No man is an iland

March 31, 2008

Email marketing has always had a technocratic hint to it. But as time passes, we can redirect more of our energy away from technological issues and into the more creative side of things.

After all, nearly all marketing emails seek to build relationships and/or drive action. Technology gets the message in front of the recipient, but it's the words and packaging (design) that do the influencing and persuading.

A 100% delivery rate won't help if the message is as impactful as a sheep on sedatives.

This whole skills area grows in importance as email overload forces subscribers to devote less time to each email. You must grab your moment or face the wrath of the delete button.

Unfortunately for us, it's not always obvious which words and design elements resonate best with various audiences. Email has its own rules and subscribers can be a diverse lot. (Those interested in the basics of email psychology might enjoy the email chapter in John Suler's The Psychology of Cyberspace.)

On top of that,we have new trends in how (and where) people use email. The challenge of mobile email use, for example, is one troubling many marketers. And Stefan Pollard has a few tips on how to optimize your messages for that particular audience.

So how do you set about building an email that influences?

There are no "paint by numbers" instructions, but David Baker outlines the process his team uses to develop an email's design and identify the alternatives they want to test.

His follow-up article applies the same concept to the words you use: identifying the different aspects of the copy you can test, including tone, offer, structure and audience empathy.

Of course, when you hit on a winning combination, there's no need to keep reinventing the wheel with each new email. Though subscribers quickly tire of repeat emails, Wendy Roth has some ideas on how you can recycle and reuse old campaigns and email material.

More on design and copywriting | Tags: email marketing, email design, email copywriting, email testing, email creative

March 27, 2008

You're probably tired of people banging on about testing different aspects of your emails and email approach to see how a change or two might help. Test, blah, blah, test etc. Yawn...anything good on the TV tonight?

And while we're at it, do we really need to pay attention to all this fuss about "designing for blocked images" or "segmentation?" Do these things really make THAT much difference?

Some new articles will answer those questions and could change the way you think about email marketing and testing. (And I say this as an Englishman genetically predisposed to understatement.)

Let us begin with this case study of the Motorcycle Superstore. Read it quick before it goes behind a website membership barrier.

Wow!

The article lists a variety of tests they did, and how the insight generated affected campaign numbers. Just testing changes in frequency allowed them to increase revenues by up to 120%. Yep, testing just one thing more than doubled email sales.

(By the way, if you're troubled by the "how often should I send my emails?" question, some recent articles by Stefan Pollard, John Arnold and Loren McDonald may help.)

Motorcycle Superstore also split their list into groups based on product interests and sent each group different content. This segmentation doubled open rates and tripled CTR.

OK, testing certainly works. And segmentation looks seriously promising (assuming the results boosts carry through to revenues and the costs aren't too high). But let's learn more.

A case study of a hunting retailer (also by MarketingSherpa) explores the value of designing for images off.

The retailer tested an all-images design against one also with images, but where the main message was in text using table cells and a colored background.

The "designed for image blocking" email produced almost four times as much revenue.

Ye gads!

Now here's the but (there's always, always a but). In this particular case, the main message in the all-images email was particularly well suited for presentation in text form. This is not always the case. But you can't deny that the test and the safe design were worth doing.

And there's more where that came from.

A while back there was some debate about whether text links or button links work best when trying to get people to clickthrough to your website. The folks at AWeber decided to find out, setting up an appropriate test.

They just published the results. It's interesting to note that text links in context eventually outperformed button links.

But even more interesting is to see how the relative performance changed through time. AWeber were farsighted enough to keep testing the same thing again and again.

The first few tests saw the button generate far more clicks than the equivalent text links. But as time passed, the positions reversed.

The clear message: testing once is good. Testing again later is even better. Things change.

So testing has its risks. Test inappropriately and you could end up making the wrong decision. If AWeber had stuck with the button based on the initial tests, the CTR on their newsletters would have fallen in the long run.

There's another example buried in the Motorcycle Superstore article. When they tested the best day to send out email, the best day to send wasn't actually the best day to send. (I love that sentence.)

The send day that produced the best results for the day of the send was not the same as the send day that produced the best overall results:

"Thursdays and Fridays performed the best, but only for that one day...emails sent on Mondays and Tuesdays had a longer lifespan and higher total conversion rate."

Fascinating!

To finish, a couple of other new links on these subjects. We know segmentation works, but if you're like me, you're probably scratching your head wondering how to do all that funky database stuff. Aaron Smith suggests it needn't be as tricky as you think.

And MailChimp have a few tips on testing from the Conversion Rate Experts.

Tags: email marketing, email testing, email segmentation, email design, image blocking

March 26, 2008

You may have seen a flurry of excitement concerning the results of a survey by Q Interactive and MarketingSherpa on consumer perceptions of spam and the "report spam" button (as reported by DMNews).

In brief, a fair number of consumers define spam essentially as email they don't want, irrespective of whether they signed up for it or not. And a good number see the "report spam" button as a substitute for the unsubscribe button.

Given the big role played by spam complaints in determining your sender reputation and thus your ability to get email delivered, there is some understandable Panic (with a capital P).

Is your email getting blocked because people lose interest and hit the spam button instead of bothering to unsubscribe?

Well, hang on. Let's look at this rationally. (And let's assume the survey has no methodological flaws.)

First, this should not be news. As far back as May 2007, the big webmail services began making it clear that their definition of spam was "unwanted email."

As such, then, their users are using the report spam button exactly as intended by those who provide that feature: to report unwanted email. We may not like it, but that's the way it is. Like Al says, it's a feature, not a bug.

And other consumer surveys have long revealed similar consumer email attitudes.

In January, 2008, a ReturnPath survey found that "...subscribers do not hesitate to complain about unwanted messages (reporting the email as spam)."

And back in May 2007, Epsilon reported that two-thirds of those using spam complaint mechanisms "...equate reporting spam with unsubscribing from marketers' email programs."

Spam has always been defined by the recipient. Always. And if that definition is essentially "unwanted" or "irrelevant" email, then email marketers must accept it and adapt to it.

If that harsh reality seems like a daunting proposition, consider this...

If consumers were so trigger happy about reporting anything and everything as spam, then we'd all be on blacklists. Clearly we're not: good emails are still getting delivered.

As Laura puts it in a great post on this very topic..."send relevant mail that your recipients want to receive. If you do this, then you will not have delivery problems."

Quite.

Having said that there is some recognition from ISPs (like Google) that not all spam reports are equal. And that spam reports for "real" spam and spam reports as unsubscribes should be treated differently.

Which is why there are moves afoot to allow webmail services to display secure unsubscribe buttons the same way they display report spam buttons. See this website for details. And anti-spam vendor Cloudmark recently announced a "Secure Unsubscribe" feature.

But even if this becomes widespread, don't think you're off the hook. There are already indications that ISPs will look at unsubscribe rates and other interactions with your email to determine whether they're wanted (or not wanted, i.e. can be treated as spam).

The message is clear. However much we might talk about definitions of spam, permission, buttons etc. etc., if your email is not engaging the interest of your recipients then your deliverability will suffer.

So there are two lessons to draw out of this...

First, the survey is yet another wake up call to get out your big book of best practices and get to work. Check out the ideas at the end of Denise Cox's latest post for some starting points.

Second, we need a change of attitude to unsubscribes.

They are not bad news anymore.

Any unsubscribe request you receive directly is one less disinterested person who might later report you as spam. Unsubscribes are, in a sense, something to welcome.

Loren McDonald has some tips on optimizing the unsubscribe process and you'll find other articles here.

So no panic required, but there's hard work ahead...

More on deliverability | Tags: email marketing, email deliverability, webmail, spam, anti-spam

March 25, 2008

Email marketers used to talk a lot about different levels of permission. This refers to the means by which an email address was obtained.

The lowest level of permission is where the subscriber has no idea their address is being added to a list...

"Unless they tell us otherwise, we'll assume they're happy to be on the list"

The highest level of permission is where the address owner actively confirms their explicit request to be added to a list...

"We'll only start sending you email if you sign-up twice"

For a proper overview of the different permission levels, read this post by Dennis Malaspina.

In recent months, much has been made (rightly) about the role of reputation, recognition, relevance and other things beginning with R in determining deliverability and general email success.

As a result, permission has been pushed and shoved out the way a little and is looking a little sad and neglected in the corner.

Time perhaps for a quick reminder on the value of permission, because it's the foundation on which many of the key elements of a successful email program are based.

Advantages of high levels of permission:

Higher permission standards require more commitment from the subscriber to activate the sign-up, in turn meaning...

1. Fewer spam complaints after the initial emails (they're more likely to remember they signed up)

2. Better recognition for your emails (subscribers are more likely to be looking for and recognising your email)

3. A better match between what you send and what they want (which means better responses and fewer spam complaints)

In addition, the highest levels of permission mean less typos, dead addresses, spam traps etc. get into your email database, all of which can impact negatively on your deliverability.

And if you do attract the unwelcome attention of blacklists and anti-spam technology, you will get a more sympathetic ear to your plight if you can demonstrate that you adhere to high permission standards.

Disadvantages of high levels of permission:

1. You get a smaller list. All things being equal, the more commitment you require for the sign-up, the less people complete the process. Despite the advantages outlined above, this issue alone leads to permission compromises. Especially if performance reviews depend on list sizes.

(Kevin Hillstrom is always very good at pointing out the realities of email marketing life in a less-than-perfect organisational world. See this post, for example.)

So permission may not get the press it once did, but as the above makes clear, its role is undiminished.

Previous generations of email marketers looked at permission as the main factor determining the success of their efforts.

Today, permission should be seen as an important factor that gets you a good place on the starting grid. It's the first link in the chain of email success. But what you do with that permission is at least as critical.

A high level of permission is useless if you wait six months to send the first email. Or if you fail to send relevant content, etc. etc. As we said before, permission is a loan and no longer a gift.

Further reading:
Permission, relevancy and the relevancy of permission

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

A few days ago I wrote about all the other groups potentially messing about with your hard-earned email reputation.

Affiliates promoting your products or services through their own email lists are one of those groups. How they present these offers and how they conduct their email marketing obviously reflects on your business.

But it goes beyond issues of branding and reputation. Under certain circumstances, US anti-spam legislation deems vendors liable for the email actions of those selling on their behalf, e.g. affiliates.

You'll find details on this here. As an affiliate myself, the observed response of merchants to this liability has been one of the following...

• Ignore the issue
• Ban affiliates from using email to promote the merchant's products and services (safe, but means watching the poor baby floating along with the bathwater)
• Ban most affiliates from using email, but allow a few select affiliates with large lists and sound practices to do so
• Allow any affiliate to promote the merchant's products and services via email, but only after the affiliate agrees to a set of requirements and controls on how they do so

This latter approach came under scrutiny recently when the FTC reached a settlement with affiliate merchant Cyberheat in a Can-Spam related legal case. Cyberheat agreed to implement a fairly rigorous set of controls to ensure they remained compliant with the legislation in terms of what their affiliates were up to.

Anyone whose affiliates use email lists would do well to explore the ramifications of this settlement. These two links will help:

Ken Magill's What the Cyberheat Settlement Means to You
Laura Atkins' Affiliates: what is a company's responsibility?

Tags: email marketing, affiliate marketing, can-spam, anti-spam, spam laws

March 24, 2008

Most of us are still trying to comply with basic best practices. But if you're running along nicely and wondering where to go next, have a think about integration.

Now that's a lovely buzzword, but I'm never too sure what to make of it.

After much reflection, the most benefit seems to come from seeing integration as a way of thinking about your email efforts.

A lot of promising email marketing practices and ideas fall out naturally when you simply adopt an "integration" mindset. Which just means shifting your perspective away from viewing email as a standalone direct response sales machine.

Consider email and email marketing instead as just one piece in a bigger jigsaw puzzle. How might your email marketing benefit (or benefit from) other parts of your business?

Such a change in perspective opens up a whole palette of possibilities...from branded signatures in business email through to pre-testing subject lines using paid search listings.

It's this mental switch that underlies much of the advice and commentary given by those at the advanced end of the email marketing spectrum.

We talked a few days ago, for example, about the return of email newsletters as a customer relationship and branding tool. Jeanne Jennings takes up the story in her latest article, with an in-depth exploration of "true email marketing."

Here's another example stemming from "integrated" thinking...

Matthew Finch recently wrote about gaining email insight from other channels, more sophisticated segmentation and re-targeting based on a subscriber's website actions. When you dig down, all these suggestions arise from an "integrated" perspective.

His last point, about using web metrics to drive email targeting, also reflects a more formal idea of "integration," this time of email with web analytics.

Your web analytics can tell you what your subscribers did after clicking a link in your email. A concept that is now free and (relatively) easy to implement, thanks to Google Analytics.

You can see how many pageviews they generated, which whitepaper they downloaded or how much they spent on products.

All of which means you can better judge the success of those emails and apply the lessons to future campaigns.

You can also send emails based on what your web analytics tells you about a subscriber. This covers buzzwords such as event-based emails, trigger emails and behavioral targeting.

Stefan Pollard and Dan Miller explain the principles in this article, while Sally Lowery outlines some of the opportunities here.

An "integrated" approach also changes the way you think about email and the organisation. It implies there is value in getting those outside email marketing to understand email's benefits. So marketing colleagues and senior executives can better exploit email to the benefit of other channels (and vice versa), a point made by Aaron Smith in a call to email arms.

Once you stop thinking of email in isolation, other concepts become obvious. Like the importance of the landing page: how the email message and the web page it points to must be part of one continuous whole, rather than two discrete entities unrelated to each other. MarketingExperiments explore this idea in more detail in their latest brief.

So, how are you applying integrated thinking to your email marketing?

More on advanced tactics | Tags: email marketing, integrated marketing, behavioral marketing

A couple of recent articles tackle the issue of email marketing to an international audience.

MarketingSherpa highlights the experiences of Accor Hotels, while Derek Harding draws out six challenges you need to master.

Based on my experiences as a recipient and ex-pat, here some additional random tips when segmenting your list by nationality or location, .

1. German is not German

It's a start to realize that different countries may need content in different languages. But also keep in mind that countries using the same language still need country-specific translations.

Not just from a localization viewpoint but also from a purely linguistic one.

The German in Germany is not the same as the German in Austria. You wouldn't use US spelling in an email going only to Brits, etc. etc.

2. Find some email tech person and get your text coded right.

Commonest mistake I see with emails in languages other than English is special characters that come out garbled. The likes of French's ç or German's ö.

(Inevitably, those two special characters are going to come out messed up in someone's browser, RSS reader or email client...reinforcing my point while positioning me as a hypocrite.)

3. Double check translations, even localized ones.

Translators translate, and the best ones localize that translation, too. But few think about all the implications of the end result. Three common traps:

• Irrelevant links: the English version of your French article on CRM is perfect, except the links still point to sites and documents in French. Someone needs to find adequate English alternatives.
• Cultural references: The Russians may have a term for "home run" but a local idiom that means the same would be better
• Seasons: the approach of summer in your European email becomes the approach of winter in your Australian one.

4. Translate your English into English.

Apparently the international language of science is now broken English. Even if you decide it makes sense to send English content to those with a different mother tongue, it's still worth adjusting that English for that audience. Less Shakespeare and more plain talking.

5. Be careful correlating location with nationality and language.

We live in an increasingly mobile world. I'm British, but live in Austria. As a result, many companies send me content in German, even though English would work better.

Most marketers can relax...people like me are probably an exception unworthy of much concern. But specific markets might justify finding out a little more about a subscriber before assuming they must be Austrian because they live in Vienna. Think senior corporate executives in Europe, diplomats, language teachers, etc.

P.S. Courriel is French for email and marknadsföring is Swedish for marketing (I'd like to pretend I knew that but I had to look up both words in the dictionary).

Tags: email marketing, international email marketing

March 21, 2008

It's a Friday and time to hear from you. The growth of mobile email gets a lot of press. But are you concerned about the impact on your email marketing?



(For those seeing the feed or email version, give your opinion here.)

March 20, 2008

Scowls were directed at email marketers recently for their apparent neglect of deliverability as an issue and their desire to find some simple deliverability solutions offered by their email service provider.

Solutions that largely don't exist.

So how do mere mortals deal with the problems associated with getting your emails through to the intended recipient?

The lax attitude might well be a defensive reaction to the growth of deliverability as its own art and science...with its own dedicated services...and with its own set of complicated jargon.

The complex technological mysteries that happen somewhere between an email's source and destination can cause level-headed people to throw their hands up in despair and seek easy solutions.

Fortunately it's not as bad as it looks.

We've talked before about how the fate of your sent emails is largely in your own hands. As long as you use a half-decent service or software, you control the factors that determine deliverabilty success.

These days, this success is largely down to your reputation as a sender of email. George Bilbrey outlines exactly what contributes to this reputation in this nice overview.

A closer look through his list reveals that all but one factor is about what you send and who you send it to.

To rephrase, a positive sender reputation comes from sending email to valid addresses representing people who want to get that email's content.

When you put it like that, you see that reputation (= delivery success) depends on doing exactly those things that constitute basic email marketing best practices. These best practices are all about building a list of addresses responsive to your messages.

It's a point made forcibly by Stephanie Miller, who explains how sending relevant email is the key to delivery success.

So when you follow best practices, you are following deliverability best practices, too.

When experts talk about improving the response to your emails, they're effectively telling you how to improve deliverability.

When Simms Jenkins, for example, outlines some best practices for business-to-business email campaigns, he's also outlining best practices for getting B2B email delivered.

When David Baker talks about trigger email, or Loren McDonald writes about attuning your emails' frequency and content to the needs of individual recipients, they are both describing ways to improve deliverability.

This good news has another implication.

An email service provider can't guarantee deliverability for you. But it can provide the tools that help you do the kind of things that improve your deliverability.

It's a point I've made in more detail before, but a more recent post from Ken Takahashi does a better job than me of explaining what it is you should be looking for from your service, both generally and with deliverability in mind.

Of course, there's a dark lining to every silver cloud. There will be times when even the most careful sender of email runs into a deliverabiliy problem.

That's when it's time to call on the expertise of your service or go to a third-party deliverability expert.

If you do take the latter approach, Word to the Wise's Laura has some useful information on what you can expect from a deliverability consultant.

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

March 19, 2008

Here's a classic example from earlier this week illustrating the problems that arise when you see permission as a gift, not a loan.


For many subscribers to this newsletter, the permission loan expired long before this email arrived.

Sending out a new issue three years after the previous one has all sorts of risks. For example...

• I may have forgotten I ever signed up to the newsletter so I mark you as spam
• My interests may have changed. I may just delete the email, take the trouble to unsubscribe...or mark you as spam.
• The email account fell into disuse and was closed. Since the address no longer exists, the webmail service assumes any email to this dead account must be from a spammer and treats your other emails accordingly.

So is there a safe way of reactivating an old list like this?

There is no safe way. But there are safer ways than blithely sending out a normal email with a brief acknowledgment of the sending delay.

The MailChimp blog has some advice from a while back. Fortunately, blog posts don't age as fast as permission:

Sending Your First Campaign To An Old Email List?
Reclaim Old Customer Emails (example)

Do you have any recommendations on how to reactivate a stale address list, but avoid the wrath of the anti-spam Gods?

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

Most marketers understand the need to get permission from someone before adding their address to an email list.

But our choice of words does us a disservice. We don't get permission. We borrow it. Subscribers don't give permission. They lend it.

When someone submits their email address and ticks the "send me email" box, they're not saying "you have my permission to send me emails."

What they're saying is "you have my permission to send me emails as long as you keep sending me the kind of emails I want...with relevant content...at acceptable intervals."

As soon as you break the terms of this permission loan, they withdraw that permission. With permission withdrawn, your emails become "legal spam." And nobody wants to be thought of as spam.

More on permission | Tags: email marketing, permission marketing

March 18, 2008

Barely a day goes by without another new development suggesting the spread of mobile email among both businesses and consumers will accelerate. But how do you adapt to that as a sender of marketing email?

The first job is to find out exactly which of your subscribers is viewing your email on a mobile device.

And already our mobile strategy hits a wall. How do you do this?

You can't.

But you can start to tag at least some of your subscribers as mobile users by, for example...

• Surveying your audience and asking who wants a mobile version of your email
• Adding a mobile option to the format preference you offer at sign-up or in a subscriber preference center

Whatever you choose to do, your list now has two groups. Those who definitely check their email using a mobile device and those who don't (but might).

Sending to those using mobile email

This group gets email optimized for mobile devices.

"Optimized for mobile devices" is easily said of course, but what does that mean? There are two aspects:

1. Designing for the physical and technological limitations of the mobile device
2. Designing for the mobile user (who has different email habits to someone sitting in an office or at a home PC)

Nobody has any proven answers for mobile email design, since there's still too much variety out there in terms of how different smartphones etc. treat email. But you'll find suggestions here and some design testing tools now include mobile devices in their testing mix.

As time goes by, mobile devices will get better and better at handling email. We've already seen how the iPhone is HTML email ready, a concept soon to be applied in Blackberrys, traditionally a disaster area for HTML email.

This trend will make mobile email design easier and let you focus on other problems.

And here are your first two:

• Those using mobile email may also use a desktop or laptop to check mail some of the time.
• Many mobile email users save non-essential (but useful) emails for viewing later back in the home/office on the desktop or laptop. And many (most?) marketing emails fall into this category.

So if we write and design emails solely for the mobile world, many of those emails will actually get read somewhere else.

Hmmm.

An alternative then is to use the design approach recommended below for those reading in traditional email environments, but who might be using mobile devices too...

Sending to those not using mobile email

This group can get your "normal" emails. Or can they?

Inevitably, some of those not (yet) identified as using a mobile device to view email will still do so. Especially if you have a B2B list.

Your job here then is to take account of this possibility in your design, but without making any drastic changes that cramp your impact on traditional email users, who still make up most of this group.

Two possible solutions here:

1. Add a link at the very top of the email to an online version of your email optimized for mobile users.

If the email looks rotten to the recipient, they can always clickthrough to a clean, online version.

2. Ensure your from line, subject line and the very top of your email quickly communicate two critical facts: who you are and the value in your email.

That way, the mobile email user will likely save your email for later and a viewing environment (PC, etc.) better suited to your email design.

(Actually point 2 is useful advice for all email anyway, since recognition of both the sender and the email's value drive open rates and responses.)

Any other suggestions (or corrections to the above) for adapting to the mobile email revolution?

More on mobile email | Tags: email marketing, mobile email, wireless email, email design

Time to head upcountry and bring back the latest case studies and campaign reviews for you to look over.

The ever-reliable Anna Billstrom subjects the travel industry to scrutiny. How do emails from Orbitz and Hotwire shape up when images are suppressed? Anna has the answers here, as well as suggestions on ensuring branding survives a loss of graphics.

Josh at SendLabs points out all the good things about a one-off campaign by Dunkin' Donuts to promote their "lattes and cappuccinos" day.

Melanie of Blue Sky Factory highlights the value of the subscriber preference center used by Sam's Wines and Spirits to ensure relevancy in the emails they send out.

(My only question is why the sign-up thank you page at the website doesn't take people straight to the preference center, rather than obliging them to click on a link in the welcome email?)

A couple of ESPs ran interviews with famous customers. I'm listing them because they're less self-serving and more insightful than your typical corporate case study:

MailChimp talk with Mozilla on emailing to techies, the role of their newsletter and the relationship to RSS feeds. And Campaign Monitor looks at how 37signals use email (with sample screenshots).

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

March 17, 2008

If you're pounding away on the email treadmill, it can help to have someone press the "pause" button, hand you a pair of binoculars and point you to some fresh ideas and perspectives running free outside in the park.

Kevin Hillstrom, for example, invites us to reflect on the fact that email might make sales, but the vast, vast majority of subscribers aren't buying.

He suggests we could invest less email space in trying for a direct sale, and more in improving various qualities of the customer relationship that eventually lead to more sales.

This concept gels very nicely with what we talked about last week in the return of the email newsletter.

And how about a fresh look at subject lines?

It's hard to find much new insight on that particular piece of the email jigsaw. But Linda Bustos has a fascinating read on how your subject line could (or should) tie in with different buyer personas (personi?)

The implication is that traditional ideas about targeting need to broaden. We need to segment by more than just technical characteristics like "date of last purchase," and consider defining recipients in terms of the decision-making approach they use and similar.

Clever stuff!

Sometimes new thinking means taking existing ideas and transferring them to new applications. Take the idea of incentives.

Discounts, coupons, free downloads etc. are a well-established ploy in email marketing for getting people to sign-up to your list or make a purchase.

Chad White, however, points out how you can use such incentives to get subscribers to take other actions of value to your email program.

And here's another "never thought of that" angle...can you use your email marketing to encourage people to link to your website? Garrett French explores the potential and has a few ideas on how to set about doing it.

Enjoy the view...

Tags: email marketing, email marketing strategy, subject lines

You may be familiar with Tim Berners-Lee, the man who "invented" the World Wide Web. But have you heard of Ray Tomlinson?

He invented network email.

And this article reveals that the first ever email message was "...QWERTY, or another meaningless set of letters produced swiping one's hand across the top of the computer keyboard."

Not sure that would make it through spam filters today.

According to his own account, he invented email because "...it seemed like a neat idea." Indeed.

Tags: email, history of email

March 14, 2008

It matters whether someone opens your email. But it also matters when they do so.

Reading through the newly-released MailerMailer and Vision 6 metrics reports, both agree that around 75% of people who are going to open an email will do it within the first 24 hours.

Why should such things interest us? Here are a few reasons:

1. By tracking the timing of opens and clicks, you can prepare for the consequences. Can your website / customer service / inventory cope with email-incited peak demand times?

2. Although most responses come quickly, there are still people looking at your email sometime down the road. Vision 6 reports 6% of first opens coming at least 7 days after the initial sendout.

And let's not forget that the first open may be immediate, but people may come back to your emails again much later.

So links and images need to stay live and relevant.

By relevant I mean, for example, if you had a time-limited offer, then the landing page needs to break the bad news gently to latecomers (and similar).

3. If you know most responses take place quickly, you can use that knowledge when testing. A concept explained well by Jeanne Jennings.

4. Knowing how many times a recipient opens your email (repeat opens) is an oft-forgotten measure which reveals its own insights.

5. If you track the speed of opens across emails, you might notice patterns. If people are taking longer and longer to get to your email, what does that tell you? Are they switching off? Do you need to work in some kind of urgency into your emails to ensure apathy doesn't see responses drop?

Any other suggested uses for this kind of data?

More on open rates | Tags: email open rates, email marketing metrics

March 13, 2008

Published reports aggregating numbers from across a range of businesses sending email are not as useful as your own reports, but they have their value.

Big picture industry overviews and benchmarking statistics have long been the domain of the MarketingSherpa report. But the UK now has its own alternative.

The UK's e-consultancy just published their 2008 Email Marketing Industry Census. Its 50 pages cover marketer attitudes and practices, revealing budgetary, strategic and tactical priorities and deficits.

More campaign-oriented data comes from the newly-released MailerMailer Metrics Report covering the second half of 2007.

And those in Australia have their own benchmark metrics, courtesy of Vision 6, who also just released the numbers from H2, 2007.

The best way to use these reports is not to treat the numbers within as directly comparable with your own efforts. Instead, read the authors' interpretations: they use the data to draw out general patterns and best practices that can help your own efforts.

More on statistics | Tags: email marketing metrics, email marketing in the UK, email marketing in Australia

March 12, 2008

As part of an unplanned retro-week, we've been talking a lot about how the strength of the relationship between sender and recipient is ever more important for driving email success.

It's always been important, but in recent years it got a little overlooked in the technology rush: too many buttons to press and spreadsheet cells to fill.

There are various elements to this magic word "relationship." And I'm too tired to try and list them all (to be frank). But we can think about things like trust, loyalty, credibility, value etc.

Of course, any relationship or reputation you've built with the recipient is worth a pile of burnt beans if they don't recognize your email as coming from you.

And not recognizing the sender is one of the main reasons people will delete the email or mark it as spam, a point made again by Ben Chestnut in this more general article on spam complaints.

So how do you ensure your emails are recognized?

An obvious way is through the content and design of those emails. And here I'd simply point you to a superb article by Stefan Pollard, where he outlines various parts of the email (headers, logos, copy, snippets etc.) you can use to achieve brand recognition.

But recognition does not begin and end with the email itself. You set the stage for achieving recognition through other elements of your email program, too.

The start of the email relationship is particularly important. Among the many benefits of gaining explicit permission is that recipients are more likely to recognize your email simply because they're expecting it.

The sign-up process itself begins the process of recognition. You can link to sample emails. Or warn people what to expect on a sign-up confirmation page, as in this example.

The concept continues with the welcome messaging. Right after sign-up is a choice moment when a good welcome email (or set of emails) creates an awareness and anticipation that carries through to your "normal" emails.

(Lindsey Secord has a few welcome mail tactics and screenshots in this new article.)

Then we also need consistency...of presentation and frequency.

Recipients become used to a particular email structure and design. Significant changes need careful treatment to ensure the recognition factor is not lost.

Look, for example, at this table of winners and losers in subject line tests. Although ostensibly evaluating the impact of the word "free," the comparisons also suggest that dropping the brand/business name from the subject line has a negative impact. Lower recognition = lower open rates.

Consistency of frequency is also important. This doesn't mean only sending emails at a specific interval. But it does mean sending enough email that you're not forgotten. My rule of thumb is a minimum of once a month.

And as a final thought, we come full circle to the idea of relationships again. In an earlier post on the topic, we talked about sending professional, valuable, personable emails that build trust, credibility and loyalty.

If you're doing that then people will seek your emails out among the morass of inbox mediocrity. And half the recognition battle is already won...

Related posts:
What to put in the from line?
Recognition and relevancy
Recognition and open rates

Tags: email marketing, email recognition, email reputation, email relationships

March 11, 2008

Many insights pop out of the self-evident-but-often-ignored idea that the relationship with your recipient plays an ever more direct role in determining your email success.

If we're getting back to relationship basics, then what you say, how you say it and how you present it are vital. Also because the way to stand out from inbox mediocrity is (surprise!) to send emails that don't look or sound mediocre.

Just today, Melinda Krueger asks:


If you need any reminding, read one recipient's reaction to a campaign email requesting volunteer help. You can argue about the rights and wrongs of the tone used, but the point is the strong emotional reaction it evokes. Words matter.

And since we spoke about the return of the email newsletter yesterday, Cynthia Edwards has a timely article inviting us to reject the notion that short is always better. She suggests some situations where long copy might work in emails.

Discussions of email design often focus on rendering issues, but we'd do well to remember that design is about impressions and emotional connections, too. A point emphasized by Suzie Travers in this brief article on successful email design.

Those looking for more specific design advice might enjoy Vdot Media's 9 best practices or browse through Jon Aizlewood's series of ten posts with design tips (Feb 26th to March 10th in his blog's design category).

Finally, if ideas are proving elusive, try MarketingSherpa's 2008 Email Awards Gallery, full of details and screenshots from this year's winners. The awards aren't based on artistic impression, but take account of hard results, too.

More on design and copywriting | Tags: email marketing, email design, email copywriting

March 10, 2008

All the trends in email marketing point to the growing importance of establishing a good relationship and reputation with ever more discerning recipients.

Which means delivering a professional, valuable, personable email that builds the kind of trust, credibility and loyalty you need to gain, retain, influence and impact readers and customers.

That concept sounds disconcertingly familiar.

If we go back to the late nineties, we'll see that this is exactly the premise behind the lowly email newsletter.

As the roles of relationships and reputations blossom, perhaps it's time to rediscover the charms of the content-based email newsletter. To help you on your way, some new articles and one very old one:

Marketing with an e-newsletter: 80+ pages of insight on how to develop that impact and influence. Old, but getting more relevant by the day.

Michael Katz's newsletter archive: dozens of articles written for professional service companies but full of wider lessons for all e-newsletter publishers.

Bring Your e-Newsletter from Snoring to Soaring: Kivi Leroux Miller has advice on the basics.

Ten things to spice up an email newsletter: Denise Cox has a few tips beyond the usual.

Make sure your email newsletter is working: Joseph Carrabis talks about benefits, personas and engagement.

Tags: email marketing, email newsletters, e-newsletters

The term "email reputation" has grown to mean many things. But no sensible marketer denies the fact that the emails you send have an impact on how recipients think about your wider business and brand.

This is both opportunity and problem.

On the opportunity side, it's the reason why we work hard to ensure our email marketing programs do everything right.

By respecting permission, controlling send frequencies, sending relevant content, using an appropriate design, style and tone etc., we can make that impact a positive one.

Then there are the problems.

Unfortunately, those carefully constructed marketing emails are not the only emails that recipients are using to build an impression of your business.

That business is also associated with other emails which might be killing the reputation you strive so hard to build through your in-house marketing program.

The obvious candidates are the emails coming from your colleagues: customer service email, transactional email, email from other business units etc.

These have a marketing impact, too, wreaking havoc with frequencies, messaging etc. Which is why you read so much about centralizing email control.

But it doesn't stop there.

Third-party emails may be marketing on your behalf. And their email marketing practices reflect on your business and brand.

Do the following keep to the same standards you'd use for your own marketing emails?

• Rental lists (is that rental list truly opt in?)
• Sponsorships (newsletters featuring your ads)
• Partner emails (maybe you arranged an ad swap with a business selling related -- but not competing -- services and products?)
• Affiliate emails (how do your affiliates promote you via email?)

If you use any of the above, they are each helping build (or destroy) your "email reputation."

Here two examples to illustrate the point:

1. Bryan Eisenberg describes how one leading company became an unwitting and unintentional "spammer" through using rental lists. He also reports on the actions they're taking to prevent a repeat.

2. Many companies targeting marketers promote webinars and white papers by renting subscriber lists from different B2B marketing websites and publications.

Trouble is, info-hungry marketing people like me are on all these lists. The result of one particularly careless rental campaign? Five emails from five websites (fine) advertising the same webinar from the same company in the space of two days (not so fine).

Time perhaps to cast an evaluative eye on who else is driving your email reputation?

Tags: email marketing, email reputation, branding, email list rental

March 07, 2008

If you're staring wistfully at a blank screen waiting for the Goddess of Creativity to finish with Accounts and pay Marketing a visit, here some alternative sources of inspiration:

Two blogs covered how etailers and others used the leap year to liven up their emails. These kinds of ideas tend to transfer well to other special days and seasons, so are always worth a look:

RetailEmail.Blogspot has a dedicated Leap Day edition with screenshots and subject lines.

Get Elastic showcases over a dozen examples (and takes a closer look at how one retailer exploits the imminent arrival of daylight savings time in a promotional email).

Christopher Knight interviewed Tad Clarke and Eric Stockton to get the inside story on MarketingSherpa's own approach to email newsletters. Topics covered include production processes, content and publishing strategy, testing and more.

NetFlix is becoming the email marketer's favorite email program. Both Lisa Harmon and Adam Covati report on their efforts.

Anna Billstrom gets the case study bug, reporting in depth on campaigns by the Boston Celtics, eHarmony and Dell/Kodak. The last one is particularly interesting since it has inside information on some of the thought processes that go into design and strategy decisions.

Andrew Seel looks at a university newsletter, draws out the positives and suggests some minor improvements.

Karen Gedney explores how tradeshows keep registered visitors and exhibitors engaged through regular newsletters.

Finally, Brent Rosengren reviews the email campaigns of (would-be) presidential candidates in the US and gives his opinion on where they might do better.

Plenty of weekend reading for you...

Thanks to the power of electronics, we get a lot of data back everytime we send out an email campaign. Clicks, opens etc.

Much of this data gets dumped in the alleyway of neglect. More enlightened marketers, however, put it to good use to track the results of their efforts and learn about what works and what doesn't.

A big problem in this process is the poor attention given to understanding the cause of a particular result. If success is attributed to the wrong cause, then the future refinements you make to your emails might actually do more harm than good.

Let me explain with a couple of examples:

1. Open rates example

Imagine you email your list with two types of email. The first contains a coupon code for 10% off all items in a specific product group. The second contains links to specific items in that group priced at an even bigger discount.

The first generates average open rates of 45%. The second average open rates of around 20%. Clearly your list are more interested in a wider coupon than specific discounts on a more limited selection.

Now imagine the coupon code in the first email is always an image. And the product links in the second email are text. Now imagine that your recipients actually have no preference between a wider coupon and specific discounts.

What's really happening is that a large number of recipients using clients and webmail services that block images are activating image downloads so they can see the coupon. Something they don't have to do with the second email.

Because opens are measured when a tracking image is downloaded (see here for details), what you get is an entirely artificial boost to open rates for the first kind of email.

In this case, it would be wrong to conclude greater interest in a coupon simply because the open rate is higher. You would need to look at the profits generated by each type of email to make a realistic comparison.

A similar theory can be applied to open rates garnered by image-rich emails. Are the open rates high because of recipient interest or because you force people to download images to see the contents of the email?

2. Clickthrough rates example

Imagine those two emails again. This time, the coupon email has a text link to a coupon page at your website: "Click here to get your 10% discount coupon for shoes."

The alternative email pushing specific discounted shoes has a link that says: "Click here to see which shoes qualify for a 50% discount."

Let's assume again that recipients actually have no preference for either approach. The sales generated would be the same for each. Yet the second email will undoubtedly get more clicks.

The coupon link has all the information a customer needs to decide if its worth taking the next step. The discount link does not: recipients need to follow the link to get the information needed to ae that decision (exactly what shoes are discounted?)

The difference in the number of clicks reflects the disparity in information provided, not a true difference in interest between the two types of offers.

Clickers on the coupon link are pre-qualified. If you looked at the number of clicks without considering the quality of each and the subsequent actions taken, you would, again, draw a false conclusion.

What do these kinds of interpretation problems tell us? To make the right decisions based on campaign reports, we need to:

• Understand what each metric really means and how it is measured
• Understand the various factors that might contribute to a change in that metric
• Understand the need to look at other metrics associated with a particular email
• Avoid basing decisions on one metric in isolation, unless you're sure of its importance and the causes of any changes in that metric

More on statistics and analysis | Tags: email marketing statistics, email campaign analysis, email marketing metrics

March 04, 2008

Here's the theory...

You send out an email and measure the responses. Some people don't open or click on your mail because they are too busy or overlooked your message or were slightly unsure if they should bother taking a closer look.

So you resend the email to these "didn't open, didn't click" addresses. Some now see it for the first time, or have more time to review your email: you get a few more sales.

This approach can work, as case studies verify. And I've seen the resend approach used many times in my inbox (either that or there are a lot of messed up email systems out there sending duplicate emails).

But there are obvious problems which make this simplistic theory a little more complicated.

Some of the recipients who did not open or click on the email did so because, for example...

...they use email clients and webmail services that block images (no open registered) and they found your message irrelevant to their needs (no click).

...they haven't checked their email yet.

Sending the email again to folks like these looks like an error. It might even annoy them. "Your first email was a waste of my time. Now you're sending me it again."

So you got some extra sales, but what damage did you do to relationships with the other recipients?

So my question to you is this: how do you get the benefits of resending an email to non-openers / non-clickers, but without the problems? Should you even try?

My immediate reaction would be to suggest the secret (if you are going to do it) is in the timing, subject line and content.

For example, don't resend the email until you're sure the vast majority of responses you are going to get in total are already in. So you don't annoy people who were about to respond to (or open) your first email anyway.

How about modifying the subject line and content/offer presentation?

The resend is less likely to be seen as a duplicate email sent in error. And maybe a different copywriting approach triggers a more positive reaction in some of those who saw your first mail but didn't judge it worth their time to open or respond to?

What do you think?

In his usual irascible manner, Ken Magill waves an admonishing finger at the many marketers who rate deliverability services and features as their number 1 criteria when choosing an email marketing service (ESP).

But there's more to this than meets the eye.

Ken's main and valid point is that the vast majority of problems with getting email delivered are down to the marketer and not the ESP. The best service in the world can't help if you mess things up on your side.

But deliverability services and features should still be an important issue when choosing an ESP.

Why?

Two reasons.

First, your ability to undertake the practices that lead to good deliverability is improved with the right tools. For example...

• Automated bounce management helps with list hygiene
• Auditing services can flag where you have problems with your whole setup
• Spam filter simulators can pick up on issues with your content
• Segmentation tools allow you to send more targeted emails (leading to fewer spam reports)
• Support for email authentication

In a sense then, a lot of important ESP features are indirectly "deliverability" features.

Equally, while a great ESP can't save you from pushing your own deliverability self-destruct button, a bad one can push the button for you.

If they, for example, tolerate bad emailing practices, then your sending IP address might end up on blacklists. Even if you follow every deliverability best practice. See this post for more info.

So Ken's right. Your ESP needs your help to achieve high delivery rates. None have magic wands. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater: the tools they provide and their deliverability skills still impact on your success.

March 03, 2008

One of the blessings of being a blogger is having people far wiser and experienced than me adding further insight to blog posts.

Take a second look at these posts and see some of the great advice in the comments:

Case 1: A little reminder about the problems with personalization prompted several kind people to suggest excellent concepts and approaches for ensuring the "first name" / "last name" data you collect online is usable.

Case 2: Justin Premick gets bonus points as the first person to explore some of the irksome questions posed about the "dangers" of advanced email marketing.

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