This week has been all about SOPA and PIPA, two anti-piracy bills that, if passed, could have a huge impact on the digital industry.  This article from CNN Money has all the details.

On Wednesday, many websites protested these bills by shutting down for the day.  Wikipedia, Google, Wordpress and Craigslist were among the sites that went dark to make a statement.

Use the comment section below to share your thoughts about SOPA and PIPA and how your business will be impacted should these bills become law.

The eec Speakers Bureau continues its efforts to evangelize email marketing and industry thought leaders within our membership.

The next major launch, the re-launch of the eec's Expert Channel on YouTube, will also take place in conjunction with the Email Evolution Conference in February.  During the launch, qualified attendees will have the opportunity to film a segment and the channel will be promoted during the conference and via traditional and social media. For more information, contact Luke Glasner and Lana McGilvray.

A new initiative to ensure blogs across our membership are posted on a much more regular basis is also underway.  If you are a member and have a relevant blog, article or whitepaper you would like to see posted here on the eec blog, we are offering Compendium access to those members interested in promoting relevant eec content.  Please send your request for a Compendium account to Ali Swerdlow, or you can submit your content to her or to Dori Thompson.  Please ensure that blog submissions are well-edited and non-promotional to acclerate acceptance.

We are actively ramping up our social channels, and if you have not already done so, please activate your participation in the eec’s new Facebook page as we will be posting across all of our social channels.

- eec Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee co-chairs Lana McGilvray and Dori Thompson

The DMA UK’s Email Marketing Council maintains a blog featuring Council members writing about a wide range of topics relating to email marketing.

This month’s highlights:

• Strategic approaches can be overlooked in an effort to get the next email out the door.  Here are five realistic resolutions for an email marketer.
• The world of email is constantly changing both from the sender and the recipient’s perspective.  However, there are some basics that don't change.
• Because of the way consumers interact with brands via email and social media, it's important for digital marketers to effectively integrate their marketing channels.

eec Platinum Sponsor, StrongMail, today released the the results of its “2012 Marketing Trends” survey which provides unique insight into how businesses plan to budget and prioritize marketing dollars in the New Year.  Conducted in November 2011, 938 business leaders participated in the global survey.
 
Survey Highlights

• 92% plan to increase or maintain marketing spend in 2012
• 60% plan to increase email marketing budget; 54% social media; 37% mobile/search (tied)
• 45% cite data integration as primary email marketing challenge in 2012; 43% lack of resources/staff; 40% content management
• 48% cite increasing subscriber engagement as top 2012 email marketing initiative; 44% improving segmentation/targeting; 32% growing opt-in email list
• 68% plan to integrate email marketing with social media; 45% with mobile; 17% with search

Marketing Budgets Remain Healthy; Email and Social Media Attract Increased Investment
Email marketing (60%) and social media (54%) were cited as the top two areas for increased marketing spend. According to the survey, 51% of businesses plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2011, and another 41% plan to maintain current levels.  Only 8% of respondents plan to decrease marketing budgets, which is a slight increase over the 7% reported in last year's survey. Other areas of increased spend included mobile and search, which are tied at 37%. Direct mail (28%) and tradeshows (23%) are top targets for decreased spend.
 
Subscriber Engagement is Top Email Marketing Priority; Data Integration is Top Challenge
The top email marketing initiatives for 2012 are increasing subscriber engagement (48%), improving segmentation and targeting (44%) and growing opt-in email lists (32%). Data integration is key to achieving these top priorities, but it is also identified as the primary email marketing challenge in 2012 (45%), followed by lack of resources (43%) and content management (40%). These opposing data points represent an opportunity for email service providers to fill the gap with relevant services.
 
Marketers Focus on Integrating Email Marketing and Social Media
More than two-thirds of business plan to integrate social media and email 2012, versus 44% for mobile and email. The strong ties between email marketing and social media are also emphasized by the 47% of businesses that plan to increase investment in using email to drive growth in their social media channels, such as corporate Facebook and Twitter pages.  The next popular areas of investment are batch promotional (44%) and newsletter (39%) programs, followed by real-time lifecycle marketing programs (35%), with an emphasis on winback (68%) and welcome (59%) programs.
 
Marketers Unclear on Value of Mobile Marketing
More than a third of businesses plan to increase their investment in mobile marketing programs such as mobile apps (30%) and SMS alerts (20%), but there is a lack of consensus on the primaryvalue of this emerging channel.  Building customer and loyalty (35%) was identified as the top benefit, followed by expanded reach (29%) and awareness building (28%). However, this is offset by a similar percentage still trying to figure it out (24%) and a smaller percentage citing no value at all (7%).
 
"While email marketing leads the pack in terms of increased of investment in 2012, the data also reveals that marketers need to overcome key challenges around data integration and resource constraints," said Christopher Marriott, vice president of agency services at StrongMail. "Whether managing and optimizing existing email marketing programs or enabling integration with social media and mobile, there is a real opportunity for full-service email marketing providers like StrongMail to help companies get the most out of their interactive marketing investments in 2012."
 
Survey Data
Full survey data is available at: www.strongmail.com/2012marketsurvey

April Mullen is one of the star members of the eec's Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable. We asked her to share some of her enthusiasm for the eec and the Roundtable by answering a few questions:

Why do you volunteer with the DMA/eec Cross Channel Roundtable?
It is getting increasingly difficult in today’s marketplace to stand out against the competition during a consumer’s considered purchase cycle and marketers are deeply challenged by this.  In the Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable, we’re really thinking of how several channels can interact to create a consistent and positive experience for consumers to overcome the challenges.  If a handful of marketers can gain valuable insight from what the Roundtable is doing, then everything we’ve put into it has been worthwhile.

How do you use the info you gain from your DMA/eec experiences, either internally with your company or for your personal career goals?
My experience with the eec has afforded me opportunities to regularly gain outside perspectives and allowed me to apply fresh ideas to my own marketing programs. 

What is your advice for someone looking to get active with a Roundtable?
Don’t hesitate to get involved in industry organizations, specifically small groups like the eec Roundtables.  The networking and knowledge you will gain from your experiences will help you grow as a marketing professional.  Plus, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you’re helping to shape the future of email marketing. 

April Mullen
Branding and Marketing Communications Analyst – Email Management
Scottrade

Thanks you for your dedication to the eec, April!

If you're an eec member and you're interested in joining one of our Roundtables, please contact Ali - ali@emailexperience.org.

Wow, that hour went fast!  The estimable Shaun Brown, partner, nNovation LLP, a law firm based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, spoke about the new Canadian privacy legislation – referred to as Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL – an acronym that many speak like the word “castle”) – that has many email marketers confused on compliance requirements and timing.  Listen to the November 10th webinar (and we highly recommend it) for free here.

Brown compared CASL to something many of us already know – the U.S. CAN-SPAM law of 2003.   Bottom line:  In many areas – permission, notice, coverage and risk – CASL is much broader.

• Scope:  CASL covers not just anti-spam, but also anti-malware, anti-hacking, and through related amendments to other legislation, control of content and misleading information, as well as privacy of personally identifiable information (PII) (harvesting, dictionary attacks).
• Application/Jurisdiction:  CASL covers any message sent from or accessed by a computer in Canada (regardless of where the sender is located).  We are talking about all electronic messaging – email, instant messaging, SMS, social – plus anything new that comes along.  (Fax and voice are covered by Canadian do no call regulations.)
  1. Note that there is no minimum number of messages. So sending one message is enough to put you under jurisdiction of the law.
• Coverage:  CASL applies to commercial activity, defined pretty broadly.  For example, Brown said in the webinar, if you are promoting a person who normally promotes a product or service or business opportunity -  even if you are not specifically promoting that product, service or business opportunity in the message -  then your message is covered.  
  1. Note also that any message sent to seek consent is considered commercial – so you can’t send a request for consent. There are no exceptions for research studies, for example. “This will have to play out in the courts in deciding what is ‘commercial,’” Brown said.  “I would not be surprised if this was challenged.” As the law is enforced, Brown says, we will have more guidance on what is considered “commercial” under the Act.

Compliance with the anti-spam aspects of CASL encompasses three broad categories:

1. Prior consent – defined as either express or implied.  Both are acceptable for all situations and of equal value.  (Implied does expire, though.)
   
   a.    Express: Must include clear notice and the provision of a set of prescribed info from subscribers when providing consent.   The owner or any authorized user of the email address must give the consent.
   b.    Implied:  The Act deems implied consent when there is an existing business relationship (e.g.: a customer who has purchased in the past two years, or if there is a contract or a subscription which has been active in the past two years.)
   c.    Once consent is implied (e.g.: a purchase), you generally have two years to send messages in compliance (or obtain an express opt in).  An express consent never expires, and is valid until the individual withdrawals consent.
2. Information
   
   a.    Must include contact information for the sender and the subscriber.  It is not clear in the law what this must include.
   b.    Regulations are expected to define this further.
3. Unsubscribe
   
   a.    An unsubscribe opportunity must be provided in all messaging and be available for  60 days post delivery.
   b.    Unsubscribe requests must have no cost, and use the same means by which the message was sent (unless impractical), either via replyto: or a link.
   c.    Must be processed “without delay” (and within 10 days) with no messages sent after the request.  This aspect may also be defined further with regulation.  “Senders must be able to demonstrate that you put forth a best effort to act on unsubscribe requests quickly, with the intent to stop messages,” Brown advises.

CASL was created with both public and private enforcement opportunity.  The Canadian Radio & Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is charged with enforcement.  This is a civil enforcement agency, there are no criminal provisions.  There is a private right of action available to any individual impacted.

Right now, the law is not in force.  It was passed in December 2010 and regulations were published for comments this past summer. The Government is still working through those comments (there were many!).  No timetable is published for a second set of regulations; however Brown expects something by early 2012.   The government is also setting up a Spam Reporting Center, which will be a website to gather evidence and monitor trends as well as provide consumer education.


In preparation for enforcement, Brown recommends three primary areas for marketers and senders:

1. Check your lists. Do you have consent – and evidence of consent?  The burden is on the sender to prove consent.
2. Check location of subscribers where possible.  The law doesn’t care what the domain of the address is, or if the sender has a clue where the recipient is.  If the message is received on a computer in Canada then it applies.  If a sender does make an attempt to gather this data, This may be a factor in exercising the due diligence defense, where no one can be charged if they have shown due diligence to comply.  “Be sure you have a business objective in NOT complying with the Canadian legislation,” Brown says.  Note that reconfirmation of some permission grants may be necessary.
3. Watch for regulations re: content of messages. The regulations will clarify the information required when obtaining consent as well as when sending a message.

As with any legislation, the devil is in the details.  The Email Experience Council recommends that you have legal counsel review the law and determine the next best steps for your organization. In the webinar, Brown gave his thoughts on some key business issues and applications:

• Liability of service providers.  Telecom/ISPs are generally going to be exempt from liability under the anti-spam provisions where they merely provide the telecommunications service allowing the message to be delivered. However, it’s not clear if this applies to email delivery service providers.  “If you are merely providing a ‘do it yourself’ service and the customer manages the list and the unsubscribe, then it may be that the delivery provider is covered under the Telco exemption,” Brown says.  “This may be different if you offer a full service offering.”
• Ownership of the message, for example, placing ads in an editorial newsletter or providing the name of the email delivery vendor in the message itself is not directly addressed in the law.  “In my view it doesn’t make sense from any perspective to say that the ESP is sending on your behalf, for example identifying the ESP in the message,” Brown says.  There were a number of comments on this as the regulations were reviewed this past summer, and Brown hopes that some clarity will be offered in future revisions.
  1. This brings out the question of where an agency or service provider is vulnerable by trusting their client.  If the agency or ESP sends unsubscribe data to the sender, is the agency responsible if the client doesn’t take action?  “The law is broad, so if you are aiding or causing company to avoid compliance, then you are potentially responsible.  The way to manage risks like this is to inform your customers of their obligations, make sure you have the appropriate language in your agreements, and ensure the relationship agreements are clear who is taking responsibility for managing unsubscribes requests,” Brown advises.
• Transactional messages.  The legislation does not refer to “transactional” messages.   The law does cover some types of messages that could be considered transactional (e.g.: service notices or warranty information).    The law states that these types of messages require an opt out.  “This somewhat confuses the issue, by listing out messages that, in many cases, are likely not commercial electronic messages and therefore not covered by the Act to begin with,” Brown explained.
•   Point of Sale.  What if you ask verbally for consent at the POS?  Brown says that the original draft regulations from the summer declare that consent must besought in writing only.    However, this may be removed based on the amount of comments against it. “I would like to think that if you are entering this into a system form, and there is a date stamp, that this would meet the evidentiary burden under CASL,” he says.
  
  1. There is no legal requirement to send a follow up message, but “It’s always good idea to remind people of their subscription and why they have provided consent.  It’s more of a relationship issue than a compliance issue,” Brown says.
•  Is list rental dead?   A properly compiled permission based list is quite valuable, and the law does not forbid the rental of them.  “It’s not dead, but CASL places a higher onus on list owners and senders to make sure it’s done properly,” Brown says.
  1. The act of appending is not covered under CASL. It is likely covered under privacy laws, particularly if you are making changes to PII footprint without consent.  There may be some situations where appending data is allowed under CASL.   If you have a business relationship – e.g. purchases in the past year – then this append may be in compliance with the CASL legislation.
• Mobile Access.  No one anticipates that certain one-off situations will be covered under CASL (e.g.: a US citizen goes to a coffee shop in Toronto and checks his Gmail account).  Brown expects that the government also did not intend to the law to apply to Blackberry users worldwide when accessing email (e.g., through RIM servers located in Canada).   “I think the intention is not to apply the legislation so broadly,” he said.  It’s not clear how data centers for companies that are not Canadian based will be treated – although Brown expects that they will need to comply just as if the entire company was based in Canada. Messages sent from those centers will be “Canadian” under this law.

Many thanks to Shaun Brown and nNovation LLP for an excellent presentation and generous review of so many audience questions. nNovation LLP is a pre-eminent Canadian law firm that advises companies, industry associations and other private and public sector parties in their business relationships and practices, and in connection with a broad range of Canadian regulatory regimes. With several years of experience both in the public and private sectors, Shaun’s practice focuses on emarketing, ecommerce, privacy, and access to information.   

Thanks also to the eec's Deliverability & Compliance Roundtable, led by Matt Rausenberger of Return Path and Dennis Dayman of Eloqua, for sponsoring and organizing this event.

If you are not an Email Experience Council member, please join us for free access to these kinds of event and resources.  If you are a member and would like to join one of our member Roundtables (committees), please email Ali.


- Stephanie Miller
eec Co-Chair

The DMA UK’s Email Marketing Council maintains a blog featuring Council members writing about a wide range of topics relating to email marketing.

This month’s highlights:

• To ensure that ISPs view your emails as “nice” rather than “naughty" this holiday season here are six factors that impact sender reputation.
• A look at spam traps - what they are and how to avoid them.
• A contentious issue in email marketing - should you (and if so, when) retire an email address?

We exist in a best-practices driven industry. Email marketing has many variables and it's a constantly changing landscape with ISPs and regulations changing rules on us on a consistent basis. We crave the tried-and-true rule, the best practice known to deliver the best result, the sure thing.

We have plenty to learn and use, to be sure! Search for "email marketing best practices" in Google, and you’ll find far more than you could ever digest among the search results.

Best practices for using social tools in email, however, are yet to be clearly defined. In fact, given the pace of change in social media, with constant Facebook updates and new technologies like Google+, these so-called best practices might forever elude us.

Those proven techniques we can turn to with confidence, however, are common sense and come from the email marketing world. Today I offer you four common-sense tips for using social tools that will help you maximize your results: 1) Offer great content. 2) Be very, very clear. 3) Test everything. 4) Go both ways.

Offer Great Content

No matter how much the email marketing industry changes, this common-sense tip will always be. And when you're seeking sharing to social, your content has to be so great that people want to and willingly share it. That idea isn't new. We've strived for "share worthy" content in the past. We had another name for it was all, because what we want back then was a forward. Now we want a share. Great content leads to greater use of your social media links by your subscribers who want to tell their network about your email.

Be Very, Very Clear

When you include social media buttons, be sure to ask for the action you want and let the person know why they should click. A plain, standalone Facebook button will garner only so many clicks compared to a Facebook button with words that ask for action and offer a benefit: "Like us on Facebook for fabulous fan pricing." Everybody knows what a Facebook button is, but not why they should click on it. Ditto for Twitter, LinkedIn and any other social media buttons.

In addition, words help you to be clear on the purpose of a button. A button for sharing is not the same as a button for liking, after all.  

Also be sure to put the buttons where they make the most sense...for your subscribers. Figure out when/where in your email your subscribers are ready to take action. This you might only be able to determine by testing, which takes us to...

Test Everything

Is there a magic spot for your "like" button that will generate the highest number of new Facebook fans? Probably. Can I tell you where that is within your email? No. As far as best practices on technical details when using social media tools, these can only be determined by you. If I could sit here and tell you placing the Facebook icon in the lower right corner will drive the most "likes" on your Facebook wall, I would. But I can't. It all depends. Testing is the only way to optimize placement of social media tools like a Facebook button for your particular business and audience. In fact, testing is the only way to optimize every aspect of your social media tools, from where you put the links to which links you offer. So test. Everything.

Go Both Ways

Yes, using email to drive subscribers to your social media sites or to share is smart marketing. Also be sure your email to social works as your social to email, as well. Your social sites can promote your email subscriptions and offer email signup forms.

And One Last Note...

Even when integrated as part of your marketing matrix and going both ways, email and social differ. And taking a customer relationship into the social realm can certainly alter customer expectations. Once you’ve crossed the social media line, you might need to revisit the tone and personality of your email communications. You've taken the relationship to a new level of intimacy via social channels, and using a corporate or more formal tone in your email marketing might run counter to the warm fuzzies a subscriber now feels for you.

Following these four tips should help you determine your own best practices for using social tools in email...meaning those practices which work best for you and your goals.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

The eec hosted a webinar this month highlighting the role of video in email.  Luke Glasner of Red Pill Email moderated and Justin Foster of LiveClicker and Rory Carlyle of Carlyle, Inc. contributed to the panel discussion.  The audience was engaged throughout as we learned about video email best practices, case studies, and technical requirements to achieve strong deliverability with video in email.  Download the webinar recording.

Top 10 takeaways from video email webinar:

1.  Video is a growing trend that email marketers need to pay attention to.  Video viewing time increased 26% year-over-year in the USA from August 2010 to August 2011.  180 million people, or 86% of the US Internet audience, viewed online video in August of 2011, according to comScore.  Marketers are taking notice, with video ad spend projected to increase 22% from 2011 to 2012 (eMarketer).  An August 2011 report by Forrester Research showed online video was perceived as the channel most poised to increase in effectiveness over the next three years by interactive marketers, behind only mobile marketing and created social media.

2.  Using video for video's sake is not a good enough reason to use video with email.  Marketers need to decide whether the application of video creates additional value for subscribers before deciding to employ this tactic.  Simply using video because it is "cool" is not a good enough reason; marketers need to first consider whether the storytelling power of video can be used to more effectively entertain, engage, or excite subscribers, build trust, stir the imagination, or persuade the subscriber to take an action vs. other techniques.

3.  Video is proven to be an effective tactic to boost email campaign performance, but only when best practices are applied.  Simply using the word "video" in the subject line of email has been demonstrated to help achieve increases in open rates of up to 20% vs. an identical message body without the word "video" in the subject line.  Video in email examples illustrated a 200% increase in CTR in a controlled A/B split in one example, 67% higher CTR v. average campaigns in another.  Still, if best practices are not used, video can annoy subscribers, distance marketers from subscribers, and even drive up negative metrics like unsubscribe rates.

4.  Video does not alter the fundamental rules of smart email email marketing. Relevance still rules.  Marketers need to think about who to engage with video; use of past clickthrough data, web analytics data, or customer demographic data are all possible sources of valuable targeting information.  Knowing which subscribers have watched video in the past can be especially helpful when developing segments for video email.

5.  Video production does not need to be difficult or expensive; marketers can make it so.  There are several techniques that can be used to minimize the amount of time required to generate videos for campaigns, such as: 1) use existing content developed in-house or by partners (just make sure you have permission) 2) If your brand is tolerant, carefully assess the production values you really need to accomplish the goal of the campaign.  It is possible to create HD video content in-house, with a full camera setup and set, for $4,000 - $5,000.  Hiring a professional or an agency is also an option, but many marketers make the mistake of thinking that video has to be expensive, when in reality video is only expensive when the marketer's production requirements make it so.

6.  Choosing which technique to use for leveraging video "in" email is a creative and cost decision.  Period.  There are benefits and drawbacks of each method of including video in email.  Concerns over deliverability, campaign send speed, or mail client support should not dictate the decision of "in" or "with" because technologies exist in the market to detect what email client a subscriber is using, and then automatically serve a compatible version of the video asset, animated .GIF video, or still image directly in the email based on what the mail client supports.  If a marketer has a creative aversion to using any of these creative treatments, it is easy to exclude the use of that treatment without having to cut the list.  Further, deliverability concerns can be alleviated simply by employing best practices in coding email messages.

7.  If using video in email, internal education is key.  Not all mail clients support full video in email, including Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010.  If you use one of these programs at your place of work, consider setting internal expectations so that stakeholders know what to expect.  While video in email support is not yet consistent across mail clients, as of June 2011 an "average" B2C marketer could expect to deliver "full" video in email to approximately 37% of the list, animated .GIF video to 50% of the list, and static image to 13% of the list.  Your results will vary based on your list's composition.

8.  Email marketers need to treat video as more than a "one off" experiment.  Since we belong to a metrics-focused industry, many email marketers choose to "one off" test video in email to see if it "works."  This is a terrible mistake because it does not allow the marketer to understand what about the video is driving results.  There are many different types of video content; some videos will work better than others.  Therefore, it is important when testing video to at minimum test over a series of campaigns (I recommend at least 3).  Only by looking at video in the context of several campaigns will marketers begin to discover what works and doesn't work for the brand.

9.  Know the lead times involved.  Most email marketers have not used video with email before.  If it's your first time, consider planning the video a full two months prior to the campaign launch.  Since video requires different techniques and tools to create and encode, try to give yourself a buffer and a Plan B far in advance.  If you already have access to video content, plan on adding an additional three to four hours per campaign for any testing or troubleshooting.

10.  Follow best practices.  Among them: 1) set the subscriber's expectation for video by calling the video out in the subject line (this is especially important for animated .GIF videos, which auto-play)  2) Use a "play" button in the video "player" to signal the subscriber can play the video.  3) Highlight in the email what "happens" when the video is clicked.  Because watching a video requires the subscriber to invest his scarce time, it is important to communicate the value you are promising up-front to prevent disappointment 4) Serve a "right click to play" message as the first frame of the video for Hotmail users (because player controls aren't supported yet in Hotmail) 5) Keep animated .GIF videos to 30 seconds or less.  Since animated .GIF videos don't support sound, they are most effective as "teaser" content.

BONUS TAKEAWAY:  Be clear with your campaign goals up front and do not over-hype or over-promise results.  Video email is still new and best practices are still emerging.  In my experience, the marketers that have gone on to be most successful with video email are those who took the time to learn about video in email, took the time to educate their managers and peers, and treated video email as an "experiment."  If you promise the moon, you'd at least better be able to jump off the ground.

With the calendar rolling quickly toward November and only a few months left before we see you all at the Email Evolution Conference 2012, we have a few exciting items we’d like to share on behalf of the entire Speakers Bureau.

First, if you haven’t participated in the eec Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee, or if you've considered joining, here’s what you should know. The Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee’s mission is to evangelize email as a key business driver for brands and publishers. It’s purposefully broad because we all know it’s a multi-channel world in which email has many applications that drive business. 

To fulfill our mission we place approved eec speakers across shows we manage, we serve as a speaker clearinghouse for organizations seeking qualified email marketing experts for their events and forums and we bring great content to external audiences. Qualifying to speak is easy; members can simply visit the Speakers Bureau page.

Second our working plan for 2012. During 2012, the Committee will execute against three key goals. We are currently planning how to best deliver and would love more involvement if anything strikes a chord.

1. We will begin utilizing social groups including LinkedIn and Facebook to grow our speakers bureau following, participation and engagement.
2. We will revamp our YouTube Channel so that the latest thought-leadership across our membership is available to communities interested in accessing our content.
3. We will expand our eec blog activity to get more and better content out to external audiences.

These three goals were selected in addition to the everyday work the committee does of reviewing and programming content across events and programs. If you have other ideas, please let us know by posting in the comments section below.

- Dori Thompson & Lana McGilvray

The Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable met on September 6, 2011.  Here's a brief overview of the meeting and the group's projects.

Attendees:

• Colleen Petitt, Aprimo - Roundtable co-chair
• Dwight Sholes, Sholes LLC - Roundtable co-chair
• Adam Cooke, Garagefly
• April Mullen, Scottrade
• Jeanette Brown, Informz

The team has completed the publication of our first project the “Cross Channel Marketing Guide.” This report provides ten guiding principles of a successful cross-channel marketing program and includes specific goals and actions your organization can apply to build a thriving program. We finalized group input in this call and the Guide is available in the eec Research Store.

Our next topic was our next project. The team determined that we would first like to create a survey of digital marketers to determine where they are in the continuum of integrated cross-channel marketing. In our meeting on 10/4 we will begin to work on this project.

The group also decided that we would like to subsequently develop a cross-channel audit that will allow marketers to assess where their strengths and growth opportunities are within cross-channel marketing.  Marketers will then be able to leverage the guide to improve and enhance their capabilities in each area. We will discuss this further in our 10/4 meeting and determine how we can use the survey to develop the audit.

Interested in joining the Roundtable?  Email Ali - aswerdlow@the-dma.org.

Mobile email...it's more than just your emails delivered via a smartphone. To succeed as email marketers on the little screen (as opposed to the big screen), we have to change our mindset.

We have to have a Mobile Mentality.

That means everything we do in email we do while considering mobile at the same time. Everything, including:

- Subscription process
- From name
- Subject line
- Copywriting
- Offer
- Headline
- Banner
- Design
- Graphics
- Call to action
- Buttons
- Frequency
- Testing
- Design
- Rendering
- Links
- Landing page
- Metrics and benchmarks
- Reporting

In particular, pay attention to your From address, subject line and headlines. These are the items subscribers are going to initially react to when viewing emails on their mobile devices (and in that order), so it’s important the appropriate message is relayed in the space provided to achieve the most optimal results. An underlying message here, pardon the pun, is that the message must take priority over the design on a mobile device. You won’t have the screen space to wow with pretty pictures or glitzy graphics. When it’s mobile, you must wow with words.

Your From address must make sense. If you haven’t yet tackled the From conundrum, do it now. The From address is the first item people look at when deciding whether or not to open an email. Yours needs to be clear and compelling. Would someone rather open an email from donotreply@yourdomain.com? Or Frank@yourdomain.com? It matters on the PC, but it might matter more on the mobile.

Keep subject lines short-er. You’re used to writing short subject lines for your emails, right? Now you get to write even shorter ones so they’ll be attention grabbing on the small screen. If the first few words of your subject line are just the buildup to the last few words of your subject line, then the buildup might be all the subscriber sees on their iPhone or Droid. Make those few words count by making them words that hook, interest and compel the subscriber.

The headline is now the headliner. Graphics aren’t going to cut it on the mobile device if you’re relying on them to earn you a click through and conversion. Plus you’re dealing with an even shorter attention span. Your headline is doing even heavier lifting than before. In fact, it might be all they see if they decide to open your email! It absolutely must compel the reader to scroll down the email for more.

You're not limited by mobile, only required to think differently. Your email rendered on a smartphone or PDA is not an end in and of itself, only one step in the process you ultimately hope will lead to a conversion. Where does one go from an email? To a landing page...
 
Mobile-friendly emails need mobile-friendly landing pages. Otherwise, you might lose that hard-won click through. Some might wait until in front of a computer before clicking through, but if someone wants to take action while on the go, we want to make it easy for them by designing a landing page that works on a mobile device. With that in mind, here are a few tips for making landing pages as mobile friendly as your emails.

Design your landing page for mobile with the same mindset as your email design, with narrower widths and a single column.

Be brief when it comes to copy...and make that copy count. Consider using two landing pages, the first which is optimized for mobile and says the bare minimum and a second they can click through to if they need more information.

Make everything shorter: headlines, line lengths, chunks of text. As with the email, think bare minimum to get your point made and your prospect clicking.

Avoid using Flash. Replace it with HTML5 or JavaScript. For best results across devices, our design team recommends building landing pages optimized for mobile as straight HTML, CSS, and minor amounts of Java.

Design for fingers, not mice. Make links and buttons a size that is easy to read and easy to navigate with a finger. You don’t want someone getting frustrated when they are trying to click through and the button or link is too small! Also remember there’s you don’t get a hover state for a touch screen on a smart phone.

If you have a form, ask for as little as possible. Ask only for an email address if you can.

You must test the rendering of both your emails and your landing pages.  You can put countless hours into the From line, subject line, headline and design of that email so it will have maximum impact on a mobile device, but if you don’t test and check how it renders in real life on all kinds of devices, all your work could be for naught. Ditto for your landing page. Test, tweak, test again.

Also remember the growing use of iPads and other tablet PCs. Smaller than a laptop, bigger than a smartphone, it’s hard to know yet where these computing devices fit into the scheme of things, how people will use them, and the best way to market to people who use them.  Don’t overlook them, however.  Being prepared for these smaller devices is only one part of having a Mobile Mentality.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

The Big Australian Report signals a significant rise in the volume of marketing messages sent to Australian consumers. For example, Australian companies sent three times as many mobile messages, ten times as many social messages and one third more emails last financial year in comparison to the previous financial year. Despite increased use of mobile and social channels, email marketing remains the central and most used channel, and the highest volume by a considerable margin. Of the marketers surveyed, not surprisingly 100% are sending emails to customers and members.

Also noteworthy is the massive increase in the number of companies using data to understand and segment their customers, ensuring that marketing messages are increasingly targeted and relevant to their audience.

Other key findings include:

• More than three quarters (77%) of large Australian companies are using social networks for lifecycle marketing activities, with 63% “significantly increasing” focus on social, primarily with Facebook and Twitter.
• Nearly one in three (30%) companies is sending mobile messages to customers, primarily alerts such as reminders and confirmations. There was also a 300% increase in number of emails opened on mobile devices.
• For the first time, the majority (62%) of Australian companies are tailoring their campaigns and messages according to preferences or behavior of their customers.
• As companies better understand their customers, they have moved from broadcast to targeted campaigns meaning that emails are sent to fewer people for whom the message is relevant. For example, the number of campaigns increased 115% while number of emails rose only 33%.
• 42% of direct marketing campaigns include a social element.

Responsys Asia Pac Vice President, Simon O’Day, believes the past financial year was a watershed for Australian companies in terms of digital direct marketing.

“As Australian companies face the threat of online sales from overseas, they have woken up to the tactics used by these competitors and sought to implement them here,” Mr. O’Day said. “As a result, capturing and using data to understand the customer has become a priority for most marketing departments. It’s no longer enough to send the same message to all your customers and see if any of them actually care or respond, while other companies are creating genuine relationships through a cross channel approach.”

Mr. O’Day added, “Social media has also evolved from experimental to a genuine marketing channel that’s targeted and measurable. This coming year we expect a growing shift from email to cross channel campaigns that leverage mobile, social and the web. And, segmentation and targeting will continue to be critical to achieving dramatic increases in ROI.”

The study undertaken by Responsys analyzed more than one billion emails, mobile and social messages sent by large Australian companies between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011, as well as results from a survey of 350 enterprise marketers in Australia.

Obtain a copy of the complimentary 2011 Responsys Big Australian Report.

The DMA UK’s Email Marketing Council maintains a blog featuring Council members writing about a wide range of topics relating to email marketing.

This month’s highlights:

• How misspelled common domain names (eg Hotmail) in email addresses can impact a marketer's sender reputation.
• A collection of recent mobile email statistics - what is essential to consider before developing a mobile email strategy?
• A guide to help marketers estimate the test cell sample size needed for email split tests.
• Social strategy, rendering in all platforms and dealing with inactive subscribers - here's how to meet seven of today's inbox challenges.

The eec members have spoken wisely – our new roster of Member Roundtable co-chairs is an impressive list of email marketing industry luminaries.  Please welcome our 2011-12 Roundtable and Advisory Committee Leadership:

• Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable: Colleen Petitt, Aprimo; Dwight Sholes, Sholes LLC
• Deliverability & Rendering Roundtable: Dennis Dayman, Eloqua; Matt Rausenberger, Return Path
• Email Design Roundtable: Lynn Baus, Responsys; Garrett Ryan, Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide
• List Growth & Engagement Roundtable: Ryan Phelan, BlueHornet; Nate Romance, ExactTarget
• Measurement Accuracy Advisory Committee: John Caldwell, Red Pill Email; Luke Glasner, Glasner Consulting
• Member Initiatives Advisory Committee: Joel Book, ExactTarget; Stephanie Miller, Return Path
• Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee: Lana McGilvray, Datran Media; Dori Thompson, Information era marketing + consulting

Thank you to all who voted and congratulations to our winners!  We look forward to another great year of productive and useful work on behalf of the industry.

eec Members: Want to join our initiatives?  Check out the Roundtables and sign up today by emailing Ali - ali@emailexperience.org.

My point to this post is this: all the marketing chatter around “email marketing best practices” and related subject matter are mostly garbage.  It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in “email,” how many emails you’ve sent in your career, what company you worked for, how well you code, and I definitely don’t care if you’re an “expert.”  At the end of the day, it’s about data; it’s about results and overall achievement of the channel in conjunction to the goals set for it.  If you don’t have goals on your email channel – start tomorrow.

We're looking for email and digital marketing rockstars to present at the Email Evolution Conference 2012 in Florida!  Your proposal(s) must be submitted by Monday, August 1st in order to be considered.

Check out the sessions from EEC11 to get an idea of the types of submissions we select.

Contact Ali with any questions or if you're interested in exhibit or sponsorship opportunities.

The DMA UK’s Email Marketing Council maintains a blog featuring Council members writing about a wide range of topics relating to email marketing.

Here are this month’s highlights:

• An example of how to use email and social to drive both list growth and sales. 
• A recent Return Path study confirms that a marketer’s sender reputation is the key to achieving high inbox placement rates and avoiding the spam folder.
• ISPs have been announcing various types of inbox filtering – here’s a look at how they might impact marketers.
• Frameworks are used in many different industries to structure thinking, people and processes effectively – here’s how they can be applied to email marketing. 
• Email marketing produces a huge volume and range of metrics; using a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed,  Realistic, Time Bound) approach will help marketers measure their specific ROI.

Email marketers should own Social Media!

If you’re an email marketer and you’re not making social marketing part of your toolset and service offering, you’re making a big mistake.  They are really not that different, although social (in my opinion) has a higher man-hour need than email.

Social media marketing is not unlike email marketing.  We share many of the same strategies:

• You need to build an interested base of fans/subscribers.
• You need to interact with those fans/subscribers.
• You need to publish quality, targeted, relevant content to your fans/subscribers.
• You build your fan/subscriber base though natural and incentive-based growth tactics.
• You need to show the ROI for the marketing dollars spent – those who say social isn’t about the ROI are dreaming.  Eventually the C-suite will want numbers that aren’t a guess.
• You need to identify the uber-fans/subscribers and reward them.
• Both can (and should) be an avenue for customer service.
• Both can (and should) drive traffic to your website/ecommerce/blog.
• Both can help and hurt your reputation, though Social in a more public way.
• Both can (and should) increase revenues. (Again, social tracking for revenues can be a little tricky.)
• Both can (and should) start conversations and keep them going.

There is no denying that budgets for Social are growing each year. Yet they are for email, too.  While social marketing may mean spending time and resources to get up to speed with the social world, it will be time and money well spent.

Many marketing managers have little or no experience when choosing a social marketing company.  And have you ever talked to some of the so called “Social Media Expert?”  Everything is bunnies and kittens and it’s all about just getting out there and adding buttons to your website – WooHoo!

It’s more than that—Much more.

(Note: I’m not talking about REAL social media marketers—those that “get it.” But the majority falls into this bucket. Again not unlike email back in the late 90s early 2000s when a bunch of “Email Experts” came out of the woodwork. I look forward to your cards and letters.)

While there are a plethora of “Social Media Experts” out there who have no idea what it takes to run a successful marketing campaign and tie it all together with analytic data and ROI metrics, for us email marketers, it’s what we do every hour of every day.

Social now is not unlike email was 10-15 years ago: blasting worked for a while, but the subscribers eventually rebelled for something better.  Social needs the experience and knowledge email marketers have developed through many years of success and, yes, failures.  The audience is still king and while social maybe the new darling on the block, it’s still in need of a seasoned hand at the helm. Email marketers were social before social was cool.

Social and email marketing are already married; shouldn’t we take Social on the honeymoon and get a little?

Cheers, Chris


P.S. Mobile should be in your toolset as well, but that’s for another post.


- Christopher Donald
VP of Marketing
Inbox Group (an eec Silver Sponsor)
@inboxgroup

If you ask which standard features to look for in an email marketing system, you’re asking the wrong question. The correct question is what do you need. Here’s why…

"It depends."
Recently at a marketing conference, one of the speakers stated that consultants are notorious for starting their answers with phrases like, "It depends."

Clients might think that’s a runaround. It’s not. Quite often, the answer to a client’s question isn’t, “If you do X, you will get Y”. Quite often it’s, “It depends.”

That’s also the way to start off any answer to any question about the features to look for when considering an email marketing system. It depends on what your needs are.

If choosing an ESP or email marketing system meant looking for standard features only, we likely wouldn't have over 100 ESPs to choose from. If there were standard features that narrowed down your choice and made comparisons easy, many of us would likely be out of business.

In reality, email marketing systems come with a wide range of capabilities in order to fulfill a wide range of business requirements. As a result, comparing email marketing systems or ESPs is like comparing apples to oranges.

If you can't simply start with a checklist, then where do you start? You start with your requirements. That is your checklist. The question shouldn’t be, "What features should we look for?" Rather, "What features do we need?"

Two factors you must consider
There are two factors you must consider no matter the ESP or email marketing system. One is the deliverability rate and the other is uptime. No matter the provider or system you choose, the deliverability rate and the uptime have to be as high as possible.

Uptime is easy to determine: Ask.

However, with deliverability "it depends" because it will vary for everyone. If one ESP gets a 97.3% deliverability rate for one customer and list, it doesn’t follow that they’ll achieve that same deliverability rate for another company with a different list. To make sure you choose an ESP or system with the highest deliverability rate for you, try and take your choices for a test drive, using the system to mail to your own list to test deliverability.

Unfortunately there isn't any one checklist that’s going to help you find the features you must have, but finding an ESP with an uptime of 99.5% or higher and high deliverability among its IP addresses is key to finding an ESP that is going to serve your best long-term.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing