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

Message Systems: Case Study - Goodmail Systems Meets Customer Deliverability Requirements
Find out why Goodmail needed a solution that had the ability to handle their large number of inbound connections and how Message Systems' Delivery Manager helped solve the issue.

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

The answer…
91% --> Stay the same. The page width is perfect.
9% --> Increased. The site could make better use of screen real estate.
0% --> Decreased. I currently have to scroll to the right to see entire pages.

Are you surprised by the results? Share your comments below.

Also, visit the eec homepage to answer the latest Two-Click Survey question:
The definition of spam has strayed from its original meaning. Should the eec reassert the true definition of spam?

-->See more Two-Click Survey Results

For the past four years, male modeling has had a shadow cast over it by one man and five syllables: Der-ek Zoo-land-er. Similarly, one technology and three syllables loom large in the world of email: vid-e-o.

Although it’s still as good as technically impossible to embed actual videos into email messages with reliable success, linking out to hosted videos can have a positive impact on email performance. As a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, so must you become Derelicte! Just use these three hot tips:

(1) Reference Video in Your Subject Line.
Including the word “video” in your subject line can help inspire opens. Three examples:
● Saks Fifth Avenue, Feb. 4, 2008:
“Video Exclusive! Days 1 to 3 of Fashion Week”
● J.Crew, Feb. 13, 2008:
“The well-traveled tote (see video)”
● Ralph Lauren, Feb. 18, 2008:
“RLTV Presents: Cape Lodge, An RL Home Video”

(2) Use Strong Visual Cues to Indicate a Link to Video.
Recipients respond best to obvious treatments like play buttons, and frames that look like Windows Media or Quicktime video players. Of the group at right, the Williams-Sonoma Bananas Foster example is particularly strong, as it uses a combination of camera iconography, video player frame graphics and verbal indicators. (Don’t you just love Bananas Foster? I wonder if there’s a video on how to make an Orange Mocha Frappuccino®!?)

(3) Match Your Video Content to Your Message.
Yes, video’s hotter than Hansel—but hotness doesn’t hide irrelevance (at least not for long!) Video needs to support your ultimate goal, whether that’s to build your brand or inspire a direct response. Two ways I’ve seen it used effectively in email:

To Demonstrate or Instruct
● REI’s Winter Newsletter links to a series of Expert Advice videos on how to select ski and snowboard gear.
● Williams-Sonoma announced the launch of their new website (featuring video) with this email. The “Cooking Videos” callout links to a Bananas Foster recipe demonstration embedded within a French Skillet product page.

To Deliver a Cross-Channel Experience
● Saks recreates an in-store experience online with a holiday windows unveiling video.
● Free People brings us behind the scenes of their catalog shoot with this on-location video montage. Party at Hansel’s house!

As we roll more video into our email programs, let’s keep these wise words in mind:
“I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to video than being really, really, ridiculously good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is.” —Derek Zoolander

Please share your findings with the eec community! Post your comments below.

As ever,
Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon

P.S. Catch a glint of Blue Steel in this Luis Vuitton email and associated video.

-->Read other Make it Pop! posts.

In the 1700s, Benjamin Franklin said “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” Life-altering inventions of this era included such things as the first mercury thermometer, the lightening rod, the steam engine, the submarine and even the first dictionary. As I think about it, there is not one of these inventions that we could do without today. Each of these inventions has enhanced the quality of the life we lead. We have integrated them into our daily routine. They have become engrained in our culture.

In the new millennium, digital innovations appear to be the elements that are driving us forward and literally changing the way we live our lives. Broadband, mobile devices and digital publishing have made access to content simple and quick. It has changed our expectations and opened up opportunities to share feedback about products and services with millions of people, with one click of the mouse. In a world where each one of us strives to be more aware about how the choices we are making affect the health of our planet, digital efforts offer us the ability to celebrate.

With digital innovations, we can celebrate:
● More eco-friendly alternatives;
● A closer tie to our communities, in a virtual world;
● Access to content that provides immediacy; and
●The ability to increase convenience with content on demand.

Last week the Digital Lifestyle Roundtable shared their first research (compliments of Zinio and the Harrison Group), which demonstrates the significant impact that email has in driving adoption of other digital elements. In addition to email, this webinar also demonstrated how advertisements are receiving more attention in digital magazines and building more brand awareness. Over 570 people attended this webinar. If you were unable to attend, you can still view the webinar (registration required). To sign up for the Digital Lifestyle Roundtable and participate in future research and efforts, please email jeanniey@emailexperience.org.

— Jeanniey Mullen of the eec

Since moving from Rochester, N.Y., to Durham, N.C., almost three years ago, I’ve gained a new appreciation for the month of March. March Madness in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) is just that—absolute madness. From the Duke-Carolina rivalry, to the ACC Tournament to the Big Dance, this is truly basketball country.

When the email to join “Bronto’s Online NCAA March Madness Bracket Group” landed in my inbox, I immediately went to CBSSportsline.com to register. CBS Sports made me work a bit to actually register as a new user (not good). Fortunately, as one who spends their day advising clients on best practices, I knew where to look.

Once I clicked on the super-small link “Register Now,” I was redirected to the registration page. I absolutely love this landing page.

1. An appropriate number of fields. Too many scares subscribers away, too few and you get a large list of uninterested subscribers.

2. Tips. Mousing over the lightbulbs provides clear instructions on how to fill out that particular field and/or a brief snippet of why they are asking for it.

3. Opt-in. Yes! Someone did it the “right” way. I say “right” because there is not really a right or wrong way, just a bad/good/better. What I love about this opt-in is that none of the boxes are pre-checked (a true opt-in), there is a brief description of what to expect (content, frequency), and a preview of an example. Brilliant!

That said, this is what happened when I clicked on “Preview an example” for the Product Updates. After hitting refresh three times, it eventually brought me to the intended preview page. I know what you are thinking...temporary hiccup with the connection. I thought the same thing, so I tried it the next day. Same result. (not good).

4. Optional Special Offers. Partner/third party/co-registration emails are always tricky. Personally, I think they have no business in the world of “best practice email marketing,” but I understand why they are used. If you are going to offer them, let subscribers opt-in and keep them separate. Well done.

Once I hit submit, a flurry of emails from CBS Sportsline began to fill my inbox (email #1, email #2). A bit of overkill if you ask me, but I forgive them. Anyway, that’s fodder for another post.

By the way, I’ve got UCLA winning it all in one bracket and Kansas in my other (neither are popular picks in my office).

—DJ Waldow of Bronto Software

Much has been written in the blogosphere about the strange interview Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave at SXSW last week. A highly enthused audience combined with a poorly executed interview to create a fairly bizarre scene. The audience apparently took charge and relegated the interviewer, Sarah Lacy, to the role of observer. I wasn’t in Austin last week, but Joshua Baer, Datran Media’s general manager of emerging media, was in the audience and reported back that the interview was indeed out of control. I wish I had been there to witness.

I have been taking special interest in all things Facebook over the past several weeks, as I have been hard at work coming up with strategies for companies to employ when building social networking applications and messaging users who have installed these applications. I believe that the rapid adoption of social networking sites is creating a huge opportunity for emarketers to message some segments of their audience in new and exciting ways. Marketers who are slow to act, or are more skeptical about the power of these networks, however, may be in for a rude awakening.

It is no secret that Facebook and other social networks are changing the way some people interact on the web. For hard core social networking users, these sites have already replaced web portals as the hub of their online experience, and supplanted their email inbox as the primary vehicle for staying in touch with their friends and the world around them. This is a simple fact.

I am not saying that Facebook will replace email as the dominant social networking application for everyone—email is the original social networking application, and by far the most popular—but I am here to report that it probably already has for some segments of your list. And don’t assume that it’s only the underage segments. Charlene Li’s January 7, 2008, Forrester Research “Youth and Social Networks” slides indicate that while the young certainly engage with these sites at a deep level (62% of those surveyed managed their online profile at least weekly), older members managed their profiles only slightly less frequently (54% managing at least weekly). Online social networking is not simply a youth phenomenon.

If you spend a few weeks immersed in a social networking site, you may understand why. Sharing photos is a pleasure, communicating with friends is easy, and marketers/groups only communicate with their users by sending useful, relevant opt-in messaging.

As email marketers we must be at the forefront of communicating with social networking audiences. These sites represent new inbox opportunities and it’s our duty to determine how best to leverage them on behalf of our companies, clients and users. We are well versed in efficiently segmenting audiences and executing relevant campaigns, now we need to figure out how to extend our reach to all inboxes, or risk missing the boat.

How many of you are focused on the social networking sites? Do you have strategies in place for messaging these users? Has your company tested a Facebook strategy and gleaned interesting results? Either comment below, or email me directly at neinstein@datranmedia.com with your story, I am quite interested in learning more, and will incorporate any comments I receive in a future post on the subject.

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

JupiterResearch reports that 62% of email campaigns are sent from more than one department in an organization. At its worst, 24% of emailers are sending from six or more departments. We know our internal email policies and procedures, but do our recipients and ISPs? To them, we’re one company in the inbox. One organization communicating with them about promotions, order confirmations, passwords that need to be reset, and more. Likely, that email looks different and derives from a variety of different systems. We have no insight or management into how much email they get, what it looks like, and if content is integrated.

Email centralization is the answer. Coordination of every email stream makes a consistent communication in the inbox. By centralizing, we can manage email frequency by type of message, maintain consistent branding across messages, better understand domain deliverability, communicate with customers at their stage in the purchase cycle with our company, and much, much more.

Every day, I work with emailers looking to centralize their strategy and vendor relationships alike. Sometimes it’s a long process of seeking for email programs and streams then getting multi-department buy-in. However, more often it’s a relief to pass this task over to marketing. Marketing teams show revenue benefits of cross-sell in transactional messages and the cost reduction inherit with reducing multiple vendors. Overall, the recipient wins in a centralized strategy as we emailers move closer to the inherit benefits of one-to-one marketing.

—Tricia Robinson-Pridemore of StrongMail

The answer…
55% --> The sender name. The reputation of the sender is key.
45% --> The subject line. Subscribers want to know what the email is about before they open it.

Are you surprised by the results? Share your comments below.

Also, visit the eec homepage to answer the latest Two-Click Survey question:
Help us redesign our site. Should the width of pages on the eec site be increased, decreased or stay the same (960 pixels wide)?

-->See more Two-Click Survey Results

Just returned (as in, drove a few miles back up I-35) from SXSW Interactive, the fantastic four-day conference on interactive marketing and communications.

One of the big unofficial stories there was the use of Twitter among conference participants—to communicate in real time about sessions, to meet up efficiently with friends and colleagues (the Austin Convention Center is a loooong building), and even in some cases to stage revolts against panels with which they were displeased.

For anyone interested in advances in communications, it was an amazing real-life case study. Those of us who put away our electronics and observed the crowd for a minute during any session saw a phenomenon unfolding before our eyes.

Twitter is a tool that allows users to send short messages about their activities in real time. Users choose who they want to follow, and to some extent, who follows them. On a boring day, Twitter is filled with observations such as “Just ate a chicken sandwich.” On an interesting day, it’s much more lively and insightful. And earlier this week, it was actually sort of revolutionary.

I think Rohit Bhargava gets it right in his Influential Marketing blog post on the reasons Twitter "sucked" and "rocked" at SXSW. For all of the advantages, there were some downsides. When you introduce yourself to someone while waiting for a panel to start, and that person can’t be bothered to talk because they’re too busy Twittering about what’s going on in the panel next door…well, that defeats the purpose of a conference (and of being part of the human race), doesn’t it?

—Amy Bills of Bulldog Solutions

Last July, the EEC community voted on which call-to-action treatment performs best: buttons or links? 72% of respondents agreed that buttons are more effective.
-->See the Survey Results

While every email is unique, the tests we’ve run since the vote confirm the results. They’ve also informed the development of a very specific button treatment that consistently outperforms others.

We call it The Bulletproof Button.

How to Build The Bulletproof Button:

(1) Pick a Color that Pops
A saturated color like red attracts attention and clicks. Just make sure to use it only when you mean it: for your primary call-to-action. Buttons are subject to the law of diminishing returns; including too many can dilute focus. Try underlined links for secondary calls-to-action.

(2) Use HTML Text
Create your call-to-action text using HTML instead of graphical text. Float the HTML text over a colored background cell so your text is legible even when a recipient’s images are disabled.

(3) Get Fancy
For a more custom button, create a graphical flourish—like a gradient—and pop it behind the HTML text as a background image. Add a carat to emphasize the action.

Bonus! After all that tech talk, here’s some button fun.

Are you a Button Buff?
How many email button styles can you match with their associated retailers? Post your guesses by commenting below.

I’ll announce the answers—and the winner—in next week’s “Make it Pop!” post. Enjoy!

Until then,
Lisa Harmon
of Smith-Harmon

-->Read other Make it Pop! posts.

The Email Experience Council's "Hyphens Equal Disrespect" Petition is about more than shortening a commonly used word so you don't look antiquated, especially in the eyes of younger customers. It's about acknowledging that today's email is ubiquitous, powerful, interactive and cost-effective—and has very little in common with its Cro-Magnun, text-only ancestor, "electronic mail." Email has evolved and so has the spelling.

We’re constantly amazed to the resistance we encounter when talking to publications and other folks that use the old, hyphenated spelling. Here’s a great example of what we hear. In a recent “Ask AP” story on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s website, Tim Bergerhofer of Kansas City, Mo., asked:

As electronic mail became widespread, it came to be referred to as "e-mail." Many users soon began to drop the hyphen (fewer keystrokes). Now, "email" is searched on Google nearly six times as much as "e-mail." Is there a plan to switch "e-mail" to "email" in an upcoming version of the AP Stylebook?

Call us stubborn, or sticklers for clarity, but AP sees no compelling reason to replace e-mail with email. Why do we stand on e-mail? That spelling is the first choice of major dictionaries, including AP's primary spelling reference, Webster's New World College Dictionary Fourth Edition. It is also the preference of many newspapers. And e-mail is consistent with other hyphenated, electronic age terms such as e-book, e-commerce, e-shopping and e-business (which would look odd without hyphens). You're not the first to propose dropping the hyphen. But the arguments of one fewer keystroke and search engine statistics don't convince us that e-mail would be enhanced by excision.

Given how frequent web searchers are punching in the sans-hyphen spelling, we think it incredulous that the AP can argue that they’re “sticklers for clarity.” Clearly there’s no confusion about what “email” is.

While true to some extent, arguing that using a hyphen in “email” is consistent with other electronic age terms like “e-book” and “e-commerce” is becoming a harder argument. “Ebook” is already searched for far more often than “e-book,” and “ecommerce” should permanently overtake “e-commerce” in search frequency sometime this year.

Now it’s true that Webster’s still spells email with a hyphen, although some dictionaries don’t. But here’s the thing about dictionaries: They take their cue from the media. And the media largely takes their cue from the marketplace. So join our growing list of petition supporters and banish the hyphen from your spelling of “email.” And if your favorite publication is still using a hyphen, ask them why they’re disrespecting the email marketing industry by using the 20th century spelling.

—Chad White of the Email Experience Council

In the marketing and advertising world, the consumer is in control. Understanding consumer drivers is critically important in driving success regardless of what role you have. When you overlay personal consumer drivers with channel specific and multi-channel marketing impacts, not only you will you succeed in the eyes of your customer, but you will also drive the relationship you have with them to the next level.

Recent research released by digital publisher Zinio and the Harrison Group enables marketers to go somewhere they have not been able to go before: into the minds of digital consumers. Attend this webinar to hear the latest benchmarks and findings captured for readers of digital magazines. But don’t be deceived! While the study appears to focus on insights around digital magazines, this data is imperative to understand if you have or ever plan to advertise in a print publication or online, if you use email to promote book or magazine subscriptions, or if you send email.

The Digital Consumer—How Email and Digital Impact Marketing Choices
Hosted by the Email Experience Council
Thursday, March 20 at 1pm EST/10am PST

Speakers:
Jeanniey Mullen, the Email Experience Council’s founder and executive chairwoman and Zinio’s global EVP, CMO
Chad White, director of retail insights and editor-at-large at the Email Experience Council

-->REGISTER NOW for this no-cost webinar!

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

Chad White: Incentives Aren’t Just for Conversions Anymore
Retailers Are Incentivizing a Wide Range of Email and Online Behaviors.

Email Evolution Conference '08: Day 1 Keynote Presentation
Email...the consumer's perception IS your reality.

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

There is a dirty little secret with email service providers (ESPs) and it’s about time it has been brought to the forefront of industry discussions. I learned about the intricacies of this secret while culling Gold Lasso customers that exceeded our spam complaint threshold. After politely showing a few of them the door, out of spite they revealed to me that they were simultaneously using the services of five other competitors unraveling a twisted web of ESP “switch-a-roonie” that promotes spam and hurts the industry. This dirty little secret is so obvious that I’m surprised it hasn’t been exposed by privacy and anti-spam advocates and used to smack the smug faces of ESP executives. Surprise! The dirty secret is that most ESPs have no economic incentive NOT to do business with customers who refuse to use good list practices. Let me say it this way: Email service providers make good money from bad customers who in some circles could be considered spammers.

You might be scratching your head thinking most ESPs have strict anti-spam policies and lobby hard to clean up the industry. For the most part this statement is correct; however, there are always a handful of bad customers that are tolerated because of the big checks they stroke. These customers come in the forms of traditional direct marketing agencies that have to blow their client’s budget, affiliate marketers, and idiots who have deep pockets but not a clue about how email marketing works. One thing these types of customers have in common is that they want or have to send large volumes of email and have either purchased an email list or have appended a purchased direct mail list.

Contrary to popular belief, most ESPs don’t give their high paying bad customers the boot. Most try to force them through a reformation process. However, if the customer continues to ignore best practices some ESPs will do one of the following: either isolate the customer on an IP block reserved for wrongdoers (a sort of purgatory) or mix their bad customer’s email across multiple IP addresses of customers with good sending practices increasing the bad customer’s chance of making it to the inbox.

In the first scenario, the ESP milks the customer as they are well aware their email will either wind up in an ISP black hole or get bounced faster than an Atari Breakout ball. The bad customer, fed up with bad deliverability, will feverishly switch to a new ESP as soon as their contract is up. In the second scenario, the ESP increases the deliverability risk of their good customers. The attitude is akin to “so what if some customers get 90% deliverability instead of 96%. What’s 6%?” Eventually this attitude catches up with reality and good customers start complaining. This is when the ESP gives the bad customer the boot as their foot is already in the door of another ESP. Contrary to what Ken Magill of Direct Magazine says—“a marketer can’t ride an ESP’s e-mail reputation, folks”—a marketer CAN ride the reputation of an ESP’s customers… for a while at least. In either case the ESP is doing a disservice to not only their customers (good and bad) but to the industry at large.

The time has come for ESPs to get together and create their own blacklist of customers who they have booted because they refused to clean up their act. This would prevent these bad customers from trying to hop ESPs causing headaches and silently undermining the industry. The secret is out! Let’s do something about it.

—Elie Ashery of Gold Lasso

-->Read other posts in The From Line Extended series.

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

Message Systems: Case Study - Wired For Change
Check out this great case study about how Message Systems helped Wired for Change.

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