Sender reputation is established and tracked for the sending domains and IP addresses. Bounce, complaint, open and click metrics are just one thing that mailbox providers are looking at when determining sender reputation. Here are some of the other things that can impact your sending reputation:

Open and Click Metrics

One simple metric that can help you gain insight into how your sending reputation might be viewed is through open and click metrics. MailChimp has posted some great research for industry averages , but overall it’s not the final open rate that is the determining factor. Having low open or click rates is just a leading indicator that there may be another problem. Low engagement rates like this could be signs that you’re emailing users too frequently, not providing valuable enough content, or even larger problems like them these recipients not expecting to receive mail from you.

Users Moving or Deleting your Mail

Mailbox providers are able to track a lot more than you can from the sender perspective. If a significant amount of recipients set up filters to filter your mail out of their inbox, move it manually, or even delete it regularly it may be directly reflected in your sending reputation. You can’t control this, or even see when it’s happening… so what should you do? Since you know that users who delete or move your mail regularly won’t be opening or clicking this mail, you can solve the problem holistically through removing older recipients that don’t open or click your email. This way, before users even have to set up filters, or continuously move or delete your mail, you’ll be removing them from your lists.

Overall Sender Email List

It’s plain old illegal to send to people that have not opted in to receiving your mail. There’s lot of companies that take 3rd party opted in recipients and try to rent or sell those lists for use, while these companies may be able to get around the legal regulations, if you want you want to maintain your sending reputation, do not send to these email lists! These recipients are not expecting mail from you, and you will experience low engagement and high complaints. Additionally, most lists like this have spam traps mixed in with valid email addresses, which helps reputation monitoring companies track which senders are sending to these rented or purchased lists.

As the definition of ‘spam’ has continued to evolve from illegitimate scams (ie; VI@GRA) to more legitimate mail that may have lost recipient interest you’ll need to continue to evolve on how you run your email program. As you’ve learned above, no one metric alone is enough for your to focus on to ensure you are reaching the inbox and some metrics like how users move or delete your mail will be completely unseen by senders. To keep reaching the inbox, you’ll need to ensure you understand your recipients behavior, give them preference centers to configure how they want to receive email, and continue to send quality content that they want to receive.

Steps to Ensure that Someone Else Sends Your Emails Correctly

This idea for this article came to me because one of my editors (who shall remain nameless) has a team of writers who write guest articles and pitch those articles to me for publication on my company’s website. However, it is the editor’s name that is put on the articles, and it is the editor’s photo that shows up next to every single comment. As an insider I know that this editor isn’t doing all of this work, but to the public it looks different.

This is a huge gamble unless you know you can trust those in charge of your emails. This led me to wonder how to make it happen, and it seems it can be achieved by following a few simple steps:

1.     Let the person who will be handling your emails know up-front your goals.

If your goal is to have someone ghost write or send emails using your name, let that person know up-front. Some writers aren’t happy about not getting credit for their work from the public, and you don’t want to have a retaliation on your hands. If you can sit down and explain why you are doing things this way, you might be surprised and just how willing people are to give it a try.

2.     Train that person, and be open to questions about emails as they come through.

Make sure that you train someone on how to send emails the way that you like to send emails. Do you like to use bullet points in your emails? How do you prefer to write a subject line? How will you react if someone says something that you don’t agree with? Be sure to make it known that any questions can go through you as the emails come through the screen.

3.     Ask to be bcc’ed on all emails at first.

This is the best way to make sure that you still have control over your emails until you trust the person to be on their own. The receiver doesn’t see the message, but you do. This will allow you to give feedback and make sure that the tone and style is coming off the way you hoped.

Is it ethical to use this practice? Consider allowing that person to use their own name and email address while writing on your behalf. Most people that you email will prefer that you’re honest and up-front about who is actually sending an email. Even if you want to put your name on an article someone else wrote (with the writer’s permission), the emails don’t have to be following suit. There is nothing wrong with having someone else manage your emails and respond back, but you may as well give that person the trust to use his/her own email on behalf of your company.

Are you someone that has a person controlling your emails? How do you make sure that the deliverability goes smoothly? Do you think this is an ethical practice? Let us know your story and your thoughts in the comments below.

As we go though this transition I am myself needing to make changes to my daily interactions with people including the changing of my corporate email address with many of you who read this. At the same time, I have many newsletters and other email notifications that also need updating. Most of these have been easy since those systems have accounting logins (Return Path) and profile links that I can get to, but I have to tell you that in about 80% of the newsletters I am getting, especially from law firms, I am UNABLE to correct/change my email address at all. All I have been able to do with them is check off the newsletters I don’t want or those I do want.

<snarky> Lets take a second to be reminded here. A Preference Centre allows each of your recipients to easily change their own subscription details. This might include just their name and email address, but it can be set up so the subscriber can edit any custom field information you have stored for them. </snarky>

The only other choice I have been given at this point is to unsubscribe and re-subscribe.

To be honest, I’m quite surprised at this sort of faux paux in todays world of relevant and modern marketing tools available to all of us today. I simply need to change my email address, but instead you are ok with the idea of me unsubscribing and forgetting to re-subscribe again? At the same time, I would assume that with your limited technology grasp that I would venture to bet that if I do un-subscribe from your newsletter that you probably also delete the past history of my positive interactions with your email, websites and webinar’s which will do you no good if your trying to marketing to me based on relevancy and interactions.

Need some tips on how to build a successful preference centre? Check out the DMA UK blog on this:

• Tips for developing the successful Preference Centre Part 1
• Tips for developing the successful Preference Centre Part2

Folks, it is so simple. If you’re going to offer a preference centre to customers then go all the way. Offer opt-in, opt-out, opt-down to everything email, social, and tracking related. You need to give consumers choice. Heck, offer things like a temp unsubscribe such as Silverpop’s Snooze feature allowing one to temporarily take a break.

-Dennis
Oracle | Eloqua

Don’t Just Send, Deliver!

This is a guest post by Michael Linthorst, Managing Director for Copernica and fanatic blogger about email marketing.

When using an IP address for the first time to send email campaigns, you will find that you won’t get the best deliverability results out of it right away. Just like you have to break in the engine of a new car, you also have to warm up IP addresses first. Email providers don’t know you yet, and you have to gradually work on the email reputation of your new IP address to gain their trust.

There are, however, a few techniques that help you speed up this process a little. Warming up your IP address in four steps:

Step 1: Sign up for feedback loops

The last thing you want to do is gather spam complaints with your new IP address. That’s why you have to sign up for the various feedback loop programs. These are programs that enable you to directly process spam complaints coming from ISPs as Hotmail and Yahoo as opt-outs in your database.

Of course, this won’t prevent a spam complaint from being registered in the first place, but it will ensure that you stop sending emails to someone that has marked them as spam.

Sign up for these programs using the following links:

• Hotmail/Outlook

• Yahoo Feedback Loop

• AOL Feedback Loop

• OpenSRS/ Tucows

• Comcast

• United Online

Step 2: Set up your authentication data

Some ISPs, including Gmail, look at your authentication data when determining your email reputation. Include your new IP address in your SPF and SenderID and make sure to encrypt your emails with DKIM to quickly build up a good email reputation.

If you’ve been sending emails for a longer period, this will even enable you to use the good reputation of your other IP addresses for your new address.

Step 3: Engage with your most active recipients

This step will hurt a little: use your new IP address to email only your most active recipients. Check your email results to see which recipients have the highest open and click through rates. This might seem a bit odd, as a new IP address can result in delivery issues. And if there is one group you want your emails to be delivered, this is the one.

But because this is group is so active, they will ensure that your IP address builds up a trustable email reputation in no time. For ISPs, active recipients are a sign that your emails are relevant for its targeted audience.

Step 4: Monitor

Keep a close eye on the results of your email campaigns so you know what ISPs you’re successful with. Turn up to send rate where possible (if you see that your emails are successfully delivered), and tune it down where necessary (if you notice that an ISP is returning a lot of bounces for instance).

Besides monitoring the results of your emails, don’t forget to regularly check your email reputation using the various available reputation score checks.

7 Essential Email Marketing Tips for Financial Advisers

By ankita @AlphaSandesh 4/29/13

E-mail marketing is a rising trend among financial advisers who want to boost their revenue. Actually it is a comparatively easy and low-cost way to make contact with prospects and connect them online with helpful and suitable information. A carefully planned e-mail marketing program may highly efficient for financial advisers as more customers move online for their financial services requirements.

In fact, a well-designed email marketing campaign can easily generate quick results for you without wasting a lot of money. Consequently, the question that arises is how you can do e-mail marketing effectively. Here is a list of some best tips which you must follow during your email campaign:

1. Past relationships with the recipients’ of your e-mail matters a lot: Consider about quality not the volume of subscriber names on your mailing list. We exist in a consent-based world. The community on your list should subscribe to your list, giving you the permission to send e-mails to them. Purchasing an email list from an intermediary or third-party does not grant you that permission.

Think about welcoming future customers to sign-up for your list with enticing content that they would not get somewhere else.

2. Content is essential for your email campaign’s success: It is very important for financial advisers to take what they convey seriously. Being flagged as “spam” really is bereavement for the email marketer. If you want to become highly efficient email marketer, then just do not send content too often, and make sure when content gets delivered it is on the exact platform. It takes the effort to become a thought leader with your customers, but it is achievable. You can do that by sending out valuable content.

3. Bring uniqueness in your emails: Provide your readers and subscribers with special treatment. For instance, if you are getting ready to issue a new book or hosting an event, make your readers or subscribers first to know. People typically do not like being excluded, so this is a great method to attract outsiders to opt-in and get involved.

4. Insert an image next to the signature: People wish for genuine human connection. And, they are more probable to go through your emails that look like they are from real people—not automatic robots. To make the e-mails more personal, insert an image next to the signature.

5. Be careful about timing: The next significant thing you must take care of is the time you are delivering your e-mails. If you want to ask your receivers’ for weekend meeting, then a campaign on Fridays will work better than Mondays. Equally, if most of your intended audience has nine to five jobs,then you may want to send e-mails throughout the lunch timings as they can verify their personal emails at that time. (continue @AlphaSandesh)

Is Your Email Subject Line Creative… or Deceptive?

By DJ Waldow @MarketingProfs 4/19/24

“It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission to a protected computer of a commercial electronic mail message if such person has actual knowledge, or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances, that a subject heading of the message would be likely to mislead a recipient…regarding the contents or subject matter of the message…”

How’s that for some legalese? That’s the actual language from the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (PDF), the law that establishes the rules for commercial email in the United States.

I’m not an attorney, but the intent of that language seems quite clear to me. Put in non-Franken-speak, it can be boiled down to this: Don’t send an email with a deceptive subject line.

However, like many laws, it’s all about interpretation.

So where does the line get drawn between a creative, compelling email subject line and one that is deceptive (and possibly illegal)?

An interesting conversation has been going on among email marketing folks lately around this very topic. I’ve argued that there is power in a compelling subject line: If you want people to open your emails, your subject line has to stand out in their (likely crowded) inbox.

That’s not to say a “boring” subject line can’t also be effective. My colleague Chris Penn proves that point with his weekly newsletter, the subject line of which reads, “Almost Timely News from @cspenn for [date].” The only part of his subject lines that changes week to week is the date, and his open rates have been hovering around 13%.

But a creative, compelling subject line certainly can get your attention. Urban Outfitters is one of my favorite examples. YOLO OMG WTF Sale! was the subject line of a recent email it sent to its list. (Read about more “crazy” subject lines.).

Subject lines that stand out are not limited to B2C email. Even the President of the United States—well, his team—crafts some unique, catchy, subject lines. The Obama Campaign released some of the data behind its email marketing messages. Subject lines such as “Join me for dinner?” “It’s officially over,” “It doesn’t have to be this way,” and “Wow” were among the ones that the campaign used.

Extensive testing found that a casual tone was usually more effective. “The subject lines that worked best were things you might see in your in-box from other people. ‘Hey’ was probably the best one we had over the duration,” according to Toby Fallsgraff, the campaign’s email director. So, were the Obama email subject lines creative or deceptive?

Copyblogger decided to test out “Hey” as the headline in a blog post—one it also repurposed as an email with the same subject line. (Be sure to read the comments in that post, too, as there are quite a few insightful nuggets there.) Suffice it to say, it’s not always about the subject line. In many cases, the from name—literally who the email is from (the sender)—can be the difference between an open and an ignore/delete/mark as spam.

Back to email subject lines: Where is the line between deception and creativity?

Is an email that includes “FW” in the subject line, even though it wasn’t actually forwarded, creative? Or, is it merely deceptive? What about if that email with “FW” in the subject line were actually forwarded—but from someone within the same company—and therefore made to look real? Is that a creative use of the subject line, or is it a deceptive gimmick?

A friend recently forwarded to me an email from Oxfam that had the following subject line: Did I leave my jacket at your place?

When you open the email (see below), the first line after the salutation reads, “It’s Aziz Ansari. And of course I didn’t leave a jacket at your place. I’ve never been to your home.” It continues, “But I’m glad you opened this email, because I actually want to talk to you about something much more important.” (continue @MarketingProfs)

Poor quality data is the biggest barrier to effective email marketing: report

By David Moth @Econsultancy 4/24/13

Poor quality data is the biggest barrier to effective email marketing, according to the new Econsultancy/Adestra Email Marketing Census 2013.

Half (50%) of respondents stated that the quality of their email database caused problems with their email campaigns, meaning that it has been the most common barrier for three years running.

A further 43% cited a lack of strategy as a key problem, followed by lack of time (41%) and poor segmentation (39%).

The Email Marketing Census looks at the amount and type of email marketing carried out by organisations, the way that email marketing is conducted, issues affecting the industry and the effectiveness of email compared to other digital marketing channels.

More 1,300 respondents took part in the 2013 Census, which took the form of an online survey in January and February 2013.

Which of the following have you experienced to be barriers to effective email marketing?

Looking at how the barriers to email success have changed since 2007, ‘quality of email database’ has actually become more prevalent, increasing by 16% in the past six years.

The barrier that has decreased most since 2007 is lack of budget/finances, with a 16% drop in the proportion of companies citing it as a key barrier. This obviously suggests that companies may have increased their email budgets in recent years.

Change in barriers since 2007

According to email marketing consultant Kath Pay:

Within many companies, email is one of the few channels that finds itself bereft of a strategy. Email is a fantastic channel, however, without a clear and guiding strategy, many of its strengths are not harnessed.

Deliverability

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a majority of businesses (58%) stated that clean and up-to-date lists have the biggest impact on improving deliverability, and this has increased by 4% since 2012.

The next most cited factors are relevance of email to recipients (45%) and reputation of sender (44%). (continue @Econsultancy)

—————————————————————————————————————————————

It’s time to hit the “reset” button on some widely used email strategies.

There are better ways to do things now, according to Loren McDonald, one of the email gurus at digital marketing company Silverpop.

McDonald, who educates clients on email best practices and trends, says it’s time to scrap three all-too-common email programs. He also suggests ways to replace or upgrade them, which I’ve supplemented with tips culled from my own research.

The three practices McDonald says it’s time to ditch:

1. Annual reactivation campaigns

Things every email marketer must know:

• You’ve probably got your share of inactive subscribers on your lists

• It hurts deliverability if you fail to remove unengaged subscribers from your lists, and

• Reactivation campaigns can be good way to bring inactives back into the fold.

But sending a “We miss you” email once a year does little good. That’s waiting too long to reawaken inactives, McDonald warns. A better method: Be more aggressive You should be able to spot inactives within a few months of opting in. Once you do, McDonald suggests putting them on a multi-step “activation track” in which you try to engage them by sending different types of content.

Example: Send inactive recipients an email reintroducing them to the benefits of your email program. Then follow it up with a popular white paper that delivers the benefits you highlighted in the preceding email.

Another tactic I’ve seen have great success at reengaging subscribers: an email encouraging them to change their email preferences (with a link to the preference center). There’s a strong possibility their needs or interests have changed, and the content they’ve been getting from you has become irrelevant. Sometimes they just need a reminder that you offer other forms of content. More important than reengaging subscribers, however, is finding out why they became inactive in the first place. One often-overlooked problem: over-aggressive acquisition sources. See if a bulk of your inactives came from the same acquisition source.

2. Frequency testing

Companies are constantly testing if they should send once a week, twice, three times, etc. While that’s not without merit, McDonald says there’s a better way to know when to send. A better method: Use behavior triggers. Automation is the future of effective email, according to McDonald. He says more and more companies are creating email “message tracks” that are triggered when a customer performs a specific action – like visiting a website or downloading a white paper.

Other “tracks” can also be launched on specific dates or during events – like birthdays or changes in inventory.

These triggered programs produce a double benefit. They:

• Increase email relevance, and

• Put frequency in customers’ hands.

Another form of behavior-based email I’ve seen a lot of companies have success with is the “stock’s running out” email. This is triggered when an item a customer has viewed online – or purchases on a regular basis – is nearly sold out. It lets the recipient know it’s their last chance to buy. This shows recipient’s your email program offers a valuable level of personalization.

3. Single emails

Many customers need to be poked repeatedly. As a result, McDonald claims single-message sends – even those triggered by an event/date – leave money on the table.

Example: He said one of his clients sent a three-part abandoned cart series.

The first email converted at a rate of 22%. The second and third: 15% and 24%, respectively. A better method: Send in a series. Had the client sent one email, it would’ve lost out on the conversions from the second and third sends.

McDonald is spot on with this advice here. But I’d recommend adding another layer to the approach of sending email in a series: Vary the day and time the emails will arrive. If a recipient didn’t respond to the first send, it’s possible it was because he or she didn’t see it because it arrived during an email rush hour – when their inbox was flooded with business and personal email. You want to give your next email a chance to arrive when it’s less likely to be buried by other messages.

Another effective practice: Find out during what day and time the recipient last clicked on one of your emails, and plan to have your next send hit their inbox at that same time.

4 Statistics You Need to Focus on for Your Email Marketing Campaign

By Stephen Woessner @Soshable 4/18/13

Email marketing may have been around for a while now, but it’s still the most effective way of building a trust relationship with prospects.

I recently worked with a B2B company that provides professional services and training to leaders. When she contacted us, the owner was at her wit’s end. Over the previous months, she had offered trips and other high-dollar incentives to her list of 1,676 email addresses, trying to entice someone to sign up for her valuable training. She had gotten dismal results, and the revenue she had made was compromised by the pricey incentives. She was convinced it was a dead list.

We designed a couple of free webinars — 60 minutes of awesomeness — and sent an invitation out to her “dead” list. Rather than incessant sales pitches, each webinar offered substantial training to the more than 320 attendees. After the event, we sent out an email that offered a limited number of promotionally-priced training programs for a 48-hour period. After that, we told the attendees the program would be released to her list of 2,180 people, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Within eight weeks, we helped this business owner make $147,000 from a “dead” email list.

Email Marketing — Still?

Email marketing is still the only medium to move prospects through what John Jantsch, in his book “Duct Tape Marketing,” called “the know, like, and trust funnel.” At the bottom of the funnel are repeat sales and brand evangelism.

By giving and giving and giving to your fans through content distribution, you create well-prepared prospects. Then, when you offer something great, like a discounted training program for a limited time, you get immediate and intense conversions for huge revenue.

The Four Stats You Need to Watch

As you launch your email campaign, keep these four measurements in mind:

1. Bounce rate: How many emails bounced versus how many went to good addresses? Cleanse your list, and bring in more subscribers to replace the bad ones. If you create a high-value offer, like a webinar or fact-filled report, 6 to 13 percent of daily visitors will opt in if the value exchange is good enough.

2. Open rate: This is actually a measurement of the quality of your subject lines, which get readers to open your emails. Evaluate the first two words — that’s where you grab their attention.

3. Click-through rate: How motivated are people to click on the links you place in your content? If this number is too low, evaluate the link choices. For example, we helped an automotive parts company convert a blog post about an engine problem, which was solved with a performance part, into an email containing the same content. We made the product phrase a link to the company’s sales page; because it was positioned as the solution to a common problem, it resulted in a 700 percent increase in conversions for that product that day. If we had linked “gasket” while telling the reader he needed the performance part instead, we wouldn’t have gotten the same results. (continue @Soshable)

Education is huge in our space to help defeat what you are about to read here. If you’ve been in the business for any length of time, I’m sure you have run across some of these when talking to prospects…or may have said them yourself at some dark point:

“I use several ESPs because I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket.”

In other words, they want to snowshoe email across multiple providers in an attempt to stay under the radar. Most importantly, when one of those providers removes them from their network for violations, they have others to fall back on.

To me, it’s easy. Send email to people that have opted in and do so in a way that provides value and makes them want to open each time they see something new from you.

“Though we send large volumes of mail, we tend to do better in a shared IP pool.”

In other words, they need to mix their unwanted email in with other senders that are keeping the IP reputation up far better than they ever could.

Large volume senders should be able to maintain the reputation of a pool of IPs because when done right, the reputation of the IPs and sending domain will flourish.

“Our last provider couldn’t get us the opens we need.”

This probably had nothing to do with the content (payday loans, life insurance, how to get rich in 24 hours) or spam-filled subject lines, would it?

Even if they are sending opt-in mail to an engaged audience, if the ESP has a properly configured network and mail is landing in the inbox, your ESP can’t actually make people open the mail.

Stop oversending and make your subject line and content appealing enough for someone to use their ever dwindling, valuable time to choose to read your email (and take action!) amongst the other 50 sitting in their inbox.

“We bought the list from a legitimate list broker. They all opted in to receive emails.”

Did they opt in to receive mail from you? No! Even if this practice is not in direct violation of the Can-Spam Act, it is in violation of the spirit of the act, in addition to a violation of common sense. These people that are unfortunate enough to be on the list do not know your brand. They have no loyalty. Prepare for complaints and low engagement rates.

“I don’t know how (blacklists, spam traps, poor Sender Score) happened!”

If your business is relying on email to drive revenue, how can they not know?  Chances are they know what is going on behind the scenes, but chanced it in hopes of beating the deliverability system. How bad can a purchased list hurt anyway? Well, after their sending reputation crumbles and they can’t get email to its destination (causing headaches for everyone), you suddenly have the answer.

Any other common threads that you hear? Comment below, email me, or drop me a tweet at @InboxExpert.

Email Marketing: CNET increases engagement by cutting nearly half of newsletter portfolio

By Courtney Eckerle @MarketingSherpa 4/16/13

Newsletters are an outlet to provide information to consumers, but at a certain point, newsletters can stop informing and begin to overwhelm subscribers.

In this case study, read how CNET came to recognize the issue, the steps it took to cut down the editorial portfolio from 30 to 16 newsletters, and the criteria it used. Plus, learn how the team communicated the changes to all stakeholders — from management to subscribers.

CHALLENGE

Every time an editor, product manager or content producer, among others, wanted to create a newsletter, “it was just added to the portfolio,” said Diana Primeau, Director of Member Services, CNET.

Even though CNET conducts regular and stringent list cleansing for its newsletters, Primeau said they had never assessed the portfolio as a whole. There was never really a need — engagement rates had remained strong.

Upon the suggestion of her general manager, Primeau was committed to looking over the portfolio as a whole. Her team soon realized there were issues affecting more than the one or two newsletters they initially considered eliminating.

Soon, the team was developing a plan to consolidate newsletters containing duplicate content, and completely shut down others. Tightening the program from a bloated portfolio of over 30 newsletters down to just 16 was a process the team was confident could result in renewed opportunities for growth and engagement.

However, those opportunities were contingent upon clearly and strategically communicating the changes to subscribers, and ensuring they would understand the renewed value this newsletter overhaul would provide.

“A lot of people subscribe to multiple newsletters, so we weren’t as concerned about losing subscriptions as we were subscribers,” Primeau said.

CAMPAIGN

The goal for this campaign was to review CNET’s 30 editorial newsletters and decide which were relevant. Eliminating redundancy and unwanted content was its eventual goal.

Because these are editorial newsletters that aren’t “selling someone something,” but are avenues for CNET to provide content, Primeau said it was important to reevaluate relevancy within them. From there, she said the team looked at which areas were receiving engagement, and removing areas that were stagnant.

Sections of an email that aren’t receiving engagement, or newsletters that are repeating content is “wasting our users’ time,” according to Primeau.

If a newsletter was cancelled, her team decided they wanted to “give [subscribers] something great in replacement.”

She and her team went through all 30 newsletters looking for these elements, and working with the editorial team, consolidated newsletters and built a slimmer, more dynamic portfolio that would continue to appeal to subscribers.

Step #1. Communicate process with all stakeholders

“It’s huge, and it’s huge on two levels,” Primeau said of working and communicating with all stakeholders on a campaign like this one.

The first level, she said, starts with higher-ups. The impetus for this campaign actually came from Primeau’s general manager.

“I was challenged by him,” she said, adding he “happens to know a lot about email, which is great because that’s normally not the case.”

He was the one who brought up the idea CNET might have too many newsletters, she said.

“I had heard that all the time,” Primeau said.

She argued because the team regularly cleansed their list, people signed up for the newsletters, and engagement metrics were strong — the number of newsletters wasn’t an issue.

“Most people kind of go with that, but … he wasn’t going for it. So, he pushed me — he said, ‘I really encourage you to look at everything,’ and it was kind of a wakeup call for me. He was right,” Primeau said.

Since the idea came from the top, it was especially important to keep him in the loop, she said, but added it also ended up being important because the scale of the project changed from what she initially thought.

“Before we started really digging into it, we were just going to cut back one or two newsletters,” but the project ended up being far more substantial.

So, it was helpful to keep upper management in the loop to ensure there weren’t “any concerns on his part, so we thought it was really important for him to understand what our methodology would be.”

To ensure her team and management were together on the project, Primeau made a presentation showing what the team had found, their methodology as well as the steps moving forward — the first of which was to get buy-in from the general managers.

Needed buy-in from editorial staff

The second step for Primeau was to engage the writers and the editor-in-chief so Primeau could make sure the team was “putting the right spin, for lack of a better word, on the messaging to customers.”

Also, Primeau said they needed some buy-in from the content creators because they discovered the newsletters in the portfolio featuring an editor’s presence in the form of a picture and contact information had better performance metrics.

“So, it was really important to us that we were able to surface [the editor-in-chief's] team and make sure we could have an editor’s presence in all of our newsletters,” Primeau said, adding they have that in all of the current newsletters except one.

The coordination was necessary because Primeau was asking for a time commitment from the editorial staff, and the changes to the newsletter portfolio would affect their process with the newsletter content as well.

“These folks aren’t just working on newsletters, they’re writing content for the site, they’re doing live events and all kinds of different things,” she said.

Step #2. Set up criteria to assess portfolio

Looking at the portfolio, Primeau said it became quickly obvious “just looking at the names of the newsletters, some of it felt really current, relevant and modern, and some of it felt really old.”

From that point, another aspect they considered was which newsletters could be consolidated. Primeau gave the example the team couldn’t find much difference between CNET’s wireless report and mobile newsletters.

Once the team started diving into consolidation, Primeau said they realized many newsletters included repeated content on the same day, and they had to ask, “how many people get both of those newsletters?”

The biggest aspect of determining which newsletters would remain was understanding the user experience each one provided. Primeau’s team looked both at what content was running in the newsletter, and where that content mapped back to on the site.

“That kind of gave us the touchstone of the wrapper that goes around the newsletter. Is it continuous with the experience the user has when they go back to the site?,” Primeau said.

From there, the criteria began to involve these aspects:

• Removed newsletters left over from an acquisition that “didn’t make sense” currently

• Reviewed the names of newsletters

• Reviewed the descriptions of the newsletters on the sign-up page

• Reviewed the metrics — “how many people are subscribed, what are the open rates, what’s the click rate … and there were a couple that were pretty low across the board.”

Throughout this process, Primeau’s team wanted to ensure all the content they sent out was relevant. Newsletters that were found to have overlapping or related content were merged, Primeau said.

Other newsletter topics were considered to be “a small universe” and although the engagement rates would be high, the subscription rate wouldn’t be growing, she said.

“We had a few newsletters that were started with great intentions, but it wasn’t our wheelhouse,” she said.

Primeau gave the example of a newsletter called “Green Tech,” while that subject was talked about across content, it wasn’t specifically focused on in the site and was taken out of the portfolio. (continue @MarketingSherpa)

A Winning Email Strategy From the White House

By Luella Ben Aziza @DotMailer 4/4/13

Barrack Obama looks happy, doesn’t he? So might you if you’d risen close to $690 million via email fundraising!

OK, so Obama did have a few resources and trump cards on his side – a mailing list of tens of millions, a team of 20 solely working on email and digital strategists and directors galore, but are there any lessons that the average fundraising Joe (or anyone driving actions from email) can take away from Obama’s successes? Absolutely!

Join Me For Dinner….

‘Join me for dinner?’ sounds more like the sort of email you’d get from your best friend or your mum rather than the president of the United States doesn’t it?

But that’s exactly the invitation that the Obama campaign team sent out to his supporters. Of course, Obama wasn’t literally planning on wining and dining each and every one of the email’s recipients. Instead he was offering an evening spent with him as a prize in a draw that all of his donors would be entered into.

The email said:

‘If you make a donation today, you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to be one of the four supporters to sit down with me for dinner. Please donate $5 or more today’.

‘We’ll pay for your flight and the dinner — all you need to bring is your story and your ideas about how we can continue to make this a better country for all Americans’.

This informal approach that has been labelled ‘strange, incessant, and weirdly overfamiliar’ by Business Week clearly worked exceedingly well for the president. In fact, most of the $690 million Obama raised online came from fundraising e-mails like this one.

Toby Fallsgraff, the campaign’s e-mail director said that the campaign team adopted this over familiar approach following rigorous split testing that revealed that ‘the subject lines that worked best were things you might see in your inbox from other people’.

Obama’s Digital Director Teddy Goff told Hubspot that they ‘consistently found that people wanted to get a sense from the campaign that we knew who they were and what they’d done for us in the past. Something as simple as dropping in a line like, ‘You’ve volunteered before; thank you. Now take the next step and become a donor,’ into a fundraising email to non-donor volunteers had a huge impact on results.’

Another one of Obama’s quirky subject lines read “It’s officially over” and another “It doesn’t have to be this way”. He also enjoyed fundraising successes by simply using the words “Wow” and “Hey.” (continue @DotMailer)

Our friend Alyssa Nahatis, Director of Deliverability, Neolane posted a great piece with an Inforgraphic how to build a foundation for the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL)

There’s no questioning that new laws and regulations are important, especially when they directly impact your business. But here’s the thing: countless pages of dry legalese can be difficult to decipher and digest, especially for marketers. When I attempted to write a blog post summarizing the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), an upcoming law governing commercial electronic messaging (CEM) in Canada, I almost put myself to sleep. Ouch!

Click here to read the rest

-Dennis
Oracle | Eloqua

Don’t Just Send, Deliver!

List hygeine matters: Get started on spring cleaning

By Karen J. Bannan @B2Bonline 4/11/13

As email marketers, it’s easy to remain focused on the next campaign, forgetting that the success of it and of subsequent efforts rests significantly on the quality of subscriber lists.

“In a perfect world, we would all constantly clean our lists of inactive subscribers and bad email addresses; but it seems to be one of those things that falls by the wayside,” said Stacy Hayes, business development director at email service provider GraphicMail. “The problem is, if you don’t maintain your list, you’re working hard instead of smart—jeopardizing your relationship with the ISPs and lowering your deliverability.”

Hayes suggested these tips to help you get started with a spring cleaning of your email marketing list:

1. Be careful about who cleans your lists. If you do opt for an outside service, read your agreements very carefully, Hayes said. You may be signing away more than just bad email addresses. “There are a lot of companies that offer list-scrubbing services—from “some guy’ in his basement to giant corporations,” she explained. “Be mindful of who you share your data with. They might be utilizing your data for their own mailings.” And don’t overlook any ESP list-scrubbing tools, which are often free and easy to use, she said.

2. Ask for unsubscribes. It may seem counterintuitive, but marketers may want to try sending out an email asking people if they’d like to opt out of email marketing, Hayes said. If someone isn’t opening or engaging with your messages, let them take themselves off your list, she said.

3. Make unsubscribing easy for recipients. Again, marketers should be thinking quality rather than quantity. Put opt-out information prominently into any messaging, she said. “Losing a subscriber is better than gaining a complaint. This will save you money on not only mailings but any potential list cleanup,” Hayes said.

4. Look at the numbers. Once you’ve scrubbed your list, take a look at the metrics, Hayes said. If you’ve deleted more than 25% of your subscribers, you need to reconsider your signup or list acquisition process. There’s probably something flawed with it, she said. (continue @B2Bonline)

Early today Andrew Kordek posted a piece discussing situations where COI doesn’t make sense. While I agree with Andrew’s basic premise – there are, absolutely, instances where COI, even in one-to-many communications, isn’t needed and may have a negative effect – the examples Andrew has chosen to highlight don’t support his thesis. Let’s dive into them, in reverse order.

The registration process consisted of creating a username and password (with CAPTCHA), filing out a long form with information, followed by another page where I had one pre-checked box for one newsletter and then a choice of 7 unchecked boxes for other email publications (with cadence/frequency info and examples) followed by a “confirmation of choices” page and ending with a welcome email which had all of my email choices dynamically assembled within the email. The permission purists or organizations who claim that COI is the ONLY way to acquire an email address would say that this is not enough.

So… signing up on this website is hard and requires a lot of work, so COI shouldn’t be needed? Those two thoughts are tangential. They don’t cross at all.

As much as we want to believe that people, in general, are good, there are any number of people who will try to put someone else’s email address into a web form for a million reasons. They may be a competitor trying to affect your reputation. They may not want email from you at all, but want access to your site, so they give you an address that they think they’ve made up which just happens to belong to someone else. They may legitimately typo the address – I mistype my own company’s domain name at least once a day, and I’ve been here almost a year and a half. None of the things Andrew called out that this site does will protect that site from any of these things.

There is some good advice in what Andrew wrote; there’s also some bad advice, and some things Andrew didn’t even touch on.

• CAPTCHA – all that does is “prove” the submitter’s not a bot. It doesn’t verify that an address hasn’t been misspelled, and it doesn’t stop determined individuals from putting in addresses that aren’t theirs.
• Pages of publications to choose, with a confirmation page – this is a fabulous idea. Presenting immediate feedback showing what the user has chosen to receive and how often they should receive it is an excellent example of transparency.
• Welcome email – also a fabulous idea. This is an opportunity for the website to remind the recipient to add them to an address book, or perform any other step required to facilitate inboxing, and to make sure they know when they might expect to receive emails.

Where does this advice miss? Well, nothing’s been done to make sure the user hasn’t mistyped (accidentally or purposefully) their email address. Playing that tune may make me a “permission purist” but confirming signups helps prevent typos, and minimizing typos goes a long way towards keeping your IP reputations clean, as Laura over at Word to the Wise has mentioned several times. Andrew also glosses over another great use of that confirmation page / welcome email combination – drive the user back to your website (after checking their spam folder) if they haven’t gotten their welcome mail in a relatively short period of time (say, 2-3 hours) so they can check that they haven’t typoed the address. You may not have to COI, but every step you take to bring typos to the user’s attention is one less possible ding to your reputation.

COI would make sense in a retail POS situation where the clerk is asking for email to send the receipt.

Well, no. If all you’re doing is mailing a single receipt, COI makes no sense. You probably want to take care to minimize Personally Identifiable Information, or anything else sensitive that might appear on the receipt, but you shouldn’t need COI for this. On the other hand, if you’re planning to store that email address in some way to send future receipts without input (for example, when I swipe my credit card to make a purchase at the Apple Store down the block, my receipt is immediately emailed to the email address associated with my App Store ID), then you should probably confirm that address in some way. The deciding factor here is “how many emails am I sending this person?” – if the answer isn’t “just one”, you may want to confirm the address.

To me, this is a wonderful opportunity for the company to send out a really fantastic confirmation email which could highlight the benefits of the program, tell a wonderful story incorporating things such as social proofing, give a discount and ask the recipient to confirm.

Yes, absolutely. Using an emailed receipt to drive folks to your newsletter subscriptions is a great idea. Hey, you’ve already got their address; if they subscribe to your newsletters from a link in a receipt, that’s awesome. You probably don’t need to COI those newsletter subscriptions, either, since the act of clicking the link in the email they’ve already received indicates engagement.

In fact, organizations could probably get away with send [sic] 2 or 3 of these emails, but should stop sending anything after X times (there is no “best practice” here) if the recipient does not confirm.

And, again, no. One transaction, one receipt with accompanying “Hey, do you want to receive other emails from us?” request. If you’re sending more than one email without being sure that you’re sending it to the right person, you run a real risk of typos biting you right in the reputation.

COI is a tool. Its purpose is to help you insure that the person asking you to send email to an address has the authority to make that request. It doesn’t make sense in every email-sending context – there are lots of cases where it could be intrusive and unnecessary. But if you’re contemplating sending multiple emails to an address, it’s one great way to make sure they’re the recipient you think they are.

Leveraging Buyer Behavior and Automation – Keys to Retention Marketing Success

By Loren McDonald @Silverpop 4/10/13

Most marketers know that loyal customers are key to their success, but they still tend to get caught up in filling the top of the funnel instead of enticing repeat buyers to come back for more. A recent study from Silverpop partner Windsor Circle, a retention automation platform, revealed that 55 percent of ecommerce revenue was from 31 percent of customers who were repeat buyers, so this is obviously an audience that marketers should be nurturing to build long-lasting relationships.

I recently co-presented a webinar on this topic titled “10 Most Effective Retention marketing Strategies for Digital Marketers” with Windsor Circle and our joint client, evo. In this Webinar, we discussed 10 real-life examples of brands using marketing technology to keep their loyal customers coming back and how to re-engage those who might have fallen off the radar. Here are a few of my favorite takeaways:

Leverage each customer’s behavioral data to drive personalized, targeted messages.

Your customers’ inboxes are constantly flooded with marketing messages, and it’s easy for them to hit a quick “delete.” Sometimes marketers get caught in a “batch and blast” mentality and forget to incorporate their buyers’ needs and wants into their messaging. By “listening” to a buyer’s behavior and using this data to send uniquely relevant content to that person, you’ll increase the likelihood that he or she will come back to make a purchase.

You don’t have to boil the ocean to see the benefits of this approach. Start by leveraging information you already have, like purchase anniversaries or the geographic area where a buyer lives, to send them meaningful messages. evo, for example, sends emails with winter gear specials to geographic regions that have just had a snowfall.

Also, consider surprising or rewarding your customers – a little “thanks” for making a purchase or sharing a piece of content or rewarding your most loyal buyers with something exclusive can go a long way.

Automation is key for maximizing conversions throughout a customer’s lifecycle.

Whether it’s through email, social or the Web, marketers need to give buyers what they want, when they want it. Automation, though not traditionally associated with retail marketing or content humanization, is an excellent way for businesses to drive more personalized experiences and give your brand the edge when it comes to standing out from the rest of the pack.

Welcome series are probably the most basic automated program to set up, and a great place to start. A friendly “hello” after signing up for your email program or a nice “thank you” after a first purchase gives consumers a positive impression of your brand. It also puts a human touch on your marketing messages, setting them apart from generic inbox clutter.

To go above and beyond, consider expanding your single welcome email into a multi-message format, with each email warming the new subscriber to a different value proposition or call to action based on his or her point of entry, interests or what the new contact needs to do to become an experienced user of your product or service. (continue @Silverpop)

Let me first start by saying that COI makes sense in certain acquisition situations, so don’t jump on the “marketer” @andrewkordek writes that COI is a horrible idea bandwagon.  For example, COI would make sense in a retail POS situation where the clerk is asking for email to send the receipt.  Since its simply an ask by the clerk and there is no indication of permission given by the individual other that the receipt itself, its makes sense to not only validate the address, but to also confirm that they would want to receive marketing email going forward.

To me, this is a wonderful opportunity for the company to send out a really fantastic confirmation email which could highlight the benefits of the program, tell a wonderful story incorporating things such as social proofing, give a discount and ask the recipient to confirm.  In fact, organizations could probably get away with send 2 or 3 of these emails, but should stop sending anything after X times (there is no “best practice” here) if the recipient does not confirm.  I have always talked about that the little things in email programs make a big difference and to me, most organizations fall down on confirmation emails in either design, content and even messaging.  This scenario provides a tremendous opportunity for companies to differentiate themselves since it is either the first or last touch they would have with that address.

However, COI doesn’t make sense all of the time despite what Spamhaus and other deliverability governing bodies might say. For example, I recently ran across an organization who required registration on the site in order to receive email.  The registration process consisted of creating a username and password (with CAPTCHA), filing out a long form with information, followed by another page where I had one pre-checked box for one newsletter and then a choice of 7 unchecked boxes for other email publications (with cadence/frequency info and examples) followed by a “confirmation of choices” page and ending with a welcome email which had all of my email choices dynamically assembled within the email.  The permission purists or organizations who claim that COI is the ONLY way to acquire an email address would say that this is not enough.  They would require a COI/Closed Loop email for the recipient to click and confirm their choice, which in my opinion is excessive.

This is not about whether COI is better or worse than SOI debate that we have had for years.  This is about applying common sense internet practices with practical user experiences on the web.  At some point there is a thing called being too cautious and people who only see permission as a one way street need to not dig their heals in like Congress trying to pass a debt ceiling resolution.

I welcome your feedback and rebuttals.

Editors Note: David Romerstein, a Lead Engineer – MTA Ops at LivingSocial, wrote a rebuttal you might also want to check out, No, COI Makes Sense Most of the Time. 

How to be a spammer: five golden rules

By Tim Roe @Econsultancy 4/5/13

Disclaimer: I have been instructed by our marketing department, that I must put a disclaimer before this blog, just in case someone takes what I am saying seriously and actually follows this advice.

I and the company I work for (RedEye), accept no responsibility for damages caused by anyone following the advice below. The actions below would not even be carried out by specially trained professionals, so should certainly not be tried at home!

You have been warned….

“Spam” is like a dirty word in the world of email marketing. No credible email marketer wants to be associated with it. However, there has been some talk lately insinuating email marketers are not sending enough emails and suggesting that if they send more, they’ll make more money.

I’ve even seen some theoretical figures quoted that suggest if you send to your list twice as many times, you could make twice as much money!

Apparently, email marketers are worried about over mailing their lists, upsetting their customers and being accused of being spammers. The problem is that while this line of thinking is going to upset many an email marketer, it’s also admittedly a bit of a temptation.

When the chips are down and the CEO is breathing down your neck for more sales, the thought of more emails equals more money starts to look rather appealing.

So, for anyone considering the spam approach, I’ve pulled together some tongue in cheek rules on how to be a spammer in the modern email world.

Rule one: Totally disregard priority inboxes

No one really believes that priority inboxes are even real (despite the desperate claims of the ISPs). Your email is going to be seen by the recipient, because they want it and if they didn’t they’d already have unsubscribed.

After all, you’re emailing opted in email addresses, so they will always get into the inbox. Why worry about what the ISPs are saying.

Rule two: Ignore sender reputation

Again, another cruel rumour put about by the ISPs and their agents. Your email campaigns get blocked by the ISP’s because the so called deliverability chap(ess) at the ESP forgot to send the ISP postmaster a Christmas card this year.

Send your email campaign, regardless of any damage you will do to your so called “sender reputation”. If your emails stop going into the inbox, the deliverability person at your ESP will be able to phone up the ISP and get the emails into the inbox again. Right?

Rule three: Don’t think about future campaign performance

Do people really care if you send them irrelevant emails? (After all, they don’t pay for them do they!) Your emails will always go into the inbox because your templates are so good and don’t contain spam words.

This means that because when the recipient is ready to use your services, they’ll be able to see your email and act accordingly… email campaigns must be considered on a send by send basis.

Who cares about damaging the future value of your list by blasting it more often?

Rule four: Send to everyone on your list

You can’t tell when someone is going to want your emails, how can you? Remember, if your emails are always being delivered and going into the inbox as well, they’ll open and click when they are ready.

It doesn’t matter if the recipient hasn’t opened or clicked in a couple of years, as you can’t predict when they will again, you must send emails to them. (continue @Econsultancy)

4 Easy Changes to Make to Your Email Marketing

By Jill Bastian @Skadeedle 4/4/13

Taking a little bit of time to make just a few changes to your email marketing can get you big results in engagement, and it’s all about engagement, right?  Right. And the best way to get that info is from your email marketing reporting stats which will tell you how engaged your readers are – from how many people opened, clicked on links, or best of all, did both for each email you’ve sent.  Your stats may be pretty average, which is fine, but if you’re an over-achiever like us, you’re probably thinking they could be better. Here are 4 email marketing tips to help grab your reader’s attention and get you better engagement:

Pre-header – This is the first line of text or copy in your email and it gets pulled into the subject line in the preview pane. Usually this is text at the top of the email, above the logo. If you don’t have a logo, banner, or header in your email, it’s whatever text is first in the email. Which means it could be ‘View in a Browser‘. Ugh! Helpful if you’re seeing a text version of the email, but not an attention grabber to get more opens. The pre-header serves as a secondary subject line and gives your readers more motivation to open your email and essentially turbocharges it. Give it some gusto by making sure you put something attention grabbing there.

Alt Text – Almost all email browsers “turn off” images by default, and so your slick images may not initially render until the reader clicks the “display images” link. When an image isn’t displayed, alt text is the text that shows up instead of your image. Remember back in the day when your mom or grandma wrote on the back of a picture about who was in it and where it was taken? Well alt text is basically the digital version of that. Instead of your alt text reading something like, myawesomelogo.jpg, kinda boring and uninformative, you can change it to say anything, like the action you want taken: Save 25% on our amazing service, but only if you act by 4/13/2013! This is way more action-oriented and will get you more clicks.

Social Media – Yep, we like to talk about social media. A lot. But we do it because it can be such a boon to a small biz, driving interest, traffic and sales. Your email is no different, you need to socialize it, and not in the taking-it-to-the-park kind of way. There are two things you can do tosocial up your email. First, allow your readers to share it on their own social networks, getting your awesome content in front a whole new audience. Second, include links to your own social networks so your readers can connect with your biz. Both of these are easy to include in your emails and a fast way to get engagement, for your email and your social networks. (continue @Skadeedle)

Tips and Tricks to Optimizing all of Your Email Messages for Mobile

It’s first important to understand why mobile deliverability is so important in the first place. According to Return Path’s report, 37 percent of U.S. respondents surveyed now open their email on mobile devices. This percentage is up 300 percent since 2010 and has had only upward movement since.

Now this number goes for all emails, which means that your email marketing campaigns are not the only thing you should consider. When you send a friendly email to a customer or client, think about how that email will look if it were opened on a mobile device. In fact, if you’re sending an email on the weekend of after work hours, you should assume that your message will be opened on a mobile phone.

A few things to keep in mind when sending an email that will likely be opened through mobile:

• Keep the content and the subject line short and sweet.

This is probably the most obvious thing to keep in mind, but businesses still seem to be messing up because they can’t seem to cut their message down. You want to make sure that even on a small screen like a mobile screen, the core of your message is at the top. Get straight to the point, and make it sound human by adding in a few personal touches. One thing that is a little less obvious is the subject line. You want to get your point across in the subject line as well, but try to keep it at less than 10 characters—this is the perfect length for the small screen to handle.

• Always test your email before you send it.

You probably have a smartphone, so use it as a way to test your messages! This is a great way to see for yourself just what works and what does not when you’re looking at a small screen. For example, you want to keep your font size 12 in order to ensure that it is clear and consistent with the other text on the page.

• Consider sending both text and HTML versions of your email.

Although somewhat rare, some mobile phones only accept one type of email and not the other. Just to be on the safe side, consider sending both types. It’s easy and won’t clutter up anyone’s inbox, so why not go for it?

• Make sure your links are not surrounded by too much content.

You want your links to be easy to click, so don’t surround them by a bunch of content where they will get lost on the page. Set them apart on their own, and don’t use anchor text. Instead, just use the actual URL to make it stand out. You also want to avoid putting a lot of links next to each other because that makes them more difficult to click on such a small screen.

• Avoid graphics and images, even in your email signature.

This should go without saying—images slow down your email deliverability. If you want someone to open your email, skip the graphics.

What are some tricks you use to help ensure your email is opened on a mobile phone? If you’re a mobile user, what do you like to see in your email messages on such a small screen? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo Credit: accessj.com

Email marketing the preferred choice of SMEs, research finds

By Thomson Local Direct Marketing 4/3/13

With the rise of smartphones and the 24-hour nature of electrical communications, companies have made a big shift in their marketing strategies.

A new piece of research by Edge Content has found that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are spending more and more of their marketing budgets on emails.

Around half of the companies quizzed stated that email marketing now accounts for 20 per cent of their total budget – more than any other channel.

Indeed on average, email marketing accounts for 15 per cent of an SME’s promotional budget.

When it comes to how they use email, 92 per cent of the respondents stated that they use the medium to share news about new products or services, while 87 per cent used email to let clients know about special events.

The research also revealed that the average size of an SME subscriber list was 3,500 names long, but one-fifth of companies had more than 10,000 subscribers. (continue @ThomsonLocal)

The Truth About Video Email Marketing

By Scott Hardigree @Indiescott 4/2/13

Look in your email inbox, and on any given day you’re likely to find several emails that feature videos. They can range from informational/educational to simply entertaining. But what is all the fuss about? Does video email marketing really lift response rates? Can anyone use video in their email marketing? What are the best tactics (or best practices for that matter)? Let’s find out!

Video Email Marketing Statistics and Reports

• Simply including the word “video” in an email’s subject line saw an increase of 7%-13% in overall click-through rates (CTRs) in 2011, according to Experian’s 2012 Digital Marketer Benchmark and Trend Report. Embedding a video in an email generated an average conversion rate 21% higher than emails containing a static image alone.
• And Videoretailer.org reported that using the word “video” in the subject line of helped achieve increases in open rates of up to 20% vs. no “video” in the subject line.
• The 2010 Video Email Marketing Survey and Industry Trends Report revealed that video was used with email marketing by 50% of survey participants, and an additional 24% were considering the use of video in their email marketing programs.
• Video in email can increase click-through rates by as much as two times to three times, according to David Daniels, former principal analyst at Forrester Research and current principle at Relevancy Group.
• Holland America conducted an A/B test with an animated .gif video in email vs. a static image. The video segment resulted in 100% higher click-through rate, reported Liveclicker.
• According to Marketing Vox, 63.9% of 5,000 people watched to completion a video sent by email.
• In a Get Response study of 800,000 customer emails, those containing video received, on average, 5.6% higher open rates and 96.38% higher CTRs than non-video emails.

Video Email Marketing Tactics and Examples

Depending on your budget, several options exist for creating videos in emails:

• Embedded video, which is provided by companies like Bomb Bomb. But keep in mind that embedded video will not work in all email clients.
• Animated .gif videos. See this example from Style Campaign, which is executed brilliantly but this format also has its limitations.
• A static callout linking to a web-hosted video, like the examples below, is by far the most common tactic…

Video Email Marketing Best Practices

No matter what format you choose, if you decide to take the plunge, you should follow these best practices for video in emails:

• Video expert Justin Foster, in a webinar for the Email Experience Council titled “Video Email: Why, When and How,” said it’s important to call out the video in the subject line, use a play button in the video player/player image, and highlight in the email what happens when the video is clicked.

• Make the call to action a text link for subscribers who have blocked images.

• Keep full video length with audio to less than 3 minutes, animated .gif videos to 30-45 seconds.

• Make sure the first frame of the video is acceptable for email clients that show static images only.

• Ensure that the amount of bandwidth required by the subscriber is not more than 150-200kB/second. (continue @Indiescott)

Create Rockstar Calls to Action to Increase Revenue

By Emily Keye @Bronto 3/27/13

It’s important to note that emails are not and should not be considered a one-step conversion touch point.  There are a number of factors that play into you being able to drive revenue through email marketing.  For example, you need to cultivate a high quality email list and set clear expectations at the time of sign up, you must have captivating subject lines that grab attention, you need compelling, relevant content, and the list goes on and on.

Today, I’ll argue that the call to action (CTA) is the most important aspect of an email message.  The CTA is designed to convince email subscribers to take the next step and visit your website.  Without email subscribers visiting your website, there is surely no chance of a conversion and therefore no revenue being driven.

So how do we create effective CTAs that grab your subscribers’ attention and entice them to click?

Let’s talk design first!

Draw attention with size:

Bigger really is better!  The size of an element in an email campaign relative to other elements in the email campaign indicates its importance.  The larger the element the more important it is.  The CTA in the email campaign should be the largest element.  If you choose to have multiple CTAs within an email campaign, the most important should be dominant.

Stand out with positioning:

The placement of the CTA in an email campaign is critical.  You don’t want your CTA to be at the very bottom of a long email.  Subscribers are literally spending seconds scanning your email campaigns.  Place the CTA above the fold in a prominent position.  Keep in mind that subscribers are scanning from left to right in an “S” shaped pattern.  If your email is super long, consider the same CTA at the top and at the bottom.  Another option that Greg Zakowicz suggested is to remove your header to help lift the CTA above the fold, see more details on this theory in Can Removing Headers from Your Emails Increase Conversions?  In this email from Ann Taylor, you can see that the CTA has a prime position above the fold.  The CTA also seems to be exaclty where a subscriber would look to as they scan down the email in that “S” shaped pattern.

Use whitespace to your advantage:

The use of whitespace (or dead space) around a call to action button is an effective way of making it stand out in areas where there are many elements.  This is even more important for subscribers who are viewing your emails on mobile devices and tablets.  Remember, they are on a much smaller screen and are using their finger as a mouse. If you’re interested in learning how to design for tablets, check out Tablets Are Taking Over! Are Your Emails Ready?

Contrasting colors will make it pop:

Deciding what colors to use for CTA buttons is very important.  Use colors in your call to action buttons that have a high contrast relative to surrounding elements and the background because it is critical to ensure that the user notices your call to action.  The CTA in this Leapfrog email is clear since they use a bold orange against a background of light blue.  It really pops of the page! (continue @Bronto)

This is a guest post by Josh Nason, the Content Marketing Manager for Dyn, an Internet Infrastructure company specializing in email delivery, web speed, uptime and more. He has been involved in email since 2007 with ESP startup SendLabs, purchased by Dyn in 2010.
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This year’s SXSW 2013 has come to a close and while we’re still enjoying the goodwill from our annual concert on the day music and Interactive crosses over, one indisputable fact came from our marketing team that planned the event: email still matters, even to this crowd.

In fact, it was a key driver in getting 5000+ registrants for the show despite a lot of competition.

The First Deployment

Based on our database from the year prior, we sent out an email in early-January to past attendees and VIPs. The message was simple: Save The Date. We had no bands announced or even a start time. All we had was a day and a venue.

The campaign (subject line: SXSW 2013: Save The Date For Our Event!) got a 34% open rate and a near 10% click through rate.

Segmenting The Audiences

At our event, we offer both VIPs and General Admission tickets, so there were two different types of audiences we needed to target with different information. There was also a concern that some of the people on the VIP list would bring additional people and cause a potential crowding issue.

So we decided to be proactive and send an informative email to VIPs (subject line: SXSW VIP Update: How To Avoid Not Getting In). It attained a 70% open rate with a 6.52% click through rate. The message was definitely received.

We sent a similar message to our General Admission ticket holders with some tips on when to show up, etc. that earned a 36.41% open rate and 8.06% click through rate. Why less? We learned that with free tickets, people will RSVP for dozens and dozens for parties. The engagement level was less than VIP, but still pretty good considering the audience.

Game Day

On event day, we wanted to drop a final reminder on where to go, when to be there and to also create some more buzz about our show. Our VIP-targeted email garnered a 56.47% open rate and 8.33% click through rate, while our GA email earned a 30% open rate and 7.05% click through rate.

Eventbrite was a huge help to us, and one that we highly recommend to anyone putting on an event, regardless of size. One of the reasons was in their inbox: the ticket they received when they signed up. We asked that people either print off their tickets (kinda unlikely at SXSW) or show the email so we could scan it in at the door. With mobile such an important part of our world, it made perfect sense and it was easily accessible within their inbox.

The Future

We now have nearly 5000 new email addresses to help introduce our services, do follow-ups on post-event content and invite back for next year’s event. Because we segmented out, we can target specifically on their experience with event follow-ups.

We obviously promoted our show via social channels, but being able to directly talk to people going was a huge asset for us. Having those analytics I referenced above provided a nice baseline for future event invites.

If you’re into events, using email as a main driver and communicator is a must. If you’re into music, we recommend our SXSW event in 2014!

Big data means big opportunities in email marketing

By Mike Hotz @Responsys 3/20/13

According to Forrester Research, marketers will blast out a record number of 258 billion emails this year – a 63% jump from just the year before.  While many may pound their chests about those rapidly growingemail lists, just as many are likely overlooking big opportunities to improve their targeting, relevance, and performance.

Indeed, a recent survey by CEB of over 800 marketers at Fortune 1000 firms showed that over half of those companies are still relying on past experience and gut decision making to create and optimize their campaigns. Only 11 %, meanwhile, are using data to support those decisions. Data, in fact, ranked dead last on their list of available resources.

Stats like those aren’t hugely surprising: After all, email marketing has sustained itself very profitably for a long time on a “batch and blast” mentality. But at 258 billion emails per year and growing, too many consumers are simply feeling blasted – and harder to engage without more targeted, relevant content and messaging.

Little wonder, then, why savvier marketers today are diving deeper into customer data to give their email-marketing campaigns more relevance, more precision in reaching the right people, and better predictability around buying decisions.  What kind of impact can data actually bring to bear? Data-driven “triggered” email campaigns, according to Responsys client, Ascena Retail Group, have been shown to achieve the following:

• + 70% increase in unique open rates
• + 55% increase in unique click-through rates
• + 300% increase in dollars per email delivered
• + 225% increase in conversion rate

So what do you do with using customer data to yield numbers like those? As I sketched out in a recent webinar, Give Your Email Programs a Dynamic Boost With Customer Data, tapping customer data in powerful new ways doesn’t require a Ph.D in Big Data – it means identifying the most relevant types of customer data you should be working with, and then creating more personalized campaigns that have a good chance of boosting results.

4 Key Types of Customer Data
In order of importance, here are the four primary data types every email marketer needs to get acquainted with.

• Email Interaction. Basic email interaction data shows where the customer has clicked within the email, open rates, opened links, clicks, customer conversions, and related metrics.
• Web Interaction — Access to a recipients’ web interaction data can help marketers gain an in-depth understanding of how the customer is browsing a website. Abandoned shopping carts and completed applications, for instance, will show what the consumer is in the market for, thus filling the blanks for what kinds of email campaigns will prove most compelling.
• Purchase Data — Past purchase data can be a valuable predictor of a consumer’s next move. By looking at what the subscriber has purchased in the past and what they are using now, email campaigns can be customized to suggest a personalized next step. For example, if the customer just bought a new mobile phone, knowing specific specials for phone cases and screen protectors can help direct the next purchase.
• Profile Preferences  — Data from user profiles, such as location, age and gender, may not be as reliable as the users most recent email or web interactions, but is still valuable in baseline targeting.

After identifying what customer data will be the most relevant to your campaign, the next step is to define segments based on the data collected. Consumers in each segment should exhibit similar types of behavior as shown by the data, ensuring that they can be marketed to in similar ways.  Triggered emails, for instance – where a specific consumer behavior triggers a corresponding email — can come in a variety of formats, including welcome emails, birthday wishes, and reminders to repurchase favorite products. (continue @Responsys)