Diving headlong into the world of email creative is tough if you don’t have all the lingo down. Here’s a handy cheat sheet for those who are still polishing their grasp on the glossaries, and a brush up on definitions and best practices for those who already know their stuff:

(1) The Preheader
These small and subdued text blurbs at the top of your emails are getting more play these days. Particularly as more folks browse their inboxes from mobile devices, this first glimpse of the main message becomes your crucial chance to grab their interest. A preheader informs a recipient of what the email is about, how to view it with images and/or from a mobile device, and how to ensure future delivery via content teaser snippet(s), the “view with images” prompt and/or the “add to address book” prompt. Think about what text snippet you want customers to see first. Probably something a little more engaging than “If you are having trouble viewing this email with images...”

(2) Header and Navigation
This often takes the form of a colored banner and encompasses anything that lies between your preheader and main message. It’s the space for your company logo, and—depending on the message content—it may also include menu items that link to other pages of your site, just in case the main message doesn’t quite strike the fancy of the viewer.

(3) Primary Message
Your email’s big push deserves a lot of attention from you since you’re looking to earn the attention of your subscribers. A harmonious balance of headline, body copy and supporting images delivers maximum impact. This should include a prominent primary call-to-action (ideally in the form of a big, beautiful, “bulletproof” button!) and a link to a landing page with a cohesive look and message that will maintain enough interest to turn that clickthrough into a conversion.

(4) Table of Contents
These come in handy for longer, newsletter-form emails that contain tons of content, allowing customers to skip right to what interests them rather than having to scroll all the way down. The TOC works most effectively as a bulleted list at the top of your email that is anchor tagged to hotlink directly to content. Fitting this into your preview pane, along with your primary message and call-to-actions, will also help it gain enough attention to earn its keep.

(5) Submessage(s)
Adding secondary and tertiary messages to your email gives you the opportunity to present another story or two. Just make sure you don't lose your viewers in a maze of information. Keep it clean with visual prompts like color, strong headlines, imagery and graphics. Submessages are usually organized in a siderail or layer-caked below the primary message.

(6) Recovery Module
This is your final outpost, your last chance to capture the clickthrough of anyone who may have sailed through your main message or submessages. The recovery module is often a bar at the bottom of the email that includes a list of links to your site, or potentially an incentive to grab your subscribers’ interest before they slip back to their inboxes.

(7) Footer
Using the same sort of subdued, “legalese” text that comprises the header, this is another place to include the essential nuts-and-bolts info. The unsubscribe link is tucked away here along with company contact details, “forward to friend” and customer service links. And of course, make sure it’s CAN-SPAM compliant!

Now that you know all the lingo, can you identify all seven message components across these two REI emails?
--> REI Triathalon
--> REI Paddling Newsletter

Talk the talk; walk the walk!

As ever,
Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon

-->Read other Make it Pop! posts.

The Truth about Email Marketing, an email marketing book by Simms Jenkins, eec member and the CEO of BrightWave Marketing, will hit book stores on Aug. 1. Ahead of the release, the eec’s Chad White had the opportunity to ask Simms about the book and the truths he reveals:

Chad: What is the most surprising “truth” in your book?

Simms: This will depend on the reader but for many email newbies making the transition from direct marketing or another world, Truth 21: Length and Your Call to Action may be surprising to some. So many emails I receive these days are brutally long and bury the calls to action. I think many major retailers are guilty of taking their offline ad campaigns and forcing them into email templates. Frankly, that doesn’t work, so hopefully this truth sheds some light on optimizing layouts and messaging.

I also cover what the future of email (Truth 49) and what it may look like. This may have surprising thoughts for many. Here’s the complete list of truths.

What are some of the email marketing myths that you debunk?

One of the most important and obvious to you and your readers may be the notion of permission email and how that draws a line in the sand of where you stand in utilizing email marketing. It must be a part of any conversation about email marketing regardless of your knowledge and experience. I think some people forget and that is an important part in setting up this book as an end-to-end guide about what makes a successful email marketing program.

On the other end of the spectrum, I address how email marketing can exist within the current world where social media grabs much of the spotlight (Truth 48: The Impact of Social Media on Email). The truth is we always hear about how email is on its deathbed but it still acts as the communication hub for many companies and specifically, should get a major boost because of the popularity of LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

Email marketing is evolving quite quickly. To which recent change have people been the slowest to adapt?

I am still utterly shocked about how email marketers fail to change and adapt to a world where 50% of consumers block images. One would think that companies would change their messaging strategy, optimize their creative and deal with this very significant and real challenge. However, many are not.

Your recent study that cited tangible revenue that is left on the table should get people’s attention, but I have my doubts. I speak quite frequently to diverse audiences and meet with some of the top corporations and many are flying blind or clueless when it comes to how their emails render in many of their subscribers inboxes. What if their TV commercials were showing up blank during prime time? Do you think they would address that?

The most shocking aspect of this issue is when I am told that the company is aware of their emails showing up as a red X with no links, branding and messaging but they have their hands tied due to political and organizational issues. That screams to me the need for more education, awareness and participation with groups like the eec.

What’s your best advice for folks that are new to email marketing?

The best part of our industry is the amount of great thought-leadership and free resources. Whether it is your blog, the eec newsletter, Email Marketing Reports, EmailStatCenter.com—the list goes on and on. You can find many of the best listed on the book’s companion website’s resource center. The amount of places to learn and network from peers is incredible. It is pretty unique to have an industry where so many high-level executives blog frequently—and not just fluffy PR-related blog posts.

The other exciting thing about diving into our industry is because it is still relatively a young one and changes so frequently, the opportunity to have an impact on your company and the industry is a very real and attractive one. We need so many more passionate and energetic professionals, so it is a place that one can enter today and become a leader rather quickly given the right situation. That can’t be said for all industries.

Email marketing’s reputation as being “cheap” often leads to budgets that are undersized compared to email’s ROI. Do you have any advice for helping marketers communicate the value of email to their bosses so that they can get larger budgets?

The Truth about Email Marketing has two entire sections on budgeting and ROI and organizing a proper email team so this is covered in depth and is one of the most frequent issues that I tackle on a daily basis. We in the email marketing industry are certainly a victim of our own success, at times, as the depth of measurement and efficiency of email often overshadows the potential for deeper investment and greater sophistication, all of which lead to more relevant and valuable emails for subscribers.

I am a believer in using your metrics to champion your success and your potential. Not enough email marketing pros use their email analytics outside of showing open and click-through rates. The biggest breakthroughs we see with our clients is when we can show the impact email has on broader business goals, like product awareness, loyalty and revenue. CFOs don’t care about open rates but you can have their ear when you show the crossover impact and power email can have on a business.

Thanks, Simms.

My pleasure, Chad. And as a special offer to the eec community, I’ve arranged an exclusive deal through the publisher to make The Truth about Email Marketing available for 25% off, plus free shipping. Just purchase the book through the FT Press store and enter the discount code Emailmark01 during the checkout process.

-->For more books on email marketing by eec members, check out our listing of Books on Email Marketing.

If you’re going to be at eTail 2008 next month, stop by Premiere Global Services’ booth (#25) to see the eec’s Chad White and enter for a chance to win a limited number of pre-release copies of the Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season, which is sponsored by Premiere Global. Chad will be talking about the guide and also sitting on an Email Marketing Day roundtable with Kara Trivunovic, Premiere Global’s director of strategic services, where they’ll be discussing the holiday email season. Hope to see you there.

eTail 2008
Aug. 4-7, 2008
The Hilton, Washington, D.C.
Register for eTail and book with code 10359.003XZ368 to get 20% off to attend on behalf of Premiere Global.

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

DMA UK: Economic Impact Analysis - The Direct Marketing Industry
This is the third Economic Impact Analysis of the direct marketing industry.

eec Reportlet: The Rise of the Preview Pane Banner
Squeezing secondary calls-to-action into the preview pane.

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

We’ve had a few people recently tell us that when they view the RSS feed for the Email Experience Blog in their blog readers that all the line breaks are stripped out. If that’s happening to you, then you’re subscribed to the wrong version of the feed. Please subscribe to this feed and all your formatting problems will be resolved.

Sometimes people need a nudge to try something new, edgy or against the conventional wisdom. So here you go, we dare you—NO, we Double Dog Dare you—to consider this challenge from DJ Waldow of Bronto Software:

Add an unsubscribe link to the top of your emails where it’s more easily seen. Why is it that the vast, vast majority of unsubscribe links reside (hide?) at the bottom of the email message? Is it because as consumers, we've been trained to scroll to the bottom of the email to unsubscribe? Or is it that as marketers we don’t want to do anything to suggest that subscribers should opt-out? Consider the likely positive benefits of adding another unsubscribe option to the top of your emails: Would this give more people faith that the unsubscribe link would work and therefore reduce the number of spam complaints? While it would surely increase the number of unsubscribes, would you lose active subscribers? Your inactive subscriber are most likely to act on the new, more visible opt-out link, which would give you a more engaged subscriber base that’s cheaper to mail and administer.

You may have a more specific business reason to make the unsubscribe link more prominent as well. For example, you may want to add the additional unsubscribe link if your spam complaints are too high, particularly if you have lots of younger subscribers (which tend use the “report spam” button to opt-out). Also, if you see your spam complaints rise after sweepstakes acquisition campaigns or during the holidays when you increase frequency, adding a more prominent opt-out link will likely reduce those complaints. I dare you to test this on a small portion of your list (and share your results).

If you take up this dare, let us know how it went by commenting below. And if you have a Double Dog Dare for the eec community, let us know about that too.

-->See more Double Dog Dares.

We as marketers sometimes get hung up on what to name things, especially in our multichannel world where there are many technology-based strategies and solutions, often with overlapping attributes, and a lot of these approaches seem to move through their lifecycles faster than doped riders in the Tour de France. Change is definitely a constant in our personal and business lives, the economy continues to keep us on our toes, and email is right smack in the middle of business—or should I say, your digital company?

I had the pleasure of presenting this week with Jeanniey Mullen from the eec and Zinio, David Daniels from JupiterResearch, and Des Cahill from Habeas. We came together with just under 200 attendees for a live Habeas Huddle webinar entitled “Your Digital Company, Today and in 2013: How to Leverage Email and Online Trust for Success.”

Some serious ground was covered in one hour with great data and insights from two studies from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Ipsos, as well as David’s ongoing work at JupiterResearch. We also discussed a number of case studies, best practices and takeaways, and Jeanniey helped bring it all together with a historical view of email and how to think differently about this proven, vibrant channel in our changing, digital world.

For the sake of grounding, the EIU provided this definition/food for thought: “The digital company is one in which the use of information and communications technology underpins virtually all processes and activities, as well as all efforts to improve competitiveness.”

One could argue that if your business has a data center, is using the internet to attract and retain customers, and you rely on hosted applications and services (i.e. web meetings, social networking, blogging, email service providers, etc.) for marketing, sales and customer service—then you’re working in a digital company. OK, enough with semantics. Bottom line: Business executives worldwide say email is their No. 1 communication channel today and in 5 years, and consumers feel the same way when it comes to interacting with preferred brands online. Your customers are also more empowered with technology and expect control and certainty (trust) when doing business online and with mobile devices.

Check out the complimentary webinar and whitepaper just published by the EIU entitled “The digital company 2013 – How technology will empower the customer.” The co-sponsors of the paper are AT&T, Concep Global, Habeas, Nokia, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SAP and WebEx.

Both webinar and white paper provide invaluable information that was packaged from quantitative and qualitative research (businesses and consumer trends) that I’m sure will stimulate a few great ideas and help you get ahead of the pack. Maybe it will even enable you build a strong business case for more budget and a promotion!

—Erick Mott of Habeas

Ben Bernanke delivered another gloomy assessment of the American economy to congress yesterday during which he pointed out that the seemingly antithetical dual risks we currently face—slow growth and rising prices (due in large part to energy costs and the credit crunch/housing collapse)—are likely to plague us for some time to come. A “perfect storm” of macroeconomic forces is currently ravaging us, and it seems as if we may not even have seen the worst of it.

Could this be good news for email marketers?

While I believe it’s probably not great news for anybody—especially for those of us who may own a house, have investments in the market, drive gasoline-powered cars, consume goods and services, or eat food—I do believe the current economic downturn we’re facing represents an opportunity for email to shine.

Marketing budgets across the board are shrinking, but in my recent experience, email is being allocated an increasingly larger percentage of that budget. As a highly measurable channel, we are immediately at an advantage. The fact that the average return on investment for a dollar spent on email marketing was an estimated $48.29 in 2007 according to the DMA doesn’t hurt either. When budgets shrink, it makes good sense to invest a greater percentage in email, and I am already seeing it happen.

So with an increasingly large share of budget, many of us are now charged with selling goods and services to segments that are increasingly price sensitive due to the $4.89 per gallon they are paying at the pump (I just paid that much). Many segments are looking for deals right now, and while we obviously still need to send the right ones to their inboxes, it seems as if consumers are now taking more time to review the offers they receive, which may be good news for good senders. I’ve seen evidence of this in the KPIs and test results of many of my clients’ programs, primarily in the form of higher than expected open rates for certain segments.

HERE ARE FOUR EMAIL MARKETING TIPS FOR THE DOWNTURN:

1. Now is a good time to test that reactivation program you’ve been thinking about.
Those inactive customers could be brought back into the fold with a juicy offer, and in these rough times, each win-back is more valuable than ever.

2. If you don’t already, leverage automated campaigns to the hilt.
Internal marketing resources at many companies hit hardest by the downturn are getting scarcer, but don’t let this inhibit the growth of your program. Focus on high-value, highly relevant, triggered and serialized campaigns that run without needing daily attention.

3. Think about creative ways to monetize your data.
Do you send targeted third-party offers to your list? Do you include banner ads in your newsletter? If you don’t, now would be a good time to test it.

4. Make a strong business case for more budget.
Few in your organization boast the ROI numbers you do. Build a cogent business case and get the additional budget you need to take your program to the next level—your business needs you now more than ever!

So while inflation drives prices higher and the credit markets seize, drop the Wall Street Journal, erase your E*Trade bookmark, and focus on messaging that appeals to your increasingly price-sensitive consumer. With any luck you’ll be able to uncover some rational exuberance in your email program.

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

The answer…
42% --> Open rate
13% --> Click rate
18% --> Click-to-open rate
26% --> Conversion rate

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

Also, visit the eec homepage to answer the latest Two-Click Survey question:
Are you in compliance with the new CAN-SPAM rules that went into effect this month?

-->See more Two-Click Survey Results.

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

FreshAddress: 2008 Email Address Validation Study of 50 Leading Retailer Websites
This study is the second in a series of examinations of the email validation practices of leading internet retailers.

Alchemy Worx: Subject Lines – Length is Everything
Conventional wisdom about subject line length is turned on its head.

StrongMail: The On-Premise Advantage for Marketing and Transactional
New perspectives on insourcing and outsourcing business-critical commercial email.

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

As we send more segmented, triggered and dynamically populated emails, it becomes necessary to approach email creative design in a new way. Rather than seeing each email design as a separate entity, we need to start thinking in terms of an email creative framework.

An email creative framework is like a set of LEGOs: It is a library of modular, flexible design elements from which we can build an exponential range of message configurations. Think of the components within each email you send—the header, the main message body, the submessages, the footer—as separate LEGO blocks that can be mixed, matched and stacked into different arrangements to build marketing and operational messages, skyscrapers and castles.

THREE STEPS TO BUILDING YOUR EMAIL CREATIVE FRAMEWORK:

(1) Get Serious: Audit all of your current and planned message types to get a clear sense for the kinds of content your creative framework needs to accommodate. Then consider the LEGOs you’ll need to support them. For instance, perhaps you send marketing and operational messages. The two different message types might share header, footer and submessage LEGO components, but have different LEGO block bodies. If you are a retailer, you might send product promotions featuring 4, 8 or 12 dynamically generated featured items, for which you would use a stackable 4-item LEGO block to accomodate all three configurations.

(2) Get Creative: Once you’ve identified which LEGO blocks you need, it’s time to have some fun with graphics, type and color. Email creative has always been about extending pre-existing brand attributes appropriately and effectively to the inbox. Now that we are building creative frameworks to accommodate a growing number of segmented, triggered and dynamically populated emails, we have to make our color, font and graphics choices even more carefully. In addition to being “on brand,” they have to be “evergreen,” working with different types and configurations of information. This might mean choosing lighter colors and graphics to create a more neutral shell, allowing content to pop with blue, burnt sienna or another eye-catching hue. And it defininitely means using more HTML as opposed to graphical text. While we already recommend using HTML text because it appears in images-disabled inbox environments, it becomes doubly important now since HTML text—unlike graphical text—can be auto-generated as dynamic content.

(3) Get Practical: After succesfully choosing your LEGO block types and colors, you can begin to create your content library—an archive of pre-built components you can reuse again and again. For instance, perhaps you have a 150x180 right rail LEGO block submessage module with a blue headline, grey body text and an orange call-to-action button. You can now create and cache multiple submessages built to these specs—perhaps a “free shipping” message, a “become a member” message and an “update your email profile” message—to include across multiple emails over time. As you add to it, the content library becomes more and more valuable. It’s like having a cache of special LEGO pieces—think traffic lights and pink ponies—on-hand to help you quickly and easily build a more dynamic email experience.

As ever,
Lisa Harmon of Smith-Harmon

-->Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Stop drinking the kool-aid! Your subject line test strategy needs a complete overhaul.

Last week I released a whitepaper on subject line length and its effect on open, click and click-to-open (CTO) rates called Subject Lines – Length Does Matter. At first glance, our analysis of over 640 email campaigns supports the widely held view that short subject lines are best for opens. But what it goes on to demonstrate is that when it comes to subject line length, more opens = less clicks!

We discovered that although subject lines with 60 characters or less make more people open the email—the traditional view—these people are less likely to then go on and click on content or offers within the message than people who open an email with a longer subject line. There is an inverse relationship between opens and both click and CTO rates.

The study goes on to show that CTO rates start to be optimized when the subject line is over 70 characters in length and continue to rise until well beyond 100 characters. This is true for both the number of characters and the word count. The more words there were in the subject line, the better the CTO rate (if anything the results are stronger for word count).

Given the strength of the whitepaper’s findings, I wanted to find out what subject line lengths marketers were using as common practice. As you might expect, we monitor a large number of UK email campaigns, from a cross-section of sectors and companies including British Airways, Hilton, Apple, Amazon and Reuters and we were astonished to find out just how many subject lines sent by these companies were short (i.e., 60 characters or less).

Out of 700 subject lines sent to our monitoring accounts in the last 90 days, the vast majority—87% of them—were under 60 characters in length. A further 7% fell into the ‘dead zone’ between 60 and 70 character where neither opens nor the CTO rate is optimized, and only 6% of the subject lines were over 70 characters long and therefore likely to optimize click and CTO rates.

Does his mean that everybody out there is only interested in opens and doesn’t care about clicks? Or perhaps that email marketers, having extensively and regularly tested longer subject lines, know for a fact that they don’t work? What’s more likely to be the case is that as an industry we’ve done such a fantastic job of drinking the kool-aid that we have stopped testing outside of the accepted norms.

Our whitepaper also found subject lines with a higher word count also optimize clicks and CTO rates. So how do the numbers break down when it came to word count? The numbers are equally amazing. Only 13% of subject lines monitored contained above 10 words—where clicks and CTO are optimized. 60% fell into the ‘dead zone’ of between 6 and 10 words, where neither clicks nor opens are optimized; and 26% of the subject lines contained fewer than 6 words, and therefore optimized open rates.

So what I have learned from this exercise is that email marketers need to completely overhaul their subject line test strategy:
● Subject line tests should be more granular—long and short just isn’t good enough. Subject lines need to be broken down into more character groupings (1-10, 11-20, ...91-100).
● Introduce word count testing. Words are a much better way of conveying meaning than characters.
● Assess the impact of the number of propositions contained in the subject line on your campaign performance.
● Finally, open rates are just a small part of the story. Your tests should assess the impact of subject lines on clicks, CTO rate and conversions, as well as sales.

My greatest fear is that the people reading the whitepaper will be looking for a simple answer such as “when it comes to email subject lines, short is best”, when in fact the central message is keep searching, keep optimizing and keep on challenging assumptions.

—Dela Quist of Alchemy Worx

Since this is my first post on the Email Experience Blog, I thought it might make sense to formally introduce myself to all the eec blog readers out there: I’m Spencer Kollas. I have been in the email marketing business for about 7 years and currently serve as the director of delivery services at StrongMail Systems. I started out as a sender/marketer before moving over to the formal email deliverability world. Today, I spend most of my time working with clients to improve their delivery rates, increase their revenue and help them get the most out of their email programs. But enough about me…let's get to the topic at hand—bounce management

I was reviewing some old files recently and I came across some information from March of 2007 when the eec came out with a research study on bounce management. This got me to thinking about how much has really changed since then. When looking at my daily work and interactions with clients, I am doubtful that it has changed all that much.

I still get questions all the time from clients asking what they should do about their bounces, how should they handle them, and what the difference is between hard and soft bounces. Given that response, I thought it might make sense to talk about this subject a bit. Plus, not only is it something near and dear to my heart, it's also a topic that can help those who still aren’t sure what to do about bounce management.

In their report on bounce management, the eec highlighted three important reasons every marketer should have effective bounce management programs:

● Performance evaluation. Proper bounce management provides crucial data on your use of email and the ROI that comes from it. By keeping track of this information and applying it back to your conversion numbers, you can see how to improve your ROI.

● List management. Bounce data is key to keeping your list clean and to maintaining or restoring contact with customers. With proper bounce management you are able to remove the customers that are no longer actively using the email addresses you have on record.

● Practice improvement. Your email system should furnish detailed data for diagnosing issues with your marketing practices (data capture, targeting, etc.) and for taking the corrective actions that will ensure both a good reputation and better deliverability. Make sure to look at your data, as this will allow you to see if certain receivers are blocking your mail or whether any other possible issues are occurring.

Now, if you are working with an ESP that is worth anything, they should have a bounce management process already put in place to make sure that their clients are following best practices. However, if you are sending email in-house, or you just want to make sure that your ESP is following best practices, those are the three areas you need to focus on when asking questions.

So what makes up a good bounce management system? Here are some basics that all programs should include:

1. Capturing of all data streams.
2. Correctly interpreting data.
3. Organizing (standardizing) data.
4. Making data actionable.
5. Being continually updated.

With a bounce management system that meets these requirements, you’ll be in a position to properly evaluate your performance, manage your list and improve your practices—all of which translate into better bottom-line results. So follow these simple rules and make sure that you have a system that meets your needs and both you and the ISPs will be happy. Good luck and good sending.

—Spencer Kollas of StrongMail Systems

As I rolled into work this morning, I logged into my Gmail account to see what random emails came in over the 6-hour window of time I was sleeping. Lo and behold....a message was sitting unread in my inbox.

The message was from “AIM Member Message” and had the subject line “What’s New with AIM?” If I wasn’t the type of person who opens every email (if only to critique them from a best practices standpoint), I would have “junked” this one immediately. Who is “AIM Member Message?” Why not “AIM” or “AOL Instant Messenger?” If you are going to have a terrible From name, at least wow me with the subject line, right? “What’s New with AIM?” Boooooooring.

Two strikes for AOL before I even open the message. But, again, I open everything. Maybe they were banking on that fact. Maybe they didn’t really spend any time thinking about the From name or subject line. Maybe they don’t have a dedicated team of email marketers who are thinking about email as a strategic tool. Maybe it’s a combination of all three or “none of the above.” Who knows? Either way, it’s not a great start.

Did I mention that I can’t remember ever receiving an email from AOL (not in my Gmail account anyway)? So my next question (zinger) is how did they get my email address? Followed by...why the random, seemingly out-of-the-blue email? Oh right, they wanted to tell me “What’s New with AIM.” Too bad I don’t care or more importantly, never asked to be emailed by AIM. Good thing they put the disclaimer in fine print in the footer.

Now...to the message. On first glance, a decent design for images off. Three text links—one “Find Out More!” followed by two “Start Now!” At least the valuable disclaimer/opt-out shows up with images off.

Moving onto the message with images on, I realize there are several key calls-to-action that are now viewable. So much for a nice design with images off. First off, apparently this is the AIM Newsletter. Who would’ve known? What *is* the AIM Newsletter anyway? A weekly message? Monthly communication? Whenever-they-feel-like-it email? Looks like they want me to download AIM. Funny thing is that I already have an AIM account. In fact, I’ve had one since AIM first launched sometime in the late 20th century. AOL collects a ton of data (I assume). Shouldn’t they have already known that little tidbit? How about segmenting the list...targeting emails?

Continuing down below the fold, it looks like they want me to “start using [my] free AIM Mail Account.” Again—been there, done that. My AOL username dates back to the dial-up days of 1995.

Finally, at the very bottom of the email—well below the fold—I get some neat new information: Mobile AIM! Yes. I can now access AIM on my mobile device. I guess it’s about time to purchase that smart phone. I’ve been told they are pretty cool.

Unfortunately, I’m no longer shocked or surprised when a multi-billion dollar company does not understand the basics of email marketing. In the email ecosystem, industry experts often get dinged for hammering “email marketing 101.” Marketers shout, “We get the fundamentals. Show us the new stuff!” But then...we get emails like the one from AOL/AIM/AIM Member Message.

Thanks AOL for keeping our jobs easy....

—DJ Waldow of Bronto Software

Recent news shows why social networks are no vacation from spam and phishing: “A Colorado man has been ordered to pay US$6 million in damages and legal fees for spamming thousands of MySpace.com users.”

The story goes on to report that the defendant, Scott Richter, had been sued by MySpace in January 2007 in connection with a campaign in which MySpace members were spammed with messages promoting a Web site called Consumerpromotionscenter.com. The messages were sent from phished MySpace accounts, according to the findings of Philip Boesch, the court-appointed arbitrator in the case.

It reminds me that where people and money gather, so do crooks. We’d all like to think that a new technology will come solve spam and phishing for us, but it seems that the many fraudsters and scam artists will continue trying to break in and make it fertile ground for their own illegal activities.

While these misfits continue to try to find cracks in social networks, email authentication and ISP/sender cooperation continues to increase the viability of email as a channel. Our 2008 Channel Preference Survey Whitepaper showed that even 62% of 15-17 year-olds still preferred email to any other channel for promotions.

So what is a marketer to do? The answer for social networks also applies in the world of email, IM, SMS, etc. Differentiate your brand from the spammers by doing something they’d never do: Ask your potential customers what they want, and LISTEN.

For 30 years or so the concepts of one-to-one marketing have focused on the marketer determining what they think subscribers will want based on their demographic or psychographic data or behavioral observations. Regardless of whether the medium is social networks, email, phone, SMS or IM, I believe the next 30 years will be about putting the power back into the hands of the subscriber. How do we do that? Here are a few thought-starters:

1. Create a profile center for registrations and let the subscriber choose not only what publications they want, but how often they want them and through which medium (email, SMS, etc.).

2. Listen and respond to complaints. Spam complaints, concerns about phishing, content or frequency of communications. Direct marketers know that they only have to treat their loyal customers well or they will walk. There are more choices now than ever.

3. Survey customers on their preferences and respond with content that meets their stated preferences. This doesn’t mean you should abandon your web analytics analysis, it just means you should augment it with survey data to drive content.

—Chip House of ExactTarget