Every week the EEC adds new content to its Whitepaper Room. Here are the latest additions:

Chad White: E-gift Card Promotions Popular During Christmas Crunch Time
Retailers focused on e-gift cards in the days before Christmas, relying on email as a last-minute delivery mechanism.

Right Now: Busting Out of the Inbox
Five New Rules of 1to1 Email Marketing

Premiere Global Services: 8 Thursdays - Edition 1
Eight email marketing topics you can't afford to miss.

Microsoft: Protecting Your Brand, Customers and Employees from Online Threats
Creating A Competitive Advantage

MagNews: The Funnel
A Scientific Approach to Measuring Email Marketing Performance.

Listrak: Outlook for 2008
Essential Email Marketing Deliverability Guide

Innovyx: Understanding Dynamic Messaging
Knowing the challenges and learning how to face them.

Ezemail: The Rising Popularity of Handheld Email Devices
How Are Email Marketers Affected?

*Have a whitepaper you’d like to contribute? Email it to whitepapers@emailexperience.org.

Every week the EEC adds new content to its Whitepaper Room. Here are the latest additions:

MailerMailer: Email Marketing Metrics Report
Metrics and trends

*Have a whitepaper you’d like to contribute? Email it to whitepapers@emailexperience.org.

You’ve worked hard to build your distribution lists, you’ve adhered to the best practices in the industry and you’ve done what was asked by mailbox providers but your mail still isn’t reaching the inbox. This is not an uncommon problem; the typical solution is to be put on a whitelist.

Blacklists, or block-lists, are routinely shared among mailbox providers in an effort to combat spam. Whitelists on the other hand are a guarded secret, holding the identification of those mailers that have received “special permission.” The special permissions may permit your mail to be delivered, may reduce or eliminate spam filtration on your mail or might simply be providing you with false hope.

Why would mailbox providers provide access to something that was apparently so sacred and so carefully guarded? Frankly, whitelists are intended to address the shortcomings of spam filtration technology. Acting in the best interests of their customers, mailbox providers will block spam to enhance the user experience. Unfortunately, the rules for catching spam also catch some legitimate mail thus a need for an exemption-based system.

Just because you’re on the whitelist doesn’t mean your mail is getting delivered. What type of whitelists are you on?

Location lists — Used to identify your mail server as a localized to a specific location. Some early spam rules treated mail from outside the continental U.S. as highly suspect and blocked in instances delivered in volume. Whitelists were used to exempt certain foreign IP addresses.

General identification — Used to assert an identity and attribute a reputation to it, typically uses IP addresses but could use other authentication technologies such as Sender ID Framework, Domain Keys or cryptographic tokens.

URL lists — Used to identify specific URLs in your message as legitimate and not spoof URLs or otherwise malicious.

Domain lists — Used to identify a mailer as a recognized legitimate mailer. Used widely early on but has declined significantly due to bogus DNS records.

Reputation/Accreditation lists — This list uses some form of authentication (generally the IP address) to identify the mailer and either asserts a reputation for the mailer or an indicator that the mailer has passed some form of accreditation. Mailbox providers may have an agreement in place with the list provider to provide some privilege.

Clearly, the trend is toward reputation or accreditation lists—and the best solutions incorporate both. Incorporating an authentication mechanism that is not spoofable with such systems is the best case scenario and forces marketers to be accountable for their online actions not just their brand reputation. What this means for marketers is that the whitelists they once relied upon for getting their email delivered are going to become less effective as mailbox providers transition to reputation-based systems.

More on what you can do to make sure your online reputation is consistent with your brand reputation in another post…

—Charles Stiles of Goodmail Systems

The answer…
63% --> Yes, it’s a key measure of engagement.
37% --> No, image blocking has made the metric almost meaningless.

Are you surprised by this collective wisdom? Share your thoughts below.

Also, visit the EEC homepage to answer the latest Two-Click Survey question:
How much time do you need to honor opt-outs?

-->Read more Two-Click Survey Results

Every week the EEC adds new content to its Whitepaper Room. Here are the latest additions:

ExactTarget: CareerBuilder.com Case Study
Taguchi Testing Strategy Delivers Results

Epsilon: The Fortified Inbox
Insight Brief

Bronto Software: Creating A Multi-Channel Strategy
Increase Your Email Performance By Integrating Other Channels

Abad Marketing: Claves para lograr que nuestros mensajes se lean en navidad

Return Path: Stop Sending Email Like It's 1999
Welcome Message Study: Marketers Are Missing Opportunities to Pave the Road to Relevancy

Email Data Source: Email Brand Equity Index™
The Email Brand Equity Index™ is the first score that reflects a 360 degree view of email marketing efforts.

StrongMail: Put the Action Back in Transactional Email
Transform your service-based messages into revenue opportunities.

*Have a whitepaper you’d like to contribute? Email it to whitepapers@emailexperience.org.

It sounds like I’m trying to curse in codespeak, but I’m not thinking the words you likely are (bad, email marketer, bad). However, I’m thinking “strategy” and “deliverability.” The Email Insider Summit validated something we email “thought leaders” have been predicting for a while—the importance of strategy is trumping the importance of deliverability as the topic on the forefront of emailers’ minds. Not that deliverability isn’t important anymore, only that it has been superseded by the need to create a comprehensive plan for the email channel that moves marketers beyond segmented campaigns into behavioral messaging. David Daniels’ “Leveraging the Power of Email into the 21st Century,” David Baker’s “The Democratization of Email” and the HP case study presented by Daryl Nielson and Jared Hansen all drive home the point that strategy is imperative to channel success and retaining internal resources required to optimize email for any organization.

—Tricia Robinson of StrongMail Systems

JupiterResearch’s David Daniels and the eec’s Jeanniey Mullen presented at the Specialized Information Publishers Association’s conference in Miami today. Click here to read the coverage by SIPA’s Tom Hagy.

David Baker’s piece on Zero-Calorie Email is refreshing in the thick of the holiday season, when retailers experience difficulty building slim (even coherent) campaigns. David defined “zero-calorie email” as “a reduced version of the original, with only the necessary things you really need and want.” This potential for economy, efficiency—even poetry—is a virtue of email that makes it not only an effective communication channel, but also an engaging form of creative work. I challenge email designers and copywriters to continually strive to find that just-right place where—ah!—form and function meet: where every image, every word, has meaning.

Below I feature recent holiday campaigns from Piperlime, crewcuts, Apple and CB2 that manage not only to stay streamlined but also to achieve a certain level of eloquence—a synthesis of season, text and imagery bordering on an art form.

Please share your favorite “zero-calorie emails” with the eec community!

From one Diet Coke-lover to another,
Lisa Harmon

-->Read other Make it Pop! posts.

From: Piperlime
Subject Line: Get free shipping and free returns.
Date: Monday, Nov. 26, 2007

From: crewcuts
Subject Line: good night (and free shipping)
Date: Saturday, Dec. 1, 2007

From: Apple
Subject Line: Give a gift that’s music to their ears. iPod.
Date: Monday, Dec. 3, 2007

From: CB2
Subject Line: mod modern ornaments from 1.95
Date: Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2007

It was refreshing and inspiring to hear Arend Hendersen, VP of analytics for third-party offer service Q Interactive, speak here at the Email Insider Summit in Utah about how their optimization of the subscriber experienced resulted in higher ROI for both Q and advertisers.

Using lifetime value (LTV) rather than the standard open, click and conversion data is actually quite innovative. Surprising perhaps, but true. Too many email marketers view email success in a campaign vacuum—reviewing results by the revenue generated by mailing, and not expanding the measure to include subscriber level success metrics. Only when you look at the subscriber level can you start to understand the key drivers of subscriber satisfaction and revenue.

At Q, the standard response metrics are used as diagnostics to inform the LTV, but Arend’s vision was to optimize the type, number and cadence of messages so that each segment—active, less active, rarely active—of the database earned the highest return.

Not only was this a smart, customer-centric approach, but it turns out took an enormous amount of corporate fortitude. The first 30 to 60 days showed a 20% drop in value to Q (although there were some good measures to point to more promise), so Arend reports he was in a constant sweat for a few weeks. However, his vision was based on sound data and statistical analytics, so at 120 days the program broke even, and now with more than a year of data, they’ve improved the return by 30%.

How wonderful to hear about how focusing on the subscriber earned higher return for the marketer! Let us know how you are measuring the success of your email program.

—Stephanie Miller of Return Path

What is the value of trust? What even is trust?

More and more we are hearing about the importance of trust in email. I have been to maybe three conferences in the past few months, and sat in on at least as many industry association and alliance meetings, where the topic of consumer trust in email comes up.

Financial segment senders tend to understand the value of ensuring customers trust email messages. Phishing attacks have a definite cost associated with them. It is relatively easy to do an economic model on the expense incurred in terms of calls to the support center, issuing corrective measures, etc. We don’t have to work too hard to convince the 250 most phished brands to take measures like rolling out authentication protocols to make sure email messages can indeed be represented to consumers as genuinely from the sender the email purports to be from. The Financial Services Technology Consortium has been a real leader in this respect.

Real “trust,” though, includes a number of components. At a minimum, it includes authentication, but it also includes means of conveying to a consumer not only “who really sent this email” but also “what do we know about this sender.” In email “reputation” is a term of art that typically refers to things like consumer complaint rates, but in a larger context, reputation—like brand—goes to the values a consumer imputes about your company, and its email. Trust is like brand, in that sense: something that touches all aspects of your company’s image, and something you can never pay too little attention to.

Marketers typically look at things like open rates, click-throughs, conversions, and other economic measures of program performance. They don’t typically quantify the economic value of ensuring consumer trust. Is it possible to create a measure like “return on trust”? What is the real economic benefit to a sender of maintaining trust at the highest levels with consumers?

—Charles Stiles of Goodmail Systems

The Email Experience Council has extended the deadline for Email Performance Award nominations to Monday, Dec. 17.

We’re looking for an email marketing campaign that demonstrates the full power of the channel, one that provides further evidence of email marketing’s unsurpassed return on investment and inspiration to others seeking to elevate the performance of their own programs.

The members of the eec will select the winner from among the Email Performance Award finalists, which will be determined by the eec’s leadership and announced in mid-January. The winner will receive free admission to the Email Evolution Conference at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina in San Diego, where the Email Performance Award will be officially presented on Feb. 13, 2008. So get your nominations in by Monday, Dec. 17.

-->Read the submission guidelines and download the nomination form.

Does this scenario sound familiar?:
Marketing: “We need to add another submessage to the 12/10 mail.”
Creative: “What!? We’ve already got five submessages in the 12/10!”
Marketing: “The VPs want to include gift cards.”
Creative: “Pass me another brownie, please.”

At this time of year, just as our waistlines bulge with too many holiday sweets, so our emails bulge with too many holiday submessages, stacking into unruly creative layer cakes.

I love cake. I also love a powerfully-packed multi-message. However, more than three pieces of cake – and more than three vertically-stacked submessages – make me queasy. (Did somebody say “garage sale”!?) That’s why this week, as a bookend to my holiday navigation post, it’s all about the GSF—the gift services footer!

Below, REI, Amazon.com, Macy’s and Crate & Barrel cut down on submessage layer-caking by finishing their emails off with smart little GSFs, fitting an average of four messages into the space of one. It’s like a super-dense, double-chocolate brownie!

REI, Dec. 4

Amazon.com, Dec. 5

Macy’s, Dec. 5

Crate & Barrel, Dec. 6

CHECK OUT THESE SEVEN TIPS FOR A SWEET GSF:
(1) Umbrella your GSF with a benefits-focused headline.
(2) Use equi-sized modules for easy last-minute message swap-outs.
(3) Link to your website gift center. It’s a great catch-all for gift givers.
(4) Promote gift cards. They’re so hot right now!
(5) Surface gift services —the unique ways you help make holiday shopping easy.
(6) Detail order-by dates, particularly as we approach mid-December.
(7) Dynamically generate local retail store info to drive brick-and-mortar traffic.

I look forward to breaking brownies with many of you in Park City next week!

Until then,
Lisa Harmon

-->Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Every week the EEC adds new content to its Whitepaper Room. Here are the latest additions:

Chad White: Cyber Monday Sees Record Retail Email Marketing Activity
Retailers embracing a variety of strategies in promoting their Cyber Monday sales.

*Have a whitepaper you’d like to contribute? Email it to whitepapers@emailexperience.org.