I suspect that some email broadcast vendors (ESPs and MTA providers) struggle with how much inbox placement data to make transparent to their clients (marketers).  On one hand, the data is extremely valuable, and it can help marketers and senders understand subscriber satisfaction and optimize inbox placement. After all, if you don't reach the inbox, you don't earn a response. 

On the other hand, perhaps sometimes having more data just raises more questions - and questions are a cost center for vendors.

One ESP that serves the small to mid-market is making inbox deliverability data available - with very good results.  I spoke with Natalie Nagele at Newsberry about how using this data gives her more ammunition to help marketers follow best practices.

"For one of our clients, we saw a wide variance in open rates across message types. When we exposed the inbox placement data, we realized that some of the marketing messages were simply not reaching the inbox at all," she says.

On the same day a targeted email tips newsletter would achieve 100% inbox rates to domestic ISPs, while a generic even promotion would deliver only 60-80%, she says.  The IP reputation was the same based on Sender Score, but clearly there is a difference.  "After a month of data review, we concluded that the event promotions were less welcome due to content and low user engagement - as measured by higher complaints," she says.

Nagele worked with the client to improve targeting and relevancy. They asked subscribers to update their email preferences and reconfirmed those in the marketing segment. "The list size for that segment shrank dramatically," she reports, "But open rates went up, as did inbox placement rates. Today, they are delivering between 96-100% across all of their campaigns for domestic ISPs. Those event marketing emails directly represent revenues based on attendance, which went up when people started receiving emails."

Newsberry makes this data available to all clients with a dedicated IP address.  "We've found that senders who use and appreciate this data are also willing and interested in taking responsibility for their email delivery," she says.  The inbox deliverability tools are included in our monthly plan price, available to small and medium businesses. "They don't need to spend enterprise-level funds to view important delivery data," Nagele says.

Newsberry doesn't offer the inbox delivery monitoring tools (or a dedicated IP address) for those with files smaller than 10,000 subscribers. "Based on conversations with Return Path and our own experience, we've identified 10,000 as a good point where you start building a reputation significant to ISPs," she says.

Of course, if the file is 10K strong, but the mailing frequency is low, that also can harm a sender's ability to build a reputation.  "The ideal candidates for a dedicated IP are those with 10,000 or more subscribers who send multiple times a month. We even recommend they split their list and send multiple times per week instead of one campaign (when possible)," she says.

"Those with smaller lists can still depend on Newberry’s overall reputation to maintain high inbox rates," she adds.  Most marketers understand that they don't have the volume (or budget) for a dedicated IP, but it still makes them nervous to be on a shared IP. There is a loss of control over their destiny.  Certainly, some ESPs have a better reputation with the ISPs, and some vet their clients better than others (and fire them when they exhibit poor sending practices).  Until we have widespread domain reputation and authentication, senders must be vigilant to understand who is in their Shared IP neighborhood and thus affecting their reputation and inbox placement.

Many senders (large and small) consider the bounce rate "good enough" for tracking delivery.  Of course, bounce rate is not the same as inbox placement, and the two numbers are not necessarily indicative of each other, although they tend to track together.  "The way we see it, it's all about your return on investment and time for email marketing," Nagele says.

"If you have inbox rates of 60%, consider yourself throwing 40% of your money and time out the window. Bounces will only show you if you are blocked, at which point your list is already in bad shape. Inbox placement helps you identify much deeper issues where marketers can take direct action," she advises.

For example, she says, a customer learned through tracking inbox results that their single-image emails were getting blocked by Yahoo! and Hotmail (among others). When they changed the text to image ratio, the inbox rates went up, which in turn increased open rates and subscriber response.  "How would they have known that if they were only tracking bounces?" she asks.

All senders must take responsibility for their own sender reputation. A good ESP will provide technical support, solid infrastructure and guidance on best practices. But no ESP can make up for poor list hygiene, weak sourcing, high frequency or low relevancy.  Sender reputation is a partnership between the email broadcast vendor and the marketer. 

"While we think overall IP reputation is really important too," Nagele says, "A good reputation does not guarantee delivery. Getting as much information as possible is the best way to ensure your money is well spent."

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

Authentication has a problem:  While it's a good thing, it's not an urgent thing for email marketers. 

It has a small impact on an individual marketer's deliverability, but in aggregate, it's one of the things that marketers can do to truly help ISPs and the receiver community fight spam and reduce messaging abuse.

As my colleague J.D. Falk, who is a recognized messaging abuse expert, wrote in the Return Path blog this week, "Yet in the background, seemingly far from anything that makes end users excited, email is slowly becoming more secure as authentication -- primarily DKIM -- grows."

J.D. cites a number of cool new features from Gmail in particular that are based on DKIM authentication. Like the key icon feature for PayPal and the new one-click unsubscribe option. Those "shiny new benefits" (as he calls them) may be the incentive that marketers need to stop waiting and start authenticating across all email message types.

What is your status on authentication?  Still procrastinating?  What do you need to see in terms of benefits in order to participate in this important industry movement?

Please comment below or on J.D.'s post the Return Path blog - and I'll follow up here to share any insights.

I spent much of May and June on the road in eight cities with the Online Marketing Summit
(www.onlinemarketingsummit.com) Whistle Stop tour.   It was great to get out and meet with so many smart digital marketers.  

Here’s a few observations/trends:

1. Email rocks.  It’s still a very important part of the online marketing mix.  In fact, email this year has been elevated to a sort of celebrity status.  Lots of executive attention due to the low cost and high return.  It’s the biggest revenue driver in the toolkit. 

2. No amount of celebrity can trump the realities of lean budgets.  Marketing budgets do not seem to be growing, but the investment continues to be strong with email and search, where the immediate revenue and return is.    For email, there isn’t so much innovation as preservation: Preserving our jobs and our team, growing our database assets, tying the various eCRM elements together (even loosely) and maintaining our  list hygiene and deliverability budgets.    

3. Top challenges around email are still deliverability and breaking through the clutter (relevancy.)    Especially with tight budgets. Marketers need immediate return.

4. There is still a LOT of confusion between “delivered” as reported by most ESP systems (which is really your bounce rate) and inbox deliverability (which is if your message actually reaches the inbox and can earn a response).  This something that I blogged about last month (ADD LINK).  It is also that I’m working on with a group of industry volunteers through the DMA’s Email Experience Council.  We want to publish new definitions of these terms to eliminate confusion and ease benchmarking comparisons.  (Email me if you want to participate!  We’d love to have you.)

5. Data integration is finally starting to be possible, but too many marketers, even big brands, can’t do it efficiently.   The promise of truly end-to-end eCRM is very attractive.  But remains elusive for most.  A lesson for all of us in the vendor community – we just have to make this easier, more automated and tied to stronger analytics.

6. My session was about how complaint and deliverability data are essential parts of a good email marketing optimization effort.   You can’t make good decisions about your program if you don’t have access to inbox deliverability data.  Period.  Think about what happens when you see erratic or suddenly poor campaign results.  What do we do?  We blame the creative.  “Oh, that offer must have been terrible.” Or “Gee, subscribers must hate blue backgrounds.”  Actually, what is likely is that the messages never reached the inbox – they were blocked by the ISPs like Yahoo! or Gmail or Orange due to a weak sender reputation or an infrastructure glitch.  If you don’t have access to inbox deliverability data, ask us or your ESP for it.

If you would like a copy of the handout from my session, just email me at stephanie[dot]miller@returnpath[dot]net.

By Stephanie Miller

VP, Global Market Development

The new chairman of the US Federal Trade Commission took office with the Obama administration in January. However, Chairman Jon Leibowitz and many of his key deputies have been with the agency for years, so much of the work continues seamlessly. In a DMA/Email Experience Council webinar last week, Peder Magee, Esq., FTC Privacy and Theft attorney in the Bureau of Consumer Protection said, "The FTC is bipartisan and works on consensus. Typically things are done with unanimous vote. We've had a fair amount of consistency from where we've been."

For now, that stance seems to suggest that the self regulation of the industry is working. Magee noted that some concepts "transcend the medium" when it comes to self regulation. "Transparency, prominent notice, use of personal data, and providing the ability to opt out easily" all are areas the FTC continues to watch....

--MORE--

http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2009/05/ftc-comfortable-with-email-reg.php

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Here we are in the worst economy of our professional lives, and yet every day in my inbox I see marketers making it too hard for subscribers to act on email messages.  If you want to keep your revenue at a lackluster level this quarter, try some of these "sales prevention" strategies – all examples taken from real live messages in our inboxes this week. 

Don’t laugh.  I mean no disrespect.  There are many reasons why marketers don’t always follow best practices. Some of them are legitimate.  However, these practices will take a toll on your sender reputation, inbox deliverability and response rates.  So if you are going to do it anyway, at least know the risks involved.

Review this list of "don'ts" and if you see yourself doing any of these, please reconsider.  Be sure you aren’t actually preventing sales from happening!

(NOTE:  These practices are not good.  They will prevent sales from happening!  Avoid them!)

1.  Put everything into an image.  That way, your subscribers can’t see anything when the email opens, or find the call to action.

2. Hide the links.  Use really soft colors or don’t call them out with highlight colors or underlines. Oh, and don’t put any links on your images, either.

3. Clutter up the template with lots of sidebar offers and secondary news.   Every touch point is an opportunity, so be sure to tell your ENTIRE story in every message.  Don’t let your subscribers focus on the main message, instead, distract them or confuse them into inaction.

4. Make the unsubscribe link in the footer impossible to find. Put it in a really small font.  Bury it in a paragraph of other type.  Call it some other thing, like “Feedback” or “Preferences.”

5. Don’t bother to sign up for ISP complaint feedback loops – easily available from most major North American ISPs.  And if you do get that data, don’t worry about actually using it to clean your file of complainers.  Consider the complainers a bunch of whiners, and don’t review the data to see if perhaps a particular source or type of customer is most likely to complain.  Keep your mailing pace and content the same, even if you realize that it may be untenable to some of your subscribers.

6. Segmentation is for expensive channels.  Even though response and revenue will increase dramatically when targeted messages are sent to key segments, it’s cheap and easy to just blast the whole file.  Take a short term view of this – we need revenue now, and who cares that in future our file will be less valuable.

7. Send a welcome message using a different brand than where the subscriber signed up (e.g.: the corporate brand), and do a lot of heavy selling in it.    Many new subscribers have little knowledge of the products or benefits, so push hard on the sales message even though they have no basis for which to evaluate.

8. Be vague about frequency and message type.  Subscribers who are in the dark about how often you send and what types of messages to expect will surely be delighted to get a bunch of mail about things they didn’t want or expect.  Although that confusion drives higher complaints for many other brands, which can depress response for all your mail, your brand is well enough known to withstand it.

9. Pull out any old file you can find – even inquiries from five years ago.  You don’t (legally - in the U.S) need permission to mail them, so blast away an introductory letter and see if you can dig up a few new leads.    A lot of these messages will bounce, many others will complain and that will have a negative impact on your ability to deliver to your main file.  Most all of them will have forgotten that they ever were interested in your company.  But hey, it’s pretty cheap to send to them, so might as well try it, even if it prevents more engaged subscribers from seeing the message because your deliverability dropped and everything went to bulk mail. 

10. In this economy, people are bargain hunting. So anything on sale – whether it’s relevant or not to the interests or past purchases of the subscriber – send to everyone on the file.  Sales are good service.

11. If you have a catalog or offline list which doesn’t  include email addresses, append email address to this file and send them a note welcoming them to the email family.    Assume that just because these customers have a relationship with you that they want to receive email promotions.  We might piss them off enough to prevent their buying from our catalogs anymore, but at least our email file will have grown.

Just typing out this list makes me blush with embarrassment and shame for our industry.  I know there is a lot of pressure to optimize short term revenue, especially in a recession.  But I do care about the email channel and our long term viability in the marketing mix.  I know you do, too.  Let's all stay focused on the goal:  great subscriber experiences that build brands, drive response and delight customers.

Was just reading a post from my my friend Laura Atkins and halfway through it found myself shaking my head in disbelief at those marketers who approved the notion that sending more email in this down economy would make up for their CFO's revenue loses.

Her post:

------

I get a lot of email. On a typical day I will get close to 2000 messages across my various work and personal accounts. About 60 - 70% of that mail is spam and caught by spamassassin or my mta filters and moved into mailboxes that I check once a day for false positives. About 15 - 10% of the remaining mail is from various discussion lists, and those are all sorted into their own mailboxes so I can keep conversations straight. The rest of the email is divided between mail directly to me and various commercial lists I have opted in to.

Up until recently, the commercial mail was all just dumped into my inbox. Nothing special happened to it it just sat there until I could read it. Recently, however, the volume of commercial mail has exploded, swamping my inbox. After losing track of some critical issues, I sat down and fixed my mail filters. Now, all my commercial and marketing mail (ie, mail I signed up for with tagged addresses) is now being filtered into its own mailbox.

There are two takeaways here.

One: the volume of commercial mail has increased significantly. Companies who were previously mailing me once a month are now mailing me twice a week. This contributed to the clutter and resulted in me pushing all commercial mail out of my inbox. I don’t think this increase is limited to just my mailbox, I believe many recipients are seeing an increase in commercial and marketing email, to the point where they’re finding it difficult to keep up with it all.

Two: Recipients have a threshold over which too much email makes their mailbox less usable. Once this threshold is reached they will take steps to change that. In my case, I can just filter all the commercial email as I use tagged addresses for all my signups. In other cases, they may start unsubscribing from all the mail cluttering their mailbox or blocking senders.

It is the tragedy of the commons demonstrated on a small scale.

-------

Laura, I am right there with you this past few weeks. I have found myself unsubscribing more and more these past few weeks from many of the past normally welcomed hotel deal emails I get due to my extensive traveling. I have seen as many as 2-3 more emails than normal from many of the hotel chains trying to get me to spend money with them or take one of their fabulous vacation deal. To be honest, I found myself not wanting to unsubscribe originally, but really needed to because I was tired of spending my mornings deleting emails that truly were not meeting my expectations or what I signed up for. I found in too many cases that some hotels chains were changing my frequency and content preferences without my knowledge or permission and began to send me non-relevant emails. I did email one of those top hotel chains asking what the deal was, but all I got in return was a permanent (hard) bounce saying the email address didn't exist. They never said in their email that I couldn't reply to them.

Maybe we all need a refresher in a post that our friend Stephanie Miller did back in July 2008 on how more email isn't always the best thing when it comes to making revenue. How sending more email can cause lost in revenue instead of making it.

Is anyone else seeing what Laura is? Increase in commercial email as the economy is going down?

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

I hope that you will engage me on a debate here.

Are marketers in charge of email marketing?  Or subscribers?  Or the ISPs/Receivers?  No fair saying, "Yes, they all are, Stephanie."  What if you had to choose?

Consider these examples:

- Complaints are the most important factor in Sender Reputation.  That would suggest the subscriber (who can click the Report Spam button thoughtfully or gleefully or ignorant of its repercussions) has all the power.  Yet, marketers can lower complaints by metering frequency and improving relevancy.  Which suggests that they are in control.

- The subscriber grants permission, but then ignores the marketer's messages.  If the marketer removes this subscriber from the file for lack of activity, has the marketer abused the permission grant?

- The ISPs can use data from a small subset of a marketer's activity and infer from it that all other actions are good or bad, and make blocking decisions based on that.  That would suggest that ISPs are in the power seat. 

- ISPs manage a tremendous amount of data and rarely look at specifci brands or domains.  Since they don't know the senders they block or deliver, then the data speaks for marketers.  That puts the marketer back in charge, since they control the levers of their own data.

Check out this article and 2008 email stats from our friend Stephanie Miller of Return Path which reminds us about the reality of email marketing.

1. Email delivers $57 for every $1 spent. (Source: The DMA, 2008)
2. Spam now accounts for 90-95% of all email sent. (Source:  Forrester Research, "Secret to Email Delivery" 2008) 
3. While 70% of marketers collect enough data at sign up/registration, only 25% of them actually use it. (Source: Return Path Subscriber Experience Study, 2008)

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.san&art_aid=97408

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

As some of you know, I was at the Email Insider Summit (EIS) this past week in Utah and again the industry has taken another brave approach and let the consumers speak to the marketers directly.

The panel of moms at the EIS gave a top researcher of consumer media habits (and us) their ideas about online consumption and how email plays a part in their lives. Of course there were some surprising outcomes of how they use email and the Internet in their daily lives. Just like at Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) 2008 San Francisco event with "older/wiser" panelist and at the May 20008 EIS with the panel of college students, we heard how the consumer wanted to be sent email, see information within that email, and how they want to use that information.

What I heard was some interesting things from these busy mom's

• Many only read their email 1-2 times a week. Why? No time...
• They tend to take the first few minutes of their computer time when they can get it and use it to "clean" out their junk first. If they don't recognize it, out it goes. "First thing I do when I open my email is just delete a bunch of stuff."
• When asked what ONE thing they would take to a deserted island with them? All answered some sort of communications device like a Blackberry or iPhone. This was a surprising answer from some of those who said they don't want to have to email all day, but seems to me this is one way they want to Triage their email.
• They don't want to have to give up all their information for a simple coupon. One mom said she was tricked in thinking she would just get $10 dollars off if she just filled out a simple form, but instead the form kept making her jump through hoops to get the $10 dollars off.
• Some complained that advertisers lie about what sort of offers mom's will get if they sign up. They don't get what they were told they would get or most of the time aren't sure what they are signing up for
• Some mom's said they are loyal to companies who make it simple. “Send me an offer and let me purchase. Don’t have time to navigate, jump through hoops. Make it easy.” 
• Some get so much email that they turn on their PC at 6AM and don't stop using it till bedtime late at night. Some have it in the kitchen which makes it more accessible.
• The delete button is used more often than any other.
• Marketers send to much email. "It's like my inbox is another kid, calling Mom, Mom, Mom. All this noise, it just blends in. I can't keep up, I don't even try." 

There is much more that was said, but overall my take away was that

• They are paranoid about email and with good reason. They don't trust email.
• Mom's want information that's easy to digest or understand. Give them enough information to make an informed quick decision.
• Give them the upfront costs or process to get something. Don't make it hard.
• Consistent theme of the moms was the issue of time -- they don't have any. Kids and other scheduling items are the important things (which I agree). Make it simple.
• Because people are on the defensive when it comes to email, they will go on their first instinct or impressions when reviewing their email which is why they delete and or question why they signed up for this IMMEDIATELY when they look at it. Is there value in this email?
• Email to them as consumers is more of an inconvenience than helpful
• Time is of the essence when it comes to email.
• The computer, ever be its intent to be helpful, is as one mom described it a "time sucker" instead 

Side thought:

On the last day, my best friend Stephanie Ann Miller of Return Path moderated a panel titled "A Call to Arms: How You Can Truly Move the Needle on Email". There, she suggested that marketers often deliver messages they want to convey, rather than what a consumer is seeking. She was quoted as stating "We're giving them broccoli when what they really want is pizza." Much of email marketing is still not relevant to--and not targeted at--consumers". I think points DIRECTLY to what these moms are trying to tell us. Good thought and mom/kid comparison SAM!

As a side joke, does anyone else here now see a new demographic or segmentation titled BUSY MOM in the frequency box? I know my wife could use it.

-Dennis

Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

At the risk of getting tomatoes tossed at me as the token marketer here, I took a contrary assessment of the MailChimp study that Dennis highlighted here.  The study shows that emailing to an old file boosted complaints and unsubscribe requests, and depressed open and click through rates.

But that does'st tell the whole story.  If I was a marketer only focused on response results, I’d look at this data another way.  I’d say,  “Hey – I got 7,688 clicks on the “bad” list and only 6,925 clicks on the “good” list.  I doubled my bounty! So mailing the bad list was totally worth it!  Let’s do that again.  And again! Party on!”

Many marketers sstruggle with this sort of situation.  We know the best practice is to not email old files. We know the best practice is to refrain from emailing that extra campaign this week.  However, at the same time we are under pressure to drive short term revenue.  “The numbers are down, just send another email campaign.”    And it works – the extra email campaign drives revenue.

In this case, not following best practices generated a lot of traffic.  The MailChimp study doesn’t say if the old file clicks converted at the same rate, but let’s assume that they were at least comparable.  There was some gold in that there old file.  Of course there was a lot of shiny rocks, too. 

So, if you are going to break the rules, be smart about it and make sure you have enough data to make informed business decisions.  You need to know if the risk of complaints or brand degradation from annoying your subscribers outweighs the short term revenue.   Consider these protections and optimization strategies.

1.  Make sure you mail from a distinct IP address, and quarantine the data to be sure it’s spam-trap free.
2. MailChimp could never assess the value of this old file if they didn’t have the deliverability data.  You must seed these mailings if you want to make good decisions about future mailings.  Deliverability is a marathon not a sprint.  Track as many campaigns as you can.
3. Finding the gold in this file meant mailing the entire file. But next time, consider only emailing those who opened. Or be sure to remove records that have not responded in 12 months.  Keep the old file risk to a minimum.
4. Track the results all the way through to the bottom line.  In this example, if the clicks from the old file didn’t return actual purchases/conversions, then they are worth a lot less.  So when you do your ROI, be sure to use the numbers that are most meaningful for your business.

Although sometimes we feel like marketing strategy is equivalent to holding up a torch and peering in the dark, murky back room of a cave, in email marketing we have enough data to make good business decisions.  Shame on us if we don’t take full advantage.

Perhaps like everyone else (but who cares about them - we all care most about ourselves!) email marketers have a lot of pressure on us right now.  The global recession, the tightening of spending by consumers, jobs being eliminated… there is a lot of stress in the macro-economic environment today.  Plus, there is stress in our micro-worlds… no one outside the email marketing world really understands what we do, how complex email marketing is or why it matters that we send subscribers messages that they love.

I think it's time to stand up for our subscribers - despite the pressures.  We must advocate for them – because the only way to increase revenues from email marketing is to create great subscriber experiences.

The most important thing to do is actively manage your inbox deliverability.  You can't earn a response if you can't be found or seen properly.  Plus, whatever improves deliverability invariably improves response - because it's all based on subscrciber experience.

Here's another idea you can try now, to give yourself and your program a bit of a boost, and to help you get through the 2009 planning

.       Improve Relevancy in Small Steps.  We all know about the behaviour triggers that help make our programs more relevant.  Basically, you change your contact strategy and cadence to send more email when subscribers are more inclined to buy.  This is effective, but can require additional resources or technology.   What to do if you don’t have those resources or technology?  A great way to improve your programme without new technology or data integration is to think about a content strategy that improves the value of your email messages over time.  Adding value to just some of your messages, even SOME of the time, will improve response to ALL your messages.   So instead of just sending promotions over and over, replace some of them with messages that feel more custom, even if they are still sent to large segments of your file.  Insert a few tips in your next promotion or business newsletter.  Host a poll.  Say “thank you” to everyone who bought this past quarter.  Send a no-strings-attached whitepaper to everyone who visited the website last month.  Encourage everyone who uses product “a” to take a free trial of product “b.”  Help subscribers network with each other.

I know I'm suggesting doing more with existing resources and time. But frankly, in these economic times, what choice do we have?  Now more than ever, we email marketers are being asked to deliver more than ever – higher revenue, larger subscriber files, more active lists and longer lifetime value.

What do you think?

I recently wrote a whitepaper for the Email Experience Council (EEC) with some GREAT contributions from Michelle Eichner of Pivotal Veracity, Andy Goldman of Ogilvy, John Alessi of SocketLabs, Tim Chase of Goodmail Systems, Chris Harris of Blackbaud, Stephanie Miller of Return Path, and Aaron Smith of Smith-Harmon on How to Revive a Stale Email List And Why You Should Avoid "Soft Touch" List Cleaning Services. I did this based on a question that was raised on a call where a certain college, who is a major sender of email, wanted to use a list that hadn't been touched in OVER two (2) years.

In this paper we discuss:

• Why and when the issue comes up
• The right way to re-active old subscribers
• Deal with subscriptions issues
• How to keep your list clean on-going
• Remove inactive or unemotionally subscribed
• Some warnings/problems about third party list cleaners

Check out the opening blog posting for the paper... http://blog.emailexperience.org/2008/08/how_to_revive_a_stale_email_li.html

Yes, you have to buy it unless you a member of the EEC, but hey...what's $49.00 for a paper compared to 20o miLLion EMaiL ADDRESS oN a Cd for $99?

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

I'm on the road lately and find that some marketers I meet are surprised to learn how much marketing there is in email deliverability. I'd love the feedback from all you non-marketing types here!

Here's my view:  The marketing piece - all the things you do as a marketer to ensure a great subscriber experience like great content, relevant promotions, strong calls to action, effective design, frequency, permission, privacy, triggered messages, transactions -- is often more essential to great deliverability than the technical aspects like infrastructure, reverse DNS and authentication. Of course, you need both to reach the inbox.

Here's why the marketing plays such a key role - because complaints are such a key factor in determining your deliverability. ISPs view complaints as a proxy for how relevant and welcome your subscribers find your messages. Relevant messages have low complaint scores, the key factor in Sender Reputation and good deliverability. Irrelevant or too frequent messages have a lot of complaints - lots of subscribers clicking the "this is spam button."

No matter how good your infrastructure, privacy policy or even the practices of your email delivery vendor, if you want to consistently reach the inbox - and earn a response - you need to keep complaints at a minimum, and apply both marketing and technical brains to creating great subscriber experiences.\

So it's just as true that the IT folks can't blame us marketers and we can't blame them (or our ESPs). The great, important weight of deliverability is a shared responsibility - and opportunity!

Dennis asked me to post about something near and dear to my heart - determine the ROI of email marketing and making the case for best practices.  So often, marketers find themselves in a very difficult business position - they know that what the CFO or CMO is asking them to do is not a best practice, but it's really difficult to argue when the C-suite says, "We need more revenue, do it!"

I would say that the reason we don't win those arguments is because we don't effectively make a business case for why best practices matter.  It's not "free" or "cheap" to send out that extra mailing this week or use that old file that no one knows the source of or "buy" a list or blast one set of subscribers with a new type of message. Practices that even good marketers do all the time.

We all know that creating great subscriber experiences is key to driving even more revenue and higher ROI.  Yet, in order to do that, we need resources.  Those resources are technology and human -- and often involve expertise that we don't have resident in our marketing departments.  How can we do the data integration, segmentation strategy, list management, tracking and analysis, deliverability management and compelling creative when we barely have enough resources to get the messages out the door each week?

The first way to make a business case is to show the actual costs of sending more messages than are relevant and valuable to subscribers. The short term revenue boost from sending "just one more" email blast this month has a real long term negative effect. 

Your CFO (or CMO or CEO) thinks that sending more messages is simply the cost of broadcasting them - the CPM we pay to our email delivery vendor.  Actually, the real costs include the costs of replacing all those lost via increased unsubscribe requests, complaints (clicks on the This is Spam button) and fatigue.  It also includes the cost of unrealized future revenue from those lost subscribers.  And it includes a "brand slam" factor based on negative brand impression and lower loyalty.  When we do the math on an sample mailing of just one million records, we show that a mailing that the CFO thought cost around $1,000 actually cost us $800,000 That is real revenue!  And a real missed opportunity for future sales.

The second way to make a business case is by showing how deliverability failure -- caused primarily by things like overmailing, low relevancy and poor list hygiene  -- can have a dramatic effect on the bottom line. Most permission-based email marketers who do not actively manage their Sender Reputation and deliverability can expect that up to 20% of their messages never reach the inbox.  You can hit "send" all you want.  But some of those messages will get blocked by the ISPs and receivers because of a low Sender Reputation.  The good news is that all of the factors that go into a great Sender Reputation (and high inbox deliverability) are the same things that smart email marketers do to drive higher response and revenue.  Like keeping the list clean, honoring permission grants, processing bounces properly, removing complainers (those who click the This is Spam button) from your file and making sure your content is well constructed.  Sender Reputation is all about how your messages are valued. If your messages are welcome by most subscribers most of the time, your Sender Reputation will be good.

How do you know? First, get more info on your own Sender Reputation: ww.senderscore.org  or www.dnsstuff.com or check out some of the posts here on this blog.

And use this simple calculator to understand the impact of poor deliverability on the ROI of your program: http://www.returnpath.net/senderscore/calculator/

Okay, you may be thinking.  "Focus on the customer."  That sounds reasonable.  Yet, if this is so obvious, why don't we do it? Well, I think it's because email marketing works too well. It's easy to get stuck in the status quo:  blasting away at our subscriber files with irrelevant messages and hoping that it resonates with enough subscribers each time to make our number.

We may feel like victims of our own success, but frankly, I think we can do better.  It's just a matter of making the right business case.

Oh that I had a nickel for every time I get asked this question. I suppose it's natural to want to go for the quick fix - in email marketing and in life!

The good news is that several lists do exist. The bad news is that nearly every effective direct marketing word can be found on these lists. The good news is that It isn't really about a list of words per se, it's how the filters see a constantly evolving combinations of words get used that trigger the filters.

We always suggest that senders write great marketing copy for their offer, marketing goals, brand and audience, and then test their creative for current triggers. You can do this via some free or nearly free tools like: Campaign Monitor, Litmus, Preview My Email and Mail Chimp.

You could also send test campaigns to your own accounts at various email clients and check each one for rendering and inbox delivery. Or, use a Campaign Preview or Spam Filter Monitor tool from your ESP or deliverability service provider (full disclosure: my company, Return Path, offers one).

Often, the flagged words include things like "new", "on sale", "whitepaper", "click here"; or the unsubscribe link or snail mail address. Since these words appear in almost all emails (for response and also for CAN-SPAM compliance), the spam filters pick it up as a trend with spam.

Out of fear of tripping the filters, some marketers try to alter words and content that have a lot to do with their business and what they have to offer. This is usually not necessary. For each campaign, once you see which words are flagged, just adjust or use synonyms or change the combinations.

That said, there are some obvious words to watch ..here is a list that is pretty good. http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter_phrases.htm

Here's also a bunch of keywords identified by SpamAssassin themselves: http://spamassassin.apache.org/tests_3_1_x.html

But again, it could make you mad trying to stay away from all those words... best to focus on your marketing goals first, write great copy that engages and sells, and then be sure to test your emails prior to sending.

I am asked frequently, "What is the right frequency for email marketing?"  (pun intended).

The answer, like everything in marketing is, "It depends."  But in email marketing, it depends on the SUBSCRIBER interests, not the marketer's interests (the fact that these two interests should always be a aligned is such a fundamental truth of good marketing that I won't even mention it further).

Frequency is a pretty important factor in deliverability - as it affects complaint rates and also is affected by the volume blocking at some ISPs/receivers.  I think of frequency as a factor not just of absolute touches, but of cadence.

Depending on your business and products, the right frequency for a segment of subscribers can vary from four messages in six months to four messages in four days.  If your prospects make a decision in a few days, make sure they have the info they need.   If the decision is top of mind or life changing, a daily frequency can be welcome - but test that and be cautious.  Too much email in short time periods will increase complaints, hurting the deliverability of all the email you send.  Listen to customer service and your sales team - they likely know the optimal cadence and frequency for helping without being annoying. Let that inform the number and speed of your email marketing touchpoints.

Segmentation - even simple segmentation - will also boost revenue by sending more email when the subscriber is in market and less when they are not.  That is less email overall, which is a good thing for subscriber satisfaction and the complaint rates of most marketing programs. While it's often true that when response goes up, complaints also go up, I believe that marketers can keep the former on the rise and the latter on the decline through segmentation.

Even wide segmentation slices can greatly simplify the email marketing message challenge, and boost performance.  Not all subscribers are the same - you may have new buyers (never before purchased from your company), active buyers (customers who are currently using one of your products) and lapsed buyers.   Tailor the message for each, featuring the information you know they need to make a decision.  Present the information in a compelling and credible way, and you can shorten the research phase for them (and close deals faster).  Further segmentation can be done by product line or category, and by allowing prospects to select information that is most interesting to them (what we call self segmentation).

The Internet has made the sale cycle longer - as prospects research online and learn about more options faster and more efficiently.  Segmentation is a way to nurture your file for opportunities - and improve all your response metrics, deliverability included.

It's not hard to do effective segmentation - but not doing it can cost a fortune in lost opportunity.

Stephanie Miller

VP, Strategic Services

Return Path Inc.