that the non-permission way pays better.

Now, I dare say we can all point to spammers who (presumably) make a profit using the non-permission approach.

But that only works if your business model involves false identities, skulking in cellars waiting for the FTC to call, and the creation of problems other people have to pay for. Not for you and me I think.

Like the bumper sticker says, "Email marketers do it with permission."

(Deliverability) Is Your Email Being Delivered?
This article at a Belgium IT site isn't specifically for email marketers, but it does run over all the potential things that stand between you and your recipient's inbox.

It's a touch too negative in places, but does give you an understanding of how diffuse and complicated the whole email delivery process actually is.

And it offers insights into other delivery issues that many email marketers might not consider (like the cost of customer service calls when transaction emails fail to get through).

(Law) Affiliates and email
A long look at the issue of affiliate marketing and email legislation. Specifically, the FTC recently made it clear that companies would be held responsible for Can-Spam violations in relevant emails sent out by affiliates.

The big issue here, of course, is that many retailers have thousands of affiliates and keeping tabs one each one's privacy practices is a tall order.

The article solicits comments and advice on the issue from various players in the industry.

January 04, 2006
(Misc) What keeps email marketers awake at night

A review of over 500 email marketing articles published last year reveals what people were writing and worrying about in 2005. And the results are very different from 2004 (see the table below).

The highlights:

>> In 2004, the media and marketers focused heavily on the spam problem and related email marketing legislation, such as the Can-Spam Act in the USA. These issues were less important in 2005, reflecting the success of anti-spam measures and the growing feeling that inboxes are slowly starting to clear of rubbish.

(And, of course, marketers have simply learned to live with the new legislative requirements.)

>> Attention turned instead to the practicalities of email marketing, specifically strategy, tactics and list management. Over the course of the year, best practices and marketer interest shifted toward more sophisticated and successful methods for growing and using email lists.

>> Deliverability remained a key issue in the industry. The problem didn't go away like many (including me) hoped or expected.

>> Despite widespread (also including by me) predictions for interest in RSS to grow over 2005, it never happened. At least not at the scale predicted. What did happen was a growth in the acceptance of RSS and email as complementary channels for online marketing, rather than competitors for marketing dollars and attention.

Far fewer people now refer to RSS as sounding the death knell for email marketing.

Predictions for 2006:

>> Spam and legal issues will continue to fade as technological solutions to the spam problem improve further. Deliverability will, however, still be an issue as marketers seek to understand how these solutions impact on their own practices.

>> We remain on the cusp of the RSS volcano, waiting for the eruption in popularity among users. If the IT folk work out how to make it easy to subscribe to feeds through the browsers and email software that consumers are already using, then the revolution will come.

>> At the moment, few companies have the resources, skills and/or confidence to take advantage of the opportunities presented by sophisticated database tools, integrated email/website metrics and tracking etc.

In 2006, interest in advanced strategies and tactics will remain high, and implementation will start to catch up with interest. More marketers will get comfortable with the basics, and feel confident enough to move up to the next level of email marketing. Costs will fall and the holders of purse strings will be more easily convinced to free up the required resources.

Full results of the review:

(Topics as a percentage of all blog postings in 2005, with the most popular topics listed first. 2004 results are given in brackets)

* Strategy/tactics 14.69% (9.2)
* Deliverability 11.07% (12.1)
* List management 10.31% (3.2)
* Misc 7.25% (3.5)
* Case studies 7.06% (6.1)
* RSS 6.30% (5.8)
* Law 6.11% (17.9)
* Other spam issues 5.92% (12.4)
* Format/design/copywriting 5.53% (2.9)
* Surveys/trends 4.77% (5.5)
* Events 4.77% (5.2)
* State of industry 4.77% (3.5)
* Basics 4.58% (not measured separately in 2004)
* Metrics 3.05% (ditto)
* E-newsletters 2.29% (3.2)
* Email address providers 1.53% (9.6)

Note:

This is not a scientific survey. I wouldn't send it in to Statistics Monthly and expect them to nod their heads in appreciation. What I did was go through the last year's worth of blog postings here at "No man is an iland" and categorize all the articles referred to (over 500 of them) into one of 16 different topic areas.

Then I calculated the percentage of the total number of articles accounted for by each topic, and compared that to 2004. Then I filtered that through my own experiences and observations to come up with some conclusions on what that might mean for the state of the email marketing industry in 2005 and 2006.

So don't let the presence of numbers mask the fact that this is a largely subjective exercise in thinking.


January 03, 2006
(List mgmt) Subscription practices from hell

I'm trying to unsubscribe from an online marketing newsletter. Anytime one of your subscribers uses the phrase "trying to unsubscribe", start to panic. They've already decided they don't want your messages. So let them go. If they can't unsubscribe, indifference can turn to malice; spam complaints likely follow.

In this case, the newsletter advised me a few weeks ago that if I didn't confirm my subscription, I would be unsubscribed. I didn't confirm the subscription. They keep sending me the newsletter. I'm guessing the attempt to clean up the list resulted in a very small number of confirms so they backtracked.

The result? A promise not kept - not great for credibility.

On the actual emails they send, there is no one-click unsubscribe function. There isn't even a multi-click unsubscribe function. You have to send an email (or a letter). Not best practices. Worse, if you "reply" to the newsletter, your email bounces. You have to write to a specific human address (implying the unsubscribe is not automatic).

Hurdles, hurdles, hurdles. Not good for that reader relationship, eh? They lost me weeks ago, now they're annoying me, too. If my latest attempt to unsubscribe does not work, I will report the emails as spam, for that is what they will have become.

You don't want to encourage people to leave your list. But when their love has gone, chains and locks aren't going to bring it back. For more on this principle, read this article.

Some simple rules of thumb:

* Make it easy to unsubscribe, ideally through a web interface. There you can also present alternative options to a straight unsubscribe, such as reducing the delivery schedule (maybe they were overwhelmed by the frequency of your sends), switching to alternative content modules, moving to another list or changing delivery vehicle (e.g. to RSS).

* If your system allows it, send a note afterwards (automatically):
- confirming the unsubscribe
- thanking the recipient for their previous interest
- giving a sign-up link (they may only want to unsub temporarily for a vacation or change of email address)
- pointing out the alternatives

(Deliverability) Mea culpa

January 2nd was not a public holiday where I live. So still in a post-holiday stupor I sent out the biweekly newsletter summarizing these blog posts on its usual Monday schedule.

There's a lot to be said for sticking to a regular deadline, with its implications for an image of steady reliability. But sending on a day which is a public holiday for 90% of the readership is not clever.

As a result, most people will see the newsletter when they return to work today, where it will get lost in the myriad of email accumulated in their email account over the end-of-year holiday.

And people returning to work after a long break have other things to do than read email newsletters, even good ones. What are the odds on the open rate for that issue being the lowest of the year?

Reliability is great, but not when it's at the expense of giving yourself the best chance of reaching your readers.

January 02, 2006
(List mgmt) Is Bigger Really Better?
Derek Harding takes issue with the idea that the size of your email provider service (ESP) is directly related to its value.

He examines some pros and cons of working with big vendors and suggests that choosing an ESP is simply about finding the vendor -- big or small -- that best matches your needs for the right price.

(Misc) Hiring Email Marketers
2006 begins with an article that speaks for the current optimism in the industry. Michael Pridemore of Accucast advises on adding email marketing expertise to your team. What to look for? Where to find it? How to use it?

And if you're an email marketer looking for a new position, maybe a few insights there on how best to sell yourself.

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