Benefits of Email | Email Experience Council

Email Marketing and Social Media Are Top Areas of Investment in 2012

Wednesday, December 7, 2011 by eec Blog Contributor

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

Four Common-Sense Tips for Using Social Tools in Email Marketing

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 by Marco Marini

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

Build vs. Buy: The real cost of building an email solution

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 by Marco Marini

The trend for several years now has been away from building and toward outsourcing, yet some organizations still think building an in-house email marketing solution is the way to go. The market offers numerous ways to build your own in-house solution. But what's the real cost?

Some organizations have so much IT talent that they think they can build their own email marketing system. A perceived cost savings typically drives this decision. Would they consider building their own print shop? Probably not. It's a matter of sticking with your core business vs. being your own vendor.

There are so many possibilities for email platforms these days. ESPs have been around for over a decade. They are a tried-and-true way to go as the "buy" option for companies preferring to outsource the infrastructure. If an ESP isn’t for you and your organization plans to build, I offer some factors to consider to help you determine the real cost.

There's a real cost to building that must be considered. It's a capital expense vs. an operations expense. But building comes with operational expenses too…and the cost of not having certain competitive capabilities.

"Building" can mean a variety of approaches to your email marketing system. It might mean you're buying a server from StrongMail or using an online solution like Amazon Cloud. It can also mean you’re building from scratch. There are sending solutions where sending is hosted but you still have to do the front end. No matter the route you go, if you build, you will have to manage the hosting, maintenance, firewall, integration and more. Much more. When you “buy,” you’re outsourcing the infrastructure and getting invaluable additional benefits as well, including deliverability, currency and relevance-enabling tools.

Deliverability
Deliverability is critical. It directly impacts your email marketing ROI. If an email isn't delivered, you have zero potential for an impression or sale. In fact, you don't even get to work a little brand awareness in there. An undelivered email might as well not exist. When you buy—meaning outsource—your email solution, you get a team of postmasters who will keep your email deliverability rate up. When you’re doing this in-house and you run into an email delivery problem, you’ll either have to hire a consultant to help or be willing to dedicate your IT team’s time to figuring out the problem – which is not easy to say the least.

Currency
Plus there's staying current. ESPs are constantly evolving, continually adding new features to keep up with email deliverability requirements and consumer expectations. If you build your own, you are essentially freezing yourself in time. For some organizations, the incremental cost for email goes away. But you still have IT costs. It's a business decision and there are tax implications as you consider capital vs. operating expenses.

Relevance
To compete in the inbox in 2011, you must have relevance-enabled tools. Those tools used to cost thousands of dollars. Today they cost hundreds...when you outsource. Relevance-enabled technologies include trigger-based and event-driven emails, lifecycle and drip campaigns, and dynamic content. You can build out these capabilities, but the undertaking is massive. And massive means pricey because you're talking payroll costs and lost opportunities while you wait for your solution to be built and deployed.

Top-tier ESPs have this relevance-enabling technology built in to their platforms. That means "buying" instead of "building" lets you take advantage of these competitive advantages from day one.

Relevance also requires website analytics resulting from a recipient interacting with an email. Many web analytics platforms can track this at a macro-level, but the real value comes when the data is tied to a specific email address. If you don't have the tight integration required to give you insight from web analytics, or integration with your CRM system, you won't be able to do truly relevant, targeted email marketing.

How long will it take to build and deploy?
If your IT department says it will take six months to build, plan on 12 to 18 months before you're fully functional with all the features you want. Can you wait a year and a half for a good email marketing system? While your competition is emailing your target market, you won’t be…or at least you won’t be at the level of effectiveness you want, meaning your competition will likely win out.

Don't forget the payroll costs
Consider the staff time and associated payroll costs. If you're going to build and maintain in-house, you’ll need at least two staff people trained so you'll always have someone on hand if problems arise. In addition to the IT aspects of building and maintaining an email solution, at least one of your employees must have expertise in email areas like privacy, working with ISPs, deliverability issues, protecting your online sending reputation, being CAN-SPAM compliant and more. If you plan to design your own emails or use rich media email, you’ll also need someone who is an expert and who will take into account rendering issues in different email clients and on handheld devices too. That’s three staff people. What does that add up to when you add in all the benefits, taxes and other costs of adding a body to your payroll?

Unless you are sending hundreds of millions of emails monthly, outsourcing is cheaper...and safer. Building might look cheaper at the outset, but the cost is going to be higher than you anticipate. If email isn't core to your business, outsource. If it is core to your business, absolutely critical, maybe build. Maybe. But consider every single cost.

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

Save Time and Money by Integrating Your Email and Blog

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 by Marco Marini

Email marketing and blogging share one core feature that neither can exist without: content.

Creating content takes time and effort. For email, you have offers to formulate, copywriters to hire, drafts to review, words to tweak, calls to action to polish. For blogs, you have keywords to use, writers to manage, and frequency to maintain.

You can save yourself time and effort by repurposing content between your email marketing program and your blog program.

When you create something once and use multiple times, you’re getting more bang for your buck. You can also get more out of user-generated content, and other types of content like video and photos this way. Since blogs require a lot of content to be effective, you want to tap into every source possible, including your promotional emails and your informative, newsletter-style ones.

At ClickMail, we archive every email newsletter on our website, write a follow up blog summarizing the article and provide a link on our blog to the archived issue. We’ve served our list by providing valuable content with the newsletter, we get the SEO benefits of the additional content by posting the newsletter on our website, and we get the blog content, additional SEO benefits, and a link back by posting a blog. We’ve accomplished all this by simply repurposing one newsletter article.

You can also save money while generating blogs and emails by tapping into your customers for free content. For this user-generated content—which tends to be more relevant to your audience, as well as objective—solicit feedback post-purchase using email. Use any testimonials in your blog, email newsletters, and promotional emails; or let customers contribute to your blog and draw from that content to repurpose it for email content, too.

To save even more time and money by repurposing content, think beyond posts and articles to announcements, webinars, podcasts, video, photos, press releases, customer testimonials and reviews. Consider all content potentially email and blog-worthy with edits to make it appropriate to the channel. If it works in your blog, it can probably be repurposed in your email. If it works in your email, it can probably be repurposed for your blog.

Also remember that your blog works as an SEO tool, helping people who don’t know about you to find you. This may lead them to sign up for your emails when they see your blog on the search results page, click through to it and then your website, and like what they see. So repurposing email content in your blog might just help you grow your in-house email list, too.

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

Multi-Channel vs Cross-Channel: What Do You Think?

Wednesday, December 8, 2010 by eec Blog Contributor

Multi-channel. Cross-channel. Can we use them interchangeably? Is there a difference and if so, what is it?

The eec's Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable believes not only is there a difference, but it's a significant one.

Here’s our definition: multi-channel marketing refers to sending out the same message to your audience using a variety of different channels (email marketing, direct mail, mobile, etc.). The channels work independently and are generally not coordinated - more of a silo approach.

When referring to cross-channel marketing, you’re still using multiple marketing channels but you're taking a much more choreographed, orchestrated, personalized approach. One message reinforces the next message and leverages the benefits of the specific channel by driving your audience to action, as opposed to just repeating the same message. It's much more tightly integrated and looks at the interactions 'holistically' - not only how the customer is receiving the communication, but also how they're responding to it. A cross-channel marketing strategy then takes that into consideration before sending out the next communication.

So...what do you think? Share your thoughts by posting a comment below.

- Eileen Weinberg
ClickSquared
Member of the eec's Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable

I'm thankful...

Tuesday, November 23, 2010 by Email Experience Council

I'm thankful for increased awareness around the benefits of email marketing in my organization.

Name:
Company:

Pull the Trigger for Targeted Messages and Higher ROI

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 by Marco Marini

When do fewer emails mean higher ROI? When your emails are hyper-targeted and truly one-to-one. That doesn’t mean you need a huge team of people contacting customers one at a time, like the telemarketers of old. It only requires you to tap into existing technology and know-how to make it happen.

I like to say “happy birthdays mean happy profits” because birthday emails are a perfect example of this concept. When someone subscribes to get your emails, you get their birth date along with the other data you gathered about them upon signup. That date goes into your system and on or near the customer’s birthday, depending on how you have it configured; an email is automatically triggered offering a birthday bonus of some kind, like a free ice cream cone if you work for a chain of sweet shops, or a free movie rental if you’re marketing your video stores.

These emails get a remarkably high response rate because they are so targeted…and therefore, welcome.

You’re not limited to birthday emails, however, nor are triggered emails only appropriate for B2C marketing. Triggered emails come in three types—recurring, transactional and threshold—and can be used in a variety of circumstances:

A recurring email can be a birthday email like we’ve described above, or could happen a certain period after a purchase, to remind a customer that it’s time to renew
A transactional email can be one email, like a follow up to a purchase or download, soliciting feedback, or even a drip campaign following a purchase, giving tips on how to use the product (and also up-selling)
As a threshold email can occur when a customer’s behavior has gotten to a certain point, say if they’ve purchased three songs from one album, you offer a discount on the album

In the past, marketers resisted moving from batch-and-blast to this kind of targeted, triggered approach because the cost seemed prohibitive. Between building the API and the software to handle the emails the technological cost made any chance of an ROI a slim one. Today, however, all top-tier ESPs and many secondary ones offer triggered messaging capabilities. That means you can make your email marketing program even more relevant without increasing your staff or IT costs.

Before we dive into the benefits and how-to’s of triggered emails, let’s review the terminology:

Triggered means triggered by an event: A trigger based message is one sent out in response to a certain action within an email or on a website
Targeted means segmented, with dynamic content, so different recipients get different email content and even colors and graphics
Drip marketing is a series of messages triggered by an event, such as a purchase or whitepaper download (also known as lifecycle messaging)

You’ll also need to define the event or events that trigger the website. The event might be a click on a website, time spent on a page with no shopping cart activity, a coupon download, or a link clicked in an email. Or, to return to our earlier example, it might be date driven like a birthday or anniversary.

One-to-one triggered emails have a much higher ROI so even though you’re sending out fewer emails, you’re making more money off the targeted ones. But what do you need to do to be set up for that kind of triggered email?

1. An ESP or in-house solution that enables triggered messaging

2. An API to automate the flow of data from your CRM or in-house database to your ESP or internal ESP

3. A content library, so your system can take from it to place the appropriate message in each email

Also consider that these types of emails typically use a transactional delivery engine vs. a marketing delivery engine, i.e. point-to-point transmission vs. one-to-many broadcast.

The one caveat happens when you start to collect the data upon which to define your rules. Do not ask for too much. You can ask for up to four pieces of information upon sign up, but any more than that, and your abandonment rate will soar. Instead, be very clear what information you want to start out with and only ask for that (based on what you can really use). Then over time you can ask for more information, and append that information to that subscriber later.

The idea of this kind of targeted email marketing might be daunting, but it’s really not difficult given today’s technology and pre-existing services. As a result, your triggered email messaging can be as sophisticated as you want to make it, to get the most ROI from your highest value customers. For example, your system can score a customer based on behavior, such as purchasing a higher-priced item, and offer an exclusive and limited price on another item as a reward.

Marketers have to start automating their email campaigns based on customer behaviors, such as shopping cart abandonment. Companies who’ve done this have experienced higher click through rates and conversion rates, without increasing staff costs. Alternatively, automating email programs around customer behaviors with hyper-targeted messages will result in a higher email marketing ROI.

And it leads to a higher engagement index, which means more of your subscribers are engaging with your email, which in turn will give you a better standing in the eyes of the ISPs…which in turn will improve your email deliverability and get you into more inboxes…and so on and so on and so on.

Sounds pretty happy to me!

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

Powerful Purchase Data That Can Reel In Revenue

Wednesday, August 4, 2010 by Kristen Gregory

Plenty of databases house valuable information that could help marketers do a better job with their email programs. Here are some data points to consider bringing into your email platform to take your marketing up a notch:

1. Last Purchase Date - I believe this is perhaps the most powerful data field of all as it has tons of revenue-generating and relationship-building marketing potential. Ideas for messages based off this date (and all can be automated) include:

product review requests.
“getting started” guides or how-to tips for using the product purchased.
product care messages (tips to maintain or clean the product).
coupon for next purchase.
product refill requests (after estimated use time as passed).
non-purchaser series – sending “We miss you” emails with increasingly valuable offers to push folks back into purchasing after a certain amount of time has passed.
non-purchaser series for those who have NEVER purchased (i.e. the last purchase date field is empty).

2. # of Purchases Made By Contact - This can help you identify single-buyers and try various tactics to push a second purchase. You can also identify your most frequent purchasers and create VIP offers just for them.

3. Lifetime Value/Total Purchase Amount - This data can also help you recognize and segment out your top spenders and create a strategy specifically for them. Make these customers feel special. Welcome or invite them into an elite group where they can get access to products before others, receive exclusive offers, have a voice in product development (perhaps they get to vote on product features/colors!) and so on.

Sephora has a V.I.B [Very Important Beauty Insider] program where customers who spend more than $350 in the calendar year get royal treatment (10% welcome coupon, access to products pre-launch, special holiday gift cards, exclusive offers and more). You can set up a similar program and target folks who are near or on their way toward that VIP amount, reminding them of the benefits. (Sephora isn’t currently doing this as far as I can tell.) Doing so could spur more purchases through YOUR business versus a competitor in hopes of reaching that elite level. To run this kind of program, you’d want to track the total purchase value over a calendar year.

4. Average Sale Value (or at minimum, last purchase value) - Knowing what customers spend on average can help you be smart about the offers you present. If someone spends $110 on average every time they purchase from you, you can feel confident they may take advantage of a deal offering a free gift or free shipping for purchases over $100 or you can try to push them a bit further than normal with a special offer at a purchase of $150 or more.

5. Dominant Product Category - If someone tends to focus their purchases in one of your categories - say outdoor & gardening out of all your home décor options or only clothing in your bike shop - you should consider targeting that customer with messages featuring that area of displayed interest.

The revenue you can create by implementing this kind of savvy marketing will likely be well worth the effort/investment necessary to bring this data into your email platform.

Have you already set up some messaging based on these data fields? What results are you seeing?

- Kristen Gregory
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto Software
@kristengreg

Ben & Jerry’s Drops Email in Favor of Social Media: Industry Reactions

Wednesday, July 28, 2010 by eec Blog Contributor

Two weeks ago, Ben & Jerry’s announced they were “giving up” on email marketing in favor of social media. Note: Later that day, the @cherrygarcia Twitter account reported that this was a UK-only change.

Update: Our friends over at The eMail Guide took the time to email the PR folks at Ben & Jerry’s. Here’s what their PR Director, Sean Greenwood, had to say – personally, I don’t think it changes the story dramatically.

As you can imagine, the email marketing industry was up in arms. There was a collective “Noooooooooo” followed by “Are they kidding?” The Inbox Insiders – an email marketing list created by Bill McCloskey that boasts some of the sharpest marketers from many of the largest brands in the world as well as a host of vendor side (email service provider) folks – decided to weigh in. Here is what a few of them had to say…

    21st century brands need to ‘behave’, not just tell stories, as behavior is tangible and real, and empowers Consumers to shape their own brand experience. That shaping is what drives advocacy and rampant love of the brand. Ben & Jerry’s clearly has heard what their customers want, and currently do not want, and are behaving accordingly. Sweet, creamy customer-centricity!

Andy Goldman*
SVP, Strategy & Integration
RAPP

————-

    The same discussion now about social vs email took place decades ago regarding radio vs newspapers and TV vs radio. History repeats itself. Of course some social evangelists and fan boys/girls will hoot about this vindicating social as better than any other medium, but comments such this are not motivated by any kind of insight. At this point they are driven by wishful thinking and personal agendas. In other words, this recurring discussion is more political than practical. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter are proprietary platforms controlled entirely by their owners, while email is a standard supported globally and that sets it apart.

Jim Ducharme
Editor
The eMail Guide

————-

    While Ben & Jerry’s UK marketing department is listening to their customers, which is always applauded, this is shortsighted from a business perspective. Email and social media are significantly more powerful when used together versus independently. Further, with email marketing, you own your email list, whereas Facebook and Twitter followers are owned by those respective properties. Rather than replacing email with social media altogether, Ben & Jerry’s should focus on improving the value of their email programs for their subscribers by integrating social elements and exclusive offers (e.g. use a 24 hr. “flash” discount to drive traffic into retail stores or use email to launch a social word of mouth campaign.)

Kristin Hersant*
Director, Corporate Marketing
StrongMail

————-

    Facebook and Twitter may be working well for them now, but will that hold true into next year? The year after? Five years from now? And if they disband their email program now and decide they need it later, how easy will it be to resuscitate those email relationships? I’m not anti-social media. It’s just that I’ve been on panels where the topic is “Email is Dead, Long Live X” where X = RSS/Blogs/MySpace, etc. And none of them have actually, to date, replaced email.

Jeanne S. Jennings
Consultant, Email Marketing Strategy
JeanneJennings.com, Inc.

————-

    The “inbox” – defined as a destination for content from both people we know and brands we like – has fragmented. It’s online, on my device, in Facebook and Twitter and at a business address. Great email marketing has always been about great content, and that is more true today as email marketers compete for budgets and customer attention with social, mobile and even offline marketing. Why keep your investment in email? Frankly, the question must be, How can we best utilize email to connect with customers and prospects in ways that help achieve our business KPIs?

    If you can’t come up with a strong strategy to answer, then you are either missing a big opportunity or won’t find ROI in the channel.

Stephanie Miller*
VP, Global Market Development
Return Path

————-

    Ben & Jerry’s made a bold move and now they are getting the media benefit of that decision. In the short run, I think they will benefit from this move. However, in the long run, they have made a decision that abandons a lot of paying customers that may have wanted to hear from them, but don’t actively engage in social media. In our research on how consumers engage brands through Email, Facebook and Twitter we see consumers layering these activities to get closer to brands. Consumers don’t operate in silos and marketers shouldn’t either.

Morgan Stewart*
Director, Research and Strategy
ExactTarget

————-

    Part of me has to think (hope?) that Ben & Jerry’s UK has run the numbers and determined that forgoing email marketing in favor of social media is the best option for them. I don’t understand why they’d abandon email marketing altogether. Why not give their subscribers a choice?

DJ Waldow*
Director of Community
Blue Sky Factory

————-

    Such a shame that brands can’t think “one to one” in the digital age and have to kiss goodbye to a fantastic relationship-building channel. The skills needed to make a success of social media are not that different to email marketing, so I fear that B&J may be running away from email to an equally unforgiving world of Facebook and Twitter. Lucky for them that the ice cream’s so good.

David Hughes
Founder
The Email Academy, Ltd

————-

    Most CPG brands struggle to create robust CRM programs with very tiny budgets. It sounds as though B&Js has simply made a budget-related decision to move to the least expensive channel available so they can reach out more often to their customers. Email will still have a place in their communications arsenal despite the announcement – after all, how do all their Facebook fans know when they have a message from B&Js? Email. Of course, it’s an email that doesn’t cost B&Js anything to send – though it goes to a much smaller audience than they could likely send to directly.

Gretchen Scheiman
Partner, Associate Director, CRM
OgilvyOne worldwide

————-

    I applaud Ben & Jerry’s for getting customer feedback before making a very strategic decision. However, I think the mistake is that they abanonded email rather than letting customers choose their preferred communication channel. After all, this is a company that offers 108 flavors. Since many customers prefer chocolate to vanilla, are they going to eliminate vanilla now too?

Simms Jenkins
CEO
BrightWave Marketing & EmailStatCenter.com

————-

    Email is a core driver of many successful social marketing programs. I’m just not sure if anyone has articulated this to Ben & Jerry’s or showed them an effective way to integrate email & social into an effective program.

Chris Baggott*
CEO/Co-founder
Compendium

————-

    Their decision certainly seems shortsighted. Are they completely overlooking email as a coupon distribution channel? If their subscribers were getting high-value coupons exclusive to being on the list, maybe they’d have liked the program more. Although B&J doesn’t have quite the same distribution model as ColdStone Creamery, they could take a few lessons from their competitors in the retail ice cream space (I’m thinking of Rita’s Ice too).

Karen Talavera*
Email & Digital Marketing Coaching, Training & Strategy
Synchronicity Marketing

————-

    Each year Ben & Jerry’s kills 8 to 12 ice cream flavors. In 2010, at least in the UK, it looks like Email Marketing has gone to the ice cream Flavour Graveyard just like Peanut Butter & Jelly did more than a decade ago. But Ben & Jerry’s decision in the UK to pull back on Email Marketing and focus on new marketing flavors like Social Media speaks to their unique customers and marketing approach, not to any decline in email marketing’s popularity and effectiveness. After all, while Cherry Garcia is Ben & Jerry’s top seller, vanilla is still the most popular ice cream flavor in the world.

Loren McDonald*
VP, Industry Relations
Silverpop

————-

    Totally abandoning email in favor of social is short sighted and antithetical to Ben & Jerry’s efforts, since email marketing can be and is one of the most powerful drivers of social media participation. A survey conducted by Harris Interactive last year found that 96% of Americans were willing to provide companies with their email addresses in order to receive offers and discounts, compared to just 12% that were willing to provide their social media “digits” to do the same (e.g., their Facebook handle). Smart marketers are using email as the gateway to social — acquiring customers’ email addresses first, and then directing them down the funnel towards social media channels.

Jordan Cohen
VP, Business Development
Pontiflex

————-

Where do you stand? What is your take. Good (strategic) decision by Ben & Jerry’s or just plain madness?

- DJ Waldow
Director of Community
Blue Sky Factory

Read the original post.

*eec Member

Why the Email Industry Needs New Tracking Metrics

Monday, July 26, 2010 by eec Blog Contributor

Email marketing has made significant improvements over the years. As a whole, the industry has improved email marketing strategy, message design, targeting and delivery. But one area that hasn't improved is tracking metrics. ESP's are still using the same metrics that have been in place for years. It's time for that to change.

For the past 2 years, the eec's Measurement Accuracy Roundtable has been developing a new set of email marketing measurement standards called the Support Adoption of Metrics for Email (SAME) project. The new standards are a dramatic improvement over original metric definitions. They provide more insight into the true results of a campaign and paint a more accurate picture of your campaign performance.

The reasons why the email marketing industry needs the new metric standards are numerous. They include:

The ability for all marketers to benchmark their results against the metrics from any delivery platform
The ability for the industry to aggregate results knowing that all source data was acquired using the same definitions
The ability to compare data across multiple systems and databases
The ability to better integrate metrics with other platforms, such as CRM system

Because of the benefits of the new metrics, many ESPs are adopting the new standards or are planning to do so. At Email Transmit, we've made an update to our tracking area to provide our clients with access to the new metrics. Our interface now defaults to the new eec metrics and we've allowed clients to continue to view traditional metrics as well.

While implementing the new metrics we've also provided their definitions so marketers can fully understand how the results are calculated. Client feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, as clients are able to get more usable data from their campaign results.

Are you ready for the next step in email metrics? Start by signing the petition, then read the definitions and commit to incorporating the new metrics or contact your ESP and ask them to support the project. Hopefully in the near future we'll all be able to abide by a common set of metrics and have usable industry-wide benchmarks based on the same definitions.

- Adam Q. Holden-Bache
CEO/Managing Director
Mass Transmit, developer of Email Transmit
Connect with Adam on Twitter and LinkedIn

Abracadabra: Is Email Metrics Standardization Real or Merely an Illusion?

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 by eec Blog Contributor

I’m a lover of magic. When illusions appear creative, bold, and clever, they seem worthy of being shared with everyone. On the other hand, if it’s a trick that everyone knows, the “magic” becomes cheap and hollow, unlikely to fool anyone. When it comes to the standardization of email metrics, the question arises: is this truly noteworthy, or simply another case of “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain?” Smoke and mirrors won’t work in this case; complete transparency is necessary to address this issue. It’s time to put all of our cards on the table and examine various aspects of the argument surrounding standardization.

As co-chairs of the eec's Measurement Accuracy Roundtable, independent email consultants John Caldwell and Luke Glasner have marshaled a group of industry players to launch an email standardization project. For what it’s worth, that project is gaining momentum and earning some serious ink within the industry. This is not the same old dog and pony show we’ve seen in the past; these guys really have their act together. Think of them as Siegfried and Roy of the email industry. Their S.A.M.E. project (Support Adoption of Metrics for Email) has bent the ears of industry pundits, and their formula for encouraging ESPs to adopt the standards seems to be fooling everyone. And in this context, deception is a good thing. Learn more about the S.A.M.E. project here.

Sleeveless in Seattle
As with any new industry-related project, many challenges surface, but without early adopters, we’d be left sleeveless, a nightmare for any magician. Two ESPs, MassTransmit/EmailTransmit and AllWebMail have already committed to adopting the industry standard for metrics which was released by the DMA/eec in March 2010. Since then, a dozen other high profile ESPs have committed to adopting the standards within the next six months. When you think about early adopters, companies like these help pave the road for the rest of the industry. As interested ESPs begin to track the progress and milestones achieved by the S.A.M.E. project, momentum will build and the benefits will begin to blossom around the industry.

“Adoption is not just a semantics game,” says Stephanie Miller, Vice Chair of the eec and an active member of the Roundtable (her day job is at inbox deliverability solution provider, Return Path). “Marketers usually find out that there are no standards when they go to benchmark their performance, or when they change vendors and realize that all those numbers they’ve been betting their bonus on – they don’t mean what they thought they meant!

“It’s about time our industry stepped up and supported standard metrics just like any other direct marketing discipline,” she says.

Deliverability Will No Longer be a Selling Point for ESPs
Once the implementation of email standards leads to congruency across the industry, ESPs and marketers will find themselves on a level playing field. This means marketers may spend more time searching for the right ESP, but once a match is made, marketers will be less likely to move from one ESP to another due to inconsistency in metrics. This means attrition rates for switching ESPs will fall, and in turn, ESPs will focus on services that will keep customers longer and help them achieve a higher ROI. Examples of such services include compelling creative copy and perhaps even a SWOT analysis every month/quarter provided by the ESP to each marketer. Higher performance of the channel benefits all of us.

S.A.M.E. Project Goals
Once a magician takes his oath, he must never reveal his secrets. However, if aspiring participants are willing to learn magic, they, too, can join the “magic club.” ESPs face a similar choice. They can remain on the outside looking in, simply observing the progression of the S.A.M.E. project, or they can choose to be an active part of the club. John and Luke's first goal is 10-15% of the ESP market adopt the standards.

Nowadays, when an ESP reports on the “state of the industry,” they analyze metrics only of their own campaigns, like a magician who looks in the mirror and declares himself successful. Industry standardization will introduce accountability to the industry, providing the digital marketing community with sterilized benchmarking and consistent reporting. The spotlight now shines bright on John and Luke and the eec Roundtable, along with other industry veterans and aspiring ESPs involved with the S.A.M.E. project. It is their mission to deliver what the email industry yearns for: a final levitation act that will wow the crowd and inspire mass adoption. They hope to prove that they are master magicians—if they perform their act well enough, even the skeptics will believe.

Get Involved

Marketers: Send this article to your ESP and encourage them to adopt the standards.
ESPs: Study the new standard definitions and set a goal for yourself to adopt them. Be part of the program.

Now, where did all the Rabbits go?

- Fred Tabsharani
Port25 Solutions, Inc.
@tabsharani

Will ESPs Evolve Into Marketing Automation Solutions?

Wednesday, July 7, 2010 by Marco Marini

A recent article in DM News entitled, “E-mail service providers break the mold” got me thinking about how ESPs have been evolving, adding features sets and functionality, that are beginning to close the gap between the ESP platform and the marketing automation platform.

The evolution of the ESP is to be expected given the changing marketing landscape and shifting customer expectations. The further we move away from batch-and-blast and move toward one-to-one marketing, the more we have to take into account that one-to-one is not as simple as a really targeted and timely message. It means the platform by which it’s delivered too, for example via mobile or a social networking site.

In addition, most top tier ESPs offer drip and triggered email streams and have built-in web analytics or integration with a web analytics platform, two capabilities that begin to bridge the gap with marketing automation software. I predict lead scoring will be next. ESPs are recognizing that they must do and offer more in order to compete with marketing automation solutions like Eloqua, Marketo and Pardot. Marketing automation is like a big tool, a dashboard that gives marketers access to all kinds of information about what prospects are doing when, and where they are in the sales cycle. To evolve into that kind of tool, ESPs will have to offer lead scoring.

Even with their evolution and growth, email is still the core competency of ESPs. Email is—and always will be—the thread that ties everything together. You need an email address to log in to LinkedIn. You get an email when someone contacts you via Facebook. It’s the email that leads to the landing page that provides the web analytics. As the DM News article points out, ESPs are adding other services like database and mobile marketing. Next ESPs will need really need strong lead scoring capabilities, which might mean developing or buying a robust lead scoring solution and being able to tie that back to CRM systems.

Marketing automation excels at lead nurturing before passing those leads along to sales, so those leads are of a higher quality and more likely to result in customers. Compared to the core competency of an ESP(email as thread), marketing automation does a better job of pushing people through the sales pipeline, with more intelligence, more automation and—as a result—more relevance. Marketing automation isn’t only for customer acquisition, however. Used properly, it’s just as good for customer retention.

In short, marketing automation is sales and marketing focused, while your typical ESP is more marketing focused. But down the road maybe an ESP will buy a lead-scoring company. If that's the case, how would it be different from a marketing automation tool?

There is still one major difference, however, and that’s ease of implementation. With an ESP, you can start with email and add on more functionalities as needed. You choose the right ESP for your program, use it properly and you’re good. This ease of implementation lowers the barrier compared to a marketing automation platform.

If you choose a marketing automation tool, you’re gaining lead scoring and marketing sophistication. You’re also signing up for a lot of work upfront in order to use it properly. You have automation rules to set up, processes to define, and more…much more. A recent comment from a colleague drove this point home. She was tardy in replying to an email, and when she did reply, she explained her company is moving to a marketing automation software that had her “frazzled.” As she put it, “It’s a fantastic move, but as with anything the implementation is slowing me down a bit.” At the same time, she recognized the benefit of the solution, stating that the result will be streamlined processes and more qualified leads for the sales team.

In my opinion, due to the complexity and sophistication, a marketing automation solution is overkill for many (or even most) companies. You need to progress to the point where you really need that kind of functionality, so you’re likely better off starting with an ESP anyway.

Can ESPs evolve to the point where they offer the sophistication of a marketing automation solution without losing the simplicity of their implementation? Or will ESPs eventually be some version of a marketing automation software, with all its complexity and benefits?

We even see the need for bridging the gap at our own company. Although we resell almost a dozen ESPs, we also partner with Marketo and Pardot to offer their marketing automation solutions to our clients. No matter what happens with the gap, whether it shrinks or disappears altogether, I believe this trend is a good thing overall. The increased competition will only continue to raise the bar for everyone and it’s our clients and their customers who will ultimately benefit.

- Marco Marini

CEO

ClickMail Marketing

Update From the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable

Thursday, April 15, 2010 by eec Blog Contributor

For the past few years, the eec's Measurement Accuracy Roundtable has been conscientiously working to standardize email metrics. Standardizing these metrics is crucial to improving the quality of reporting and to enhance the creditability of the email industry. As part of the standardization goal, the Roundtable seeks congruent email reporting across existing Email Service Providers.

The email industry operates in a dynamic environment, and, like every major industry, it has its shortcomings. But, one thing that has remained constant over the years is the ambiguity that faces marketers because of differences in how email metrics are calculated from one ESP to another. When these reporting variances occur, marketers get anxious, and it adds to the already toxic elements that challenge the industry every day. Currently, the biggest issue that the industry faces are the ever-increasing levels of spam, but other inconsistencies also pose a challenge.

For example, when email marketers shift from one ESP to another, reporting of metrics can cause a headache, due in part to the method that certain ESPs use to calculate reporting metrics. By standardizing metrics, both ESPs and marketers will benefit, as standardization radically improves benchmarking and further enhances credibility. The “common denominator” created by standardized email metrics gives marketers an even playing field when choosing ESPs.

On the other side of the equation, ESPs are faced with challenges of their own. They must systematically convey to their existing clients that changes in reporting are imminent and industry-wide. They must make changes to dashboards and publish new calculations to alleviate any irregularity from one ESP to another. Furthermore, ESPs must demonstrate the value of these changes through a series of well-defined communications which explain why a standardized method is a benefit for all. These transitioning steps may cause clients to feel alienated. To maintain a good relationship, ESPs will need to formulate a plan to minimize client inconvenience during the transition process.

One of the benefits for ESPs who shift to the new standards will be their ability to apply for an adoption seal program. This seal can be placed conspicuously throughout their online properties, informing potential clients that this ESP supports and has adopted the new standards of email metrics. This will quell any uncertainty that the marketer might face when trying to discern between ESPs. In essence, the seal provides reassurance to clients that switching to a new ESP will be relatively painless.

Finally, ESPs must ask themselves the proverbial question; will making changes to their existing reporting infrastructure help the industry in the long run? If so, ESPs must make standardization of email metrics a priority. However, moving toward standardization too quickly can stifle growth and innovation. Therefore, we must use this time wisely and collaborate with industry colleagues to develop congruency across the majority of ESPs. These innovations have the ability to help email marketers better discern email metrics, especially if or when they switch providers. These changes will increase clients’ satisfaction when choosing a provider and, ultimately, brighten the future of the entire industry.

Learn more and join our efforts.

If you are interested in joining the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable, please contact Ali Swerdlow.

- Fred Tabsharani

Marketing | Industry Relations

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

How Social Networking Can Magnify the Power of Your Email Campaigns

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 by Marco Marini

Are you struggling to increase your in-house email list in order to extend your marketing reach? There is a growing percentage of the online population that does not sign up for emails or newsletters. Instead they get their information predominately through social networking sites and portals. To reach them, one has to get to them either through their contacts, the groups they belong to, or those they follow. But email can be the vehicle to do just that.

Email can enable and even encourage content to be shared with social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. This then allows for an extended reach to those people who haven't opted in to receive emails from you. Plus the marketer retains some control over what specifically can be shared. For example, it might be a video, particular imagery, or a special offer. You as the marketer get to decide.

In addition to getting your content exposed to a much broader audience, sharing email content gives those doing the sharing the opportunity to add value to their respective networks. This is a huge motivator for many social networkers because it puts them in the role of trusted advisor. (Consider how often a tweet from someone in your network is simply a retweet.) This also allows a marketer to enable their audiences to evangelize on your behalf.

This opportunity to reach the previously unreachable, and to simultaneously empower your audience to demonstrate value to their network, can lead to very high conversion rates, especially if your goal is to not only reach new prospects but also to add new subscribers to your in-house list.

The latest statistics indicate that the number of people seeing content increases approximately 24% with social networking/email integration compared to relying on email alone. That's a massive increase for virtually no cost. FTF (forward to a friend) has been considered an email best practice for years, and it's one marketers should keep doing. But social forwarding features blow it away when you look at the extended reach enabled by social networking vs. FTF email.

The typical social networker has approximately 160 connections. When they share something in their network, the message they are sharing is exposed to their whole network. Compare that quantity to the person who forwards an email using FTF: Typically 1 in 1,000 email recipients actually forwards via FTF, and of those that do, the vast majority forward to 3 people or less. And hardly any of them subscribe as the result of getting the forward. It's easy to see that when you provide interesting, valuable and relevant content into a socially networked environment (i.e. content people will want to share), some of the new people you've just reached will sign up with your company directly for future news or shareworthy information.

When you add social networking integration via a tool like Share-to-Social or Social Forward, be sure to provide instructions to your audience about how to share specific offers or content, and help them understand why they should. Language such as "Click the Facebook icon to the right to share these recipes with your network" tells the user the action to take (click to share) and implies the benefit (you'll delight your friends).

All of this, however, is predicated on having information worth sharing. Your content has to have value. It must be relevant, interesting and appealing. Period.

The organic list growth opportunity is staggering too, as the latest research from MarketingSherpa and authors David Daniels and Jeanniey Mullen* show that the typical lifetime value of a new email address is between $120 and $180 each! Growing your list by just 100 recipients would play out to something like a $15,000 lift to the bottom line. Cha-ching.

Email marketing still offers the highest ROI. Imagine what you can achieve when you multiply its reach by integrating social networking features into your email campaigns!

*In their book, Email Marketing: An Hour a Day

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

My Email Hopes for the New Year

Monday, December 21, 2009 by Kara Trivunovic

Have we all become puppets? Being an email marketer, I realize the question itself is not overly popular – but it is something many of us struggle with. As owners of the email programs, many marketers I speak with express the acknowledgement of needing to send fewer, more valuable email communications; however, that admission is always said with the anticipation of the "but." And a big "but" it is! "BUT, my executive team (business owners, advertisers, take your pick) insist that we send more email, against our recommendation."

This statement, while expected, never ceases to amaze me. Have we really become an industry of puppets? Are experts no longer hired for their expertise and knowledge to create, drive and manage the best email program a brand can hope for? Have we been forced in to a "yes-man" role? Ugh. I don't like the sound of that at all. Can't we just find a way to co-exist – a little compromise here and there? As we move in to 2010, I share with you my Email Hopes for the New Year:

Mastery of the Basics
There are so many things we could talk about here, but we really need to take a step away from the new and shiny email "toys" and really get good at the basics. If you have a 7% open rate, I don't think that plugging a video in to your email campaign is going to help. Clearly – you need to think about why you only have a 7% open rate and what you can fix about your email approach or strategy to improve. Poor program performance isn't going to make anyone happy – not you, not your boss, not your advertisers, and certainly not your customers.
Send Less, More Relevant Email
Achieving relevance is often a daunting conversation for marketers because it means having to dig deep in to data, that you may or may not be able to access. Are the days of asking customers what they want really gone? Do we have to rely on behavioral data to get relevant? Sure, it is definitely the "holy grail" dream, but it you can't get your hands on that information then why not just ask. Some of the most successful program optimization efforts I have seen with clients are those that asked some very specific questions around products/brands that were then applied to the email program. If you don't know, try asking – instead of guessing.
Have a Real Email Plan
Do you have a 2010 email calendar? If you said yes –you are in the minority. Just like other marketing efforts, you should have a 2010 email calendar denoting messages you intend to communicate with your customer-base throughout the year. Even the best laid plans have to be revised based on things happening in the market, but accounting for those outliers becomes more manageable when you have the other communications planned. If you do not have a 2010 plan, I beg you, at least make it your first quarter goal to build one. I promise that the work you do on the front-end will really help to drive the vision through the organization the rest of the year – at least it should.
Make Your Email Social
While socialized email was a new topic for email marketers in 2009 – it is definitely something you need to pay attention to and determine how it may enhance your email programs and brand as you move into 2010. It isn't going anywhere, so you should start considering ways to test and integrate it with your email marketing efforts. Just like anything else, social components have a place in your email communications and don't necessarily have to be leveraged in every communication – but determining how it could benefit your business and your email program in the coming year is definitely something to be mindful of.

As you all enter in the holiday-state-of-mind, be ready to enter Email 2010 head on. Stand your ground, sell the email vision/strategy through the organization, be ready to compromise a little (but don't give up) and most of all, have a real plan. The best way to be the expert within your organization and to get the attention and support of your decision-makers is to paint the picture – long-term considerations and all.

Happy Holidays everyone! Go get 'em!

- Kara Trivunovic
Sr. Director of Strategic Services
StrongMail

Managed Email Marketing: The Benefits of Outsourcing Your Email Marketing

Monday, November 16, 2009 by Marco Marini

If you're still managing your own email marketing campaigns without any outsourced expertise, you might want to take a look at the benefits of outsourcing. Here are just a few of the many benefits of outsourcing for better managed email marketing:

Increase your deliverability rate
Improve your email design and email rendering
Gain a deeper and more actionable understanding of your reporting and metrics · Protect your online sending reputation with expert advice
Have more staff time for other initiatives
Add the highest caliber email marketing expertise to your team without increasing your payroll
Draw on more and broader email marketing experience with seasoned professionals guiding you
Spend more time on strategy and planning, less on implementation
Enjoy a solution that automatically scales with your growth
Know you're working with the best email service provider for your business
And ultimately, improve your email marketing ROI!

If you want to learn about better managed email marketing via outsourcing, reach out to ClickMail Marketing for more information.

Gmail: Unsubscribes, Complaints and Engagement

Monday, August 3, 2009 by eec Blog Contributor

Gmail reported in their blog this week that they have developed a way to provide their users with an opportunity to report spam and/or unsubscribe from emails they receive in their Gmail accounts. The article, titled "Unsubscribing Made Easy" is a positive change for Gmail, but still falls short of where most legitimate senders want to see.

Like many complaint feedback loops (also known as FBL's) offered by a number of ISPs, Gmail's new functionality is mostly a good thing. I applaud their effort, and it certainly helps when there is this cooperation and transparency in the sender/receiver relationship. It is better for everyone. This is why the Abuse Reporting Format was met with applause by senders when it arrived a few years back.

Here are the good parts. First, Gmail's new feature provides the subscriber with a chance to mark a message as spam, which should allow Gmail to better filter their email. Second, in addition to the option to just report spam, the end user may also choose to "unsubscribe and report spam." This second option apparently is just provided when Gmail deems the sender to be reputable. See the image below for an idea on what the subscriber sees.

In his blog, Brad Taylor outlines the reasons Gmail pursued the development of this new feature.

"For those of you senders who are interested in this feature, the most basic requirements are including a standard "List-Unsubscribe" header in your email with a "mailto" URL and, of course, honoring requests from users wishing to unsubscribe. You'll also need to follow good sending practices, which in a nutshell means not sending unwanted email (see our bulk sending guidelines for more information).

With an easy way to unsubscribe, everybody wins. Your spam folder is smaller, and senders don't waste time sending you email that you no longer want.

Update (1:50pm): If you want to unsubscribe without reporting the message as spam, click "show details" in the top-right corner of the message, then click "Unsubscribe from this sender."

It is this piece that leads me to a bit of concern on the implementation. If Gmail is doing their usual checks on authentication, reputation, content etc. to determine which senders are legitimate, why then force the end-user to either mark something as spam, or go through "show details" (which nearly no one will do) to unsubscribe? Why not also provide an unsubscribe button on the interface in addition to the "report spam" button?
I can understand why Gmail would forgo providing the email address back to the sender at the user's discretion. However, even the FTC has a study showing that unsubscribing from spam doesn't really lead to more spam. In the FTC's 2002 study, they report that "In no instance did we find that any of our unique email accounts received more spam after attempting to unsubscribe."

Gmail has the opportunity to educate their subscribers on legitimate and unsolicited email. Why not provide just an "unsubscribe" button for legitimate senders, and explain why they are doing it, rather than propagating the unfounded fear of unsubscribing?
Also, other ISPs have gotten around this privacy concern by not passing back the actual email address back to the sender. Many senders use other forensics to determine which subscriber complained so that this subscriber can be removed from the list.

Engagement Matters
We advise clients to look at all sorts of engagement metrics, and unsubscribes and complaints are equally as important as opens and clicks. When possible, I'd like to know the ultimate intent of the subscriber when they choose to get off of a list. I always say I'd rather have someone unsubscribe from my email than ignore me.

As for which email this is enabled for and which not, the folks over at Word to the Wise looked at this a bit deeper and do some testing. They found that:
"Conditions where the unsubscribe option is presented include:

The mail is authenticated
The sender has a good reputation
The email has a mailto: option in the List-Unsubscribe header
The recipients marks the message as spam"

Either way, legitimate senders do benefit from this, but it is fun to dream of having both unsubscribe and report spam options available to subscribers.

- Chip House, Vice President, Industry & Relationship Marketing, ExactTarget

Chip is responsible for industry research and relations, and owns the targeted marketing programs that ensure the satisfaction and success of ExactTarget's client base. Chip also manages the teams responsible for marketing research, deliverability compliance, and privacy initiatives. As an established industry leader, Chip writes regularly for online marketing publications and was named to BtoB Magazine's 2005 "Who's Who in B-To-B" for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email. Chip brings 20 years of direct marketing and twelve years of internet marketing experience to ExactTarget.

Market Forces Combine to Increase Demand for Email Campaign Outsourcing

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 by eec Blog Contributor

So we are deep in a recession economy, marketing budgets and headcounts are being cut, yet we are seeing an increase in requests for the outsourcing of email production and campaigns. Why is this?

Well let's take a little time to explore the variables in play here. As marketers turn to more cost effective channels, email is becoming more popular than ever – according to a recent Forrester study the number of marketing messages for the average email user is predicted to double by 2014. This makes the email channel even more competitive and crowded, causing a dilution of open, click and conversion rates.

The only way to genuinely attract attention and boost performance is to send more relevant and personalized mails. To experienced email marketers this will not be news, and it is common wisdom nowadays to absolutely progress beyond broadcast (or blast) mailing tactics to attain any kind of click thru and conversion response.

There are a number of campaign types that increase relevance beyond broadcast, such as 'life cycle', 'clickstream' and 'targeted'. JupiterResearch states that these types of campaigns are up to 18 times more profitable than broadcast. Each of these types leverage known intelligence about the recipient, whether based on a user triggered event, online behavior, or persona driven. BUT in order to actually create a highly relevant campaign, each mail needs to be customized to each identified audience segment and ideally personalized for each recipient - both of which increase the number of steps and effort in the overall process of producing a campaign from start to finish.

You have a choice here: do you create individual email templates for each audience segment, or minimize the number of actual email templates and leverage conditional email content for a more dynamic 'data driven' approach. More email templates means more production effort to create, optimize and test each and every template – whereas the data driven approach needs more advanced skills/technology to design and test more complex templates.

Are we at a tipping point? Has the amount of extra effort, technology and skills required to execute more advanced email campaigns pushed email campaign production to a point where outsourcing makes more strategic and tactical sense? Perhaps. Organizations need to be competitive and need to consider ways to execute these types of campaigns. The tremendous ROI (as stated by Jupiter) more than outweighs the additional operating cost, so each and every marketing department who takes the email channel seriously will need to formulate a strategy here.

With headcounts diminishing, outsourcing is an obvious path forward. Having a tried and tested production team getting your mails out of the door in good time, with great quality (...under SLA), allows you to not only benefit from advanced campaign performance, but to focus your time on higher value marketing initiatives!

- Andy McCartney, Vice President of Strategic & Account Services, Premiere Global Services

Andy runs a team of email marketing gurus and specialists who help clients of all shapes and sizes with their emarketing initiatives. Advice and service engagements are delivered in areas such as strategy, campaign production, list health and deliverability. Andy has over 20 years of experience in marketing and services with hi-tech companies, including 10 years in business intelligence and analytics and 12 years in interactive marketing leadership roles.

Socializing with the eec Email Design Roundtable: A Discussion on the Integration of Social Media and Marketing Email

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 by eec Blog Contributor

The eec Email Design Roundtable recently spent some time discussing an industry hot topic: the integration of email marketing and social networking.

Social networking generally makes its way into email in two primary ways:
(1) Through appeals in email for subscribers to join an existing social network.
and
(2) "Share with Your Network" (SWYN) invitations for subscribers to share email content with their networks. While these are each fairly simple, there are important creative and strategic considerations that contribute to email success, as well as innovative ways to bring user-generated content (UGC) into email.

Each Design Roundtable member offered fresh insights and ideas to the evolving body of best practices around social optimization in email. Below is a summary of key points from the conversation:

When it comes to making emails more viral, content is king. However, creative elements can contribute to the successful integration of social media. How can design and copy encourage social behavior?

Tim Siukola, ExactTarget: Use the same design "toolbox" to draw attention to alternate ways to interact, keeping the toolbox consistent across campaigns.

Lisa Harmon, Smith-Harmon: Including the toolbox in a "Share Bar" or "SWYN Module" in the header or footer of the email makes the most sense for most marketers.

Chad White, Smith-Harmon: Integrating the social appeal into clever calls-to-action (i.e. "Help a college student save money – forward this email!") can garner more interest than simple links. But some also announce their social networking presences through emails focused entirely on social. For example, Shoeline found that by announcing their social networking presence through a social-dedicated email and then adding a prominent banner in later emails increased subscriber engagement by 57% (Source: Style Campaign).

Justine Jordan, ExactTarget: For organizations with tight-nit communities and/or UGC, integrating photos is a strong way to engage subscribers. It also plays off the significant voyeur aspect of social networking! In addition, integrating the social network icons encourages participation by building recognition across email campaigns.

What strategic considerations are important in integrating social networking with email marketing campaigns?

Megan Walsh, Williams-Sonoma: For retail, the challenge is prioritization of "Share vs. Sell." You have to weigh the benefits of directing subscribers to engage with the brand's social network with the importance of ROI. Ideally, the integration is done so that "share" and "sell" complement one another.

Chad White: "Social Influencer" has emerged as a new category of customer that could be used in email segmentation (similar to non-buyers or early adopters). This segmentation would serve the same purpose as brands targeting of bloggers – making sure that messages are reaching the most influential people in the audience. Measuring the success would call for a different set of 'performance' metrics.

Brooks Bell, Brooks-Bell Interactive: In non-retail messaging, it's valuable to think about how upsell messaging and lifecycle messages can be engaging enough to warrant them 'shareworthy' in the eyes of subscribers.

How does the use of rich media impact social behavior?

Lisa Harmon: Is there a way to adapt the visual language of rich media to the email channel, in a way that makes messages more viral? Subscribers should be excited to share content with friends, and rich media contributes to enthusiasm around a particular message.

Tim Siukola: People are more apt to share video than text with others – it's more likely that subscribers will think of rich media content as appealing to people in their networks.

Ron Blum, Upromise: People are also very likely to share text content – whether it's newspaper articles, magazine articles – any type of content – not just rich media. If you look at Twitter, people are sharing tons of URLs to text content.

Chad White: That's definitely true in the B2B circle. It takes much longer to assimilate information via video. You can assimilate information via text much more quickly than via video.

Raj Khera, MailerMailer: In Twitter, in the B2B space, people link to charts too… While that isn't text, it's not rich media; it's something in between. People tend to like to share those types of visuals.

What are some examples of good social marketing via email?

Tim Siukola: Urban Outfitters includes network logos at the bottom of their emails and promotes special social features when they have them.

Lisa Harmon: American Apparel held a DIY costume contest where they encouraged subscribers to submit photos of themselves in American Apparel costumes. They also showed last year's winner in the email. This is a good share + sell example.

Final Remarks
Who is an expert on these topics? No one! We're all new to the game, and it's important to be in the game, regardless of any anxieties about how far ahead competitors might be. The most important thing is to consider what makes sense for your brand and how you can use social elements to create a unified experience that engages subscribers.