No man is an iland

October 31, 2007

Just to round off a fine email day with a couple of nice article tips.

Andrew Seel is the Makeover Magician. This month, he takes a standard-looking email newsletter for a recruiting agency and knocks a few marketing holes in its vulnerable parts.

Which means he highlights the design, layout and copywriting faults. Then presents the new improved version with explanations for all the changes made. Magic stuff.

And anyone in the travel industry might want to take a quick trip (see what I did there?) over to Denise Cox's blog, where she passes on her thoughts on how travel organizations can make the best use of email.

More case studies | Tags: email marketing, travel marketing, email newsletters

You may have seen the earlier post on the new MailerMailer email marketing benchmark metrics report. Karen Gedney discusses some of the results, too, in her latest ClickZ article.

It's worth reading what Karen says because she takes the raw numbers and interprets what they might mean in terms of possible improvements to your own efforts. Particularly through changes to your subject line.

On top of that, she draws in her own experiences with various clients and campaigns so you come away with some real world understanding of the ins and outs of the subject header.

More statistics and subject line info | Tags: email marketing, subject lines, email subject lines

This case study from EmailSherpa describes how putting a Hacker Safe security logo in email promotions lifted conversions and order sizes quite remarkably.

There is more to this story.

In an earlier post, we identified trust as one of the key factors underpinning email success. Especially in an online world threatened by phishing, spam and viruses.

Building a trusting relationship between the sender and the recipient of a marketing email does more than affect their decision to open and interact with your email. It also impacts the reader's behavior once they leave your email to visit your offer page etc.

This is where programs like Hacker Safe have a role to play...by enhancing this trust through independent verification that (in this case) you can be trusted to protect the buyer's transaction data.

If you're reading this, you're likely an advanced Internet user. Happy to buy online. Many folk are still wary of online transactions. People need verification that the process is safe.

This is particularly important where your relationship with email subscribers is a young one. You may not yet have had the chance to establish your reputation with them. Ditto if you're not a well-known business or brand.

That's when such seals can give folk independent verification that they're in safe waters with you. It's definitely worth testing to see the impact of such security, privacy and other certification logos on results.

And I do suggest testing, rather than signing up straight away. Because what I've read of website experiences suggests some fantastic result lifts are possible, but some folk don't see any additional response.

Two notes:

1. It's not a pay-your-money-get-a-logo deal here. Hacker Safe requires compliance with various ecommerce security standards. See their website for details.

2. This trust issue is also why email certification from the likes of Goodmail has a positive future I believe.

More on tactics | Tags: email marketing, hacker safe, consumer trust, scanalert, email conversions

Email marketing is flourishing and I'm spending a lot of time keeping up with developments so this blog remains timely and helpful.

Time is money, as they say in Sweden (and everywhere else.) And my time is only possible through the kind support of Email Marketing Report's sponsors.

So a big thanks to...

Campaigner email marketing solutions, now in their six month of sponsoring this blog. The Campaigner user interface underwent a recent redesign. Among the new features: the ability to instantly compare your campaign's performance against that of your peers.

StreamSend email marketing suite, who support the main site. StreamSend's customers get a private IP address and the company just announced a new deliverability partnership with Habeas.

Both companies offer a free trial of their services.

This blog reaches some 2,500 subscribers (via RSS or the summary email) and the site as a whole gets an average 500 unique visitors a day, based on independent audits. Which is a lot of folk interested in email marketing. If you want to reach them, sponsorship info is here. Thanks!

October 30, 2007

If you read the last post and are wondering just what reputation means in an email marketing context, here some helpful articles:

1. The reputation category at Email Marketing Reports

2. Posts from this blog on reputation

3. Articles and specific blog posts...

Make the most of a good reputation and Mind your email reputation are good introductory articles by Stefan Pollard and Spencer Kollas respectively.

Those articles refer to your sender reputation. Which is how those who guard the world's inboxes see your email practices. The better your sender reputation, the more likely they are to deliver your email.

You also have a sender reputation with each recipient of your email. This reputation determines how they interact with your email, whether they interact with it, or whether they just report you as spam.

This dual concept of reputation is addressed in a new article by Nick Usborne. And is explained by myself in a couple of older blog posts:

The new deliverability: dealing with empowered subscribers
The email reputation matrix

Tags: email marketing, email reputation, email deliverability

This is a question that has troubled me for a while.

If you use an email service provider (ESP) to send out your emails, do you insist on having a sending IP address for your exclusive use?

The theory...

Your reputation as a sender of legitimate marketing email helps determine whether ISPs and webmail services let your email get through to their users.

They associate a sender reputation with the source of the email. This means they assign a reputation (good or bad) not to "Mark Brownlow," but to the online source of the emails I send out.

You can broadly consider this "online source" as the formal, technical Internet address that identifies the location of the email's source. It is known as the sending IP address, which is used by my ESP for sending out my emails.

The sender reputation of that IP address (which is essentially my sender reputation) is determined by the practices of all those who send out email using that same sender address.

If only I send through that IP address, then my practices (and my practices alone) determine the reputation of that sending IP address. I am in control.

If I share the IP address with other senders using the same ESP, then their email practices also impact on the sender reputation of that address. So their email practices impact the reputation associated with my emails.

So if one of them is naughty, I suffer the consequences, too. ISPs and webmail services block the sender IP address of the culprit, which also happens to be my sender IP address.

That's the theory, and I've long searched for concrete references to explain whether it's true. Today, I found them courtesy of Melinda Krueger and Email Karma.

Melinda ropes in a few technical delivery experts to comment on the concept of dedicated and shared IP addresses from a deliverability point of view.

And Email Karma goes into detail on how email blocking systems relate to IP addresses.

Let me summarize my understanding and hope some technical folk can jump in with further comments or corrections if necessary...

The above theory is broadly correct. From a sender reputation and delivery perspective, it is better to have a dedicated IP address for your use alone. You are protected from being punished for the actions of others.

However, there are a few ifs and buts to consider (aren't there always?)...

1. It is not complete protection from sender reputation difficulties. Think of an IP address like a real physical address.

If you live alone in an apartment, then your behavior determines the reputation of that apartment. But if your neighbors are badly behaved, then the authorities (the ISPs and webmail folk) may decide simply to blacklist the whole apartment block. (See Email Karma's comments on escalating blocking systems.)

Unfair on you, but it can happen.

In other words, people sending from an IP address close to yours can still cast a shadow on your reputation.

This is less likely if the ESP is proactive in ensuring its customers stick to best practices and itself keeps an eye on deliverability problems.

It can then step in and take corrective action before problems escalate to a level where "whole buildings and districts" are blacklisted, rather than just the "single apartments" that are actually causing trouble.

2. On the surface, being totally responsible for your sender reputation seems like a good thing. But this may not always be the case.

For example, if you've been slipshod about your email practices, then it may be that the good practices of those sharing your IP address have been keeping that address's reputation positive.

When you're on your own, your bad practices are not compensated for by others, and your reputation suffers accordingly.

This should not be seen as a suggestion to get away with bad practices by sharing a sender IP address (your ESP should hammer you if you do try this.) No, the point is that a dedicated IP address means you are more accountable for your actions. (See Ed Henrich's comments in Melinda's article)

Equally, if you don't send very much email, then it may be hard to actually build any kind of sender reputation with individual ISPs and webmail services. They need a decent amount of volume from you, sent regularly, to label you a "good sender."

In that case, a shared IP address lets you "combine" efforts with other senders to establish a reputation for your sending IP address (hopefully a good one.) See Maarten's comment here.

3. The scope of sender reputation is changing. As a response to phishing and other problems, the email world is trying to build authentication systems that allow email senders to be better identified.

There is growing emphasis on identifying senders not by their sending IP address, but by their domain name. As that concept spreads and is implemented, then your sender reputation becomes tied more to your domain rather than the IP address you send from.

At which point, the IP address question becomes less important. Then you really are in control of your reputation. And you can take it with you when you move from one IP address to another, or from one email marketing service to the next. (See the last section in this technical article on the DomainKeys Identified Mail authentication standard.)

Watch this space.

More on deliverability | Tags: email marketing, email deliverability, sender reputation, ip address, email marketing services

If your email marketing "to do" list still bears an uncanny resemblance to the one you wrote in January, you may be looking for quick fixes to boost your 2007 results.

Which may explain the end-of-year interest in subject lines, as you can change them easily and see an instant impact on your metrics.

Here are some new additions to the subject line knowledge base that passed across my desktop today...

First up, Lisa Harmon looks at Thanksgiving emails from two retailers. As well as reviewing the subject lines, she explains the importance of consistency within the email...ensuring images, offers, subjects and copy harmonize and reinforce each other. (Rather than causing a disconnect.)

Then the dynamic duo of DJ Waldow and Kimberly Snyder pick out a few retailer subject lines and give their opinions on their effectiveness. Both are experts and yet still often disagree. This reminds us that intuitive evaluation alone is no substitute for testing your ideas out on your email lists.

Marc at Mobilize Mail sets out his views on what makes a great subject line.

And finally, something a little different. We may worry about subject line lengths, but what about the size of your from / sender line?

Kara Trivunovic notes that mobile devices in particular truncate the sender header to an alarming degree. Which can have some unpleasant and humorous consequences if you're not careful.

More on subject lines | Tags: email marketing, email subject lines, email headers, retail emails

October 29, 2007

If you want your email to get delivered, you need to avoid spam complaints.

Many factors can cause people to report your mails as spam. But a big one is when they don't feel that your unsubscribe process works or can be trusted.

This may be slap-in-the-face obvious, but confidence in your unsubscribe process also depends on the messages you display to people who use it.

You need to make it clear that the unsubscribe request has been received and will be acted on in a timely manner...ideally immediately.

If you don't make this clear, then you create uncertainty. And you might just encourage people to report you as spam. Just to make sure they don't see your emails again.

Exhibit A: After unsubscribing from an email list today, this is the confirmation message I received:


Erm...what? My transaction has been saved? Does that mean my address is off the list? Does it mean they crosswired their ecommerce system with the list management database? Is my request saved for processing at some later date?

(Not to mention the bizarre grammar.)

You and I know it probably means the unsubscribe request worked. Probably. But does this kind of message instill confidence in your average reader of emails?

Nope.

Check your unsubscribe process and see if it sends the right message (I'm off to check mine.)

More on unsubscribes | Tags: email marketing, list management

October 25, 2007

Blithely wandering the web before a short vacation (so no posts tomorrow), I came across yet more examples of subject line tests.

Mike Volpe posted up the results from his test on using words like "free" in a webinar invitation.

And Tony Wright describes his recent subject line experiences. (Read the comments, too, for insight from Friendster.)

Tony's post is also intriguing, because he suggests you might draw subject line inspiration from the titles of the articles and links that get the most attention at social media sites like Digg and Reddit.

Anyway, let me take the opportunity to play Mr.Miserable with three subject line reminders...

1. The subject line advice you read is important but not universally applicable. For every guideline out there, you can always find someone doing the opposite and making it work.

This is because audiences, lists and senders are different and unique. Which is why doing your own subject line tests is always a good idea. Take the general recommendations given by experts and use these as a base for your own tests.

2. Tests are important, but be sure they produce meaningful results. Comparing open rates between two emails, each sent to a different group of 50 subscribers tells you nothing.

If you don't have enough subscribers to do statistically-sound comparative tests, simply look over all your past emails and see if you can find helpful patterns.

Were there types of subject line (or subject line topics) that always produced better results?

Also...email habits, attitudes and perceptions change. Consider retesting your assumptions and results further down the road to make sure they still hold.

3. Subject lines are an important factor in getting people to read and interact with your email. But not the only factor. Don't forget the importance of the sender name, brand, past email experiences, time of day, day of week etc.

More on improving open rates | Tags: email marketing, email subject lines

The email design challenge is not just about coming up with an impactful design in the first place. It's also about ensuring your emails display the way you want them to, regardless of where they may be viewed.

The growth of image blocking makes that task a touch more difficult.

Janine Popick has a few quick tips on using images in email for those still finding their way on the topic.

And DJ at Bronto has an interesting little blog post on the way you might word the text that appears at the top of many emails these days, pointing people to the online version of the message.

He argues we're not being innovative enough and has some suggested improvements.

My two cents: this text traditionally appeared as a backup in case your email looked like the dog's breakfast in some email software or webmail services. Anybody not seeing the email or images clearly could always click on the online link.

My own experience talking with subscribers is that people also use this online link for convenience. If you have a lengthy email or one with many external links in it, some people simply prefer to read and interact with that email in a more convenient web browser.

So, for example, they can use tabbed browsing and don't have to keep switching from email client to browser and vice versa.

Something else to consider when formulating that "click here for the online version" text.

More on design | Tags: email marketing, image blocking, blocked images, email design

The USA's DMA just released the results of its annual look at the economic impacts of direct marketing.

Ken Magill has the numbers for email here. The results show email is still top of the ROI tree compared to other forms of direct marketing.

But ROI is dropping from past highs, with a $48.56 return expected for every dollar spent on email marketing in 2007 (the figure was $57.25 in 2005 and $51.58 in 2006.)

Several points here:

1. Drops in ROI are inevitable given the law of diminishing marginal returns. As the low-hanging fruit gets eaten up, you inevitably have to work harder to generate more revenue.

2. It's important not to lose sight of the absolute figures. ROI is still excellent and still beating out other direct marketing channels.

3. ROI is just one of the measures you might judge email marketing with. Kevin Hillstrom, in particular, has many warnings on the implications of placing too much emphasis on the ROI figure (see, for example, this post or this one.)

Which brings us to another topic: which metrics to use to evaluate your efforts.

Loren McDonald tackles the issue in this new article. His argument is that traditional email metrics (like open rates) cut little ice with senior management. So you need to focus on business metrics as well.

Loren explains how you might define business targets and then relate them back to your email program to assess how you might change tactics and strategies.

As I interpret that, the key is to see email marketing metrics as reflecting a chain of events that cumulate in some business impact.

At its simplest, this chain is send, delivery, open, click, action, business impact (sale, download etc.)

The further along the chain you go, the more you move away from traditional email marketing metrics and more into business metrics. The important point here is that they are all linked.

So every point along the chain has an influence on later numbers. If you measure each point in the chain, then you can identify the weakest elements...so you know where to focus your efforts to get the maximum benefit to the eventual business impact you're trying to achieve.

As such, different metrics and measures may vary in usefulness if you're setting business targets or reporting numbers to senior management. But every one is a valuable measure when it comes to chasing practical improvements in your email marketing results.

More on statistics | Tags: email marketing, email roi, direct marketing, email marketing metrics, email marketing statistics

October 24, 2007

Nice case study from Ken Magill at Chief Marketer looking at Brunswick Bowling and Billiard's email marketing efforts.

Particularly noteworthy: he describes how they offer an hour of free bowling in return for subscribing to their email list.

That seems like an expensive giveaway... except it's not. For two reasons...

1. Like all good entertainment venues, they profit from ancillary sales (food, drink etc.) once people are in the building...provided the "coupon" is filling otherwise empty lanes and extending bowling times (so there's no or little opportunity cost.)
   
2. They can get a lot of sales and marketing benefits out of a lifetime of marketing to that address.

Sign-up incentives with a high perceived value (but only to your desired audience) and a low actual cost are ideal, of course.

Though those first few emails to such subscribers need to hook them on your email program. Otherwise they'll be leaving your list faster than you can say, "so long and thanks for the freebie."

More on list building | Tags: email marketing, list acquisition, sign-up incentives, subscription incentives

After last week's post on more storage space, an upgraded application for mobile phones and more penetration of business markets, here's another new trick up Gmail's electronic sleeve: IMAP.

For the uninitiated (like me), IMAP functionality allows users to access their email accounts from various devices and have all of those devices reflect any changes made.

So if you read your email on your mobile device, the messages are all marked as read when you login to Gmail later from your PC. Synchronization is the word. (Your email client or device works directly with the email on the Gmail server, rather than downloading a copy.)

For email marketers, it means more people likely to shift to Gmail. Neither Yahoo! Mail or Windows Live Hotmail (the other big webmail services) offer IMAP as standard...yet. (AOL webmail does.)

Tags: email marketing, gmail, imap

October 23, 2007

One of the best sources of new content for your emails or blog is content you've already sent to the same audience.

Let me explain.

Remember all the great promotions or articles you sent out in the early days of your list or blog? When hardly anybody was signed up or reading? Hardly anybody at all in fact.

Exactly! The vast majority of your audience have never seen it before and the rest quite probably forgotten about it. So consider using it again.

This tactic is no rarity. The folk at the popular MarketingProfs site, for example, often include "classic" content from the past to round off their newsletter content.

In this spirit then, here a recap of the 10 most popular "classic" blog posts and articles from Email Marketing Reports...

• 9 things they don't tell you about email marketing
• Email Open Rates Guide
• You know you've done too much email marketing, if...
• Outlook 2007 and HTML email design: a summary
• Choosing an email format (from 2001!)
• List welcome messages: what goes in them?
• Bulk email lists: good or bad?
• 10 tips for sign-up forms
• If ancient Rome had the Internet
• Email and webmail user statistics
  

Enjoy...

Tags: email marketing, newsletter content

Angle 1: The email marketing and anti-spam communities are effectively on the same side. We're all keen to ensure that users get the email they do want and none of the email they don't.

So it's always worth foraging into the anti-spam world for help and hints on better email marketing. Step forward, for example, Terry Zinc's Anti-Spam blog, written by a Microsoft employee working in an anti-spam division.

It includes, for example, a 30-part series of articles on email authentication.

Angle 2: Much of the advice given to senders of individual business emails transfers well to email marketing.

For example, this Smashing Magazine article on email deliverability is meant for individual emails or small newsletter lists. But it contains much useful basic advice and links applicable to bigger email marketing efforts.

More on deliverability | Tags: email marketing, email deliverability

October 22, 2007

This is a PS to the earlier post on the role of trust in email marketing.

Part of creating trust is demonstrating that you can meet expectations. And that's a lot easier to do if you can set those expectations yourself.

If you don't ensure prospective subscribers know what to expect from your email program, then two things happen.

1. Some people fail to subscribe because they're not willing to gamble that your emails make it worth giving up their email address.

2. Those that do subscribe will have their own ideas about what to expect. It's difficult to meet these expectations if you know nothing about them. Which means you inevitably disappoint some folk, leading to trust, brand and relationship issues...and (possibly) spam complaints.

Ideally, you need to ensure prospective and new subscribers are clear on:

• what you will send (content)
• how often you will send it (frequency)
• what happens to their email address (privacy)
• what the email looks like (design)

All of which will reassure them that the decision to subscribe is a good one. And when your emails arrive, they are expected and recognized.

The two main places you can communicate this info are through sign-up forms and pages, and in welcome messages.

I try to do this with my own sign-up form, for example...

MailerMailer just released their latest benchmark metrics report for the first half of 2007, drawn from an analysis of nearly 270 million emails from around 3,000 senders.

Benchmark figures have their critics, which is more to do with how they're used. Just today, for example, Denise Cox reminds us that if you benchmark your own numbers against industry averages, then be sure you and your benchmark source calculate the numbers the same way. And she gives several ways of measuring clickthroughs by way of demonstration.

MailerMailer have been publishing these benchmark reports for a while now. Their value is twofold.

First, they set broad expectation levels for key success metrics. So while we can argue about the value of averages, we can certainly tell if we're doing very badly (or very well) compared to our peers.

More importantly, the benchmarks give us clear hints as to where we might be going wrong and what we can do to improve things.

The report includes open rates and clickthroughs (broken down by industry type, subject line length, list size, send day, email format, number of links, and degree of personalization) and bounce rates.

The results show that all of those breakdown factors impact opens and clicks. So there's the evidence you need to go away and do some tests yourself to see what, for example, shorter subject lines and segmented lists might do for your results.

(Testing is important, because your email program and audience is unique and what holds for the average might not hold for you.)

At a macro level, open rates have declined slightly (likely due to increased image blocking) and clickthrough rates have held steady (why are they not rising?)

And however your own efforts are going, spare a thought for the wholesale/distributor sector, who come in just about last on every metric.

P.S. MarketingSherpa has a longer article evaluating the report's results.

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

A common theme of late has been recognition, reputation, relationship. So much of email marketing practice seems to come down to establishing and building clear reputations and relationships with email address providers and email users.

One element of all this is trust, which I was reminded about today by a Habeas press release citing new research into email user habits and attitudes.

Essentially, the study claims that a majority of people still use email regularly and can't imagine doing without. But many are wary of various email threats (phishing, spam etc.).

All this leads to what Habeas calls an "Email Insecurity Factor". A factor that makes users wary of email relationships with people they don't know. Which is where the importance of trust comes in.

Building a reputation / relationship is also about creating enough trust to overcome the concerns and constraints that hinder people from engaging with commercial emails and those who send them.

And the idea of building trust needs to run through your entire email program. Since you need time to establish that trust, you have to begin the process as early as possible...at sign-up and in your welcome messages.

Take sweepstakes, which many use to grow their address lists fast. Mathew Patterson notes today that lists built this way tend to attract more spam complaints than average.

So he has four suggested tactics for your sign-up offer and initial emails with new subscribers. Tactics that can help ensure the email relationship gets the best possible start.

Here's another example today from Cam Beck, who introduces us to some slightly disingenuous opt-in (or is it opt-out?) language at the Bank of America. A lack of clarity does not build trust.

Consider, also, the sterling work on welcome mail strategies done by Chad White at the RetailEmail.Blogspot blog. A topic also taken up by others, such as Linda Bustos, Anna Billstrom, Whitney Hutchinson and myself.

These examples show that even before your new subscriber starts getting your normal emails, there's already so much you can do to build (or undermine) the trust necessary to overcome those email insecurities.

Tags: email marketing, welcome emails, sweepstakes, list building, list acquisition

October 19, 2007

Ah, Friday. Time to wave a fond goodbye to another week of work and get some reading in. Want to improve your email marketing results? These new articles from around the web can help...

1. Consider web feeds (RSS) as a sales medium

Heresy! Dare I suggest giving web feeds another look? Autodesk sent the same offer out via email and RSS, and the latter got higher conversions.

(Note: this doesn't mean RSS is better than email. It just reminds us that we shouldn't assume email is the only way to get an offer out.)

2. Consider certifying your emails

Goodmail big up another client who boosted open rates after getting certified...though they admit the client also changed their email practices at the same time in ways that would have a similar effect.

(That's not a sly dig at Goodmail, since other case studies show the potential benefits of certification, for example for the Red Cross or Overstock.)

3. Compare your efforts with the Advanced Email Marketing Checklist...

...put together by Anna Billstrom. Should give you some ideas on what else you might do with your emails.

4. Add customer ratings and reviews to your emails

Bath and Body Works report higher conversion rates from promotional emails as a result of doing just that.

5. Ensure more continuity between your emails and your website

Chad White explores issues like branding, use of a logo, navigational layouts, colors, etc., with good and bad examples from the world of retail email.

6. Improve your delivery rates (doh!)

ESP Aweber just added an incentive to subscribe to their blog...a 9-page guide to the things you can do (or need to think about or explore further) if you want more emails to reach the inbox.

7. Better exploit transactional emails

Elaine O'Gorman describes the advantages of adding marketing messages to account updates, order confirmations etc., explains some of the problems with implementing the idea, and lists the components of a strong transactional email program.

Good stuff in there in addition to the plugs for outsourced ESP solutions.

More email tactics and strategies | Tags: email marketing, rss, web feeds, transactional emails, email deliverability, email certification

OK, we're all fairly clear that getting permission from the owner before adding an address to your email list is an email marketing must.

That basic concept hides a lot of nuances, though...the "can I do this?" and "does this count as permission?" questions that arise when building an email list.

Two read-worthy articles explore a couple of these nuances.

The first is by Tom Hespos, who looks at the issue of implied or assumed permission. This is where you take an existing subscriber and add them to a new list, on the assumption that if they wanted one kind of email from you, they'll want another.

Wrong, as we've explored on this blog before.

The second is by the ever-great Stephanie Miller, who asks us whether the opt-out approach is OK...if the addresses you add to your email list belong to existing customers of your business (who did not uncheck the email sign-up box during checkout).

Stephanie suggests the answer is no...and yes...depending on how you communicate with that customer once you have them on your list. And she explains just how that communication should look.

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

October 18, 2007

The potential impact of social networks (like Facebook and MySpace) on email has filled many blog and column inches.

Once the tiresome "social networks killed email" argument was dispensed with, wise folk accepted that these networks would at least change the way people use email. And the challenge to email marketers became this...how do you adapt to these changes?

Of course, the first problem is working out exactly what the likely changes in email user habits are actually going to be.

And it's no longer just about changes in user habits, but also changes in the very functionality of email. This basic functionality (email tools, software and interfaces) hasn't changed that much over the years.

Until now.

For instead of killing email, social networks are set to breathe new life into the medium. With inevitable impacts for email marketing.

The reason is simple. Email, for all its limitations, is ubiquitous and inclusive. There are hundreds of millions of email users, each able to communicate directly with each other.

Social networks, for all their benefits, each have a limited and exclusive user base. This situation leads to three trends.

First, social networks beef up their email functionality, as seen with Facebook's recent move to allow users to send email messages to non-Facebook users. (See the Facebook announcement.)

Second, the big email address providers realize they can keep and exploit their "captive" email audience by adding in social network components to their email interfaces. (See today's Wall Street Journal article: Will social features make email sexy again?)

The portal / webmail powerhouses like Yahoo!, Google and MSN have a good chance of beating upstarts like Facebook at their own game, by using social network features to enhance, rather than replace, email. (See also Steve Rubel's recent post.)

Third, everyone else realizes that people need to integrate and simplify their online communication before they spend all day logging in and out of different accounts and chasing up messages old and new.

Which is why we're hearing about new tools and services designed to turn your traditional email interface into an all-encompassing communication and coordination hub. (See VentureBeat's Four startups ready to change the face of email.)

Ironically, then, it seems email may end up swallowing social networks. Quite what this all means to email marketing I'll leave to the thought leaders out there. But change is afoot. Big change. And we would be wise to keep tabs on it.

Tags: email marketing, social media, social networks, webmail, future of email

Just added another 30+ "trusted" sites and articles to the specialist email marketing search engine at OnlineMarketing.info (see this post for background on the project.)

The additions range from anti-spam law resources to consumer email surveys and specialist email marketing blogs.

Among the new resources covered by the search database:

Word to the Wise, Email Karma, Dave Chaffey, Persuasion marketing blog, Email Marketers Club, Terry Zink's anti-spam blog, Epsilon, WilsonWeb, eMarketer, MAAWG...

...check it out and let me know of any useful additions I may have missed!

Not a facetious question this...

We have a growing body of email marketing knowledge, experience and best practices, super new tools and technology, and stronger cooperation between ISPs and senders of email.

So you'd expect average email marketing results to improve over time, right?

But if you browse reports (like Sherpa's benchmark guide), you find that clickthrough rates (if we take that as an acceptable success measure) are not spiraling upwards.

Here's a quote from that report on CTRs for B2C emails sent to house lists:


So why the stagnation?

• Measurement issues and statistical anomalies?
• Influx of new marketers still learning the nuances of email marketing?
• General email fatigue?
• Overzealous list growth with folk sending too much email to too many recipients?
• Outlook 2007?

What do you think?

More statistics | Tags: email marketing, email marketing statistics, email marketing metrics, CTR, clickthrough rate

October 17, 2007

Time for another roundup of all the advice put out by vendors and experts.

Update: See the latest articles for the 2008 season.

The latest...

Campaign Monitor's Mathew Patterson points us at the winners of the 2005 and 2006 Christmas email design awards as sources of inspiration...and announces the 2007 version.

Vertical Response's Janine Popick has 7 quick tips with an emphasis on retail emails.

From earlier this year...

• GourmetStation.com plans for hearty holiday push
• Using email marketing for the holidays
• Five Holiday E-Mail Marketing Do's and Don'ts
• 3 Ideas to Boost Holiday Email Response
• Holiday preparations
• Gearing up for the holiday season

From last year...

Similar articles from 2006.

Tags: email marketing, holiday marketing, Christmas marketing

October 16, 2007

Well, the last post started to read like something out of a Merchant Ivory film, so let's get back to some sharp and simple stuff.

Ken Magill writes powerfully. I suspect many marketers also read his columns to make sure they're not in them. Ken's victim this week is the DMA, who he says should be doing more to defeat Utah state legislation that imposes unreasonable demands on email marketers.

And if you're gasping for inspiration, try these two blog posts:

Josh at SendLabs picks out four marketing emails and explains the good, bad and ugly of each.

Dylan at eROI challenges us to think a little differently and consider a horizontal email format, using FHM as an example of one that works given the audience and content.

More case studies and email law | Tags: email marketing, dma, utah email legislation, email design

It was the Greek fable writer who penned the story about the boy and the jar of nuts. With so many nuts so tantalizingly close, the boy cried tears of frustration as his fat and full fist remained stuck in the jar.

So it is sometimes with email marketing. If only we could send more email to more addresses. But the permission jar has a narrow neck. If you get too greedy, you end up with nothing.

Send too much unwanted email and your delivery rates plummet as inbox guardians react to all the subsequent spam reports.

Still, the web is littered with well-meaning businesses who are in denial about their email practices.

Often deluded by an exaggerated sense of loyalty to our products and services, we simply cannot accept that not everybody wants to hear about the latest model, offer, customer acquisition etc.

So we drift away from the best practices, finding excuses to send more email to more addresses without regard for the recipients' perspective.

Unfortunately, while we can delude ourselves, we cannot put one over the ISPs who guard those inboxes. A point made by Return Path's J.D. Falk in an excellent and humorous blog post: How to Impress the ISPs.

As senders, we are being marked all the time. By recipients, by ISPs, by webmail services. As soon as we let standards slip, we are punished. By lower responses, spam reports and delivery blocks.

Perhaps we have become bamboozled by all the technology (useful and valuable though it is)...content to let the databases and automated tools do all the work. Seeing spreadsheet cells, not customers. Forgetting that the email that goes out needs to evoke a positive emotional response as well as a digital one that shows up on campaign reports.

Or forgetting that prospective subscribers to a list need to be persuaded of the value of relinquishing their precious email address. An issue highlighted earlier today by Melinda Krueger in a look at one company's email efforts.

And so perhaps there is value in looking back to the early days of email marketing, when pioneers like Michael Katz and Nick Usborne emphasized the role of personality and human relationships in engaging readers and cementing their loyalty to your business, brand and email program.

I like, for example, the concepts explored in the latest EmailLabs newsletter, where Stefan Pollard describes 10 ways to engage newsletter readers.

Or David Baker's list of email marketer roles, which includes "the Interpreter," responsible for creating and guarding the email experience...a topic which always deserves more exposure.

Web 2.0 never did manage to kill email. But it teaches the value of getting customers and prospects to interact and become part of a communication exchange. Email marketing does not operate in a technology vacuum.

Tags: email marketing, customer relationships

Although still way off reaching the user numbers of (Windows Live) Hotmail and Yahoo, Google's email product is gaining ground among your (potential) subscribers.

Three new developments that add more weight to that trend:

1. More storage space for Gmail users
   
2. An upgrade to the "Gmail for mobile" application
3. Another push to get businesses and educational establishments to use Google's web applications (which include email account solutions), with the addition of some of Postini's email security features
   

Their competitors have scored points with recent revamps of their webmail user interfaces. If Gmail can do its own little revamp, expect their user numbers to accelerate appropriately.

More on webmail | Tags: email, gmail, google, gmail for mobile

October 15, 2007

Just a couple of nice articles to sweeten your working week...

Dylan Boyd at eROI has a resume bursting at the seams with big-time email campaign experience. Which he shares with us in this blog post outlining five important factors to take into account when planning a sequence of marketing emails.

And on the design front, Lisa Finfer describes 12 design and development best practices for email.

Careful, though...the language style used might mislead you into thinking some of Lisa's recommendations are set-in-stone truths, rather than the guidelines and "points to think about" they're meant to be.

Statements like "Newsletters...should have 30 percent images and 70 percent text" are a bit too inflexible.

More on design | Tags: email marketing, email design, email campaigns

Before you get to work deleting all the spam that accumulated over the weekend, perhaps time to shut the door, take the phone off the hook, and consider your next email steps.

Here it might help to know what others are thinking about the role and future of email marketing. The UK's E-consultancy, for example, just released a (free) short report on the outcome of an email roundtable featuring ESPs, agencies and corporate marketers.

The report provides an overview of the UK market and associated statistics, but also explores the email marketing challenges, problems and opportunities faced by businesses. Which means insight on these two questions:

How can you better use email for marketing purposes and what's stopping you from doing so?

One of the two biggest constraints* is the old one about a lack of appropriate resources. If you need more ammunition to justify increased investment in your email efforts, Simms Jenkins has another article to wave furiously in the face of skeptics.

As well as citing supportive numbers, Simms also provides a useful list of email's advantages to the business. These are worth reading for their own sake, since you may not be exploiting those advantages fully yet.

*the other big constraint is a lack of appropriate skills, which gets little public attention. We increasingly know what to do, but we don't necessarily know how.

More on statistics and strategy | Tags: email marketing, email marketing statistics, email marketing metrics

October 12, 2007

OK, when the guardians of the world's email accounts look at your incoming email, we know they use your sender reputation as a top criterion for deciding whether to deliver (or not) your message.

We also know that this sender reputation is built from various components, for example:

• the spam reports your emails generate,

• the addresses you send to (for example, are you still trying to email addresses that don't exist?), and

• (increasingly) the way recipients interact with your emails

People hitting "this is junk" or "this is spam" buttons are perhaps the most critical component of your sender reputation, a point hammered home recently by Loren McDonald.

He suggests we see these spam reports as feedback mechanisms...a kind of market research that tells us when we need to change email course.

Whether people click those particular buttons depends on another kind of sender reputation...the reputation you've established with that individual recipient.

This concept is explored in an excellent new article by Ian Giles and Matthew Vernhout of ThinData. They outline ten "branding elements" that help boost and consolidate this reputation, thus lowering the risk that a recipient sees you as spam.

One element mentioned by the authors (and others) is the idea of delivery consistency. If you follow a consistent delivery schedule, then you train people to expect and recognize your emails when they arrive.

This helps your sender reputation in two ways. It means less spam complaints. But there's also the suggestion of a more direct impact, with ISPs marking consistent delivery schedules as a plus in their reputation calculations (see this article on Yahoo, as an example.)

This brings me to the problem. Consistent schedules do not fit in with some of the more promising "advanced" email marketing techniques. Heidi Cohen, yesterday, talks about behaviorally-targeted email. And today, Lee-Ann Vermaak argues in favor of email follow-ups from call centers.

As soon as you start to tie emails to behavior, customer lifecycles, trigger events etc., frequency becomes more inconsistent.

But do inconsistent delivery schedules then leave the recipient confused? Can this harm your sender reputation?

I don't think there's too much of an issue here. The answer to those questions is no, provided you meet two criteria.

1. Recognition. If you're sending diverse emails, ensure that each clearly identifies where they're coming from. And (ideally) ensure they share enough features to allow recipients to recognize them as coming from a common (reputable) source. This touches on issues of branding and centralized email management.

2. Relevancy. If the irregular communications have clear benefits to the recipient, then you're on safer ground.

Fortunately, these "advanced" emails are by definition more relevant and targeted (that's why they are so promising.)

Deviating from an established delivery pattern only starts to break down reputation-wise when you ignore these two criteria.

There is a big difference between rushing out an extra promotion because you want to clear the warehouse for a new delivery, and doing the same knowing that the selected recipients have a track record of interest in that kind of product.

Thoughts?

More on deliverability | Tags: email marketing, email reputation, sender reputation, email deliverability, email timing

Various newspaper articles and blog posts of late have covered the growing phenomenon of businesses encouraging or mandating employees to enjoy "email-free Fridays."

I'm going to be contrary and suggest no-email Fridays are great for B2B marketing emails sent on that day. (Don't look at me like that.)

If you take a closer look at these new policies, they don't impose a blanket ban on using email. Instead, they attempt to get employees to avoid email for internal communication.

There do not appear to be limitations on reading email, or communicating via email with others outside the business. So people will still use email. They'll just get less of it from colleagues.

Which means less competition for attention in the inbox. (That's the "AHA!" moment.)

Now I'm being a little unfair here.

For example, if you're not using email for internal communication, then you might check email less frequently or not at all on Friday.

And then there's the question of whether Friday marketing emails catch people in the right frame of mind anyway, given a likely focus on finishing work and getting home for the weekend.

The real message is that there's more than one way to interpret changes in behavior. And the only real way to know what day works best for you and your unique audience is to test.

(Hat tip to Tom O'Leary for putting me onto this issue.)

More reading on the phenomenon:
A day without email is like... (The Email Wars)
No email Fridays transform office (ABC news report)
...no email day is next (Intel plans a pilot project for engineers)
Fridays go from casual to email free (USA Today)

More on timing | Tags: email marketing, email timing, best day to send email

October 10, 2007

Today at iMediaConnection, Chris Lovejoy suggests asking for a second email address when people subscribe to your email lists. So you have a backup if you can't deliver to the first address.

I'll leave you to consider the pros and cons of that because the article got me thinking on another topic...


This could have important consequences for your success.

Not all email addresses are created equal, even if the human behind them is the same. Most of us have more than one email account. One might be for "work," another for "home." One we might check regularly, another just occasionally.

A B2B marketer would perhaps like to get a "work" email address that is checked regularly.

Your sign-up language can encourage people to submit the kind of address you want. It's as easy as writing "main email address" or "work email address" beside the relevant form field.

But is it as simple as that?

In the past, webmail addresses, for example, had a bad reputation. Free email address services were pretty flimsy, had strict limits on how much email you could store, and churned rapidly. So marketers wanted work addresses in their database, not Hotmail or AOL addresses.

It's different today (or is it?) For a start, the likes of Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL and Windows Live Hotmail now have robust, quality webmail services in place with plenty of storage capacity.

These webmail services are increasingly used as "main email accounts." Additionally, we also know that the work/home separation is blurred. People read work email at home, forward email between accounts, do consumer stuff while at work.

The big webmail services (responsible for 500+ million email accounts) are a deliverability challenge, but at least there is some clarity in terms of what you need to do (or not do) to reach inboxes there.

This is not the case with "work" email addresses, where each corporation might have its own customized set up of various anti-spam and email management systems.

On the other hand, if large proportions of your list are controlled by single webmail account providers, then the potential downside of a deliverability problem with any one provider is much higher than if your email addresses are spread out among many different account providers.

Another issue: work addresses churn, too, as folk switch jobs. Are work addresses more permanent than those "throwaway" free email addresses?

I'd welcome any insights you might have on this topic, particularly...

Do you care which email address people give you? And do you do anything to encourage subscribers to submit the "right" one?

Tags: email marketing, email addresses, webmail, free email, email deliverability

Recently, we suggested that the main factors in getting people to open your email were recognition, reputation and subject line:

Recognition: do I know you and recognize the source of the email?

Reputation: have I had a good experience with you and particularly with your past emails?

Subject line: does what you put in the subject line motivate me to read further?

(Not the only factors, but important ones.)

Some new blog posts and articles offer further insights on these issues. Bill McCloskey confirms this idea of reputation driving open rates (what he calls email karma) in this new article at MediaPost.

And Janine Popick and Adrain Singer weigh in with subject line comments...

Janine picks out a few emails skulking in her spam folder and explains what they're doing wrong.

Adrian describes the four subject line characteristics that his software service and consulting company finds work best.

More on open rates and subject lines | Tags: email marketing, email subject lines, copywriting

If a marketer has furrowed eyebrows, they're probably examining their delivery stats to @hotmail addresses. Me included.

An important element in getting your legitimate emails past Hotmail's anti-spam technologies is having appropriate email authentication records in place.

Now, my technology skills stopped developing the day my physics teacher told me to think of electricity like flowing water (yeah, right). But Stefan Pollard's latest article has some detailed technical advice for you on setting up proper authentication records for Hotmail.

And on the Yahoo! Mail front, Tim England recently listened to one of their inbox guardians, who revealed four tips for improving the deliverability of your messages to Yahoo's email account holders (all 250+ million of them). Here's what he found out.

More on deliverability | Tags: email marketing, email deliverability, hotmail, yahoo mail, windows live hotmail

October 09, 2007

The inherent measurability of much online advertising has its dark side. Measurability means accountability. So while folk can "wantonly" throw money at events sponsorships (for example), the likes of email marketing have to prove their worth in hard numbers.

The debate about measuring the value or success of email takes place at two levels.

The first is at the organizational level. What is email's contribution to the business? How can you justify it to senior management or your bank manager?

The second is at the practical level. Just what numbers do we use to gauge the success of an email and gain insight on how we might do better next time around?

Taken together, three new articles essentially argue that we make the same mistakes at both levels. Instead of asking, "what are we trying to achieve?" and then measuring that, we fall back on familiar, traditional metrics without considering their true relevance.

Kevin Hillstrom deserves much kudos for encouraging email marketers to properly represent the value of email to colleagues who don't want to hear about open rates. See his post E-Mail Success, or E-Mail Failure? for more info.

And at MediaPost, both Melinda Krueger and (especially) Whitney Hutchinson discuss ways to measure your email marketing efforts which reflect your goals and situation, rather than tradition.

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

Recently, MailChimp announced the Inbox Inspector, a tool for identifying potential design and delivery problems before you send out your email.

Its aim is to give everyone access to the kind of information that used to be reserved for those with deep pockets and big email lists. Does it live up to its billing? Check out my review.

Later this week or next, I'll look at another design testing tool and see how it compares...

More tools and services | Tags: email design, design testing, mailchimp, inbox inspector

October 08, 2007