No man is an iland

Any self-respecting marketing channel is incomplete without a set of cool numbers to go with it: numbers you can print on a t-shirt and impress your friends with (if you have the right sort of friends).

Social media has them. Now it’s email’s turn…

If email was a country, its 1.4 billion users would make it the largest in the world. Bigger than China, bigger than the populations of the USA and European Union combined.

247 billion emails are sent each day. That’s one email every 0.00000035 seconds.

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, some 20 million emails entered cyberspace.

Every second, the world’s email users produce messages equivalent in size to over 16,000 copies of the Complete Works of Shakespeare (assuming a 30KB average email size).

13.4 billion: the number of direct marketing dollars forecast to go on email in the US in 2009.

$583 billion: the return from that investment if you use DMA figures on email marketing ROI. That’s four times the market value of Microsoft.

181: the number of marketing emails it would take to produce enough revenue to buy one share in Microsoft.

83,689,738,832,367: the number of marketing emails it would take to produce enough revenue to pay the US National Debt.

[Aside 1: When you see email stats like the above, you gain a new appreciation for the work of those companies and organizations managing email.]

[Aside 2: And when you consider that many of these emails are spam, you can understand why ISPs and others have bigger problems to worry about than whether legitimate marketing email is reaching the right destination.]

Sources:
Email marketing ROI and other financial statistics
Number of email users and sent emails
Population of the EU
Population of the USA
Population of China
How many bytes in the CW of Shakespeare?
US National Debt
Market value of MS
MS share price

Find related articles:

• Channel: Marketing humor and Email marketing metrics

The first half of our look at video in email reviewed those scenarios where video makes sense as email content. Now let’s get down to some specifics.

What tricks, traps, tactics and practices do our five video experts have for us?

1. Use video as a means, not an end

Wayne Wall, CEO at Flimp Media, a rich media marketing and analytics service, notes that your video is:

“…a means to get your audience to follow through on a call to action.”

That’s easily forgotten in all the excitement about “video experiences.”

The actual business objectives of the email can suffer if, for example, the video “reveals all” without offering some way to take the next step toward a sale, download, registration, donation, etc.

2. Find the right video/copy balance in emails and landing pages

That means ensuring the video and surrounding copy complement each other. You need actionable links near the video, otherwise (as Wall puts it):

“…you give your audience no choice but to say, ‘That was cool,’ and delete the email.”

It’s a point echoed by Anna Yeaman of email design agency Style Campaign. She says the combination of video, text and images in the email mustn’t do too good a job if, for example, you want to drive traffic to a website:

“For instance, we surmised that between the video gif and step-by-step recipe in this email, subscribers were left with little reason to clickthrough. Whether that’s good or bad depends on your objective.”

The trick is to find a balance between an engaging video and action-oriented copy. The latter should provide an outlet for those seeking to explore further, but without drawing too much attention away from the video itself.

Justin Foster, co-founder of video commerce solutions provider Liveclicker adds:

“Don’t over-complicate your email with long copy or several different prominent calls to action when featuring video…people cannot view the video and read outside the video at the same time.”

Similar principles apply to videos featured on landing pages. Chad White, Research Director at agency Smith-Harmon and author of the Retail Email Blog says you need to make it very clear what you want subscribers to do after they watch the video:

“Hallmark recently sent a back-to-school email that leveraged a TV commercial that they made. The point was to sell greeting cards that gave encouragement to students on their first day back at school. The email contained the video promo plus related cards, but the landing page didn’t include any card promotions.”

“In fact, it didn’t include any Hallmark branding or navigation. It was just a video console on an otherwise blank page. That’s a huge wasted opportunity to leverage the engagement of the video to sell products.”

3. Don’t forget video analytics

Obviously you’ll be measuring and testing the impact of video content on the results of your email campaigns, through clicks, sales, forwards etc.

But you can (and should) also measure how people engage with the video itself. Flimp’s Wall notes:

“…producing and distributing video is only half the battle. Once it’s out there, you need to be able to monitor what it’s doing.”

Justin Foster agrees, suggesting you “…measure the engagement of video in email to learn how much of the video your subscribers actually watch.”

How?

Well, your video email service may offer engagement analytics, where you can see, for example, how long people watch the video and when they break off to go elsewhere.

Anybody who has put up a video on YouTube will see a very basic example of this with YouTube’s Hot Spots feature.

4. Keep it short and sweet and draw attention to the player

These engagement metrics will help you understand how long your videos should be. But Foster suggests 10-30 seconds worth of video in the actual email is a good target to aim for.

Yeaman adds:

“As a designer I get frustrated with the size restrictions of video gifs. Adding 10 seconds to the length will not impact performance so much as adding 50 pixels to the player width.”

“For instance this Kraft food video is only 240×144 pixels. In order to offset the size, I added a drop shadow and orange box. Try adding design elements around the player to help it stand out.”

5. Don’t disguise the video link

Drawing attention to the video is particularly important where you use just a linked screenshot or still. This is where many marketers lose out, because they fail to make it clear that the image actually leads to a video.

Yeaman believes a static screenshot can hold its own against, for example, video gifs, but only if well executed…

“Pick a compelling still, place a play icon over the top, add a play bar, length of the video and repeat your CTA in HTML text.”

…and she points us to examples from Express and Dillard’s.

6. Design for failure

Unfortunately, even the best-designed screenshot can break down when images are blocked, which means alt attributes and adjacent text links are a must (for more on coping with image blocking see here.)

And even the best “video in the email” technology cannot guarantee full functionality in every situation. So you need to design for when the video format is not supported.

Peter C. Horan, Chairman and CEO of Goodmail Systems notes that their CertifiedVideo technology has built-in redundancy, where the video:

“…falls back to today’s ’static video image with the click arrow’ should a consumer’s browser fail to cooperate.”

Video gifs are image-based animations so face image blocking constraints, too. In addition, the Outlook 2007 email client only displays the first frame of such an animation. So it’s worth giving creative thought to how that first frame looks.

Anna Yeaman says:

“One technique we’ve been using is to add a play icon over the first frame for Outlook 2007 users. You might take that a step further, by replacing the default first frame with an engaging still.”

Justin Foster also points out that different clients vary in terms of optimal frame rates for video gifs.

“Video .gifs work ‘nearly’ everywhere, as opposed to ‘everywhere.’ For example, Outlook 2007 will not display video. Some mobile clients will show choppy video, while others support only static images.”

“Video .gif delivery technology can help compensate for some of the client-specific limitations by automatically swapping in static images or varying the video frame rate based on the detected client.”

The lack of audio in video gifs also demands creative thinking. You can’t simply repackage an existing video that has sound, if the audio is an important part of the message.

7. Test your options

With video email there is a tradeoff between the quality of the in-email video experience and the cost. Whether you go for a video gif or CertifiedVideo, it’s worth testing against the (cheaper) simple screenshot linked to a video hosted online.

Chad White’s company, for example, “…A/B tested a video gif vs. a standard video image tease. The email with the video gif dramatically outperformed the one that just used a static image to promote the video content.”

Justin Foster also notes that “…a 5%-25% increase in sales has been demonstrated in A/B tests featuring in-email video v. the ‘gold standard’ of video in email (using a static image with a play button overlaid, linked to a landing page featuring full video).”

It’s important, however, not just to compare the performances of the alternatives in terms of your email goals, but to balance that against costs.

8. Be aware of production and bandwidth costs

Anna Yeaman warns that for smaller organizations those costs:

“…can outweigh the benefits. Video production fees, editing, converting to gif, delivery and or bandwidth charges are currently a deterrent for many.”

You have some cost flexibility with regard to content generation. Wayne Wall says a video doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective:

“The prevailing theory is that video takes lots of time and effort to get it ‘right.’ But there’s no ‘right’ way to do video. We’ve seen effective campaigns shot in a half hour on $100 flip cameras.”

Nevertheless, delivery and bandwidth can incur significant costs, depending on the technology and approach you use.

Justin Foster notes:

“It’s quite possible for video email to consume anywhere from 10X to 500X the amount of bandwidth required to send ‘normal’ email…email marketers used to sending ‘on the cheap’ could be in for a case of sticker shock.”

The actual physical infrastructure required to feed video files to a large list is also an issue. As Yeaman says:

“If you’re sending out to a small list, your ESP might accommodate you. For larger lists you’ll need to partner with a video vendor, or find someone capable of hosting the video file.”

Foster also recommends using dedicated content delivery services to ensure videos display smoothly regardless of the email subscriber’s physical location.

The technical nuances of videos playing in the email itself suggests the technology may not be appropriate for a DIY approach yet unless you’re sure of your expertise and infrastructure.

Further reading

Part 1 of this article with details of technologies and broad approaches.

The video email category at the main site (many other posts and links).

Recent articles at other sites:

• I think I have a crush on an animated GIF
• The Video Boom: Video Takes Over the Inbox
• Choosing The Best Content For Video In Email
• Case Study: Direct Mail vs. Email Marketing with Video
• Embedding video in email
• Four Tips for Including Video in E-mail
• Video in E-mail
• Ask my wife – She’s always right… (a consumer view)
• Are video .GIFs used in email marketing campaigns really video?

Tags: video emails, video gifs, CertifiedVideo

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• Channel: Video email

A year ago you might have asked “can we put videos into emails?”

Today, the question is more sophisticated: should we use video and, if we should, how?

To provide some answers, I picked the brains of five video email experts representing a mix of technologies and perspectives.

Before we see their insights, here’s a quick review of the main video email approaches out there (see the video email category for details):

• Link a screenshot to a video hosted at a website (more info)
• Video gifs: optimized animations that play like a video in the email itself, albeit without audio (more info)
• CertifiedVideo: full rich-media audio and video content that also plays in the email itself, currently available at AOL only but with plans to expand to other ISPs (more info)

Today we’ll highlight some promising approaches and good examples. Next week we’ll look at specific advice on implementation and discuss some of the constraints and mistakes that can limit the tactic’s usefulness and success.

When should you add video content to your emails?

For a long time, a simple justification for video content in email was the novelty factor: moving pictures in an email attract attention and pique curiosity.

While this is still true to some extent, today’s video content – as with all email content – needs to offer something more if it’s to work effectively.

“New toy syndrome” is a danger if marketers use video email because they can and not because it offers a true benefit to both sender and recipient.

Justin Foster, co-founder of video commerce solutions provider Liveclicker warns:

“Done poorly, video in email can be a distraction, so email marketers should always ask the question: is this video actually adding something important to my message, or is it just annoying?”

It’s a point reinforced by Peter C. Horan, Chairman and CEO of Goodmail Systems (home of CertifiedVideo), who says his company advises against using video email…

“…when it’s video for video’s sake and doesn’t really benefit the consumer.”

And, as with all content, it’s better to have no video than bad video. Horan says:

“There is absolutely nothing worse than boring content, broken links, static images and slow video streams.”

Use video when it offers more than just a novel alternative

Video’s primary value then comes not as a straightforward alternative or complement to text and images, but where the video itself offers a better experience than text and images can.

As Anna Yeaman of email design agency Style Campaign puts it, video is particularly apt when the equivalent copy and images would be “too lengthy or inadequate” for the job in hand.

It’s a theme taken up by Chad White, Research Director at agency Smith-Harmon and author of the Retail Email Blog:

“Video is fantastic for things like product demonstrations, how-to information and conveying other information that’s tricky to do with words and images alone.”

Both Yeaman and White highlight Apple’s email launching the iPhone 3G as a good example. As White says:

“For a slick, tactile product like the iPhone, showing a hands-on demonstration of its capabilities is more powerful than just listing out capabilities.”

But the speed of information transfer via video means that where words can do the same job, they perhaps should do the job. White explains:

“One of video’s drawbacks is that it’s slow. It controls the pace at which you’re absorbing the information. So if the information can be conveyed just as easily in writing, then you’re probably better off going in that direction because people can read faster than someone can talk at them.”

He warns:

“Make sure you’re using video to convey the right content or hurried subscribers will tune you out.”

Three main models

Goodmail’s Peter Horan notes that early adopters of CertifiedVideo have tended to follow one of three directions, using video where:

1. It’s the primary product, such as news and entertainment. Horan gives an example:

“You’re promoting the Jonas Brothers next tour to teenage girls. Targeted email with “teasing” streaming video will increase interaction, prompting the viewer to watch a longer clip…”

2. It can demonstrate how a product works, similar to the Apple approach illustrated above.

3. It can help to add an emotional overlay to a rational message.

Smith-Harmon’s White mentions a Williams-Sonoma email promoting wreaths with a secondary call-to-action to See How They Are Made. The email demonstrates how video helps build in more engagement and a broader experience with a product…

“That video included a tour of the farm where the herbs and other wreath-making materials are grown, an interview with the owner of the family-owned farm, and footage of workers putting the wreaths together by hand.”

“Williams-Sonoma had a great story to tell about how they’re supporting a family-owned farm and craftsmen. The story added to the allure of the product.”

What does the video medium say about what you want to say?

Wayne Wall, CEO at Flimp Media, a rich media marketing and analytics service, suggests exploiting the implication that a video format represents an important message:

“…if you have big news to announce, an audience will understand that it is important before they even hear the news by virtue of the fact that you’re using a high-quality medium to engage them.”

Wall also warns that video isn’t excluded from the kind of best practices you apply to any email content, such as targeting.

It might seem self-evident, but the excitement over video email can lead marketers to forget some of the basics in the rush to play with a new toy. Wall says:

“You want your message to be well-received, and knowing how your audience responds to certain kinds of content will help to determine when video email is appropriate.”

“A deathly serious video will fall on deaf ears if you send it to a younger audience; likewise, a fun, casual video might send the wrong message about your company to certain C-level executives.”

In Part 2, our five experts explore some specific recommended practices for implementing video email and look at the constraints and bad practices that can turn your message into a horror movie.

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• Channel: Video email

A review of 187 promotional emails from Amazon reveals many insights about subject line length and personalization. Now let’s see what these emails teach us about subject line branding…

[Please take the poll at the end of this post to decide if I should do more in this series.]

One important element driving reader attention and response is recognition. If the recipient doesn’t quickly grasp the source and purpose of the email, she may simply gloss over or delete the message without much thought.

An obvious “from” header is key here, but many senders put their brand or business name in the subject line to reinforce this recognition. This post discusses the topic in detail.

For example, Amazon.com almost always puts their name at the front of the subject line. Amazon.co.uk, however, almost always puts it at the end. And Amazon.de sometimes puts it at the front, sometimes at the back, but mostly never mentions it at all:

Yikes.

Everything you put in a subject line has a benefit and a cost.

Each word (hopefully) influences the reader to pay closer attention. But each word carries an opportunity cost: it takes up space other words might use.

Faced by the numerous things we could put in the subject, we try and pick a combination of words that causes the best overall response.

The right combination depends not only on basic subject line common sense, but on context. Amazon’s subject line branding looks like a classic example.

Branded subject lines are important in inboxes where attention is scarce, perhaps through email overload or large amounts of spam. Conversely, if someone gets email from Amazon and nobody else, branding the subject line would be pointless.

Equally, the stronger the brand, the more impact it likely has in grabbing attention and encouraging interest.

So try this theory…if we rank the US, UK and Germany in terms of Amazon’s likely brand strength we get this:

And if we order their respective countries in terms of the likely total volume of marketing email received by typical email users (busiest inbox first):

Now the different subject line branding strategies make sense.

Amazon.com uses its strong name to stand out in cluttered US inboxes.

Amazon.co.uk has some benefits as a subject line element, but not enough to justify priority placing, so the name gets shunted to the back.

In Germany’s less-cluttered inboxes, Amazon.de saves the space for shorter, cleaner subject line phrasing.

The importance of context is also clear in the exceptions to Amazon’s broader subject line branding approach.

Amazon.co.uk, for example, uses the brand name at the beginning of a subject line when the email’s attractiveness is relatively low.

Compare, for example, these two subject lines:

The first one is a relatively weak promotion. In this case, the power of the brand to attract inbox interest is probably bigger than the power of the promotional message itself. So the Amazon.co.uk gets placed first.

The second one has a strong appeal with its heavy discount. There is more benefit to be gained from putting the discount up front than through branding. So the Amazon.co.uk gets shunted to the back.

Makes sense, no?

Someone publishing the same kind of email on a regular basis can see subject line branding as a yes/no issue. But others, as the Amazon examples show, may choose to tackle the issue separately for each type of email they send.

Again, see this post for more ideas on subject line branding.

OK, I have more insights based on Amazon’s emails, but three posts on their subject lines seems like a lot already so here’s a quick poll to see if you want more:

(If the poll won’t display in your reader, click here.)

If the answer is yes, I’ll take a short break for something different anyway, and return to the topic later this month.

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• Channel: Subject lines

The last post used a review of 187 promotional emails from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de to draw out insights on subject line length. But that’s not all we can learn from the retailer’s email expertise.

So today we look at what Amazon might teach us about personalizing subjects: is adding the recipient’s name to the subject line a good or bad thing to do?

Since 11 of Amazon’s 187 emails (5.9%) to me feature my name, the answer would seem to be “sometimes, but not often”.

The various pros and cons of this kind of personalization are outlined in an earlier post, where the consensus suggests it’s largely ineffectual and potentially counterproductive.

But if that was always true, Amazon wouldn’t use it ever. So let’s dig a little deeper.

Format

First, Amazon always uses my full name: Mark Brownlow, not Mark. Here’s an example:

Mark Brownlow: Up to 75% off DVDs

One reason may simply be that they don’t have separate database fields for my first and last names.

But does it have a psychological justification?

One argument against personalization is that spammers often use the same technique.

They take the bit before the @ in an email address and use that as the name. The result is often laughably inappropriate: “Hey info, buy our stuff”.

So if you use the recipient’s name, it might trigger a “this is spam” reaction.

But no spammer can pull out a properly formatted full name from an email address. So using the full name gives the personalization more credibility than a simple first name might have.

Additionally, the use of first name implies a level of familiarity which may not be appropriate for the way Amazon thinks I feel about the brand and customer relationship.

Already we begin to see that superficially simple choices like “name or no name” and “first name or full name” are more complex than we might think.

This kind of choice is one that each sender must consider in the context of their own business. There are no rules set in stone and your main refuge is testing to find what works best for you.

Geographical segmentation

A closer look reveals that Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk hardly ever use my name in the subject line. Just once each in over 5 months’ worth of emails, which were more than likely tests.

In contrast, Amazon.de uses name personalization in the subjects of around 17% of the emails they send me.

Why would they use my name, while their counterparts elsewhere choose not to?

Different cultures likely respond differently to seeing their name in a subject line. Since German email users are subject to less spam and marketing email per se, they may see less negative association with such personalization than in more spam-weary countries like the USA.

So in Germany, maybe the positive effects associated with seeing your name are not overwhelmed by negatives such as the potential association with spam.

At least one study confirms this with a German ESP reporting that such personalization was indeed associated with a strong boost to open rates (though they suggest the novelty factor helped).

User segmentation

It may not be cultural segmentation, but user segmentation at work. Digging even deeper shows that Amazon.de uses my name only on one particular kind of email: those announcing broad discounts on electronics.

This may be coincidence, but it shows the importance of viewing your list as a series of individuals or segments, rather than one amorphous mass.

Perhaps I responded well to a personalization test on a previous electronics mail?

Perhaps gadget freaks are more vain than others and respond more positively to seeing their name in the inbox?

There are also suggestions that the use of personal data like names works best when justified by the contents of the email. If the email is clearly customized to the individual, then personal data has a positive effect on response.

However, if an email is pitched as personalized (as implied by the use of a full name in the subject line) but the contents are clearly generic, then this creates a gap between the expectation set by that subject line and the value delivered in the email. Which leads to lower responses.

An email about electronics (which I buy a lot of), perhaps with product categories highlighted that I commonly browse or purchase, is tailored to my interests in a way that broader sales announcements are not.

So the use of my name might enhance and complement the personalized impression.

Highly-targeted recommendations

Let’s assume we’re right about personal data (like a name) helping when the contents are also personalized (targeted) to the recipient.

Surely, then, my name should be used in subject lines recommending cross-sells and upsells related to my previous purchases? It’s hard to get more personalized targeting than that.

Yet none of the many cross-sell emails Amazon sent me include my name in the subject line.

Why not?

Subject line design is about getting maximum value out of a limited amount of space. A name has a benefit in some circumstances, but it takes up space…potentially diminishing the impact of other parts of the subject.

Personal recommendations like this one…

Amazon.co.uk recommends “Kung Fu Panda [DVD] [2008]” and more

…are already very targeted. The tie up with my previous purchases already implies customized content. The addition of my name is perhaps unnecessary to make that point. And subject lines for personal product recommendations are lengthy enough without adding another dozen characters for a name.

Novelty value?

Another reason why Amazon might use subject line personalization sparingly is perhaps to preserve the novelty value mentioned earlier.

The company sends me a relatively large amount of promotional email and consistent subject line formats can become monotonous. Perhaps Amazon likes to break up this monotony now and then through personalization. Just to stop me switching off.

Though we can’t know exactly why Amazon takes the personalization approach it does, it’s clear from the above that decisions about subject line elements need careful thought.

Which brings me to the next post in this review, which will look at lessons from Amazon’s subject line branding and copywriting.

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• Channel: Subject lines