No man is an iland

September 28, 2007

There's the sexy side of email...crafting copy and conjuring designs. And there's the boring duffel coat and wellington boots side...like administrative content.

But, the administrative side of emails - like unsubscribe mechanisms - play an important role in ensuring the smooth running of your email efforts.

Two new articles help make the point and explain how to do these things well.

Judith Nemes picks the brains of the wise Jeanne Jennings to reveal some best practices for subscriber preference centers. That's where subscribers can update their subscriptions...change email address, lose a subscription, sign-up to new email lists, add details about themselves, etc. etc.

And the equally wise Loren McDonald urges us to account for all the other things subscribers might want to do other than click on a "buy" or "read more" link.

At the end of his article, he has a big list of functions your emails should support in addition to the main content.

Simms Jenkins also wrote on these subjects a while back. Here's his article on preference centers. And one on boring but needed email content.

And if you're still keen, despite the fact it's a Friday (Stop work! Go home!), try these links on subscriber management and dealing with unsubscribes.

Tags: email marketing, subscriber preference centers, subscriber management, email content

This deserves its own place in the hall of fame, given the recipient (me) is a permission fiend.

(As an aside, I'm really not convinced there are one billion active email addresses in the entire world. Still, who's to argue with Minh Quan...)

Dear Sir!

I have billions email address: AOL, Yahoo,Hotmail,MSN, Excite,...
Email address collect form website and sale of campaign.

I am lucky and got it, I don't have a marketing service.
Now, I need money and sale it.

Please read attach zip file to see Hotmail address from my email database.

Now I sale 1 billions email address for 500USD.
If you need to buy, don't mind contact with me.

Best regards,
Minh Quan

Actually, I'm a little disappointed in Minh. Yesterday, he was offering me 2 billion emails for that price.

P.S. If you don't understand why buying this list would be a bad idea, read this article.

Tags: spam

In the big book of best practices, sending subscribers a suitable welcome message after they sign-up gets a chapter all to itself.

Chad White of the DMA's Email Experience Council just released the second annual Retail Welcome Email Benchmark Study, reviewing the welcome mail practices of dozens of leading retailers.

Chad's post highlights some of the key data. In doing so, of course, he also indicates the kind of things you should be doing with these mails.

That aside, some of the results lift the odd eyebrow. For example, 28% of retailers don't send a welcome message at all.

And others take over a week to send it.

Since one of the main purposes of a welcome message is to take advantage of the fact that the recipient just interacted positively with you (they signed up to your list), waiting a week to do so seems a little churlish.

Tags: email marketing, welcome emails, retail emails, EEC, DMA

As David St. Hubbins once said, "It's such a fine line between stupid...and clever" And fortunately for us we have Andrew Seel to help us stay on the right side of that line.

I find his email makeovers fascinating and this month's is no exception. He puts the marketing boot into a rather patched together daily alert from fashion brand Vogue, describes the problems, then presents a much-improved alternative with all the changes explained.

Great lessons and insights.

More email case studies | Tags: vogue, email marketing

September 27, 2007

Enough glum talk of hotmail delivery problems, let's dig up some new articles designed to add a little bit extra to your basic email marketing approach.

Leading the way is Janine Popick with some simple, but effective, ideas on how you can split up your address lists and send more relevant emails to each chunk of addresses.

Then the folk over at Contactology suggest how you might sit down and map out a strategy for getting better results from your email newsletter.

And Stefan Pollard puts on a red hat and tinsel to highlight things to do (and not do) when it comes to sending emails during the holiday shopping season. One of the more thoughtful contributions on this hot topic.

Enjoy.

Tags: email segmentation, email newsletters, holiday emails, holiday marketing

September 26, 2007

Kevin Hillstrom takes us all to task for bigging up email marketing based on the returns on investment it generates compared to search marketing and other alternatives.

His (valid) point: it's easy to claim high ROI when your costs are low. But ROI shouldn't be your only measure of success.

On the other hand, the evidence collected by me and others to justify the value of email isn't just about ROI.

Anyway, Kevin isn't anti-email (quite the contrary, based on his previous posts), but he is pro making decisions based on objective interpretations of the numbers rather than loyalty to any one particular marketing channel. Can't argue with that.

More on statistics | Tags: email marketing, email marketing statistics, email ROI

George Bilbrey wrote a post today expanding on Loren McDonald's Six Sigma approach to email deliverability.

George suggests that while many of us are now able to recognize and measure a problem with getting emails delivered, too few take the next step and do anything about it.

This idea resonates well with me and reflects a growing gulf in email marketing.

Here's the background. I've never had a troubling delivery problem with my double opt-in newsletter, which reached its 67th issue on Monday. Suddenly...

• Open rate dropped to 30% (it's never dipped below 40% before)
• My "soft bounces" went from near 0% to 5%
• 3% of emails came back as blocked, but the open rate drop tells me the real number is much higher
  

Clearly there are delivery issues here. A closer look reveals problems with hotmail.com addresses and "Spamcop administrator has prohibited delivery" messages.

I'm a small business. My desk is covered in to-do lists. I have a project to deliver by the end of the week. There is a growing list of people waiting for feedback, reviews, emails and notifications from me. It's already 11pm as I write this.

The prospect of devoting any significant time to sorting out a problem with what is just one of many ways I promote my business is, frankly, not a pleasant one. And I have a pretty good idea of how to set about it (most other small businesses don't.)

This is where the email marketing divide comes in. Medium and large businesses with sizable, active email address lists can afford to invest time, energy and resources in managing the email marketing challenge. Those who know the value of a successful email program will be prepared to invest in it.

But most of those with small lists, little understanding or who are simply pushed for time (like most small businesses) are poorly-equipped to meet that challenge. They are left with two choices:

1. Stay away from email marketing
2. Accept imperfection

Fortunately for those have nots, even imperfection can work out pretty well (I know many large companies who would sell an elderly relative for a 30% open rate.)

But this reinforces the point made in yesterday's post about what's preventing email from getting a wider role in supporting the brand or business as a whole. It's still too much of a challenge for many folk. The comfort factor isn't there yet...

More on deliverability | Tags: email deliverability, blocked email, email marketing

September 25, 2007

Let's round off a long-winded blog day with some brief links on email metrics...

Melinda Krueger lists some of the important numbers you should measure to assess how well your email efforts are going and where you might need to take corrective action.

If you want to go beyond the basics, Russell McDonald has some detail on integrating email with web analytics. Both to get more insightful numbers on email performance (since tracking doesn't stop once the reader leaves the email to visit the website) and to allow you to generate data which can trigger more targeted emails later. Fascinating stuff.

Then EmailSherpa has a case study of how a minor league baseball team used a combination of HTML and text emails to sell tickets. I mention this to point out the dangers of taking metrics at face value.

The HTML/text combo was deemed a success because "The two emails sold 262.3% more single-game tickets than their average 2007 email campaign."

No arguing with that. Except the games in question were playoff games. So was it the new email strategy or the nature of the event that lifted results?

More statistics and case studies | Tags: email marketing statistics, email marketing metrics

Bill Nussey reveals that Silverpop stopped a study on subject lines and open rates because...


This reinforces a similar message that came out of an earlier Silverpop report back in 2006.

There is more to this than meets the eye, methinks. Here's my theory on email headers and open rates...

A primary reason people open your emails is recognition, as Silverpop have shown us. But there are two types of recognition you can go for.

The first is sender recognition:


To get that kind of recognition, the recipient must see a name in the from and/or subject line which she associates with your business. This may be the brand name, company name, sales rep name, whatever.

It also helps if whatever appears in the email's preview pane (like a logo) helps identify you.

Then there is email recognition:


This requires some constant in the from and/or subject line that identifies the email. This might also be the brand name etc., or the name of the newsletter itself.

So you drive opens through the reputation and recognition associated with your brand or company as an entity in itself. And also through the reputation you've built with your previous emails.

A secondary reason people open your emails is the subject line - how enticing, engaging etc. can you make it. All the copywriting concepts covered in traditional discussions on writing subject lines.

This three-factor theory leads to various insights. For example, when people first join your list, then sender recognition is critical, because you've had no chance yet to build an email reputation with new subscribers.

Of course, your sign-up process and list welcome message can help establish that sender recognition.

If the new reader's existing relationship with you or your brand is tenuous (we're not all Coca-Cola) then your subject line likely becomes more important in getting people to look at your message.

The concept of email recognition also explains why really quality email newsletters sometimes get the same open rates whatever subject lines they use. Recipients' previous experience with the emails is so positive that it overrides anything else in driving opens.

Intriguing, isn't it?

Then of course we mustn't forget all the other factors that contribute to open rates, like timing and frequency. Or forget the importance of testing different from and subject lines to find what works best for your unique audience (a point made by Time Consumer Marketing in this new article from Ken Magill.)

Related posts and articles:
Email open rates guide
From lines and open rates: unusual test results
Recognition and relevancy
What to put in the from line
Does putting your brand name in the subject line make sense?
A note on subject lines

Tags: email marketing, subject lines, email headers, from lines, open rates

I associate the word "thoughtful" with David Baker's articles. They're always a demanding and challenging read for me (in the positive sense.)

David's latest article asks email folk to take a leaf out of search marketing's book. That leaf being to think outside the channel. To consider how email interacts with other elements of the business, particularly its role in influencing customer relationships and brand building.

Admirable thoughts. But search marketers have advantages in this context.

First, it is easier to "think outside the channel" when your tasks are, by definition, intimately associated with website operations in a way that email is not.

Second, paid search and SEO do not have a respect problem. Nobody rolls their eyes when you want to talk about the role of search marketing.

Third, advanced search marketing is as complex as advanced email marketing. But basic search marketing is far easier than basic email marketing. People understand it.

Search marketing works within a fairly simple and clear framework. The MSN, Yahoo, and Google search engines and the associated paid search services pretty much define the search marketing world. And it is relatively easy to set up a successful paid search campaign.

Fourth, everyone in an organization is "sending email" and for numerous different reasons. Search marketing is normally in the hands of the competent few, making internal communication and coordination far easier.

Now, David would probably tell me that presenting problems is no good without offering solutions. But I'll leave that to others who are wiser and more experienced than me.

However...getting broader organizational interest in the wider role of email as a driver of brand/customer experiences is important, but not the first step. It has to be preceded by other efforts which pick away at email's perceived weaknesses in this context. For example:

• Centralize email activities in the organization so that you have the expertise and oversight to properly represent, exploit and coordinate the channel. This is a topic addressed yesterday by Spencer Kollas, and previously by others.
• Demonstrate the value of email in a way that's easy to understand, thus gaining the recognition that makes others in the organization willing to consider email when developing integrated marketing approaches.
• Simplify the practice of email marketing basics, so more folk can do it and understand it. This is where activities like the push for common rendering standards among webmail services and email software are so useful. And where certification may play an important role if it proves a viable means of avoiding the complexities of deliverability.
  

Which is not to say that you far-thinking marketers can't get on right away with seeing email as more than just a series of discrete sales promotions. But address the weaknesses, and integration follows.

Tags: email marketing, integrated marketing, email strategy

September 24, 2007

eMarketer just released their latest email marketing report. I haven't read it (it costs $695 a copy.)

The article accompanying the release makes some predictions on future spending in the sector.

Their experts predict growth, but unspectacular growth...and likely not as much as in other areas of online marketing.

A main reason given for the rather mediocre growth curve is the perception of email as a low-cost medium.

I find it intriguing to base a prediction on existing perceptions, since by definition these can change.

So what do you think? Have eMarketer got it right?

More statistics | Tags: email marketing spending, email advertising spending

The need to be brief, yet speak to a wide audience, has its downside online. Most media articles on a topic tend to avoid detail or special issues of limited interest.

So you have to search industry forums, message boards and blogs for answers to nitty gritty questions.

The many vendor blogs play a good role here, if we ignore the inevitable sales agenda that creeps into some of them.

Matt Vernhout's EmailKarma is a positive example. Matt has a Q&A feature which draws on his experience in the vendor world to offer advice on specific questions.

Like these three recent Q&A posts on how you actually build a sender reputation:

• What's the best way to build reputation on new IPs?
• Follow-up on reputation building
• Are IP addresses portable?

Here's another good example...

It's not unusual for test messages sent to yourself from your email marketing service to end up in your spam folder. Which can cause some consternation, since it suggests your actual campaigns may suffer the same fate.

Not so. Exact Target's Phil Schott explains why you needn't be worried.

While some vendor blogs (the ones I don't quote!) are purely sales messages, others are vehicles for some of the vendor's email specialists to show off their knowledge in a way that benefits us all. The classic example is Campaign Monitor's posts on email design.

You'll find a list of the top vendor blogs here.

Tags: email marketing, email marketing services, email reputation, test messages

September 21, 2007

As the week nears its inevitable close, time to put up your legs, grab a drink and treat yourself to a few chunks of chocolate-coated case studies. Or something like that.

This blog post by Glenn Gabe explains why he thinks BuyCostumes.com has a super email program, with a focus on the smooth continuation of the email experience when you actually buy stuff at the website.

Then Al DiGuido has two impressive examples of companies who use email cleverly to add a layer of icing to the customer relationship cake. Mainly through relevant transactional and relationship-building emails.

And a report by Giselle Abramovich on a "Segmentation for Everyone" web cast reveals the customer characteristics various companies use to segment their email address lists. Might set you thinking on how you might do the same with your own lists.

I particularly like the tracking tip at the bottom, where one company sends different telephone numbers to different email segments, so they know which campaign a person is calling about when the phone rings. Very nice.

More case studies | Tags: email marketing, segmentation, transactional email

The theory is beautiful. I visit a retail website and pop the "House" Series 1 DVD collection into my shopping cart. Halfway through the checkout process and second thoughts strike. Should I rather buy something for the whole family?

I abandon the process and move on to other tasks. But...

Half an hour later and I get an email from that website saying that if I complete the order, they'll throw in series 2 at a 25% discount. OK! Forget the kids...I'm in!

Using email to recapture "lost" sales like this is a hot topic. It seems foolproof on the surface, but it's more difficult than it looks. And a recent survey suggests few are actually doing it, despite all the positive press.

One of the big problems is mastering the technical challenges of integrating website and email systems. Another is tackling the decision rules. Who gets what email and when?

Fortunately, Angel Morales offers some help on the decision issues, explaining the questions you need to ask before you set up an email recapture program (and how you might set about answering them.)

One issue commonly ignored by the evangelists is how you decide what offer to make in the recapture email. Or do you even make an offer? Would a simple reminder of a product's benefits suffice to win over the customer?

This looks to be another area where a deep understanding of your customers and their purchasing behavior is critical to turning a promising theory into dollars.

(P.S. The dark twisted parts of my soul sometimes make me deliberately abandon shopping carts, just to see if I get a nice discount offer via email later...)

More on advanced email techniques | Tags: email marketing, trigger emails, recapture emails, abandoned shopping carts

September 20, 2007

Getting legitimate email into inboxes and past spam filters is obviously important. So important that emotions can get out of hand when email doesn't get through.

Human nature is to search for a scapegoat when delivery rates crumble. Much ire is thrown at two suspected culprits...the ISP, webmail service or blacklist behind the email block, or the email services sending out the emails for you.

These scapegoats may be convenient, but are rarely the real source of the problem. The main reasons email gets blocked are all to do with the emailer's own practices.

Sending email to people who didn't request it. Sending irrelevant email. Continuing to send email to addresses that bounce each time. Sending too much email to folk. The list goes on.

You may have read recent reports of political organizations crying "censorship!" after finding their email blocked at leading ISPs. The truth of the matter is exposed by the former head of AOL's anti-spam team, Carl Hutzler, in this blog post.

It's an inside view into how deliverability problems can usually be traced back to something the sender did wrong. Spam complaints from recipients and high bounce rates are to blame, not censorship. Carl notes that blocking issues...

"...were not issues with the organization and what they stood for. The issues were due to mailing practices and the resulting poor statistics that the organizations had in our spam control systems."

Nor is it usually useful to point the finger at the email service provider (ESP), at least not until your own house is in order.

One ESP I worked with revealed customers had an average of over 18% bounce rates. In other words, almost one in five of all emails sent out goes to an address that's not working. Hard to blame the ESP when address lists are so outdated.

Back in 2005, Anne Holland wrote on this topic. She noted...

"I strongly advise marketers not to assume that switching vendors equals better deliverability. Why? Because so much of delivery is determined by your own practices as a mailer -- not by your vendor."

It's easy to blame others for delivery problems, but the solutions may be closer to home.

(As an aside, your choice of ESP does matter, of course. Top ESPs provide the tools and advice that help you follow delivery best practices, for example by supporting email authentication, offering built in bounce management systems etc.)

More on deliverability | Tags: email marketing, email deliverability, AOL email, email marketing services

Given recent debate about the difficulties in getting best practice advice out to the marketing masses, some good news from two new surveys of retail email marketing practices...

Silverpop's 2007 Retail Email Marketing Study compares today's retailer email programs with those of 2005. The authors note improvements in numerous areas, including sign-up and unsubscribe practices, as well as email design and messaging.

The Email Experience Council's Retail Welcome Email Benchmark Study also shows general improvements across the board, with more retailers following welcome message best practices than this time last year.

Check the links for details, especially since each includes an explanation of exactly what these best practices are supposed to be.

More on statistics and list messages | Tags: email marketing, retail email, welcome messages

September 19, 2007

At MediaPost today, Bill McCloskey calls for more evidence of email marketing's value and suggests this evidence needs to reach the mainstream marketing and business world.

There are certainly plenty of numbers justifying email's place in the marketing budget. But Bill's right...the wider world has yet to appreciate it.

If you're struggling to convince yourself or a colleague of email's value, try this collection of stats and survey results for help.

Just in the last couple of days, two new reports have demonstrated how successful email marketing can be:

MarketingSherpa's new 2008 Search Marketing Benchmark Report includes a large survey where marketers ranked "email marketing to house lists" as their strongest marketing tactic.

And Ken Magill has highlights from Shop.org's State of Retailing Online 2007 Report. His article reveals that email generates retail sales at a tenth of the cost per sale of banner ads, a quarter of the cost per sale of paid search ads and less than half the cost per sale of affiliate programs.

Which might be why 88% of surveyed retailers said email marketing had... "increased as a priority in 2007."

Ken's article has some other interesting tidbits on the kinds of email regarded most effective by retailers.

Surprisingly, trigger emails sent after website visitors abandoned a shopping cart got low ratings for effectiveness. I wonder if this is based on belief or actual experience, given that few survey respondents had implemented this technique?

More statistics | Tags: email marketing, email marketing metrics, email marketing statistics

Kudos to the folk at MailChimp for digging out this case study of a self-help website.

Subscribers to FlyLady's email list get over 10 email reminders each day. And it's hugely successful.

That's right. Not monthly, weekly or even daily emails. But pretty much hourly ones. In a world of email overload that sounds insane: no email expert on this planet would advise such a high mailing frequency. But it seems to work.

I love this story because it's a super reminder that before you take action based on the general advice, benchmarks and best practices people like me blog and write about, you must first put them into the context of your own business model and audience.

A dozen emails a day works for "FlyLady" because the content (reminders of daily activities that need doing) matches the audience (people who want and need these constant reminders to get themselves organized.)

More on frequency | Tags: email marketing, email frequency, flylady

September 17, 2007

Leaping joyously through the email marketing meadow today, I discovered a few rare flowers of inspiration to share with you. Not the usual suspects at all...

First up we have the forum at WebmasterWorld, where this ongoing discussion has various views on HTML email.

Note how more than one poster has abandoned HTML newsletters in favor of short text-only alerts advising subscribers that a new "email" newsletter is now available online.

It's one way round image blocking and other design issues, and is a long-favored approach of usability guru Jakob Nielsen.

Then Jeanniey Mullen takes a look at Facebook. No, not a "Web 2.0 site uses email ergo email is great" article. But one examining HOW Facebook uses email and what we might learn as a result.

Then CRM buyer has a case study of Stride Rite's email marketing successes. Nothing fancy and the marketer involved himself claims it's all just common sense.

But that begs a question. If it's common sense, how come not everybody succeeds as well as Stride Rite? The answer may rest in this quote:

Unlike many firms that see (email marketing) as a cheap way to broadcast a message designed for mass consumption, "We view it as a strategic pillar in our communication with customers and prospects."

And bringing up the rear are the folk over at EyeTools with a heat map and accompanying analysis of a typical B2c marketing email. If you've not encountered heatmaps before, you're in for a pleasant surprise.

More case studies | Tags: email marketing, email design, html email

Last week, we talked about email as an ongoing experience for recipients...with that experience impacting on how these recipients view your business and/or brand.

Part of ensuring a positive experience is to avoid email disconnects. Those are the components of an email message that jar with the reader, don't add up, spoil the illusion, etc.

Two banal examples: links that don't work and spelling errors.

But there are less obvious disconnects out there that need watching.

Example 1: In today's iMediaConnection, Simms Jenkins reveals the unimpressive results of a survey of reply-to address functionality.

His company sent emails to the "reply-to" address on incoming email newsletters. An alarmingly large number either bounced or disappeared into the online equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. Simms discusses why this disconnect is bad for business.

Example 2: Denise Cox writes on her blog about the dangers of using acronyms and buzzwords in email headers and copy. If you confuse readers...you have a disconnect.

Other subtle disconnects I can think of immediately:

• The design and style of the email not matching the website it comes from.
• The design and style of one kind of email from a company not matching that of other emails from the same source.
  
• Landing pages failing to match expectations. For example, when you click on a product promotion and get taken to a landing page featuring numerous products from the same category, rather than the single product page you were expecting.
• After someone signs-up to your list, failing to send a welcome message or confirmation email. (We are used to subscriptions resulting in an email. We get confused if we take an action and get no re-action.)
• Any conflict between what you say you will send people if they sign up for your list and what you actually do send them.

Again, every aspect of the email experience counts towards the overall impression you make. So it pays to take a step back now and then, and look at all the elements that contribute to that experience...

Tags: email marketing, landing pages, email branding, email design

September 14, 2007

A scuffle broke out in the blogging world following a post by Kevin Stirtz describing how you might send email to folk who haven't opted-in to your newsletter.

Delivery and email professionals have criticized him severely:

Laura at Word to the Wise
Al at Spam Resource
MickC at Intellectual Intercourse

Kevin has since clarified his post a little to eliminate the suggestion that one might follow his approach at a bulk level. Laura gets it right with her interpretation:

"With very small lists you can get away with personal relationships substituting for permission"

But any other situation, and you're camped firmly in spam land. Some recipients will report your email as spam. You will end up on blacklists, your email will go undelivered, your reputation (as a sender of email and as a business or brand) will suffer.

The posts and comments raise some critical issues anybody sending email needs to understand, especially newcomers. Lets' clarify:

The myth of relevancy

Nearly every unsolicited email I have ever encountered is justified by the sender on the grounds that it's useful, relevant and welcomed by the recipient. This claim is usually accompanied by testimonials from people who were grateful to get the email.

There's only one small flaw in that theory. It's bollocks.

Such senders (especially when vendors) always overestimate the importance and relevance of their emails. And always make assumptions about people's interests that simply do not hold for everyone.

Thinking anything else is self-delusion. You may think you know what's good for the recipient, but you can never be sure. And you will get it wrong at least some of the time. And when you do get it wrong, they will see you as a spammer if they never expected the email.

You are then left to hope that whatever personal relationship you may have had (and let's hope you at least had that) will earn you forgiveness, rather than a spam report.

See also "But surely my emails are relevant? (Erm...no)"

The myth of spam's harmlessness

Another argument in "favor" of unsolicited email says that it's no different to junk mail. This is alarmingly inaccurate.

The point about junk mail (and telemarketing for that matter) is that the sender pays the people who run the distribution infrastructure (postal service, telephone company) for the right to make unsolicited calls or send unsolicited direct mail.

Email senders, however, do not pay the distributors. Spam is a huge resource burden on ISPs and webmail services, whose costs inevitably get passed on to the customers. Who are therefore "paying" to get unsolicited email.

That's one of the reasons why email spam is a far bigger issue than junk mail. There are others, but that will do for now.

The myth of personal opinion

Everyone...and I really mean everyone...has a different opinion on what constitutes spam. Which means your own personal opinion is largely irrelevant. For two reasons.

First, as soon as you move away from a whiter than white permission-based approach to email marketing, you run the risk of sending email to someone who will call it spam. The further away you move from the ideal, the greater the risk. See Marketing email or spam? for more on this concept.

Second, those guarding the email infrastructure have their own clear views on what constitutes spam. And increasingly they define it as any email their customers do not want. Sending bulk unsolicited email, however well-meaning, will produce spam complaints, and ISPs etc. will act on those complaints. And your business will suffer.

It's really time we put the permission argument to bed. As Derek Harding argued so eloquently in a recent column...

"Our trade groups must make it clear that opt-out is spam and spam is bad for e-mail, bad for our customers, and bad for us. They must state without equivocation or prevarication that consent is a requirement."

More on permission | Tags: email marketing, spam, permission, unsolicited bulk email, ube, uce

September 13, 2007

The recent release of the 2008 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide from the MarketingSherpa store got me thinking about how you might benefit from interactions between search and email marketing.

Here's my list. Can you add any more?

• use insight from paid search campaigns (Adwords etc.) to understand what attracts attention, clicks and conversions. Transfer the knowledge to the subject lines, headlines and calls to action used in your emails (and vice versa.)
• make sure landing pages from your paid search campaigns give people the opportunity to sign up for your email list. You pay for the search click once, then get to market to the same prospect via email at low cost.
• put back issues of your newsletters (or content developed for your emails) on the website. This has various SEO benefits. It attracts links. It adds depth and authority to your website. It gives you a better chance of appearing in the search results for more keywords and phrases.
• adapt the search marketing world's vast understanding of landing pages to improve those of your email campaigns.
• use email to spread the word on website content and features that might attract links and social bookmarking attention.
• search marketers invest time and energy on understanding the long-term value of clickthroughs, so they know how much they can invest in search marketing campaigns. I'm sure the lessons learnt can be applied to measuring the costs, benefits and ROI of email campaigns.

More on email landing pages | Tags: landing pages, email marketing, search marketing, SEO

After 1859 posts, I think I can allow myself just one link to a Dilbert cartoon mocking the very profession that most of us call home.

Naive as I am, it reminds me of a conversation I once had with a well-known (and delightful) online publisher.

Me: Wow, your webinar's going great guns - almost sold out!
Them: Well, actually we can have as many people attend as want to attend. We just say it's "almost sold out" to create urgency.
Me: Um...isn't that lying?
Them: No, Mark, it's marketing.

If wry self-deprecation is your kind of humor, here's my personal favorite of all the email marketing cartoons I did a while back:

One danger in online marketing is the seductive power of technology.

All the magic email tools, services and associated software (particularly the numbers they reveal after every email goes out) lead us to obsess with the details, the microanalysis.


It works.

But that neglects the role of your emails as an experience. Each email received is an interaction with your business or company.

And the sum total of those interactions can have a heady impact on the reader's perception of you and your products (not to mention their purchase behavior both online and offline).

Just because this holistic, macro-level, big picture, behavioral impact is hard to measure doesn't mean it isn't there.

Matt Blumberg makes the point nicely in a recent blog post, writing "...the whole is worth more than the sum of the parts." And he has some good tips on how you can use that understanding to improve your marketing.

This harks back to the early days of email marketing and the classical understanding of what makes a good email newsletter.

That understanding says that immediate sales are a nice byproduct of a newsletter program. But the true power and benefit lies in the long-term impact on the reader.

The newsletter focuses on delivering value (traditionally in the form of useful information) rather than direct promotional messages.

Seen over time, it consistently strengthens the customer or prospect relationship, and creates a mindset in the reader where your business becomes the automatic choice when they have a related need.

As such, it might be worth revisiting some of the older literature on email newsletters to remind ourselves of the longer-term benefits of treating email as a series of related messages, rather than a disparate collection of promotions.

Try, for example, Michael Katz's article archive, the Keeping the Key report, or the articles in the branding category here at Email Marketing Reports.

Tags: email newsletters, email marketing, branding, email marketing strategy, the email experience

September 12, 2007

Stefan Pollard's latest article discusses the wider role of your unsubscribe facility in email marketing.

When a subscriber tires of your emails (shock news: it happens), they can mark it as junk or unsubscribe. The former action is another nail in your delivery rate coffin. The latter isn't.

Ergo: unsubscribe processes are important.

Of course, we're back to subscriber reputation here again. If the reader doesn't trust you, then they won't use the unsubscribe facility or your subscriber preference center. Stefan discusses this issue and has some basic tips on designing address removal mechanisms that inspire trust and work for you and your subscriber.

His article also touches on the role of the permission reminder ("you're getting this email because...", a topic discussed in more depth in the extensive comments to an earlier post.

Even before the reputation issue got ugly, making it hard for folk to leave your list was always a no-no, as this 2002 article describes.

P.S. I'd especially recommend you take the survey mentioned in Stefan's article. Why? Because the multiplechoice answers to questions about your own practices are actually a super list of ideas for how to improve those practices.

More on unsubscribes | Tags: email marketing, sender reputation, unsubscribing, list management

If you're up for a little hypothetical exercise in email marketing decision making, Kevin Hillstrom has two challenges for you...

The first asks how you'd react if tests showed your per email profit was highest using discount promotions, but your boss wants to build a full-price brand.

The second presents some customer purchase data, suggests how you might split those customers into two groups (with each method having its own limitations), then solicits your thoughts on alternatives.

Those posts aren't just alternatives to five minutes with the crossword over lunch. They remind us that there's often more to this email marketing business than we might think. It always pays to take a second look at every problem.

More on targeting and organizational issues | Tags: email marketing, segmentation, branding, email testing

It's all change on the official list of "Top 21 Email Marketing Information Sources," which you'll find here.

A couple of folk dropped out. Not because they suddenly started writing nonsense, but simply because they changed their topic focus or stopped writing.

The new list welcomes some new faces and resources, in recognition of their value to the email marketing community. These include blogs by Matt Vernhout and Anna Billstrom.

And we have upgraded listings honoring Justin Premick's posts at AWeber, and the growth of both the Email Experience Council and the Email Marketers Club.

All details at the list's homepage.

September 11, 2007

A theme in recent weeks has been the need for more people to follow best practices, or see email marketing dumped in the same basket (= spam folder) as the less salubrious purveyors of purple pills and stock recommendations.

So it's great to see a big corporation swallow hard and take one of the toughest psychological steps in email marketing: sacrificing quantity for quality.

Ken Magill describes the process used by CBSSports.com to cull its email lists of unresponsive subscribers.

While total subscriber numbers have plummeted, they now have quality, responsive, active address lists. More importantly, they're no longer sending email to the people most likely to hit "this is spam" buttons.

Which means they're protecting their email reputation, which -- as we know -- is vital to keeping up delivery rates.

For more on the size versus quality argument, read this post.

And since we're talking about safeguarding the future of email marketing, a quick plug for Campaign Monitor's efforts to get HTML email standards going. They've now invited comments on a list of baseline CSS features they think need addressing in the first standardization push.

Tags: email marketing, list size, list hygiene

Given the peculiarities of email marketing, it's easy to overlook the similarities with other forms of marketing and online communication.

So much so that forehead-slappingly obvious improvements easily get missed.

These articles prove the point.

Retailer websites know that seemingly banal changes to website design (such as the color of the "buy" button) can have grave consequences for conversion rates and other performance indicators.

So it is with email, too. MarketingSherpa, for example, tested the wording of the links at the end of the article snippets in their email newsletters.

Does it really matter whether you say "click for more" or "read more" or "click to continue"...?

Yes it does. Small changes in wording boosted clickthrough rates by over 8%.

What about landing pages? A topic addressed recently by ThinData.

I'm pretty sure email has plenty more to learn from search, whether indirectly (adapting PPC landing page design insights) or directly (using PPC search ads as a proxy for testing subject lines.)

Then there's the more obvious stuff.

If we have two different types of customer, then it makes sense to isolate each group and send them different marketing messages (where possible). Which is the numbingly simple explanation for why experts bang on about segmentation.

Jeanne Jennings, for example, illustrates the value of segmenting your list using the example of an e-newsletter from a site selling paid subscriptions.

All good stuff proving integration is as much a state of mind as a business strategy.

More on copywriting, targeting and landing pages | Tags: email marketing, landing pages, segmentation, call to action, email

September 10, 2007

I'm one of those folk who nod their head knowingly when some clever business term is used, secretly wondering what on earth the word really means.

Perhaps I'm not alone in that, at least when it comes to the concept of "integration" in the context of email marketing.

Fortunately, we have Ben Rothfeld riding to the digital rescue with an excellent overview of what integration means for email marketing, why it's worth addressing and how you implement the concept in your email activities.

Lots of thoughts and ideas to get you thinking about email and its wider role supporting (or being supported by) the business, brand and other marketing channels.

More on email and branding | Tags: email marketing strategy, email integration, branding

Chad White got the "email strategies for the holiday season" ball rolling a few days ago, and he leads the charge again this week with a recorded webinar he did on the topic.

But he has company.

Stephanie Colleton, for example, picks out three ideas for boosting holiday email revenue, drawn from her company's own webinar on the topic.

Those looking for more strategic advice would do well to read Anna Billstrom's thoughts. She suggests some more considered ways to benefit from holiday shoppers, without resorting to a slew of desperate sales messages as shipping deadlines approach.

More on holidays and email |Tags: email marketing, holiday marketing

September 07, 2007

If you're wondering what to aim for in the coming months, then Deirdre Cook does a great job of picking out some areas to consider in her article on email trends for the fall season.

I'd add transactional email to her list. Boring text-based messages are out. Engaging emails incorporating marketing elements are in. Check these articles for more on that (and EmailLabs just covered the topic in their latest newsletter.)

I'm just a little unsure on Deirdre's suggestion to go for CPA (cost per action) deals when renting email lists, rather than paying standard "per-address" (CPM) rates. Why unsure?

Deirdre's advice is good in principle, of course, since CPA means you only pay the list owner for successful transactions (or however you define a successful "action".) But...

When I researched list rental a while back, list owners willing to countenance CPA deals were either desperate, had poor quality lists or were blasting the list again and again to try and squeeze every last CPA cent out of them (not unlike spammers).

I assume things are different now (any list rental experts care to comment?), with CPA gaining credibility as an option for unsold inventory. But is someone with a quality email list likely to want to use up a scarce mailing slot with no guarantee of revenue?

Your chances of negotiating such a beneficial deal certainly increase if you have...

• Strong brand recognition
• A proven ability to convert
• A targeted offer
• An offer which doesn't require a purchase (e.g. sign-up or free download)
• Good creative and landing pages

(In which case, the list owner might wonder why you'd want a CPA deal in the first place!)

And of course you could try for a hybrid deal, where the list owner gets a guaranteed minimum CPM plus a bonus depending on the response generated.

Anyway, I would love to hear any comments or advice from those in the email list rental field...

Note that there are also services that can help facilitate CPA list rental, like Datran Media's Exchange Online, with CPA deals promoted as a way for publishers to fill remnant email inventory. And not forgetting the affiliate networks, too, when it comes to CPA offers and email. But that brings its own problems.

Tags: email marketing, email list rental, email marketing trends, transactional email

With so many ways of connecting with prospects and customers, a common tactic is to take content created for one channel and repurpose it for another. Example: these blog posts later turn into the content for this site's twice-monthly newsletter.

Two new articles today expand the repurposing concept into new dimensions.

First, Karen J. Bannan gets a couple of experts to explain how you can reuse your old emails as a source of both content and insight for your next campaign.

And even more intriguingly, Jack Aaronson has the beautifully-titled E-mail Marketing Without E-mail article, where he discusses the strategies and rules you might develop for delivering personalized, customized or trigger email.

Not how to do it, but how you might reuse the exact same strategies and rules to customize your website for anonymous visitors.

Apart from it being a clever idea in its own right, it's nice to see experience with email feeding back into more mature online areas such as retail website design.

More tactics and strategies | Tags: email marketing, repurposing content, personalization

Occasionally I kid myself that I know rather a lot about email marketing. Then some new information or resource pops up that shows me just how much I can still learn.

One such resource is a free download from Dave Chaffey...presentation slides from a recent email marketing workshop he gave.

Find the time to read them. And keep a notepad handy because you'll end up with a long list of ideas and changes for your own email efforts.

Tags: email marketing

September 06, 2007

I know plenty of people who shudder at the word Bacn...the new jargon for the kind of transactional and commercial email that people accept is a necessary part of online life, but aren't that desperate to read.

(Of course, it's the email marketer's job to change that perspective by making Bacn engaging and valuable to the recipient.)

But along with a Wikipedia listing, Bacn now has official acknowledgment from the great Google, with a dedicated post at the Gmail blog.

For more on why Bacn is good for email marketing, read this post from a week ago and the comments after it.

Tags: email marketing, bacn, transactional email

Just a quick roundup of the forums and discussion lists available to email marketers for exchanging views, news, complaints and recipes...

Forums

• Email Marketer's Club: Participants include vendors and marketers alike.
  
• Campaign Monitor forums: Run by the vendor of the same name, with a focus on email design.
• ConnectUp!: Run by vendor ConstantContact.
  
• Dotemail.com: Run by vendor Gold Lasso.
  

Discussion lists

• Email Roundtable: Discussion group, where you need to have your subscription approved before you can join in. Features lots of email marketers at leading corporations.
• Inbox Insiders: By invite-only discussion list. If you qualify for an invite, you're likely on it already.

Feel free to add other suggestions to the comments...

More tools and services | Tags: forums, discussion lists

Those looking for benchmarks, statistics and metrics for email marketing have more choice than ever.

Still holding top spot as Source Number 1 is MarketingSherpa's Email Marketing Benchmark Guide (see my review). Great, if you can afford the $247.

Among the free resources, EmailStatsCenter.com has risen gracefully above the crowd. They now have a large collection of statistical tidbits on all sorts of topic areas...culled from reports, press releases, articles and elsewhere.

The site is also conducting a State of Email Marketing Metrics survey, which I'd urge you to take. Information is power.

For other sources of statistics, mostly from email marketing services, check this article, which also has hints on how best to use benchmarks.

More on email marketing statistics | Tags: email marketing metrics, email marketing benchmarks

Yesterday saw David Greiner and Campaign Monitor step forward with a treatise and call-to-arms on rendering standards for email clients and webmail services.

And today sees another cathartic article on a key email topic. Derek Harding suggests it's time some industry groups came out unequivocally in favor of opt-in as a minimum requirement for email marketing.

His thesis is that accepting the opt-out approach as a legitimate technique is letting people get away with practices that alienate consumers and ISPs alike. To the detriment of email marketing's reputation and impact.

Derek apportions some blame to Can-Spam legislation. Which -- as I've argued before -- simply gave people the misleading impression that opt-out is best practice.

Derek's article appeared at ClickZ, where ironically the Can-Spam legislation is up for a Marketing Excellence award this year...

More on permission and spam | Tags: permission marketing, can-spam, opt-in email marketing

September 05, 2007

It's the hip new drink at the email marketing bar. Reputation.

The latest EmailSherpa newsletter, for example, offers 27 action points to fix your reputation. (A topic also covered by Al Iverson.)

The recent flurry of articles like those above reflects the realization that your reputation defines your success at getting through to recipients.

And when I say "getting through," I mean both physically and mentally. That's because the concept of reputation pervades your whole email program.

We know about the importance of the reputation of your sending address in the eyes of email's gatekeepers. That's what people like Barry Abel are talking about: your sender reputation and its role in determining whether your email is delivered to the inbox.

Then, as I pointed out last month, we have your reputation in the eyes of those receiving your emails. The all-important subscribers. How do they view your email practices and content?

This "subscriber reputation" has various consequences...

It determines whether recipients decide to bash your sender reputation by reporting you as spam.

And it also plays a role in driving responses to your messages. The decision to open your message, click a link, read your content and/or pass on your email is not just based on the email itself, but the reputation that precedes it.

If your last five emails were all super relevant, people are more likely to read the sixth. If you have a history of irrelevant content, why bother looking at the next one that arrives?

Which is why reputation and targeting are so intimately connected. A point made by both Michael Greenberg and Stefanie Miller, whose articles look at different ways of segmenting your address list.

Targeting means relevancy means better responses and an enhanced reputation with subscribers (in turn protecting your sender reputation, since happy subscribers don't report you as spam.)

But it doesn't stop there.

Relevancy is not the only criterion used by subscribers in forming your reputation. How about style? Engaging emails also enhance that reputation. Consider, for example, Nick Usborne's latest piece on adding personal power to your messages.

What about your email's