In Inbox Reserve parts one and two, we discovered how socially centric preference centers and subject lines will lead to dramatically higher engagement and lower spam complaints. In part III below, we'll identify challenges that are inherent with acquiring a subscribers social data points and what the benefits are to your brand once harnessed.

Challenge:  Develop a Preference Center Marketing Program

The challenge for today’s brand marketer is to find ways to seductively charm subscribers to fully or partially divulge their social media credentials through an intuitive preference center.  Some subscribers will immediately acquiesce, while others will be more sensitive and allow the brand only a partial glimpse into their social networks.  For example, B2B focused subscribers may prefer to provide only credentials of their LinkedIn network and not necessarily Facebook or Twitter.  Future preference centers will allow you to prioritize which social networks you want linked to a given brand.

For this concept to work, marketers must demonstrate to subscribers the value of this initiative. Those subscribers who opt-in will glean more value and insight through their network associated with a given brand, because knowing what transactions are taking place with their social networks is in most cases desired.  Once brands amass these nuggets of data; designers, engineers and email marketing specialists will collaborate to produce instinctive methods of engagement while furthering your brands credibility.

Brands must take a proactive approach with subscribers to induce them to release this essential data.  A strategic marketing program targeted towards this master preference center with strong calls-to-action should be integrated into your marketing mix.  This marketing program should primarily focus on the features, benefits and value of updating socially centric preferences.

 

Emphasize Value and Benefits

One way to galvanize a brands subscriber base is to highlight reasons “why” updating your preference center is so valuable.  In your email marketing program, dedicate sends that emphasize the real value of managing and sharing social media credentials.  Market your preference center through other channels as well. Read Stephanie Miller's stellar post on why earning permission is divine.

Future marketing programs for updating preference centers should illustrate value–based notifications of activity within a subscribers given network: For example, in the email message itself give subscribers the option to choose from a host of alert notifications such as:

• Alert me when a member of my network makes a purchase from this brand
• Alert me when a member of my network signs up to receive newsletters from this brand
• Alert me when a member of my network reviews a product from this brand

This type of socially centric messaging will echo well with subscribers and will develop an affinity not only your brand but just as importantly your preference center.  These notifications will go "prime-time" and will replace the current generic “marketing messages” we currently receive.  Messages of this nature could be an excellent resource for winning back dormant subscribers.  

Furthermore, your subscribers might want to be immediately notified if a person from their network reviewed a nearby restaurant?  By giving your subscribers “night-vision” into their social networks, brands will have a simpler time summoning subscribers to release this coveted information.   Benefits to brands include far fewer defections from list segments, increased engagement, an awakening to dormant subscribers and significantly fewer “spam complaints.”

Immediate Benefits to the Brand

Credibility- As discussed throughout this series, socialized messaging of this nature provides a more intimate user experience.  It permits a subscriber to feel that the message is about their social ecosystem first and about the brand second.  It authorizes subscribers and their network to indirectly promote your brand, through a more relaxed conversation. 

Reduced Costs- Socialized messaging, will significantly reduce a brands’ overall operating expenses, because of a higher engagement index, fewer spam complains and better inbox placements rates.  Socialized messaging will increase sender reputation which reduces message handling costs including more relaxed human filtering steps with a given brand.  

Validation through Engagement- The ability to quickly connect with your peers before clicking the purchase button will soon be the “de facto” model for how to validate a purchase through a given brand. Acquiring validation from your trusted network means that an emotional and financial investment has been made on behalf of your friends and colleagues.  With a swift chat session with members of their network, your subscribers will discern information about a featured product/service, which accelerates immediate gratification for the purchaser.  Building a subscriber centric brand will add considerable value to your existing customer base and through crosshairs will magnify brand integrity.  Your feedback on this series is valued.

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

As outlined in Part I of Inbox Reserve, “Why Email must Reverse Engineer Social Now,” future engagement metrics and delivery patterns will be based on how subscribers’ social networks interact with a given brand.   Disclaimer: The strategies outlined below are congruent and/or complementary with advanced “opt-in” best practices.  It is safe to say that behavioral targeted messaging may not achieve the same level of granular social activity that a contemporary preference center would.

Inbox Reserve II: Socialized Subject Lines

Using fresh social data points gathered from an advanced preference center, future marketing based messaging will place your friends’ names or actions in the subject lines of emails associated with a given brand.  These personalized subject lines are a key tool for increasing your brand’s ability to engage subscribers, dramatically increase open rates and manufacture a better delivery reputation.  When you have targeted promotions that build value around this concept, connoisseurs of your brand will flock to this preference center.  Once there, they can opt-in to receive real-time notifications (or weekly digests, if they prefer) that tell them when members of their social ecosystem have taken “definitive” action involving a given brand.  Moreover, once permission is granted, subscribers will also see their friends’ images dynamically inserted into a well-designed email creative. They’ll be able to click on the images and ask their friends’ opinions of a product before making a purchase.  Here are two “plain” examples of future subject lines based on social activity within your network:

·         Real-Time-Notification:   Mark from your network just purchased     Sees Candies at 30% off…

·         Weekly Digest:              14 members of your network purchased                                      Sees Candies? Find out who!

Inbound, highly transparent subject lines of this nature are inherently credible. Their success further supports the theory that curious subscribers are also the most engaged.  Informed subscribers who choose to receive these types of messages are far more likely to engage because these notification are about your network first and the brand second.  Therefore, these subject lines seem more valuable and relevant to the subscribers.

Ever get a notification from Facebook that a certain friend of yours commented on your status?  You are much more likely to react positively to that message as opposed to a “brand first” subject line offering you a product at 30% off.   Moreover, you are less likely to click the “report spam” button because you are more loyal to the people in your network.

Reduced Spam Complaints

The most compelling reasons for brands to earn network permission from subscribers is that it dramatically reduces spam complaints.  Socialized email notifications are important because they prioritize a subscriber’s network first and the brand second. First, it’s far more palatable for a subscriber to open an email message with a friend’s name in the subject line and a friends’ picture in the creative because it creates a perception of relevance and allows for a far more customized experience. For example, if I were a subscriber and received such a message, I would probably refrain from clicking the “report spam” button because my main focus is on my network.  Secondly, personalized subject lines will cause your open rates and engagement index to skyrocket, enhancing your brand’s deliverability reputation.  ISPs will take notice of reduced spam complaints and brands will begin to see a higher inbox placement rate, resulting from more positive actions taken with this type of email. 

Notifications and creatives of this nature are packed with relevancy.  Testimonials from members of a social network will influence subscribers’ purchasing decisions, which will drastically diminish the chances of a user clicking the “report spam” button.  The benefit is increased engagement, as network buddies chat about potential purchases. This leads to more delivered mail to the inbox.  Second Disclaimer:  It’s important that we try not to associate this concept with Facebook page suggestions, simply because there is a monetary investment element in place here.  Members of your social network invested quality time in making a determination about a product or service and gave explicit permission to opt-in and receive exclusive messaging of this type.  So, it’s unfair to be skeptical because of earlier social media spam-related growing pains. 

In Part III of Inbox Reserve, we'll discuss the challenges brands will have in leveraging an advanced preference center and share some of the immediate benefits to any given brand; which include added credibility, reduced costs and subscriber validation. 

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.    

@tabsharani

 

   

Sharing a good bottle of wine with friends is simply a much richer experience than consuming one alone. Additionally, a mutual appreciation for the same types of wines you and your friends consume creates a far more substantial sharing experience. In this two part series, I’ll explore why mutual associations with brands will dramatically increase open rates and drastically reduce spam complaints, paving the way for better deliverability metrics, engagement and brand reputation.

As marketers, we put too much pressure on our subscribers.  First, we insist they recognize the label on our wine bottle, (The From: Name) then we expect them to read our subject line, and subsequently we hope subscribers actually “taste” (open) the email and glance at what we’re peddling.  If we haven’t lost their attention by now, we continue to plague them by asking them to share the given email using a functionality called SWYN (share with your network).  If that isn’t enough, we still yearn for a conversion…..and it all gets to be too much, ultimately, perhaps, pushing the subscriber away. 

Messaging of this nature is still outbound.   

What lies ahead is a significant evolution in email marketing which will work in concert with social networks to “reverse engineer” the social characteristics of email and bring social directly to your inbox.

Email offers will drastically change in the near future.  Next-generation emails will benefit from a deeper level of peer transparency. This new level of transparency will be earmarked by advanced or universal preference centers and highly intuitive sign up processes. By selectively capturing social media credentials of your subscribers, several layers of data points will become immediately available to harvest.  These socially focused data points will change ordinary subject lines to engaging peer notifications from a given brand.

Consider this:  you are far more inclined to “friend” someone on Facebook if you have mutual friends, correct?  And, you are more inclined to become a fan of a Facebook page if other members and colleagues of your social network are fans of that same page.  So, why not apply this same concept to email?

Industry statistics from Bazaarvoice illustrate that 74% of online shoppers who receive advice from their friends on social networks allow that advice to influence their purchasing decisions. Also this article by Shiv Singh supports that statistic with its discussion of when and why we trust our peers when determining types of online purchases. Furthermore, in a recent Purchaser Influence Survey by EXPO, featured today in emarketer.com, over 90% US Moms trust peer reviews more than manufacturer information. (Special Thanks to Anthony Schneider of Mass Transmit and Jeffrey Rohrs of ExactTarget for that snippet.)  With that said, we must reverse-engineer the current dynamic of outbound marketing based emails and bring our social networks to the coveted inbox.  At its core, should be a socially focused “über-email” program which acts as your brand’s private reserve.

Shoppers of a given brand instinctively want to know what “a subset of their trusted friends” bought online.  Similarly, shoppers also want to know what their friends think about those same products before they decide to purchase them.  Our marketing based email messaging should produce unbiased, first-hand knowledge of how our social networks “feel” about a product, not a subjective marketing message from your brand with ordinary subject lines.  Moreover, user-generated content is comprised of written and/or video testimonials of a product or service.  But, these testimonials which are often placed in an email, or on a brands landing page come from random people we don’t necessarily know. These testimonials although sincere in nature, don’t reverberate.

Reverse engineering social email

Would you like to know if any of your friends subscribe to the same brands as you do?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see which of your friends reviewed that new trendy restaurant on Yelp? Would receiving immediate notifications from peer actions with the brand build trust, directly after that review?

Currently, dynamic content in email allows us to customize a message to a particular segment or to an individual on your list, based on attributes in their profile.  We’ve learned that FedEx has as many as 144 attributes for a given record, which allows for granular customization of each email communication for each given email stream.  With increased Social Media data points culled together through an evolved master preference center adds an increasingly richer dimension for email marketers.  With these richer dimensions comes pinpoint information about your friends’ recent actions associated with a given brand. 

Savvy marketers will ameliorate the quality of such social media data points by dynamically inserting social attributes into a given email program. This concept completely reverses the current outbound system which is somewhat dysfunctional, because marketers still rely on subscribers outbound actions. The evolution of such a program will bring these messages to the inbox and will have far superior return on your email marketing investments, because this messaging adds increased value for the subscribers.  More value equals a more relevant email. With more relevant messaging comes drastically reduce spam complaints and dramatically increased open rates.

Let’s say you received an email from Barnes and Noble.  And, Barnes and Noble has been granted permission by you and many members of your social network, to publish information about actions your social network is undertaking with Barnes and Noble. Images of your friends may be dynamically and creatively populated in the creative, so when you open up your email, not only will you see friends’ images with links to their social media pages, you’ll also know which of them are subscribers, and which ones purchased that new Stephan King book Barnes and Noble is featuring.  What’s more is that the subject line will be highly engaging because it’s about your network “first” and not about the item being featured.

Part II of this series will discuss the challenges associated with this concept and why future marketing based subject lines will no longer matter. Subject lines will become highly relevant notifications, and how these “relevant notifications” will increase open rates and dramatically reduce spam complaints.

Fred Tabsharani 
Port25 Solutions
@tabsharani

 

The email industry's latest buyout happened a few days ago and we witnessed a highly reputable email monitoring and deliverability reputation company Pivotal Veracity agree to buyout terms from Unica, an Email Service Provider with  gunpowder. Unica is attempting to be a "one-stop shop" for marketers that utilize their suite of services and with the acquisition of Pivotal Veracity, Unica may have completed it’s mission of also providing email reputation and deliverability services to its core clients.

What amazes me about this transaction is that Pivotal Veracity was really making strides in becoming a thought-leader in this small field,  and was competing closely with archrival ReturnPath.  I believe the buyout could potentially alienate a number ESP's from eventually partnering with Pivotal Veracity.  As a result of the buyout, ESPs will be very cautious in their approach to working with Pivotal Veracity. However, this by no means diminishes Pivotal Veracity's tremendous accomplishment and a huge congratulations is in order to everyone associated with Pivotal Veracity including but not limited to Deirdre Baird, Michelle Eichner, Jordan Cohen and Len Schnyder.  It certainly looks like Pivotal Veracity accomplished their goal and executed on their exit strategy perfectly.  For many successful companies, "stage five" constitutes an exit strategy of some kind. This process usually happens after key executives and members of the board vote on such an initiative.  I just think that stage five might have come a bit early for Pivotal Veracity.

All evidence seems to show that the real winner in this transaction is ReturnPath.  ReturnPath no doubt also has an exit strategy, but they appear unwilling to divulge a strategy or partner with an ESP at this point, given their unique leadership position and respected voice in the industry.  Although Pivotal Veracity has many well spoken and thought provoking leaders on their staff, I think ReturnPath and their consummate staff are the real superheroes here.  From  Stephanie Miller, the passionate and relentless email advocate to the outspoken J.D. Falk, whose innate knowledge of email technology and deliverability illuminates us all.  Then, of course, there is the self-proclaimed spamfighter himself, Neil Schwartzman. Without a doubt, ReturnPath’s luminaries saturate the industry with reliable and balanced messaging every time.

Furthermore, with leading services in place that are more robust than ever (such as the latest from Sender Score outlined here by Spencer Kollas), and definitive plans in place for maximizing and monitoring domain reputation for senders, the future looks promising.  When you take emails bright future into account, it appears that  ReturnPath is poised for many quarters of strong growth.  I don’t want to sound like an analyst here, but I really think ReturnPath has what it takes to raise the bar for the entire email community and further develop its existing reputation services.

With these developments, ESPs will now will look to ReturnPath as the consummate leader in the email reputation monitoring space and see one fewer rival, one fewer choice to make.  Senders and ESPs will find that ReturnPath is the only high level and sovereign conduit for stellar email deliverability monitoring and reputation.  The allure of ReturnPath is its stout independent position in our space (a positon that only those in our space truly appreciate.) Certainly Matt Blumberg, George Bilbrey and their hardworking crew can now navigate the email reputation landscape exclusively.

At some point in the future, I’m sure ReturnPath also has an exit strategy in mind and that strategy is not for us to surmise. I would venture to guess that as the industry continues to mature and consolidate, ReturnPath may consider filing for an IPO, especially as we see continued consolidation in this space.   I think what matters most is to enjoy the exciting journey that ReturnPath is paving for our industry.  We now have two choices: we can either watch or we can help them build a company of which we can all be proud of. 

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

The preference center is a highly intriguing, untapped resource for Email Marketers and could be used in a variety of ways.  It has the potential to establish critical ground rules with both newfound and dormant subscribers.  When subscribers are awarded mission control to continuously manage their preferences, the amount of information that marketers can glean is truly unlimited.  During last week’s Email Insider Summit, Greg Cangialosi spoke about a “master preference center” which, in essence, puts the subscriber in complete control of different online messaging streams.  Additionally, subscribers would be able to divulge their social media and mobile credentials within the preference center.   By adding social media and mobile to the preference center, users garner an added benefit: they can proactively engage with your subscribers within the “online” marketing channel they prefer.  As Jeannie Mullen points out in her recent Web 3.0 column, subscribers now receive emails through a plethora of online channels. Optimizing the preference center will make for a more satisfying subscriber experience.

Balanced Online Messaging

When it comes to email, we understand the basics. How often do you, the user, wish to receive emails?  What email format do you prefer? However, to get to the next level of online messaging, we need to move beyond basic queries and product of interest questions.  The key to reaching the next level lies in adhering to your subscribers’ wishes and preserving a “balance of online messaging.”  To achieve the goal of balanced messaging, give subscribers social media and mobile preferences as well.  For example, subscribers may prefer to utilize Twitter for customer service inquiries, while other subscribers may choose to receive more “entertaining” messaging via Facebook.  I envision a preference center design, where subscribers can populate a matrix of radio buttons or checkboxes and choose the type of messaging and preferred online channel.  Tweetdeck's latest version is a good example, where the "notifications" tab allows clients to choose the level of detail on each type of message stream.  Perhaps in the future, we'll see more formal messaging dispatched through email instead, which underscores why the vision of a master preference center is so significant.    We’ve learned that subscribers engage with brands through various different online and mobile channels.  Engaging them through their preferred method will pique their interest and ultimately entice them to orbit your brand successfully.

Mini Surveys in the Preference Center

If we continue to explore the potential of a well-structured preference center, we will discover a way that marketers can induce a higher level of participation, intimacy and engagement.  To do this, marketers can devise a “mini survey” (just one or two questions) that updates regularly with relevant and timely questions.  The survey would be integrated into preference center itself.  By adding a mini survey to poll your subscribers, you’ll increase the attributes for a given record in a database, and thereby allow future messaging that is more detailed relevant to your subscribers’ needs and interests.  We learned last week that FedEx has 144 attributes associated with each subscriber.  FedEx utilizes this wealth of information to tailor their marketing to the needs of individual subscribers, which will increase intimacy and engagement.

When your subscribers develop their profiles via the "mini survey," they become "active" subscribers.  In doing so, they give you permission to ameliorate their experience with you even more.  By asking leading questions that will result in a more profound relationship, you will allow your subscribers to modify their behavior and attain a greater degree of engagement with your brand.  Leading questions can invoke a higher level of brand awareness, and the use of time sensitive questions will enable you to increase that level of engagement with your brand sooner rather than later.  For instance, pose questions such as, "How likely are you to purchase from us the holiday season?"  Or, something along the lines of "Do you anticipate making a purchase from use within the next 90 days?"  (Make sure to phrase questions in a sensitive manner, so that they will not alienate your subscribers!)  Questions like these effectively create a sense of urgency and may give you greater insight as to what types of promotions you can successfully "initiate" with each active subscriber.  

Detailed Information: A Prerequisite for Customized, Detailed Messaging

Now, if a newly active subscriber has been dormant since immediately after answering your leading questions, you should take steps to re-engage that subscriber.  When this situation arises, you have a valid excuse to send a re-engaging or “reminder” email with a single survey question that will lead the subscriber to a preference center landing page, without necessarily prompting a smattering of complaints.  A strategy you might consider is utilizing  the preference center as the landing page of choice when formulating re-engagement campaigns. In that case, installing follow up questions there can help you in your mission to engage subscribers.  Using these methods should significantly reduce your spam complaints in the event that the subscriber chooses to end your relationship.

Inevitably, preference centers will get more sophisticated over time, and as Morgan Stewart of ExactTarget quoted Amazon’s chief scientist, who opined, “The future of marketing is based on how we enhance the digital experience of a subscriber and provide more detailed messaging by asking the subscriber for more detailed information.”  You may wonder, “How can I ask my subscribers for more detailed information without seeming intrusive and drawing spam complaints?”  If that is your question, preference centers hold the key to a successful mission with your subscribers. 

 Fred Tabsharani

 Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

So, what are the benefits to a solid domain-based reputation?  What are the ramifications of a suspect domain? Will an ESP still send for me if my domain reputation is less than stellar? How will the actions of my subscribers influence my deliverability?  Is my domain portable? 

The dawn of domain-based reputation is upon us and legitimate senders everywhere are celebrating, albeit soberly.   In a recent Pivotal Veracity report, many leading ISPs have begun to employ domain-based reputation as an effective technique of measuring a sender’s reputation by computing assorted spam-related variables and, perhaps more importantly, subscriber engagement actions.

As Chris Wheeler eloquently breaks it down for us here, ISPs currently base a user’s reputation at the IP level and have only recently begun to show that email authentication as an enabler for domain reputation, along with positive subscriber actions, will increase deliverability to the inbox.  Domain based reputation is a boon for the deliverability landscape and is rife with opportunity for ISPs, ESPs, reputation services, and marketers alike.

If and when ISPs choose to compute your sending reputation, this computation will become your domain score.  For now, let’s call it The Domain Reputation Index (DRI).   This index will essentially be a quick reference to show how ESPs and reputation organizations will track your deliverability and subscriber engagement. Simply put, the DRI will become part of your domain DNA.

Domain Portability: A Boon for Marketers and ESPs  

For example, marketers who have a high DRI index (relative to industry benchmarks) will be able to leverage this score, and (assuming their domain name is portable) essentially have ESPs clamoring for their business. When a switch by a marketer occurs, ESPs will naturally gravitate toward DRI, much like a client with a good credit score who intends to find the best interest rate possible on a mortgage.  

In a recent comment on a Clickz article, Jim Fenton comments that  “Portability is but one of the advantages of domain-based reputation, but the extent to which reputation is portable between ESPs depends on how the respective ESPs work.  Some ESPs send as, for example, newsletter.brandname.com, which would be portable if brandname decided to switch. But others send as brandname.espname.com, which would not be portable. The extent to which the brand wants to be portable needs to be considered when choosing ESPs.” 

ESPs, on the other hand, have much to gain from the DRI windfall.  Properly managed, ESPs can manage preconditions to their clients that meet or exceed better than average DRI scores.  ESPs also have the ability to dictate the level of portability for domains.  This decision is ultimately that of the domain owner, but ESPs may help influence new customer adoption of the portable domains by offering “portability” as a standard or premium service.  The rising popularity of domain portability raises an important question: Should all domains be portable?

Furthermore, ESPs that have large domain sets (many clients) will have a “front row seat” to look into their senders’ DRI, and will  prescribe methods for developing a higher reputation score.  Clients of ESPs will adhere to stricter policy controls dictated by ISPs, knowing that their DRI is at risk if they continue to send suspect mail. DRI is also in danger when recipient engagement metrics fall below industry benchmarks.   When suspect senders realize that their DRI is below average and ISPs have shown them little mercy on delivering to the inbox, suspect senders will have no choice but to proactively engage or seize operations with ESPs.  The dilemma for ESPs is whether or not to maintain a relationship with marginal senders who are well paying, conscientious clients. Each ESP will have to decide where to draw the line on this type of client..   ESPs who stay vigilant will have the most to gain.

 It’s 1849 for Reputation Services

The Domain-Reputation Index (DRI) may be governed by independent 3^rd party entities who will aggregate data of millions of domains.  Companies that could represent such an index may include, but are not limited to, Pivotal Veracity, ReturnPath, GoodMail,  Email Data Source, ESPC, and others.  I did not mention DNS because that system is taxed already.  All of these companies may consider entering into the attractive DRI market, and establishing benchmark DRI thresholds that define, good, bad, and marginal sending behavior.  Among the various other reputation tools in their arsenal would be the ability to certify and publish millions of DRI domain records for the email industry.  Such a collection of records would cause these companies to become the most trusted throughout the industry.  

Think of the big three credit reporting agencies, and then compare them to these email reputation-based organizations.  These entities will have rich warehouses of deliverability and engagement data that will span many verticals and benchmarks.  We’re already seeing traces of this with the latest Pivotal Veracity report on your email engagement index, which is based on multiple sources that are aggregated monthly across authenticated domains.  These reputation agencies will develop a hierarchy of domain reputation building blocks and become a trusted resource as leading advocates for legitimate senders.   

As the email technology and deliverability landscape evolves in a direction that prioritizes individual consumer engagement, marketers must create more relevant communications than ever before to ensure they get into the inbox, creating better ROI.  Certainly, a deliverability index is imminent, whether we call it a DRI, or another name.  Organizations such as Pivotal Veracity, ReturnPath, EEC, MAAWG, CAUCE, or ESPC should begin to consider forming governing bodies focused on Domain Reputation.  The development of the domain reputation index is beneficial to the continued development of  legitimate senders. 

It’s truly going to be interesting to see how the ISPs choose to develop a moniker for the concept of Domain Reputation.  Hopefully, this blog has answered some questions about the need for the domain reputation index in the email industry.  In theory, there are lots of advantages; however, the advent of DRI also gives rise to many more challenging questions.  How will domain-squatting or “domain look-alike” have an effect on DRI?  Do you limit the number of domains a corporate entity would require?  One would think that an effective DRI would exist by rolling up these “sets of domains” for larger corporate entities and developing “one” corporate DRI.  What would that entail? What about domain limits or regulation?  

Also, there is disagreement about whether or not we need further regulation by limiting how many domains a corporate entity would have, given the versatility and the importance on branding.  Since a registry (which currently assigns and maintains domains) does not have the necessary systems in place to measure the use of a domain, what body, (government, or non-government) would be the likely prevailing body? 

 

All of these questions will need to be pondered as the use of domain reputation in the email industry continues to unfold.  Undoubtedly, there will be bumps in the road along the way that need to be worked out.  Nevertheless, it is important to support the continuing development of the domain reputation index because, in the end, your reputation is all that you really have.

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

What is a good open (render) rate?  What percentage of my emails were actually delivered to the inbox?  How many clicks should I get on an average email mailing?  What is the average unsubscribe rate for each mailing?  Who are my Social Influencers?  Are my subscribers engaged? 

 

Most questions that savvy marketers share are more complex than these, and over at the Email Measurement and Accuracy group, Luke Glasner and John Caldwell have assembled a team to foster universal metrics and develop protocol to be congruent across all ESPs and enterprises.

Applicable measurement benchmarks that are universally accepted within the email industry are a challenge, however it is my belief that the future of quality email measurement is quite possibly rooted in what I call a "Quality Email Score" for each type of mailing.  Let me explain...

Consider this:

Once an identity or definition of each email measurement is universally accepted and recognized, a specific measure of an email campaign may be based on a 4 or 5 digit integer.  This integer would be rendered after (x) number of hours (72, for example), for a decent sized sampling.  This Quality Email Score (QES) is plausible if we include a grouping of pertinent and well recognized email measurements as variables for each mailing.

Such measurements may include, but are not limited to an Open Rate (Render rate), CTR, Domain Reputation, Inbox Delivery Rate, Spam Complaints, Frequency (list fatigue), Relevance, Engagement, List Quality, Content, Conversions, ROI, Subscriber Influence, AOV, etc., or any subset of these measurements.  The proposal involves innovative leaders from the email and analytics industries facilitating, and then determining, a cumulative email algorithm for each deployment based on which variables are being tested.  In other words, marketers would assume one score for each email deployment. We can also break this down into a Quality Score for each particular measurement, then mix and match. 

Each of these measurements will be weighted differently within the algorithm; this process may also include factoring in different types of industries.

Once the campaign is deployed, the Quality Email Score can be compiled and generated.  Since every email campaign would be treated differently, each type of email stream then may warrant its own algorithm.  This could mean that each type of email stream would have a different integer ranking.  For example, confirmation emails might have a simple two digit score since fewer measurements will be calculated, while transactional streams with social media integration will display a three digit score.  B2B campaigns may be computed differently than B2C; once again, this difference would be based on the measurement groupings within each campaign.  However, both could still utilize the 4-digit integer. 

Once calculated by your ESP, a detailed summary of each score or SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis will be produced and issued to each marketer with commentary, so that improvements can be made on subsequent deployments.  Remember, The Quality Email Score may be broken down further by assessing a score for each measurement.  Another example could include a Quality Score for each segmented list, which could be used to determine a “what if scenario.”  MailChimp offers a general idea of this with its “list activity score.”  The major benefit here would be a simplified method of testing before, during, and after each deployment, as well as an easy way to predict return and subscriber engagement. 

These various scores will then be a part of an ongoing analysis of each marketer in that it would allow ESPs to further assess the history of a potential client.  For example, since not all ESPs measure deliverability the same way, this method invokes congruency across all ESPs.  In this way, it is similar to a credit score.  The goal, of course, is to give each marketer enough feedback in the SWOT evaluation so that future scheduled mailings will be more relevant and produce better overall engagement, eventually earning a higher score.  The initial goal is to create a core group of measurements that will be universally accepted by each ESP.

This idea is certainly an uphill climb, and is merely an endeavor to encourage thoughts on what “standardized” email measurement can grow to be, whether it’s as simple as four core measurements or as complex as 50. I understand that there are several milestones to accomplish before this idea can even seriously be considered, but I thought I’d put it out there for now to encourage a possible future vision.

Fred Tabsharani