Analytics across ISPs

ISPs don’t provide any metrics as to whether an email landed in the inbox or bulk/spam folder of the end recipient.  Without a direct measurement for this, we need to look at indirect methods.  The first method we’ll discuss is looking at different measurements across the ISPs that you send to.  Here’s an example.

As you can see, if you measure your open or click rates across ISPs over time, you’ll be able to quickly identify any anomalies in deliverability and take corrective action.  This same method can be applied to any metric that correlates to your deliverability rates like opens, clicks or even revenue depending on your business model.

The challenge with this method is you’re often trying to solve a problem retroactively.  By the time you have enough data to understand the impact to your deliverability the reason might have been something that has already passed like poor content or higher than normal complaints.

Sample with Seeds

The next method is using ‘seed boxes’ – email addresses at various ISPs that are set up in an effort to understand deliverability.  The thought is these seed boxes will act like your customer’s inboxes and if you send a small sample of an email campaign to these boxes which you can access, you’ll be able to measure your deliverability by logging in and seeing the message in the inbox or spam/bulk folder.

However, this method does come with challenges as well.  It’s difficult to get enough boxes in order to make your sample set large enough to consider statistically significant and you’ll want to ensure your seed boxes are sterile enough to ensure they have not been contaminated by email engagement (clicking, reading a lot of messages, complaints, etc.)

As long as you understand the pros and cons of the different methods of measuring deliverability, you’ll be able to utilize the best blend of analytics for your email program.  If there are other methods you’re using for measuring deliverability, drop me an email and you might just see them in a future post!

Boosting Revenue from Email

By Jeanne Jennings @ClickZ 5/14/12

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at Niche Media’s e-Newsletter World Unconference. It was my first time speaking at a Niche Media event and the way it was structured gave me a lot of time to talk to the attendees. I want to share a little about the event – including some of the key things that any business looking to boost revenue from email should be focused on.

This is, I believe, the first event I’ve ever spoken at that was 100 percent dedicated to email newsletters. If you’ve been following my column you know that I’ve been beating the drum for more companies to do email newsletters. Why?

Because only transactional messages beat editorial emails in terms of average open rates. And when it comes to average click-through rates, editorial messages are number one. Yet less than 1 percent of all messages sent are primarily editorial in nature. Make no mistake – editorial messages can and should carry promotional content; there just has to be enough value without a purchase (or even a click) to justify the email’s editorial nature.

The attendees at this conference were laser-focused on generating more revenue from their email newsletters. I heard it time and time again when I asked what had brought them there. Again, if you’ve been reading my column, you know that I’m a bottom-line girl. Generating revenue is near and dear to my heart.

Most attendees were small- to medium-sized publishers, making email newsletters a natural for them. But even if you’re not a publisher, there are simple ways to create and repurpose existing content to create a newsletter (more on that in a future column).

So what did I take away from the event?

1. Although many email newsletters are sent to generate revenue, many marketers still aren’t fully leveraging metrics and analytics to track and test performance.

Opens and clicks are good. But you also need to look at return on investment (ROI), revenue per email sent, and the quantitative value of an email address to make more money.

ROI can be difficult to get a grip on. But revenue per email sent is easy – see my past column on this.

So is the value of an email address. Just divide your annual revenue by the average number of email addresses in your database for the year. Email addresses do have a “life” of more than one year (most of us estimate it at three years, on average), but using a one-year figure is a quick way to get a read – and any revenue generated in future years is icing on the cake.

Revenue can be direct sales for products, webinars, or other services you offer. Depending on your business model, it might also include advertising revenue; this can come from ads in or sponsorship of the newsletter itself or from your website (here you just need to estimate the amount of web traffic that came directly from the email newsletter program and prorate accordingly). You might also have list rental income or other ways you monetize your list; include them all.

If you aren’t looking at your performance in these ways, you’re missing the boat. (continue @ClickZ)

Transactional Email Delivery: Understanding Delivered

By Stephanie Wise @Ombud

Email Deliverability, Transactional Emails, Cloud Emailing, SMTP Relay Service, Email Delivery, Cloud-based Email Infrastructure, SMTP Server Software, Bulk and Transactional Email Sending Service, Cloud-Based Email Marketing and Delivery Provider, Inbox Delivery, SMTP Gateway…

And my list of marketing terms that Transactional Email Delivery providers use could continue, but I’ll stop there. I think you get my point. Within the market, and even within some companies, the terminology for this solution varies. For simplicity, we’ll refer to this solution here (and elsewhere in Ombud) as Transactional Email Delivery.

If you’re constantly resending emails or waiting for responses from customers because your email is sitting in their spam folder, you are losing potential revenue. A Transactional Email Delivery solution will help mitigate this risk with potential for a significant ROI. (continue @Ombud)

Email Marketing:  New tactics  for display ads, segmentation an d discount promos

By Adam T. Sutton @MarketingSherpa 5/8/12

I interviewed a variety of email marketers at Responsys Interact 2012 last week and learned about more tactics than I could ever fit into a blog post. That said, here are three insights I pulled from some of the best interviews I had last week (Full Disclosure: Responsys sponsored my attendance of this event).

Display will rise again

Now that companies can target display ads to individuals across a variety of websites, display is poised to make another comeback, says Scott Jones, General Manager of Display,Responsys.

The reason, Jones says, is that marketers can incorporate display into cross-channel and lifecycle marketing programs and use it to send a targeted message to a single person. He sees display ads improving results for email marketers in the following three ways:

1. Extend automated campaigns

Triggered emails can reach very specific, very engaged audiences and can have great conversion rates. Some companies are supporting their triggered campaigns by also showing display ads to the people who receive the emails.

“We’re seeing marketers take their existing automated programs and start to add display to extend their number of touches with those people, and they are meaningful, relevant, highly orchestrated touches.” (continue @MarketingSherpa)

You of course want your software to be easy to use, have good maintenance tools, email analytics, and good formatting options, but these terms are not always used when describing email marketing features. If you’re just starting a business new to email marketing, don’t sweat it. Below is a list of features as well as a list of other miscellaneous terms that you will see when you’re in the market for email marketing software.

10 Email Marketing Features and Terms Explained

Email Marketing Features Terms

1. Auto Responders – This helps you set up email messages based on a certain event. For example, you may want a welcome email to be sent to anyone who signs up to be a subscriber. Auto responders also allow you to set up messages before a particular event occurs, such as a new promotion or new product. This is a very popular feature amongst some of the largest corporations.

2. List Segmentatin/Separation – This simply means that you will be able to send different email messages to different people. You will be able to segment your audience however you want—new customers versus old customers, customers who buy versus customers who just read, etc.—in order to help make sure that your messages are completely relevant.

3. Spam Regulator – Spam can come in all different shapes and sizes, so this generic term tends to trip people up when searching for software. In general, a spam regulator does not really worry about others adding spam to your messages, but rather makes sure that your messages don’t end up getting flagged as spam (and thus never reaching your subscribers). You can read more here.

4. Lockable Templates – The template of an email marketing campaign will make a difference when it comes to appeal and when it comes time to actually set up the message. A lockable template is great for those who don’t know much about design and want a solid template without much customization.

5. Message Activity Report – This feature deals with metrics and analyzing the success of a campaign. You want to be able to see numbers that tell you how many people opened your messages, whether or not those people clicked on a link, and which links were clicked. This will help you determine which messages are doing well and which should be eliminated for future campaigns.

Miscellaneous Email Marketing Terms

6. Email whitelist – This term refers to IP addresses that have been approved to deliver email even if there was something initially blocking these addresses. In other words, it is a god thing if you hear an email service provider say they are “whitelisted.”

7. Hard Bounce/Soft Bounce – A hard bounce means that your email message was not sent due to something permanent, while a soft bounce means the problem was temporary.

8. Open Rate – This term refers to the percentage of emails that are opened in a specific email marketing campaign or in total, depending on the company.

9. Double Opt-In – This refers to one way to build your subscribe list. This involves subscribers to click a link in a confirmation email in order to verify that the email is in fact in use by the person who signed up for your campaign.

10. False Positive – This is when an email is filtered or blocked as spam incorrectly. In other words, you should have permission to send the email to a legitimate address, but the email doesn’t make it to the recipient.

Understanding these different terms will help ensure that you make the right choices when choosing email software. This will also help a new business owner keep up with those more familiar with email marketing campaigns.

What are some terms that you found to be important as you created your email marketing campaign? Are there any software features that you can’t leave without? Let us know in the comments!

Photo Credit: orangedwarf.com

When Making Money Costs You Money

By Jay Brangiforte @ClickZ

Last time I briefly talked about ad revenue-based business models.

While I am definitely not a big proponent of third-party advertising in email, a large number of marketers make their revenue, or at least a portion of it, through third-party advertising within their emails. When the ads are not intrusive or overwhelming, and your customers are made aware they will receive them when signing up, many have success with this method. However, when you base your ad sales solely on the size of your list, you not only paint yourself into a corner, you are destined for deliverability issues.

“But that’s the way we’ve always done it…”

While I’m not knocking anyone for squeezing some extra revenue out of a few ads, I am warning you against being enticed by uniformed ad buyers who base buying decisions solely on list size. If you follow this path, list size will continue to grow while overall engagement goes down, ultimately leading you to the bulk folder – selling ads that will never be seen. While your list may be deliverable and ad dollars could roll in for a while, eventually the older inactive segments will start showing signs of spam traps. Once that happens, the list you have will be worth nothing if you can’t get it delivered.

Apart from the deliverability concerns, if you base your pricing off the list size alone, you are selling yourself short. If ads are core to your business, then you should be selling them on list quality, not quantity. If you can show with hard data that your list is highly engaged, has excellent deliverability rates, click rates, etc., then you should be selling those ads for more money. This isn’t print or skywriting. You know exactly how many people are reading each email and how often each ad is viewed or clicked. With this shift, your list size can shrink to a healthy engaged audience, while not losing any revenue. You’ll want to think about and adjust your model, before the ad buyers eventually wise up and start negotiating pricing based on it. (continue @ClickZ)

Recent technology advances afford companies to re-target on the web based off email engagement.  In other words, if I click/open on an email which is selling me men’s socks, that same company can now haunt/retarget me all over the web if they want with images of that same pair of socks or a variant thereof.  We all know that the site re-targeting has been around and debated for awhile on the level of creepiness and often annoying, but does retargeting from the inbox take it one step too far?  Don’t get me wrong, I am all for targeting and sending good email based on subscriber actions on the site, store and purchasing habits but re-targeting on the web based on my email activity seems to go beyond spooky and borders into the creepiness.  It seems to me that once the masses catch on to this, it would almost deter people from wanting to engage with email in their inbox for fear that the “man” would follow them around asking them to “buy buy buy” or “download now”.

I am open to hearing both sides of the argument (and maybe I am being a littler oversensitive in this area), but I would love it if someone were to tell me it’s going to be ok. In my opinion this sort of technology takes it too far.  Spooky is one thing, creepy is just wrong.

Email favored for Mother’s Day marketing

By Rachel Lamb @LuxuryDaily 7/5/12

Many luxury brands are using email for Mother’s Day marketing and driving transactions in numerous ways including free shipping or discounting, invitations to ecommerce and adding sentimental value.

Brands and retailers including Cartier, Diane von Furstenberg, Marc Jacobs, Saks Fifth Avenue, Lagos and Neiman Marcus are drawing attention to themselves and hoping to promote sales through online and physical store locations. With Mother’s Day around the corner, a quick note from a favorite brand could entice consumers to spend at the last minute, especially with limited-time offers as part of the deal.

“One of the many benefits of online marketing is that there are many dimensions and options for ways to share and communicate messages,” said Nick Heyes, CEO of Emailvision, London. “Integrating your message provides your brand with more opportunities to reach and engage with your customer.

“Email marketing is always an effective way to deliver your marketing message, be it a daily or seasonal information you want to share with your prospects and customers,” he said. “However, for an email strategy to be effective, the message and its call to action must be meaningful and relevant to those opening your emails.”  (continue @LuxuryDaily)

I’ve been fielding a lot of questions lately about delivery. Sometimes the askers of these questions really mean deliverability. I take a deep breath, keeping in mind that most of the uninitiated still think they are the same thing, harmonize my chakras, and calmly correct them and help them ask the right questions.

–MORE–

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/31680.asp

-Dennis

I work for Mailjet and we focus on deliverability: it is central in our business. So I don’t believe that deliverability is a buzzword: it refers to a problem which has become more pregnant than ever. Nearly 25% of legitimate email gets lost and never makes it to the inbox.

But when someone is bragging about a “99% deliverability”, you want to know exactly what it means. If you’re unable to picture what’s behind this flashy phrase, you might just be victim of another empty-catchy concept. Many businesses heavily depend on deliverability. When choosing an Email Service Provider, “Deliverability” is a decisive criterion.  Thus, the term is too important to remain vague and it must be clearly defined.

Deliverability Everywhere, Definition Nowhere

Deliverability is all over the web: articles, landing pages, Twitter, etc.  However, the word itself isn’t findable in any dictionary yet. And if you use Google for a definition, here is what you get:

You might think that dictionaries are always late and never ahead of their time, so it would be normal not to find any definition. But then, why isn’t there anything on Wikipedia either? The collaborative encyclopedia has no entry for “deliverability” (neither does “email deliverability!”).

But in the meantime, Google gives you 1.5 million results for the term. Isn’t that paradoxical? Does it actually mean that everybody is talking about something nobody knows about?

Who Defines The Standards?

The project of harmonizing the email-related definitions is not new. Take the metrics: it is very painful for a marketer if when he switches provider, the way the KPIs are calculated changes. For example, in a world with no standards, the open rate could be based on the number of “accepted emails” or on the number of “sent emails”. This means that your campaign reporting would not be the same from one ESP to the other… Maybe you’ve already faced this problem and did some research on this topic. If so, you probably know about the S.A.M.E project.

This initiative is backed by the Email Experience Council (EEC) which is a subsidiary of the influent Direct Marketing Association (DMA). The workgroup aims to set up “unified standards for the most basic email metrics such as delivered, opened and clicked”. In June 2010, they released a document proposing some metric standards for the email industry. It explained how open rates and click rates should be calculated.

The term “deliverability” has been left behind

Unfortunately, the word “deliverability” can’t be found anywhere in the EEC document. This raises serious questions about a Direct Marketing News article from 2008, which reports that: Deliverability has been defined by the EMAC as total e-mail deployed (unique records) divided into the total amount successfully delivered.

The article is actually not sourced. Plus, the Email Measurement Accuracy Coalition (EMAC) merged with the EEC in 2008.Therefore, it would have been logical to find a definition of “deliverability” in the EEC synthesis of June 2010. But again, nothing. The notion of “deliverability” appears to have been left behind. No authority has proposed a definition yet…

Meanwhile, the marketer’s boss stopped asking about open rates, his question is now: “what about the deliverability of our emails?”. Although the main metrics have been defined, the poor email marketer still finds himself in a uncomfortable position where his superior hears things like “we promise you a +25% deliverability” or “have a look at our case study, we’ve achieved a 99% deliverability”… The boss wants it, even if he doesn’t know what it means…

Almost every time someone talks about a “deliverability rate”,  we’re actually talking about the “delivery rate”, which corresponds to the proportion of “accepted” emails. An email is considered as “delivered” if it didn’t bounce. The number of accepted (or delivered) emails is actually calculated this way:

Accepted = Sent – Bounced

In this case, when someone talks about a “99% deliverability” or a “+20% deliverability”, it simply means that “99% of the emails didn’t bounce” or that “20% more emails were accepted”. Here, the word “deliverability” is used only because it looks sexy. Nothing more: it’s pure marketing. The word “delivery” was enough, no need to talk about deliverability…

Deliverability is Not The “Inbox Placement Rate”

Sometimes, the expression “deliverability rate” also refers to the Inbox Placement Rate (IPR): this metric is measured with inbox seeding and is provided by Return Path, the leader in email reputation services. This indicator is quite complex to obtain, so it costs money.

For the moment, there is absolutely no way to detect if a particular message ended up in the spam folder. The feedback loops provided by the ISPs need to be triggered by the recipient himself (via the “report as spam” option). But when an email is placed in the spam folder, you can’t know about it for sure.

So how does it work? It’s simple: Return Path administrates a fair number of test inboxes. The only way to find out if an email was delivered to the inbox is actually to check the recipient’s inbox and see if the email appears in it. The test inboxes allow the sender to get an idea of his Inbox Placement Rate…

But why talk about “Deliverability” if we’re talking about “Inbox Placement Rate”? That’s because the IPR is a measurement of the deliverability, not a synonym. And in fact, there is no such thing as a “Deliverability Rate”.

You understand the concept when you realize that it is not a metric, but a qualitative objective. If I had to propose a definition, here’s what it would look like:

Deliverability: refers to the ability that an email has of successfully reaching the inbox of its recipients.

Deliverability can be assessed with the help of the indicators aforementioned: the “accepted (or delivery) rate” and the “Inbox Placement Rate”. But in any case, it is not an equivalent of these indicators.

To make it clearer, here’s a parallel: if you want to improve “road safety” you will measure the number of car accidents. But the annual number of car accidents does not equal “road safety”. Just as the “deliverability” does not equal to “delivery rate” or “IPR”. The objective can never be assimilated to the success metrics.

Deliverability is a quest!

This is the way we see it at Mailjet. Once you have understood that “deliverability” is not a metric, you can start working on it efficiently. Beyond the “delivery rate”, the “open rates” or the “click rates” can actually be used to track success and detect deliverability problems. You just need to put them into perspective and track their evolution. The IPR can be too expensive if you are a small or medium sender. It is really important to understand that “deliverability” is not an absolute but rather an objective. We really try to make it clear to our customers: we refuse to make it look like there is a magic solution. The deliverability topic is already complex enough (reputation, technical, etc.): no need to blur the lines for marketing purposes!

Why Gmail May be Hurting your Email Marketing Program

By DJ Waldow @djwaldow 5/1/12

A few weeks ago I asked how often you checked your spam folder. I was surprised by the responses. In my very unscientific “study,” the far majority indicated they rarely checked their spam folders.

As the average consumer, this is probably not a huge deal. You’ll likely miss out on some emails that are falsely marked as spam; however, most email clients do a pretty good job telling you what is spam and what is not.

That being said, if you are an email marketer, it’s important to understand which of your emails are landing in the spam folder. Do you know? Are you checking this regularly? Are you doing your own testing by sending a copy of your email to various email accounts? Are you using a third party delivery service like Return Path? Or, are you just crossing your fingers and hoping all is well?

I’m here to tell you today why Gmail spam may be hurting your email marketing program.

On March 19, 2012, Gmail announced what seemingly was a small change to how they deal with spam. In that blog post, they told users how they now show a brief explanation at the top of each of your spam messages as to why each message landed in your spam folder. I cannot confirm this 100%, but by looking at my own inbox over the past 6 weeks, I think Gmail may have also changed a few other things. I have noticed more legitimate email in my spam folder than ever before.

I put together a short, 5-minute screencast to show you what I mean and why it’s critical to ensure your email marketing messages are not landing in Gmail spam. (continue @WaldowSocial)

4 Ways to Drive Revenue Through Retargeting

By Emily Keye @Bronto 4/30/12

We all already know how steep the competition is in your subscriber’s inbox. Consumers who are pressed for time and overwhelmed with emails only connect with content that’s relevant, timely and valuable to them.

Email retargeting campaigns are designed to persuade a customer to purchase, complete an online transaction they began but didn’t finish, replenish a previously purchased item, or purchase a complementary item. When done correctly, these campaigns are the most targeted and engaging messages you can deploy as they’re not only based on profiling attributes but also on precise customer behavior.

So what messages should you be using to retarget your email subscribers?

Remails

Remails are one of the easier retargeting concepts to append to your marketing tool kit. Remailing involves running segments to identify those recipients who did not open your message, altering the open/no-open decision factors you control, and sending the message again. Altering the subject line is the most effective, and necessary, method for re-mail success. Most of the non-openers did not find your subject line to be compelling. Remailing is fast, easy, cheap and profitable – a very rare offer in the marketing ecosystem. Start remailing…and stop leaving money on the table. (continue @Bronto)

If you’re spending all of your time refining your marketing messages or analyzing the performance of one particular program, you could be missing out on other opportunities for interacting with your customers.  Two of the most overlooked engagement opportunities are welcome and transactional messages. Both of these types of messages are highly underutilized by most marketers as a way to interact with their customers.

First and foremost, the welcome message should be used to build off the initial engagement you have with this person when they signed up for your campaigns. Many senders might just send a text welcome message, or even just a confirmation for their opting into the program. Rather then just sending a text welcome message, you can do so much more.

 Overlooked Welcome Messages

Here are a couple of important tips for creating a new welcome message template.

• Don’t Be Afraid to Send an HTML Message–Sending a welcome message that looks like future mailings will help them recognize your programs and give your users an idea of what to expect.
• Offer a Sneak Peek of the Type of Content They Will Be Receiving–If you have a weekly newsletter, put one article in your welcome message from the week before to show them the benefits of the type of information that they will be receiving from you.
• Ask Them to Add You to Their Address Book–The best chance for you to get someone to add your sending address to their address book is when they are intimately involved with your company during a registration/sign-up process.
• Thank Them for Subscribing–They have just done you a favor by signing up for your campaigns—remember that and tell them that you appreciate their trust in you and their future business. These people get a lot of email into their inbox and you want them to know that you think they are special and a vital part of your business.
• Give Them an Easy Way to Unsubscribe–After receiving an example of the content to come, they might realize that it was not what they expected. If that’s the case, give them the opportunity to opt-out now before sending multiple messages to them, which may lead to them marking your message as SPAM. It is better to have them formally unsubscribe from your list right away then have them mark your messages as SPAM later.
• Give Them an Incentive to Take Further Action Now–If you want them to buy something, offer them a discount on their first purchase with a coupon code in their welcome message. They act of signing up indicates that they are likely interested in eventually purchasing something and may be looking for an incentive to do so. Giving them a little nudge in the beginning might cause them to purchase sooner rather than later.

Neglected Confirmation Messages

The other commonly forgotten email marketing opportunity is leveraging the receipt of order confirmation message. While it is true that CAN-SPAM prevents these emails from being full-blown marketing messages, they can legally incorporate relevant offers if they don’t shift focus from the transaction at hand.

Some of the best examples of these types of messages come from the travel industry. It is common practice to receive an email from an airline confirming a recently purchased flight, and it’s also common to find offers at the bottom of the message for renting a car, booking a hotel or any number of other options. These are usually done through partnerships, or could be part of their core business, such as a Travelocity or Expedia. These companies are always looking for opportunities to up-sell their customers. They have realized the importance of the order confirmation message and are using this to their advantage.

So what is the right amount of marketing in one of these messages? I usually tell my clients that if they keep marketing messages to about 30-40% of the message and don’t steal focus from the transaction, that should be okay with CAN-SPAM and customer expectations. I know from personal experience that I appreciate these types of messages.

To gain a different perspective, let’s consider the following online example for a minute. Just last week, I took my truck to a local shop that was referred to me for some transmission work. They had great customer service and told me exactly what to expect for the work I was requesting, but they missed the opportunity for a “welcome message” that highlighted how they could also change my oil, which I needed done and would have been convenient since they already had my truck. And if they had offered a coupon for that oil change to first time customers, I would have taken them up on that offer right there on the spot.

The shop could have also encouraged some repeat business when I came back to pay for the work.  If they had included a 10% discount on the receipt for any services completed on another car within a month, there is a good chance I would have taken them up on it if I had any upcoming maintenance on my wife’s car.

So remember, email marketing is a lot like life. If you have the chance to engage someone, take advantage of it, because you never know how long the opportunity will last. Take every opportunity to reach out to your customers and explain your worth.

Good luck and good sending.

Why Video is an Email Marketing Goldmine

By Brendan Cournoyer @Brainshark 4/30/12

What kind of role will video content play in the future of email marketing? According to a new report published in April, a MAJOR one.

I’ve recently written about the value video marketing can offer whenpromoting webinars and events via email. Now, a new study from Experian Marketing Services has dug even deeper into how companies are using multimedia to improve their overall email marketing strategies.

According to the company’s 2012 Digital Marketer Benchmark and Trend Report, simply including the word “video” in an email’s subject line saw an increase of 7%-13% in overall click-thru rates in 2011. Furthermore, embedding a video in an email itself turned in an average conversion rate that was 21% higher than emails containing a static image alone. (Note that this data is based on information shared by marketers with video commerce company Liveclicker, an Experian partner).

True, a lot of numbers like these have been thrown around over the past year to some varying degree. But the main theme here remains consistent: video content is a boon for email marketing, and we should expect to see a lot more of it going forward. In fact, the Experian report states that by 2014, “video could account for more than 50% of all Internet traffic.” Even if that number is overly optimistic (and even the staunchest video enthusiasts might admit that it is), it still paints a convincing picture of how interest in video continues to grow. In fact, a recent Cisco whitepaper projects that video will make up two-thirds of all mobile traffic by 2015. (continue @Brainshark)

–MORE–
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/european-regulator-warns-siliconvalley-about-privacy/

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don’t Just Send, Deliver!

http://www.casselsbrock.com/CBNewsletter/The_Cassels_Brock_Report___April_2012#art39908

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don’t Just Send, Deliver!

Get set for Cookie law compliance

By Tim Roe @DMA_UK 4/27/12

With less than a month left until the Information Commissioner’s Office starts to enforce the new Cookie law on 26 May, the DMA has published its how to 10-step overview guide to managing cookies.

It’s important to ensure that you’re website complies as much as possible with the new regulations. This isn’t just about cookies, PCs and websites. The law covers any technology your organisation uses to store information on a user’s computer terminal, smartphone or tablet device. This includes Flash cookies (locally stored objects), html 5 local storage, Silverlight and more.

It may be controversial, but you must comply
The Cookie law is certainly a controversial subject. This is mainly due to the potential impact the regulations will have on the way the web works and the money that compliance will cost businesses. However, the regulations are now law which means that you have no option other than to comply.

Unfortunately, there’s considerable grey area surrounding what constitutes compliance, which makes it all the harder for organisations to adopt a suitable solution in the run up to the compliance deadline. But simply ignoring the regulations is not an option. Even if full compliance isn’t yet possible, it’s still vitally important that organisations now take the steps they can towards compliance. (continue @DMA_UK)

With the overwhelming amount of crummy email floating about the interwebs, ISPs spend most of their time trying to identify the “good” email from the billions of spam messages that hit their networks each day. It truly is a search for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Here are some things you may be doing (knowingly or not) that make your mail more like the hay and less like that elusive needle.

• A poorly configured infrastructure is making you appear to be shady character! Maybe you’ve got an open proxy or relay, or some other security issue is detected within your mail server configuration.

• Your sender identity is not authenticated, stranger! In the absence of authentication of all your emails, it is very difficult for an ISP to confirm that you are in fact a legitimate sender. Learn more about authentication here.

• You’ve failed to maintain a clean list, ya dirty scoundrel! Diligent and prudent list management is the foundation of any effective email program. This means you’ve got up-to-date contact information for your subscribers, you rapidly remove people upon request, you properly process hard and soft bounces, etc.

• You went and earned yourself a bad reputation, partner! ‘Reputation,’ in the wild world of email, is a set of metrics ISPs look at to determine the quality of the sender. Sending to spam traps, subscribers reporting your messages as spam or appearing on blacklists are factors that can tank your reputation.

Don’t assume that ISPs are going to automatically know you for the legitimate business you are; or that they’ll view your emails as the expected communications your customers want and have requested. If you’ve noticed some odd blips in your email activity metrics, such as precipitous declines in open rates, it could mean that your email is getting blocked.

(SendGrid, where I work, recently had webinar on 7 Tips to Improve Your Sender Reputation which you can listen to for free. It is full of lots of tips on how to really take charge of your email today. Once you’ve mastered that, you might as well sign up for our upcoming webinar, Tips and Tricks to Stay Out of the SPAM Folder)

Helpful Formulas for Email Marketing Analysis

By Steven DuBois @Bronto 4/24/12

In a previous post Email Metrics 101: Establish Your Baselines, we discussed some of the key metrics you want to track. Whether you’re new to email marketing or a seasoned pro, it’s critical to create baselines around your marketing program. Baselines are a specific value or values that can serve as a comparison or control.  This is what you are going to be measuring against to answer questions like “how do this month’s email metrics compare to my overall metrics” or “how are my birthday triggered emails performing in comparison to all my other emails.”

If you haven’t calculated your baselines yet, then I recommend starting with the past 30 days worth of data to use for the basis of comparison.  Aggregate those metrics and then calculate the overall rates.

For those of you that have had some time to establish a baseline and you have been gathering additional data from the campaigns, what are you doing or going to do with all that data? (continue @Bronto)

Bigpond is Moving to Hotmail: What does this mean for email marketers?

By Cathie McFarren @Bronto 4/23/12

Bigpond (Telstra), Australian Broadband Provider is making a big change that may affect your email marketing deliverability.

Telstra is lifting and shifting all of their 4.2 million Bigpond customer mail accounts to Hotmail, the process is going to take a while.  Telstra officials say the switch will happen in 2012.  Bigpond is the largest inbox receiver behind Hotmail (they were no. 1 in 2011), they represent a large part of the overall email pie. Under the deal between Telstra and Microsoft, all Bigpond customers will be required to change their username and password to ensure a smooth transition.

So, what does this change mean to senders? (continue @Bronto)

Any firm in the paid TV sector in search of answers doesn’t need to look any further than the internet. With options such as Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube readily available, more consumers are learning that they can watch their favorite shows and movies, and save a bundle by turning to online content. Unfortunately, this is not only serving a blow to paid TV providers, but their advertisers as well. Fewer eyes on the TV set means less people are seeing advertisements and if you’re a marketer, less potential customers are exposed to your products or services.

TV advertising has long been viewed as a viable way for companies to reach their target market. Sure, it isn’t exactly the cheapest option, but a countless number of brands have benefitted from quick 30-second ad spots that engage their audiences through the tube. On that note, times are changing, and if you want to remain relevant in the rat race, you must adapt and evolve with the changing times.

Here are some marketing forms that could prove effective for your efforts outside of TV:

Email Marketing – Email marketing may as well be considered as old as TV in internet years. And while it’s been around forever, it still gets the job done for purposes that range from branding and fund raising to driving traffic and increasing sales. Email marketing is known for being incredibly cheap, so if you’re a marketer working on a budget, this is an option to look into, for sure.

Social Media Marketing – Social media is so huge that we just can’t escape it. It’s integrated into our television programming, personal gadgets, and even our professions depending on what you do for a living. The social frenzy may get a bit annoying, but from a marketing perspective, it’s almost a no-brainer at this point. Nowadays, your ideal customer is more likely to be chatting it up on Facebook or Twitter than at home in front of the TV.

Mobile Marketing – If it’s not social, it’s mobile or a combination of both. This is the mindset of the average marketer in the digital age – or at least it should be. Mobile devices are becoming as common and capable as computers. They will only advance. What stage will you be at as they do?

We’re not trying to say TV advertising is dead. That would be the furthest thing from the truth. With that said, there are options that can be more practical, affordable, and effective than traditional methods. A combination of email, social, and mobile, for example, could take your marketing efforts to a plateau you never though attainable.

Email Testing: Subject line increase opens 12.7% … here’s why we’ll never use it again

By Daniel Burstein @MarketingSherpa 4/20/12

The purpose of a subject line is to get an open. However, the purpose of a subject line is notonly to get an open. In our recentsubject line contest, there were some curious submissions that made me think this blog post was necessary:

• Mom told me to wear clean underwear in case I was in an accident. I wish she had told me about this too …
• A priest, a rabbi and a MECLABS LPO expert walk into a bar in Denver …
• RE: The video showed a bald man. Why?
• 1 Thing You MUST Do in Denver Before You Die
• Want to find the end of a rainbow AND the pot of gold?
• Denver Flight #ME430 [Confirm your seat]
• Open &; Enjoy Real Bacon Smell…
• This is your brain on email.
• What the #@*? What should you test next?

I know some of these are likely meant as jokes, but if the amount of misleading subject lines that fill my own inbox every day is any indication, many of them are probably serious. (continue @MarketingSherpa)

Email Marketing: 17.36% higher average click through rate  in 7 personalized subject line tests

By Adam Sutton @Marketing Sherpa 4/17/12

SUMMARY: Personalization is one of the oldest tactics in the book. Subscribers aren’t wowed by seeing their names in subject lines, but does that mean the tactic is outdated?

This case study shows how a B2B marketing team tested personalized subject lines in seven consecutive emails to see once and for all if the tactic worked for its audience. You’ll see the metrics from all seven tests and the surprising results.

CHALLENGE

Personalization is a tried-and-true email tactic. Marketers have improved results by adding first names to subject lines and greetings for years. But is the tactic a little threadbare?

Amanda Gagnon, Education Marketing Associate at AWeber, was not sure if today’s subscribers cared that an email addressed them by name. Furthermore, her team at AWeber, an email marketing software provider, speaks to marketers. Hadn’t this group been familiar with personalization for years?

“I personally considered this something that our savvy subscribers would roll their eyes at,” Gagnon says. “Personalization has sort of been done to death.”

Gagnon knew that personalization improved results at other companies, but she and her team were skeptical that it could work with AWeber’s audience. (continue @MarketingSherpa)

The people who run or who are involved in company email programs consistently talk about 3 things when it comes to the optimizing:

1. Make more money.

2. Get more subscribers.

3. Improve engagement.

I was doing some client research today on “tell a friend” emails and become curiously startled at what I saw.  For definition, these are the emails that when on a particular product page, the user sees an item and then decides to send it to either a friend, spouse, partner or family member.  These emails are triggered from a user and provide endless opportunities to improve those 3 things I mentioned above.  Think about this for a second….these emails are generated by the user to another person with the hope that the user on the other end would consider either purchasing the item or have influence to purchase or take a desired action for that particular item.  These emails should be ones which draw high engagement and should therefore have some basic elements to them.

1. The email should contain some sort of branding

2. The email should have a picture of the item with a description of it and ways to easily navigate back to the item on the site.

3. The email should contain a personalized message from the original user on the site and it should be placed in a conspicious spot for the recipient to see.

4. The email should provide an opportunity for the recipient to subscribe to the companies email program. (see number 2 above in the 3 things most companies consistently talk about)

5. The email should test some sort of discount or offer for the recipient to go and purchase or influence the purchase or action. (see number 1 above in the 3 things)

6. The email should have some form of social sharing capability

7. The email should be in HTML so as to capture some sort of engagement stats (see number 3 above in the 3 things)

and on and on and on…..The email should probably contain more ‘stuff” so as to provide even the most basic of a good email experience to the recipient.  However..for now, lets just stick with the basics.

List building: the four questions every email capture page must answer

By David Kirkpatrick @MarketingSherpa 4/17/12

This week I’ve been reading the MarketingSherpa 2011 Email Marketing Advanced Practices Handbook featuring W. Jeffrey Rice, Senior Research Analyst, MECLABS (the parent company of MarketingSherpa), as the lead author.

This handbook is full of great and actionable email advice, but Jeff particularly pointed me to the section on providing new subscribers with explicit expectations on what, when and why they will receive email after opting in.

Since it applies equally to B2B and consumer marketers, I wanted to share those tips and tactics with you, along with a fourth email element — privacy.

Here is the set-up straight from the MarketingSherpa handbook: (continue @MarketingSherpa)