Bulldog Solutions hosted a live roundtable on Email Deliverability for BtoB Lead Generation earlier this week. We expected a great turnout for this Webinar—and we weren’t disappointed. More than 50% of registrants made time to attend the hourlong live event—an attendance rate that exceeds nearly every measure for online marketing we track in the Bulldog Index.

Our panel included two familiar EEC names: Stephanie Miller of Return Path, who is the EEC’s vice chair for member initiatives, and Michelle Eichner of Pivotal Veracity, who leads the EEC’s deliverability and rendering roundtable. That group produced the March report on email standards and bounce management that we referred to several times during the webinar. We also had Ryan Rutan, a senior programming analyst at National Instruments, who offered his perspective from an organization that’s confronted many of the issues marketers are facing. You can view a recording of the roundtable here.

Prior to the webinar we solicited questions from our registrants, a practice we typically employ to help us ensure the panel addresses the audience’s biggest pain points. As the EEC’s Jeanniey Mullen pointed out, the questions themselves are fantastic market research.

Here’s one observation I think we can all relate to. The questions showed us that marketers want a magic bullet. This is human nature and not surprising, but when the topic is complex, it’s not always easy to provide. While they’re certainly willing to put in the work on testing and research, and to consider variables such as industry and message, the fact remains we received many questions asking for answers on:
—The best time to send emails
—The most successful subject line
—The best word count for a promotional email
—A definitive answer on whether text or HTML is best

One attendee summed up the panelists’ responses with humor: “Great stuff. Very knowledgeable panel. Bottom line: It depends. Ha ha.”

During the webinar we promised attendees we’d answer some of the questions we didn’t get to address during the live event. We’ll use this blog and Bulldog’s sales and marketing blog, as well as our Marketing Watchdog Journal newsletter, to communicate when we have some Q&A written up for the audience to explore.

—Amy Bills

the voice of email

Welcome to the Email Experience Council's blog, a forum for the email marketing industry's leading voices. On these pages, you'll find the opinions and thought-leadership that's driving the next evolution of email.

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the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Elie Ashery is the president and CEO of Gold Lasso, and is responsible for the company’s vision and strategy execution. Before joining Gold Lasso, he co-founded Newsletters.com in 1997, selling it to The Tribune Cos. in 2000. He then worked for IncenSoft, focusing on email marketing while there. Read more.

Amy Bills is the senior manager of field marketing at lead optimization company Bulldog Solutions. She is responsible for lead generation and the go-to-market execution of Bulldog's new products and initiatives. Amy was previously the editorial team leader of Freescale Semiconductor’s internal creative agency and a senior editor at Hoover’s Online. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Spencer Kollas is the director of delivery services at StrongMail, helping maximize customers’ email deliverability rates. He was previously director of deliverability services for Premiere Global Services. Spencer is an active member in the Email Sender & Provider Coalition, Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group, the Anti-Phishing Work Group and, of course, the eec. Read more.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Erick Mott is the director of marketing and corporate communications for Habeas, the leader in email reputation management services. He has a rich background in marketing and communications strategy and execution for such companies as Nokia, MarkMonitor, GlobalFluency, Cisco Systems, Creator Connection, Sun Microsystems, Philips NV, Elm Products and CBS Television. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the Email Experiene Council's founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

Jeremy Swift is director of client relations for email service provider BlueHornet. He helped form BlueHornet’s founding team in 2000 and has been responsible for client services and marketing strategy since the company’s inception. Jeremy is known for his ability to articulate technical information in ways that clearly resonate with today’s online marketer.

DJ Waldow is an account manager at Bronto Software. He works with Bronto’s largest clients to help them achieve and surpass their marketing goals. An active member of the email marketing community, DJ posts regularly on the Email Marketer’s Club, publishes a bi-weekly email marketing best practices newsletter, and films BrontoFire.

Chad White is the Email Experience Council’s director of retail insights and editor-at-large. He founded and is the author of the Retail Email Blog, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.