The email marketing landscape is always changing as marketers find new and savvy ways to boost engagement, increase conversions, and maximize their efforts. But, beyond the discussion of open rates, click-throughs, subject lines, A/B testing and deliverability is the issue of compliance.

In an overall sense, there are two rulebooks that email marketers follow:

• "Best Practices"... which are the processes we abide by because we know it treats our customer’s inbox as a special place and that’s a responsibility we take seriously.
• "Legal Compliance"... which are the specific and mandatory rules we follow because our actions are governed by law [....and because none of us would do well in prison! :) ]

Most marketers are familiar with the US CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. But, now Canada has their own proposed version of anti-spam legislation that in it’s current state goes much further than it’s US counterpart.

It’s important marketers are aware of the new proposed legislation so they can begin taking action well in advance to ensure they remain in full compliance. While there is still a lot of time to make sure your ducks are all in a row to appease CASL, it’s never too soon to get started.

This post will cover the main highlights of Canada’s proposed Anti-Spam Legislation. For a more in-depth summary, you can read my blog post titled “All About CASL (Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation) in Plain English”.

I’m Not In Canada, So Why Do I Care?

CASL isn’t just focused on Canadian email marketers, but rather extends its coverage to anyone who is emailing someone that will receive that message within Canada.

So, if you run an eCommerce store out of the USA, but you occasionally sell to people north of the border and have those folks on your mailing list, then CASL is in full force for you.

It’s not just those in North America that have to play under these new rules because the people behind CASL are hoping it’s reach will extend to marketers internationally who are contacting Canadians. In an interview, the CRTC’s chief compliance and enforcement officer, Andrea Rosen, said:

If the spammer is offshore, we have the ability under the law to co-operate with foreign governments, to share information and to bring proceedings together against individuals that are offshore.

There is an exemption written into CASL that if the sender does not know or could not expect to know that the receiver would be using a Canadian computer to access the email, then you’re off the hook. So, if your USA-based eCommerce store doesn’t ship to Canada and you have no Canadian’s on your mailing list, but someone has taken the trip to see the Jays play in Toronto and while there they get your email, you don’t have to panic.

Do keep in mind, however, that ignorance won’t be an excuse so even if you don’t think you have Canadian’s in your database, be sure to be on the lookout for that. At Elite Email, we have been prompting people to look at their geo-reports to get a sense of who is engaging with the email in Canada because it might be more than you think.

What are the key requirements of CASL?

The current proposed regulation is really long and if you care to see the whole thing in it’s entirety, you can click here.

For those that are too busy to read the whole law (...and that is probably ALL of us!) here are the primary requirements:

• You must have permission BEFORE sending an email.
• You must be able to prove that you have received clear consent (more on “consent” below)
• You cannot use false or misleading subject lines or sender names.
• You must have a working unsubscribe mechanisms where manual requests are processed within a 10 day window and any unsubscribe links are valid for at least 60 days after the send date.
• You cannot pre-check subscription boxes on firms. Valid consent must be an affirmative action.
• You must include a physical mailing address as well as an alternate way to reach you, which could take the form of an email address, phone number or link to contact form.
• You cannot confirm unsubscribes by sending a follow-up email.
• If an email is being sent “on behalf of” another organization, you must clearly identify both parties.
• If you are a charity, then you are included in CASL if you are selling or soliciting anything.

One key thing I want to highlight is the notion of subscribing to your mailing list as an affirmative action. I see a lot of signup forms where the box is pre-checked and you have to uncheck it to indicate you don’t want to signup for a mailing list. If your organization is doing this, then it’s one of the first things you should consider changing. It’s a quick change that will ensure all new subscriber acquisitions are valid under CASL.

Consent, Consent, and More Consent... It’s All About Consent!

While there are lots of different facets to CASL, if I had to boil it down to one thing, I’d say that the most critical factor is ensuring you have obtained consent properly. If you’ve done that, then you’re heading down a good path.

CASL currently outlines four different scenarios that would qualify as consent.

Consent Scenario #1: Implied Consent

This is the scenario that many people will already be familiar with as it’s the one that is based on an existing business or nonbusiness relationship between the recipient and sender. Essentially, if someone has bought something from your organization or entered into a contract with you then you have a “business relationship” with them. Whereas, if someone does volunteer work for you or becomes part of your organization, then you’ve got a “nonbusiness relationship” with them.

The critical part of this type of implied consent is the 2 year time limitation. From the moment someone purchases something from you, a 2 year window commences where you can email them and be in compliance with CASL without needing any other form of consent. On top of that, if that same person buys something from you again during that window, the clock resets and you get another full 2 years. However, as a general rule of thumb, at some point during that 2 year window, you would want (or need) to obtain explicit consent in order to keep emailing them after that window expires.

Consent Scenario #2: Explicit Consent

I suspect most email marketers are already actively engaged in this type of consent where the recipient gives you direct permission to send them emails. Most commonly you will have a signup form on your website that lets people join your mailing list. This direct type of consent is really at the core of CASL, which is why it’s important that you obtain good evidence to support your practices. Doing things like capturing the date stamp and IP address of a new subscriber when they join your list and then when they confirm their subscription (for double opt-in) will help ensure you’ve got a strong case should someone challenge if consent was obtained.

As I mentioned previously, make sure your signup forms require an affirmative action and not an opt-out action. So, if you’ve got a sneaky pre-checked box that auto-enrols people, you’re going to want to change that up ASAP because it won’t count in the eyes of CASL.

According to CASL, you can also get written or oral consent and while that is acceptable, it should be noted that these methods are far more difficult to prove. If you plan on using these tactics, make sure you’ve got a workflow that allows for the careful documentation of when, where and how consent was obtained.

Consent Scenario #3: Conspicuous Publication

This is a rather unique scenario that is very different than the two above. You can send someone an email if you obtained their email address and the following three criteria are also met:

(i) The email address is clearly published for viewing.
(ii) In the location where the email address is published, there is no specific statement saying that unsolicited emails are not allowed.
(iii) The email you’d be sending to that address is related to that person’s business or official role. [For example, you can email a university professor about a new book that is related to their field of expertise/interest, but you cannot email that same person trying to sell them concert tickets. It’s a bit tough to exactly draw the line on what is related and what is not, so we might see this further clarified CASL.]

Consent Scenario #4: Shared Email Address with the Sender

This is the “business card” or “networking” rule under CASL that lets you send someone an email if they willingly share their address with you. CASL doesn’t want to render the email address on a business card useless, so if someone shares their card with you and doesn’t say they do not want to be emailed, then you can email them and be in compliance. Be sure to document the how, when and where they shared their email address with you so you’ve got that on file in case you need supporting evidence. However, do keep in mind that if you want to start sending someone your monthly newsletter (and not just emailing them as a follow-up to a networking event) you should obtain consent using another method as well.

What Happens If I Break The Rules?

Shame on you! Now go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done!

But, on top of that shame, penalties for violating CASL can range from a maximum of $1 million for individuals and $10 million for companies.

It should be noted that anyone can bring this new law against a sender, it doesn’t have to just be the government or other legal agency against the sender. Of course, if someone goes down this path and it turns out they were wrong, then they are responsible to cover all court and legal fees.

Also, the reason I have been harping in the sections above about keeping evidence for how you obtained consent is because if you can show that you really made strong efforts to follow every aspects of the rulebook, then that will play a factor in any legal proceedings.

When Does All These New Rules Go Live?

There is still no specific date set so at this point everything is an estimate, although there have already been delays so further delays are not out of the question.

Based on the current flow of events, Industry Canada should have the regulations finalized by the middle of this year (2013). After that, there will be a one year grace period for everyone to digest these new rules and prepare for the coming changes, which will result in CASL going live some time in the middle of 2014.

That being said, there’s no need to wait until the final minutes to start ensuring your compliance with CASL. Although certain parts of the proposed legislation may change, the underlying concepts about the ways you can obtain consent probably won’t change much. So, take a good look at your database now and start to figure out who you may need to re-confirm and what evidence you’ve got to support that consent has been obtained properly (in the eyes of CASL). Review all of your signup and capture forms to make sure that it is an affirmative (and not opt-out) action that enrolls someone on your mailing list. Lastly, doing a periodic top to bottom review of your organization’s email practices can usually either confirm you’ve got your best foot forward and are ready for CASL or highlight areas that you need to improve upon... and there’s no time to take those steps like the present!

* Note: This article is intended to provide general comments about Canada’s new anti-spam legislation. It is not intended to be a comprehensive review nor is it intended to provide legal advice. Readers should not act on information in this article without first seeking advice from their lawyer.

Robert Burko is CEO of Elite Email, a leading email marketing solution and proud member of the Email Experience Council that has been helping businesses of all sizes harness the power of email for 10 years. Robert has been featured extensively in the media for his knowledge of email marketing, social media and digital trends. You can also find him on Google+.  

There is little doubt in my mind that email was the No.1 non-political contributor to Obama’s win in the 2012 US Presidential race.  75% of the $934 million raised by Obama was attributed to digital and nearly all of that $700 million was raised through email¹.  That fact alone is phenomenal.

But it’s not until you start to drill down into the data to find out why Obama’s email campaign was significantly more effective than Romney’s that the exciting insights start to appear.

Marketing pundits from all channels have offered their opinions. Just look at the word cloud based on the top 15 blogs about Obama’s email strategy - targeting, testing, creative, subject lines - everything but the two biggest contributing factors: list size and mailing frequency.

Why have these been missed? Because it is relatively easy to get a sense of a campaign’s creative, subject line strategy, frequency and, to some extent, personalization by simply subscribing to a list. What you can’t find out is how large that list is or how much segmentation is being done. That makes it almost impossible to know how many emails are actually being sent. Enter eDataSource …

Scratching below the surface with eDataSource

So, we recently took out a subscription to eDataSource and let our analytics team loose on their web-based tool that combines active monitoring of over 800,000 consumer inboxes with a library of millions of digital marketing messages from thousands of brands. This impressive breadth and depth of reporting gave us everything we needed to find out what really made Obama’s email strategy so effective.

First up was to prove my prediction back in October that Obama would win because he was sending significantly more email to more people. Using the Federal Election Commission, we were able to attribute all donations over $250 to each campaign for the 79 weeks running up to the election. We then plotted this against the corresponding weekly send volumes taken from eDataSource in graph 1.

 

Graph 1: Donations Received vs Emails Sent

The trend lines tell the story more succinctly than any blog: the more emails each campaign sent, the more donations each campaign received. If the purpose of each campaign was to generate revenue, then it was frequency and list size that had the biggest impact on performance.

What I couldn’t predict was what we found when we dug deeper into the data - the send volumes for each campaign had a striking correlation with the probability of each campaign winning based on the opinion polls …

Obama - the President who ignored open rates

On graph 2 below, we pulled the send volumes and open rates for both campaigns in the two month run-up to the election and compared these to Nate Silver’s Poll aggregator for the 2012 election. His algorithm has correctly predicted the winner of 99 out of 100 states in the last two elections, so it gave us a highly accurate winning probability at each point during the campaign.

Graph 2: Email send volumes vs Probability to Win (Romney volumes scaled up by x15)

As Obama ramps up his send volumes early in the race, his probability of winning increases. Romney also increases his frequency at a similar rate but, because his list size is 15 times smaller, his growth has little effect on the polls. List size matters.

When Obama reduces his send volumes by 38% his probability of winning drops by 42%. By contrast Romney’s campaign grows by 180% and his chances of winning increase by 160%.

In the final push, Romney reduces his send volumes and with it his probability of winning. But his open rates improve by an impressive 14%. Obama takes the opposite approach and aggressively increases his send volumes, which improves his probability of winning.

And Obama’s open rates? They plummet by 14% to a campaign low … and he wins the election.

Obama’s email strategy? Send more, raise more

Had Obama chased open rates would he have lost the election? Well, what we do know is the best way to achieve that goal, as shown by Romney, is to reduce send volumes. Of course, send volumes don’t win elections, donations do. So we set about finding a correlation between send volumes and donations to add weight to our theory.

Graph 3: Open Rates vs Volumes vs Probability to Win

 

Graph 3 plots annual donations against annual send volumes and open rates for the Obama campaign. The correlation between send volume and donations is undeniable – in fact, they are close to an exact match. The general trend is for a steady increase over the year until a drop off at election time.

But more interestingly – and this may surprise some people – the relationship between open rates and donations is an inverse one! Or, to put it another way, the higher the open rate, the lower the number of donations.

Why?

Because, broadly speaking, there is an inverse relationship between send volumes and open rates. The more email you send, the lower your open rate is likely to be. But if doubling your send volume only results in a 15% fall in your open rates, then you will be significantly better off.

So why is revenue so closely linked to send volumes? Because people cannot engage with an email they do not receive. Replace the word ‘email’ with ‘opportunity to donate’, and “an extra email send to 1 million people” becomes, “let’s send another 1 million opportunities to donate”.

While relevance, engagement, creative, subject lines, testing and targeting all played a part in Obama’s success, they pale into insignificance when compared to the impact of reach, frequency and list size. And best of all? With email, you can optimize all of these at near-zero marginal cost.

But does it work in retail? Hell yeah!

Obama’s campaign is one of the few examples of a noted sender admitting that increasing frequency works. The data backs it up, too. But does it work outside of the rarefied world of political fundraising? The answer is “hell yeah!”

With the help of EDS Analyst, you too can find out if you are being out-mailed by your competitors. If the answer is “yes”, then they are probably out-selling you as well – and we shall be digging down into the data for that particular topic in the coming months. Keep your eyes peeled.

If you’d like to know more about how we use EDS Analyst to optimize email strategy, then get in touch.  And if you want to replicate Obama’s success for your own email program, then feel free to use these strategy ideas from this post from our blog: FIVE reasons why open reach will revolutionize your email marketing.

 

Dela Quist

CEO, Alchemy Worx

www.alchemyworx.com

1. Joshua Green, The Science Behind Those Obama Campaign E-Mails, 29 November 2012, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/the-science-behind-those-obama-campaign-e-mails

And the 2013 Stefan Pollard Marketer of the Year Award winner is....Sal Tripi of Publishers Clearing House! It was a very close call among our finalists, including Ryan Phelan of Acxiom Digital Impact and Morgan Steward of Trendline Interactive. The Award was presented at the 2013 Email Evolution Conference last week in Miami. Sal's acceptance video is located here.

Incredibly deserving of this recognition and Award, Sal is a stand-out in the marketing and consumer privacy field.  Through his good work at PCH, Sal has helped build one of the most impressive and customer centric email marketing programs in the business. Plus, he is incredibly generous in sharing learnings, knowledge and success stories with the rest of the industry. He's been a long time speaker and writer for DMA/eec events, as well as other email conferences. A staunch advocate and industry expert on consumer data protection, compliance issues and marketing best practices. he's also willing to step up and give back to the industry, and Chairs the DMA Ethics Policy Committee which reviews, updates, and sets ethical guidelines for marketers; Chairs the Online Trust Alliance; Sits on the IAB’s Email Committee. 

We want to thank again, Loren McDonald of Silverpop & Chair of the DMA/eec Awards Committee and all the members of the Committee for their hard work and efforts throughout this process and of course the community for taking the time to submit your choices and for sending beautiful tributes for this distinguished award. The response from the community was overwhelming.

Congratulations, Sal! We're proud to have you awarded with this top honor.

Lisa

 

Lisa Brown Shosteck

DMA/eec Team

It is important to build towards mutual results, so we need common, standardized metrics. In my earlier post called “Email marketing, are we even talking the same language” I talked about multidisciplinary teams and benchmarking, but what other reasons are there that make an initiative like SAME a necessity?

The need for a common statistics is nothing new.

To illustrate this and keep things light, some biblical references. Do you know the stroy of Babel? According to this history, and long before there was google translate, people used to talk the same language all over the world. It was great. While having this common language (but not yet insight, regrettably), they were able to build a tower that reached to the heavens. What to do to stop them?

The only way to stop them from doing amazing things WAS to rob them of their common language, therefore being divided because they couldn’t understand each other anymore.

The word Babel actually means “confused”, one of the first online translators was called babelfish. (and yes there was even an oscar winning movie with Brad Pitt in 2006 called Babel). There are some lessons to be learned here, one of which is that once you have a common language you are able to achieve more, without it can become a confused chaos.

Using multiple ESPs

Maybe we don’t realize but there are plenty of marketers who work with multiple e-mail, CRM, lead gen, CMS and other marketing automation systems at the same time. Singling out ESPs this might already be more than one. Sometimes 5, 6 or even more email marketing systems are used on agency side and multiple on client side. Can you imagine! We see what the problem is there.

A common language is needed in and metrics and reporting is the place to start with. But even if you aren’t using multiple ESPs at the same time, there are still needs for common language in regards to the long term. One of them being customer insights and migration.

Common language in ESP migration

One third of ESP clients migrate from one system to another per year. And how can we compare with the old metrics if we don’t have the same (standardized) reports. Although ESP migration doesn’t always have to be a big headache, it often is a hefty undertaking.

Migration is very hefty, especially when you are seriously sending email and it is not the kind of thing you wake up wanting to do. Only to see the deliverability part done in email service migration right takes 7 or more steps.

Behavioral data doesn't have to get lost

You don’t want to destroy or leave behind the behavioral data and aggregated insights you have been building over the last period, just because of incompatible statistics. This is where the use of standardized metrics comes into the picture again, making sure your reference reports from previous year(s) keep their value.

When it concerns using multiple marketing automation systems, either at the same time or sequentially, standards can make the marketers’ life all that easier.

By Jordie van Rijn, an independent email marketing consultant, specializing in smart email marketing, event-driven campaigns and is the founder of emailvendorselection.com a platform for selecting the best email tools.
 

The annual Stefan Pollard Marketer of the Year award from DMA/Email Experience Council will be given at the Email Evolution Conference in Miami on February 8th (Not yet registered? Join us for great keynotes and amazing case studies and new ideas at emailevolution.org. Use code MACDT for a great discount.) This year, we had a number of nominations from many of you – our eec community – and the three winning candidates are all amazing marketers and “email geeks” – just the type of people that continue Stefan’s legacy of talent, generous contribution to the industry and effective mentoring.  
 
We circled back with 2012 Award Winner Meg Reynolds of REI. She is still shining and humble in receiving this honor from the DMA/eec community. 
 
Meg:  I have been so honored to receive the Stefan Pollard Award. I’ve since moved on to a role at REI that is not focused on email marketing, but I rely on those same experiences all the same. 
 
SAM:  What are you doing now?
 
Meg:  I’ve found new challenges leading the Marketing Campaign Planning team at REI. I’ve learned a lot in the past year; it’s energizing working with many programs, channels and cross-divisional partners.  I’ve even learned a bit about myself. I’m still finding my way in a new professional community.  Hopefully that will come in due time, I’m a new kid in this role!

SAM:  Is it good to be “beyond email”?
 
Meg:  I do miss my email role and the confidence of knowing the ins-and-outs of a medium. I miss highly  measureable program performance and knowing whether someone is BS’ing me a little bit. And, of course, I miss a community of creative and passionate folks to turn to with every challenge. So give my best to that wonderful community. I continue to support it where and when I can. I open my time to young professionals and students about opportunities in digital direct marketing.
 
SAM: Any advice for email and other data-driven marketers for 2013?
 
Meg:  Respect your subscribers, enjoy your peers, and show-up when you are nominated for an award.  Even when you don't think there is a one-in-a-million chance of winning. All the best to the wonderful, supportive professional email community.

By Stephanie Miller, DMA's vice president of member relations

 

Did you know email marketing might be at risk if you use consumer data? Come to DMA in DC 2013 to protect your email marketing practices. 

Right now…Congress, the FTC, and the States want to end your ability to collect and use consumer data, including email marketing.  Right now…DMA in DC is your forum for gaining the policy insight, advocacy tools and powerful connections you need to stop them. Register now and join us in Washington, DC, for…

DMA in DC 2013
Advancing the Data-Driven Way of Life
March 12 – 13, 2013
The Madison Hotel, Washington, DC

This year’s conference includes two stellar keynotes:

• Federal Trade Commissioner Julie Brill will share insight into privacy issues that matter most to your organization.  As the FTC continues to explore how marketers, including email marketers, use data to serve consumers and fuel the economy in today's data-driven marketplace, Brill will share her perspective on finding the balance between privacy and innovation – as well as her vision for the FTC in the New Year.

• State of Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler will detail his focus on privacy in a data-driven world.  Gansler has made privacy issues in the Digital Age central to his tenure as president of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG). Learn from his investigation of geo-location tracking, data collection, and data breaches. Hear how attorneys general across the country are taking action to ensure meaningful options for consumers – and how you can stay out of their cross-hairs.

Early Bird pricing has been extended to February 1, 2013, so register today!  The $200 you save today could save your organization in the future. 

For more information, click here.

By Stephanie Miller, DMA’s vice president of member relations

Tim Watson of Zettasphere, an eec Blog Contributor, is leading a session at the Email Evolution Conference in Miami this February with fellow DMA UK leaders Dela Quist of Alchemy Worx, Skip Fidura of DotMailer and consultant Kath Pay. Register today to receive the early bird discount (through January 14th) and to meet Tim and dozens of other industry luminaries. It's the best place this winter to learn how to make email and digital marketing more successful. Register now.

Open rate, acceptance rate, click rate, read rate, spam complaints, conversion rate, delete not read, inbox placement rate and more besides. Sure email has plenty of metrics. But have we let all these numbers distract us from considering what's actually important? Have we gone metric-mad?

All email experts agree customer engagement is important and the need for relevance, "right person, right time, right message", is almost a set phrase in email circles.

What is much less clear is what anyone really means by an engaged customer? How is engagement defined, how can you measure engagement?

Metrics are needed but optimizing the wrong metric can take you away from what's important to the business. Following the idea of "right person, right time, right message", does this means the focus is to get an open rate of 100%?

All businesses are hungry for revenue so any metric of customer engagement must consider whether the definition for an engaged customer also delivers a high value customer. Defining engagement in a way that does not maximise value is not in business interest.

The DMA in the UK has been debating this issue and looking at the evidence - brand marketing email data, to determine what is important and how to define engagement.

Thankfully there is a single metric that can be used to measure engagement . Here's a clue, it's NONE of the above metrics. On Thursday, February 7th at the EEC13 conference the question of definition of engagement is being debated. Based on analysis of data a single easy and measurable definition will be proposed.

By Tim Watson

Zettasphere

Karen Talavera, eec Blog Contributor, is leading a session at the Email Evolution Conference in Miami this February.  Register today to recieve the early bird discount (through January 14th) and to meet Karen and dozens of other industry luminaries. It's the best place this winter to learn how to make email and digital marketing more successful.  Register now.

What exactly makes people respond to your email marketing offers? What is it precisely that makes them engage and buy from you? And how does knowing these things help you drive better email response?

It’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question asked of all advertising and marketing. While the fundamentals of what makes us want to transact with a company or say yes to one offer over another remain relatively the same across channels, how marketers employ specific tactics can vary drastically from channel to channel.

When it comes to email marketing it’s important to know exactly which approaches lead to trust, engagement, purchase and loyalty and how to translate them into successful email messages and  programs.

Let’s start with that first part – the approach – then move into a specific, tactical process for applying it.

The Basic Psychology of Human Decision-Making
We can pride ourselves all we want on our intellectual superiority over the rest of the species on our planet, but a commonly overlooked fact is that we are as much emotional as intellectual beings – maybe even more emotional than intellectual. Our brains are equipped with reasoning and emotional centers, and both factor into decision making.

In online marketing, making emotional connections is especially important because the digital world can be fast, furious, and impersonal.  There is a built-in immediacy in digital communication channels that often undermines the opportunity to slow down the sale and deepen the consideration process that older, offline channels afforded.

Plus, there is both a considerable amount of skepticism and unfortunately, fraud in the digital world. Allowing people to get to know you online with a relationship-building approach goes a long way toward creating the familiarity, comfort confidence consumers and business people alike need before they’re willing to buy.

It Starts with Creating Emotional Resonance
Despite our immense reasoning power, our instinctive “gut” reactions are older and better honed. From the standpoint of human evolution, we had to develop the ability to make split-second unconscious decisions to survive. This ability survives in us today and kicks-in when we’re faced with any decision – even if it’s not life or death – and often happens before our brains have time to intellectually process facts

That’s why research has proven time and again that people buy from emotion and justify with reason. So it’s essential to know how to emotionally connect with people in your marketing, and in email to do so not just authentically but quickly.

Remember, there’s that built-in immediacy factor with email – people don’t spend as much time with it as print or television. That’s right – with email you have less than three seconds to create emotional resonance.

When you resonate with your subscribers you strike an emotional chord with them. You make a visceral feeling connection.  You both tune into the same “vibe”, and it results in comfort and trust, allowing you to sell in a non-salesy environment.

As in music, your aim is to sing to the same tune as your audience, then harmonize with them by recognizing their needs, pain, challenges and desires and meeting them in that space.

So now that you know we must appeal to both the intellectual and emotional sides of people, how do we do it?

The Five P’s of Profitable Email Response
I recoomend what I call the “Five P’s” process because it not only centers on authenticity, personality and transparency over features and facts, but also honors the intellectual reasoning component of how people make decisions.

The Five P’s of creating emotional resonance and response in email are:

1. Positioning
2. Pain
3. Promise
4. Proof
5. Plan (course of action/call to action)

This process can be followed to craft your copy, offers, message design, message sequence, and even overall messaging strategy throughout a quarter or year.  Let’s explore each of these in more detail:

1.   Positioning

Proper positioning acknowledges both who you are and what’s in it for your audience to be in communication with you. Successful positioning boasts excellent clarity – it makes both your identity as the sender of email and your purpose in sending the message immediately apparent. It then goes beyond clarity to create comfort, familiarity and purpose for your audience.

In email there is little time and space for lengthy build-ups and stories – which is why creative/design elements (like graphics, color, and layout) can be more effective than long copy in creating mood, identity and personality.

Consider these tactics for creating solid positioning:

• Present the “big picture” of what’s possible for your subscribers if they respond to your offer. Show and tell – use both images and words or even video so they can experience that future potential as real.
• Include a link called “About us” or “Our Story” in your main navigation bar/ template that connects to more background about your company or organization. Don’t make it boring – tell a human story that creates both credibility and vulnerability.
• Use outcome-driven, enticing language to set the stage for your offer to come.
   

2.   Pain

Yes, evoking negative as well as positive emotions can entice response (the worst reaction is no reaction at all), but your purpose here isn’t to bring your audience into a place of fear or dread. It is instead to identify and acknowledge their problems, challenges or pain – problems, challenges or pain that you intend to alleviate. Spend just enough effort identifying the pain so your audience knows you understand them, then move on.

It’s tempting to avoid this step in the process. However, in glossing over or skipping it you risk leaving out an important part of the emotional journey for your audience; you also miss a chance to create emotional resonance by helping them feel understood.

3.   Promise

Here’s where you spare no expense getting to the juicy goodness of your message and tying back to your positioning. Effectively creating promise means conveying – again through both words and pictures – the transformational outcome your audience will experience if they say yes to your offer.

Will they be happier? Richer? More beautiful? Healthier? Less-stressed? More successful at work? Better organized?

What are the desired emotions they will feel if they say yes to your offer? Love? Joy? Happiness? Satisfaction? Relief? Peace?

Understanding how your core products/services translate into both emotional and transformational benefits is essential to creating marketing messages that emotionally resonate. If you don’t know how your offerings transform and better people’s lives, you need to learn. If you can’t express the transformational outcomes of your offerings in your marketing, it will fail to connect.

4.   Proof

So far in this process we’ve been heavily in emotional territory. In the proof stage, we accelerate the appeal to reason.

Proof can take several forms both within email messages and on web sites/landing pages. These days the most compelling proof is social proof – as humans we crave a sense of belonging and will often follow the crowd. Who else has experienced the transformational outcome of your offerings and what do they have to say about it? Ideally, you can pull this information directly from your social media pages (assuming you have it there) into your email and website.

If not, include proof in the form of testimonials, quotes, links to case studies, and short success stories. Keep it human! Clinical trials and research studies are factually powerful (and often indisputable) but social proof generates greater credibility. We tend to believe our peers more than scientists or research studies because we can identify more with a peer group.

5.     Plan

Finally, don’t leave people hanging – tell them what you want them to do next and how to do it! Show them where and how to get what you promised.

Otherwise known as your call to action, this step MUST be abundantly clear, concise, literal and logical. While positioning, pain, promise and proof all influence engagement, this final step influences action and actual purchases.  It can be as simple as a text link or a sentence next to a button; or it can involve a short list of steps.

Remember that in email true response is a two-step process beginning with a click from within a message and continuing as a completed call to action (sign-up, content view, purchase, etc.) on a web page. Continue the clarity of your call to action all the way through your landing page and conversion process to avoid abandonment.  After coming this far, you don’t want to lose the valuable connection you’ve created with your responders.

By Karen Talavera
Synchronicity Marketing
Enlightened Email & Digital Marketing Training, Coaching & Consulting
 

eMarketer’s recently published report, “Email Marketing Benchmarks: Key Data, Trends and Metrics,” concludes that email is still one of the most effective marketing tools, despite all the other channels now competing for the attention of consumers.

The report cites three trends:

1. The increasing use of mobile devices for checking email
2. The use of personalized and triggered emails
3. The use of “Big Data” for creating more targeted email marketing

Most interesting to me were the finding applicable to B2B marketers, particularly in regards to mobile and triggered emails.

In the past, those of us who write about email marketing separated out B2C and B2B issues because they differed. One would typically read an email marketing newsletter or post assuming it addressed B2C only unless stated otherwise. Any advice specific to B2B email marketing would be labeled as such. In our own email marketing blog, we strived to ensure we were offering enough B2B specific content.

These days, many of the challenges apply across the board. This makes sense because businesses are consumers too—real people, whether at home or at work. As consumers’ behaviors and expectations change, so do those of the buyers behind a business. If you’re a consumer who signed up to receive emails from Land’s End because you like their clothing, and you’re also a systems analyst responsible for recommending a new ERP platform for your company, your consumer experiences and preferences would naturally affect your expectations.

Look at the B2B adaption of social media for marketing purposes. If we were so good at keeping our personal/consumer and professional/work mindsets separate, businesses probably wouldn’t have ventured into the social media arena. However, people are people, and as our behaviors and expectations change in one part of our lives (the personal part), that can’t help but affect the other (the professional part).

Having said that, some aspects of B2B email marketing still require a different approach, as this report makes clear, especially in the case of mobile and automated email marketing.

What B2B marketers need to know about mobile email
Obviously, mobile usage continues to grow at a rapid pace. We can see evidence of this everyday both at work and at home, but research also proves it to be true. The eMarketer report states direct digital marketing solutions provider Knotice found in the last quarter of 2010, only 13.36% of communications were opened on mobile devices, but by the second half of 2011 that number had climbed to 27.39%. Now, according to this report, more than one third of emails are opened on a mobile device. According to a BlueHornet study, about two-thirds of US email users had used their mobile device to sort through email before reading it on the desktop.

However, there’s another caveat to this: an open doesn’t guarantee a click, whether it’s an open on a smartphone or a desktop. Although email open rates have gone up, click-through rates (CTRs) have gone down and now average below 5%, according to research from Epsilon and the Email Experience Council (EEC). This decline in open rates might be the result of the increasing the number of emails hitting inboxes. Mobile design has an effect on CTR, too. The BlueHornet study pointed out that 69.7% who received a non-optimized mobile email deleted it.

What B2B marketers need to know about automated email
Despite the overall decline in CTRs, one type of email continues to do well, generating noticeably higher than average click throughs: automated emails (also known as triggered emails). According to the eMarketer report, triggered emails generated a click-through rate of 10.4% (more than twice the average) in the first quarter of 2012. Some businesses have seen conversion rates as high as 50% with these automated messages.

That’s a very compelling argument for making automated emails part of your mix, especially as a B2B marketer today. Research cited in the report indicates the number of B2B emails will increase significantly. “Email research firm The Radicati Group estimates the total number of business emails sent and received daily worldwide will climb from 89 billion in 2012 to 143.8 billion in 2016.”

As a result, B2B marketers will see a lot more competition in the inbox. That’s on top of the competition from other channels—work-related and not. Keep in mind that just because someone is at work or at a desk, that doesn’t mean they aren’t still distracted by attention grabbers like Facebook and Pinterest. And that distraction can happen on any screen too, be it a desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone.

The best email marketing continues to evolve and change, whether we’re entrenched in B2C or B2B or both. Take note of the trends called out in reports such as this one. Be relevant and test religiously, whether your audience is at home or on the job.

Marco Marini, CEO
ClickMail Marketing

 

DMA Acting CEO Linda Woolley embraces the power of marketing to transform our world. “Marketers have the power to transform politics. Marketers have the power to use big data to get exactly the right items to the right location at the right time,” she said during her recent keynote address at the DMA2012 conference.  One of her oft quoted stories is that Walmart and Kellogg’s use weather forecasts to ensure enough strawberry pop tarts are sent to Florida before a big storm. The data shows that when there is a storm, sales of pop tarts goes up.  This is data driven marketing, just as much as any email campaign.

Marketers have the power to feed the poor, save the environment, change the world, she said at the event. We can predict customer intent by making educated guesses about that is needed when. “Big data is almost an understatement,” she said. Consider that we approach the production of a zetabyte of data is around consumer and marketing transactions, which is a LOT of data. It’s a 1 followed by 21 zeros. Linda said that $168 billion will be spent on products marketed in the US this year – that represents 52.7% of all US expenditures. Marketers and the companies they support account for 9.2 mm jobs in this country.

No kidding, the business of marketing is fueling the economy in new ways. That is a great way to think about how important it is to participate in our industry and do what we love to do.

Linda also showed a new video that the DMA created on how consumers rely on the data embedded into their daily life. They are “Thrilled and delighted to have that data help them connect with products, brands, people, causes and elected officials,” Linda said.

However, Linda warned us that the FTC has started going after data brokers – which is really all of us – anyone who uses data to do marketing to anyone else. The FTC wants to legally require us to allow consumer permission for every transaction. This would be the end of customer centricity. Imagine checking into a hotel that you frequent often, and the registration clerk asks if you have ever stayed before. Unfortunately, privacy zealots have scared Congress with their hyperbole, Linda said. “They’ve frightened people with the idea that if you buy a deep fryer you will be denied health care.”

However, if marketers fight back hard enough, we can show Congress the value of data driven marketing. This is where the DMA comes in.

Linda asked for each of us to join her and the DMA in taking a pledge to support the mission of the DMA to advance and protect responsible data driven marketing. Please do take the pledge today and ask others in your organization to do the same.

Linda herself pledged that the DMA will work tirelessly with every direct and digital marketer to make sure that the future is a world where we can give customer what they want , when they want it. Where marketers can play a significant role in social causes. A world where products and people get where they are supposed to be, on time.

“Together, we can transform how Congress thinks about marketers and data driven marketing,” Linda said. “we will make sure they – and consumers – understand that what we do improves lives, benefits the economy and strengthens our society.”

I hope you will take the pledge with us today – and provide us any feedback on what you need to ensure the DMA serves you the best way we can.

As Linda said last week, “We are DMA. And we’ll be there for you!”

-Stephanie Miller, VP, Member Relations, The DMA

Test These Email Campaign Elements to Optimize Performance
Author: Stephanie Miller, co chair, DMA/eec and VP, Aprimo

Email marketers always are on the hunt for ways to optimize performance.

In fact, a study from Marketing Sherpa found that most marketers routinely test at least four different email campaign elements:

 Which of these should you pay attention to? What are the most important email elements to test?
Usually, the answer is in finding the right combination and optimizing over time.  Let’s take a look at the top five.

Subject line
The best guide in subject line writing is that, “Clarity trumps clever. “ Say what you mean, say it succinctly and say it with gusto.   Avoid lots of punctuation or aggressively spammy techniques like repeating the word “Free” six times or using symbols to replace vowels like  “Vi@gra.”    Other than that, feel free to be a marketer and tell me about the offer and the sale prices.  You may find that  shorter subject lines  outperform longer ones – depending on the type of message.   You must test this, as we see results favoring both styles win.  Optimal performance depends on a variety of subject line factors.  Consider: 

• Don’t wait until the last minute to write subject lines. Craft them as a key part of the creative process.
• Focus on clarity, and front load subject lines with the most important information as many email clients and mobile devices will truncate longer lines

• Use longer subject lines  whenever  there is a compelling reason to do so, or if you have multiple offers in the same message
• Test!

Message Format
Be sure to test your message template every quarter to be sure it continues to serve you well.   Test for spam filters, but also for response.  Is your navigation in the way of offer prominence?   Would a sidebar serve you best, or does it distract from the core message?  Does your footer have the correct legal mumbo jumbo and privacy/compliance links?  The DMA/Email Experience Council released a number of Design Checklists for this purpose. Download them (free for members) in the Resource Room.

Calls-to-Action
Relevant content is essential. Subscribers are too busy –and too overwhelmed with digital content –to read messages that aren’t specifically related to their needs/wants. Make sure your message is meaningful and that it stays true to your brand’s voice.  I just published Seven Tips for Higher Click Through Rates on the Aprimo blog  (LINK:   http://blog.aprimo.com/seven-ways-to-improve-email-click-through-rate).   Consumers are savvy and impatient, so  entice them with information that’s relevant and specific.  Consider that there are many elements to a message:

1. Button.   Perhaps rather than “Click Here,” your readers would like to be invited to “Learn More” or “Get Discount,” instead. Be realistic about what your readers are prepared to do (not everyone will be ready to “Buy Now!” after reading a few lines of email copy) and be clear with your directions.
2. Message type.  Design calls-to-action customized to each email type and purpose. As always, , pay careful attention to their frequency, font, color and location on the page.
3. Offer.  Testing offers is not specifically on the Marketing Sherpa list, but I can’t imagine it isn’t a key aspect for optimization.  Automation technology and the use of personas can guide you in putting the right offer in front of the right person at the right time. 

Layout and images
Email layout and images are more important than ever. Odds are, many (if not most) of your subscribers use an email preview pane feature that displays horizontally. It’s also likely that they block images by default and access email on mobile devices. Plan accordingly. Opt for more horizontal v. vertical elements. Don’t count on images to convey your message. Create content that can be read in different formats and on smaller sized screens.

Day of week sent
As my fellow columnist Simms Jenkins concludes at ClickZ, there is no magic bullet for timing emails. Today’s subscriber lists are typically diverse, and they’re likely to include international customers, people who can/can’t access email during the work day, those who read email on mobile devices, various age groups, etc. Obviously, trying to pinpoint an optimal send times across this wide-range of readers can be problematic. You have to use some judgment , of course–I wouldn’t choose Monday morning to send out a coupon for a Saturday night dinner special, e.g.  –but don’t expect a one-size-fits-all solution for every email campaign.

In all marketing, Your mileage may vary.  Testing will give you the insights needed to determine optimal send times for your particular message types and audience profiles. Marketing automation plays an increasingly important role, as well, as it allows you to track performance, integrate email communication with other marketing tactics, manage campaigns and change responses based on reactions from the marketplace.

 

 

EU proposes a reform of the data protection rules
March 28, 2012 by Dennis Dayman

 As some of you know there were privacy reforms that were released a few weeks ago by the European Union (EU).  The European Commission is proposing a comprehensive reform of the EU’s 1995 data protection rules to strengthen online privacy rights and boost Europe’s digital economy. Last week I spent the day at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington D.C attending the EU Conference on Privacy and Protection of Personal Data. This was the second event in the past two years allowing global stakeholders like legislators and business to sit down and talk face to face about technological progress and globalisation have profoundly changed the way data is collected, accessed and used.

What makes this of interest for US based stakeholders is that the 27 EU Member States have implemented the 1995 rules differently, resulting in divergences in enforcement. The proposal reforms will do away with the current fragmentation and costly administrative burdens, leading to savings for businesses of around €2.3 billion a year. The initiative will help reinforce consumer confidence in online services, providing a much needed boost to growth, jobs and innovation in Europe.

Attitudes towards data protection

◦Just over a quarter of social network users (26%) and even fewer online shoppers (18%) feel in complete control of their personal data.
◦74% of Europeans see disclosing personal information as an increasing part of modern life.
◦43% of Internet users say they have been asked for more personal inf​ormation than necessary.
◦Only one-third of Europeans are aware of the existence of a national public authority responsible for data protection
◦90% of Europeans want the same data protection rights across the EU.
The Commission’s proposals update and modernise the principles enshrined in the 1995 Data Protection Directive to guarantee the right of personal data protection in the future. They focus on: reinforcing individuals’ rights; strengthening the EU internal market; ensuring a high level of data protection in all areas, including police and criminal justice cooperation; ensuring proper enforcement of the rules; and setting global data-protection standards.

With all this going on, we thought we might answer some additional questions for you so you can better understand how we are seeing this and reacting to it.

What are the key changes in these reforms?

◦A ‘right to be forgotten’ will help people better manage data-protection risks online. When they no longer want their data to be processed and there are no legitimate grounds for retaining it, the data will be deleted.
◦Whenever consent is required for data processing, it will have to be given explicitly, rather than be assumed.
◦Easier access to one’s own data and the right of data portability, i.e. easier transfer of personal data from one service provider to another.
◦Companies and organisations will have to notify serious data breaches without undue delay, where feasible within 24 hours.
◦A single set of rules on data protection, valid across the EU.
◦Companies will only have to deal with a single national data protection authority – in the EU country where they have their main establishment.
◦Individuals will have the right to refer all cases to their home national data protection authority, even when their personal data is processed outside their home country.
◦EU rules will apply to companies not established in the EU, if they offer goods or services in the EU or monitor the online behaviour of citizens.
◦Increased responsibility and accountability for those processing personal data.
◦Unnecessary administrative burdens such as notification requirements for companies processing personal data will be removed.
◦National data protection authorities will be strengthened so they can better enforce the EU rules at home.
Q: How will the data protection reform affect social networks?

A: Social networks provide a useful tool for staying in touch with friends, family and colleagues, but they also present a risk that your personal information, photos and comments might be viewed more widely than you realise. In some cases, this can have financial, reputational and psychological consequences. The Commission is proposing a strengthened right to be forgotten so that if you no longer want your personal data to be processed, and there is no legitimate reason for an organisation to keep it, it must be removed from their system. Data controllers must prove that they need to keep the data rather than you having to prove that collecting your data is not necessary. Providers must take account of the principle of ‘privacy by default’, which means that the default settings should be those that provide the most privacy. Companies will be obliged to inform you as clearly, understandably and transparently as possible about how your personal data will be used, so that you are in the best position to decide what data you share.

Q: How do the current data protection rules hold back the single market?

A: As we said before, today’s data protection rules are divergent and inconsistent across the EU’s 27 member countries. Companies may have to deal with 27 different sets of data protection rules within the EU. The result is a fragmented legal environment with legal uncertainty and unequal protection for individuals. This has also caused unnecessary costs and a significant administrative burden for businesses. This complex situation is a disincentive for businesses – particularly small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) – to expand their operations across the EU and represents an obstacle to economic growth. The Commission is proposing new rules to remove barriers to the internal market which exist because of the divergent legal approaches of the 27 EU countries. This will create a ‘level playing field’ on data processing within the EU. The Commission will achieve substantial harmonisation of data protection rules at EU level, creating one single law applicable across the EU.

Q: How will the EU’s data protection reform make international cooperation easier?

A: Personal data is increasingly being transferred across borders – both virtual and geographical – and stored on servers in multiple countries both within and outside the EU. That is the nature of cloud computing. The globalised nature of data flows calls for a strengthening of the individual’s data-protection rights internationally. This requires strong principles for protecting individuals’ data, aimed at easing the flow of personal data across borders while still ensuring a high and consistent level of protection without loopholes or unnecessary complexity. To respond to these challenges, the Commission is proposing a system which will ensure a level of protection for data transferred out of the EU similar to that within the EU. This will include clear rules defining when EU law is applicable to companies or organisations established outside the EU, in particular by clarifying that whenever the organisation’s activities are related to the offering of goods or services to EU individuals, or to the monitoring of their behaviour, EU rules will apply.

Moving Forward

There remains quite a lot of work to do before these reforms take effect and it is not yet known what form the final regulations will take. Industry stakeholders including businesses, trade associations, and Data Protection Authorities around the world have already or are preparing their comments to the European Commision regarding their concerns about areas of the proposed regulation. From a US perspective, while some of the proposed regulations are welcome such as having only a single set of rules to comply with, other areas are sure to raise significant concern as hurdles that may hinder global compliance. This underscores not only the different attitudes and approaches to data protection in the US and EU, but also the need for each to continue to pursue more harmonized frameworks as the global economy grows. The Internet has no borders, and regulations must recognize this in order to foster continued growth of the internet economy on both sides of the Atlantic.

The interesting timing of this blog post is that this week the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation’s chief privacy policy and enforcement agency for 40 years, issued their final​ and long awaited industry privacy report. Also, yesterday I was on the Hill meeting with Congresspersons and Senators who are tackling privacy in their committees to help them understand and shape our and customers online marketing landscapes. I will work up a blog post to address this weeks fun here in DC.

 

In a recent poll* of some of the top marketers in the country (client side, vendor side, agency side, thought leaders, former clients and colleagues), the following question was posed:

What Are the Top Five Challenges You or Your Clients Face Today?

Below are the top five answers along with ten extras we just couldn't leave out.

This year, email and digital marketing seminars and conferences abound: EEC, Sherpa, MAAWG, EIS, DMA and dozens of others.

Each of these conference committees works hard to try and bring relevant content to attendees.  A lot of of these events are expensive, and these are hard economic times.  The committees try to secure speakers, panelists, keynotes and content, in addition to paid attendees and new membership.  Whast do the attendees want?  What are they looking to learn?  What can thought leaders provide?

As a marketer, new technology and marketing channels are critical.  As a vendor, exposure to new prospects, technology and social integrations are key for lead generation and PR.  As a business, you have an opportunity to learn about solving your own challenges and explore companies who might have solutions, and to learn about new channels and technology everyone says is critical, but you don’t exactly know how to put them all together, or just don’t know much about a specific channel…and you are charged with learning it now.

From the poll* of ~300 people – marketers, vendors, clients, former clients and agencies, the aggregate top five challenges for 2012 are (drum roll please):

1. Internal bandwidth and budget on marketing, vendor and IT sides – clients and vendors are looking to “up their game” with limited resources.
2. Marketing integration and optimization with new technologies into their existing platforms (and lack of knowledge base in new channels) – Mobile and Social lead the pack right now -and integrating email marketing with other traditional, and new channels.
3. List/Customer Acquisition and eAppend via any channel (the latter has truly become a 4-letter word these days.  It has 7 letters, actually).  How can I grow my list in accordance with the law and not lose a good portion of my list if I port vendors?  How can I utilize different channels to grow?  How do I acquire solid new customers?
4. Managing multiple “partner/vendor” contracts (sometimes 5 or 6 at a time) and those vendors’ unique abilities, and the failed efforts in wasted bandwidth to try and integrate them  with IT, their CRM databases and marketing into one email or other platform, including call centers.
5. Privacy: Interpreting Privacy Policies from social groups and global rules (EU, APAC, etc., Google, FB, Twitter – they have all been in the news, as has SOPA, ACTA, PIPA), yet internal bandwidth issues remain.  Clients do not have time to filter through 40 articles, nor read the laws.  And how do they have to change their web privacy policies to conform?
   
   This wouldn’t be complete without the next ten:
    
6. RFP help.  Or RFI help.  Email Service Provider Comparisons. This happens, quite often, in three areas of involvement on the client level: procurement, IT and/or marketing (or a combination).  They often work against each other with different goals, or have problems coming to fruition with marrying their multiple goals, cost-efficiently.
7. Mobile: Everyone has seen slides and knows the potential positive impact.  Some have seen case studies, but they don’t know how to go about it.  They look for aggregators, efficiency and ease of use.  QR codes and how to utilize them is included.
8. Loss of experienced professionals due to economy, and replacement with lower-paid/less expensive and less experienced staff who has to learn the “game” all over again – back to marketing 101 educations, diversification and separation of “duties” (e.g., a Social Media Manager, an Acquisition team, etc.).  Often working toward common goals, but at cross-purposes in the leadership/budget chain.
9. Combating declining channel effectiveness, and how to measure and test for increased adoption and engagement.
10. Utilizing analytics to full advantage.  All analytics, and how they can be integrated (from each channel) easily for a “one view.”  What do they all mean and how can I make sense of them and how do I marry them?
11. How to build effective messaging in a highly competitive marketplace.  How to leverage the ability to profile data for more relevant dialogues across all channels.
12. Utilizing analytics to full advantage.  We have web analytics, integration analytics, email analytics, social analytics, mobile analytics – basically this was a “HELP!”
13. Video.  How can I integrate video into my channels?
14. Increased use of triggered/automated email or other channel messaging – mostly with implementing automation, updating systems to handle, or creating the right rules and programs.
15. Testing.  Putting together a cross-channel testing methodology, including frequency/cadence.

And outsourcing is an issue as well.  To outsource or not to outsource?  A good question.

Email marketing is quickly overtaking a larger slice of the overall marketing budget as a cost efficient and effective channel.  Immediate visibility into data is key.  With companies becoming more competitive, each looks to grab as much of the "pie" as possible, increasing their capabilities and partnerships to alleviate some of the pain marketers feel, and be more "channel-ready."

While many of the above challenges seem iterative, these are the many of the topics that were the most pressing.  Everyone agrees email as an effective channel is not going away.  However, the commonality is that marketers feel the pressure to have all channels at their ready in a complex marketing stream and clients want help with streamlining this process and utilizing every resource they have to optimize every channel.  Together.

 

*This was an internal study conducted by information era marketing + consulting, llc (EIMC) in 2012, and represents a compendium of marketers’ and thought leaders’ top challenge opinions in a limited study.  Of ~300+ surveyed, response rates were ~48%.  This was a private study, and is proprietary to IEMC, llc.  Dori Thompson is a results-driven executive consultant with 19 years of experience in direct and online marketing, ecommerce, sales, strategy, and research.  She is also the co-chair of the eec Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee.

The Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable recently had their first meeting of 2012.  Here's a brief recap of the meeting and who was in attendance.

Attendees:

• Jeanette Brown, Informz
• Adam Cook, Garagefly
• David Hibbs, Responsys
• Stephanie Miller, Aprimo
• April  Mullen, Scottrade
• Colleen Petitt, Aprimo - RT co-chair
• Dwight Sholes, Sholes LLC - RT co-chair

The Cross-Channel Marketing Roundtable kicked off our first meeting for 2012 with great attendance. Our discussions centered around what projects we will be tackling for the year. The #1 project up for consideration is to build a cross-channel audit methodology to allow marketers to evaluate the SWOT of their current program.

In addition, we spent a lot of time discussing what motivates our team members to be part of this Roundtable.  There was a lot of feedback that the opportunity to collaborate and continue to grow and learn in the digital marketing field is very important to this group. There was a strong interest in having “experts” present and collaborate with our group to showcase real-world case studies of cross-channel success. The group agreed to have every-other monthly meeting dedicated to learning and collaboration with the alternate meeting focused specifically on the project.

Our meetings take place the first Tuesday of every month from 1-2pm ET. Our next meeting is February 2. Now is a great time to join the eec and our Roundtable!

The DMA UK’s Email Marketing Council maintains a blog featuring Council members writing about a wide range of topics relating to email marketing.

This month’s highlights:

• Strategic approaches can be overlooked in an effort to get the next email out the door.  Here are five realistic resolutions for an email marketer.
• The world of email is constantly changing both from the sender and the recipient’s perspective.  However, there are some basics that don't change.
• Because of the way consumers interact with brands via email and social media, it's important for digital marketers to effectively integrate their marketing channels.

The Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable met on September 6, 2011.  Here's a brief overview of the meeting and the group's projects.

Attendees:

• Colleen Petitt, Aprimo - Roundtable co-chair
• Dwight Sholes, Sholes LLC - Roundtable co-chair
• Adam Cooke, Garagefly
• April Mullen, Scottrade
• Jeanette Brown, Informz

The team has completed the publication of our first project the “Cross Channel Marketing Guide.” This report provides ten guiding principles of a successful cross-channel marketing program and includes specific goals and actions your organization can apply to build a thriving program. We finalized group input in this call and the Guide is available in the eec Research Store.

Our next topic was our next project. The team determined that we would first like to create a survey of digital marketers to determine where they are in the continuum of integrated cross-channel marketing. In our meeting on 10/4 we will begin to work on this project.

The group also decided that we would like to subsequently develop a cross-channel audit that will allow marketers to assess where their strengths and growth opportunities are within cross-channel marketing.  Marketers will then be able to leverage the guide to improve and enhance their capabilities in each area. We will discuss this further in our 10/4 meeting and determine how we can use the survey to develop the audit.

Interested in joining the Roundtable?  Email Ali - aswerdlow@the-dma.org.

The Big Australian Report signals a significant rise in the volume of marketing messages sent to Australian consumers. For example, Australian companies sent three times as many mobile messages, ten times as many social messages and one third more emails last financial year in comparison to the previous financial year. Despite increased use of mobile and social channels, email marketing remains the central and most used channel, and the highest volume by a considerable margin. Of the marketers surveyed, not surprisingly 100% are sending emails to customers and members.

Also noteworthy is the massive increase in the number of companies using data to understand and segment their customers, ensuring that marketing messages are increasingly targeted and relevant to their audience.

Other key findings include:

• More than three quarters (77%) of large Australian companies are using social networks for lifecycle marketing activities, with 63% “significantly increasing” focus on social, primarily with Facebook and Twitter.
• Nearly one in three (30%) companies is sending mobile messages to customers, primarily alerts such as reminders and confirmations. There was also a 300% increase in number of emails opened on mobile devices.
• For the first time, the majority (62%) of Australian companies are tailoring their campaigns and messages according to preferences or behavior of their customers.
• As companies better understand their customers, they have moved from broadcast to targeted campaigns meaning that emails are sent to fewer people for whom the message is relevant. For example, the number of campaigns increased 115% while number of emails rose only 33%.
• 42% of direct marketing campaigns include a social element.

Responsys Asia Pac Vice President, Simon O’Day, believes the past financial year was a watershed for Australian companies in terms of digital direct marketing.

“As Australian companies face the threat of online sales from overseas, they have woken up to the tactics used by these competitors and sought to implement them here,” Mr. O’Day said. “As a result, capturing and using data to understand the customer has become a priority for most marketing departments. It’s no longer enough to send the same message to all your customers and see if any of them actually care or respond, while other companies are creating genuine relationships through a cross channel approach.”

Mr. O’Day added, “Social media has also evolved from experimental to a genuine marketing channel that’s targeted and measurable. This coming year we expect a growing shift from email to cross channel campaigns that leverage mobile, social and the web. And, segmentation and targeting will continue to be critical to achieving dramatic increases in ROI.”

The study undertaken by Responsys analyzed more than one billion emails, mobile and social messages sent by large Australian companies between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011, as well as results from a survey of 350 enterprise marketers in Australia.

Obtain a copy of the complimentary 2011 Responsys Big Australian Report.

We're looking for email and digital marketing rockstars to present at the Email Evolution Conference 2012 in Florida!  Your proposal(s) must be submitted by Monday, August 1st in order to be considered.

Check out the sessions from EEC11 to get an idea of the types of submissions we select.

Contact Ali with any questions or if you're interested in exhibit or sponsorship opportunities.

Sometimes you need a stat for a presentation, whitepaper, article or blog post.  EmailStatCenter.com has tons of email marketing stats.  Here are some recent ones you can use as long as you provide appropriate attribution.

62% of email traffic share to landing pages comes from Yahoo! Mail, while Gmail provides just 4% of referrals.
- Chitika Insights (2011)

US adult internet users subscribe to an average of almost three daily or weekly shopping emails or newsletters.
- Yahoo! Mail and Ipsos OTX MediaCT, "Consumer Pulse" (2011)

Q4 2010 open rates (22.1%) saw little change over the two-year period, increasing 5% from the same time two years ago.
- Epsilon and eec "Q4 2010 Email Trends and Benchmarks" (2011)

Email has been used by nearly 90% of consumers since 2005.
- MarketingProfs, "2010 Digital Marketing Fact Book"

This year's Email Evolution Conference was a huge success and we had over 400 email and digital marketers join us in Miami Beach! 

If you attended, here's your chance to access the great presentations you saw.  If you didn't attend, these presentations should help convince you to come next year.

Download presentations now.

Presenting companies included:

• Citizens Bank
• uncommongoods.com
• Scotts Miracle-Gro
• PGA TOUR
• Kiehl's
• Kraft
• InterContinental Hotels Group
• ATP Tour
• SnagAJob.com
• BlueHornet
• Yesmail
• StrongMail
• Datran Media
• Responsys
• The Relevancy Group
• Message Systems
• ExactTarget
• Alchemy Worx

and many more!