Last month I was delighted to learn that one of my clients, Sony, won the gold award at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Miami for best automated series. The winning campaign was a serialized message stream developed to welcome, educate, and engage individuals who had just joined the Sony Rewards loyalty program. We executed the new strategy though a simple test plan to quantify the impact of the new messaging, and were quite pleased by the results.

The new messages, a series of three, sent over the course of seven days, enjoyed significant increases in click-through rates over the control group, and drove an exponential lift in site visits and online engagement. Sony has taken the learnings from this test and extended them through similar serialized message streams targeting other segments.

If you're not currently leveraging a multi-message or serialized welcome strategy, I strongly suggest you develop a plan to test one. The bottom line is that new members of your list have unique needs and are likely to be up to five times more responsive to the messages they receive during their first few weeks as subscribers. It simply makes good business sense to address these needs and ensure that messaging critical to your core business objectives makes its way to the inbox during this time when recipients are most likely to respond to it.

Where do I start?

If you have any welcome message success stories, please share here, look me up on twitter [@neinstein] or email me.

- Nicholas Einstein
Datran Media

Marketing to a belt-tightening consumer base, it's now more important than ever to entice subscribers with the most compelling offers you can dream up. It's equally important, of course, to deliver the offers in the most compelling emails possible. It's been interesting to see more inventive sale messaging strategies and design approaches appear in the inbox recently.

Stunning Strategies:

Fun Themes:

• Spend more, Get More: Barneys New York recently offered gift cards to high-spenders: the more you spend, the more you get! Offering gift cards in climbing denominations makes it possible for Barneys to offer fewer straight discounts.

• Find the Savings!: Last year, Disney (scroll down a little) created an Easter egg hunt-themed sale, where browsing was rewarded with "hidden" discounts ranging from 15% to 40%. Not only was the childhood throwback brand-appropriate, but the tactic also encouraged subscribers to keep browsing in search of that elusive 40% off.

• Daily Deals: Piperlime recently ran a fun "Five Days of Treats" series. They presented a new special deal each day, keeping subscribers checking back to find each exciting offer.

Value Messaging in Full-priced Messages:

• Emphasizing Value: Nordstrom, traditionally comfortable in its position as a higher-end, higher-priced retailer, has been shifting its email messaging to include an emphasis on value. Recent subject lines and body copy call out lower costs available on full-priced Nordstrom goods.

• Eating In: In their subject line, "Eating in? We've Got all the Essentials You Need," Pottery Barn acknowledges that their subscribers are likely spending less time and money out on the town. They take advantage of the opportunity to remind subscribers that Pottery Barn's high-quality, long-lasting wares provide the necessities for nice evenings at home.

• Living Simple: Anthropologie uses this email to emphasize how they can cater to an earthy lifestyle rather than highlighting their clothing collection. It's a bit off that their landing page shows their fashion rather than housewares or books, but the message conveys how Anthropologie acknowledges the turn towards simple living.

• DIY: Sephora's "DIY" angle caters to recession-savvy shoppers with eyes on beauty. By calling out salon pricing and the savings of styling oneself, Sephora finds their niche in the value-conscious arena.

Dynamic Designs:

• Unique Text Treatments: A lot of brands send crisp and direct copy-only emails for unfettered sales messaging. Using unique text treatments, like Banana Republic's, can add visual interest without requiring graphics or images.

• Placement of Special Offer Submessaging: Some brands, like The Container Store, add sale messaging as a banner or promotional text in the preview pane. This calls attention to savings without disrupting the rest of the email message. Gymboree manages to convey three different savings offers by packing some punch in their preview pane space. Others add sale submessaging at the bottom of the email so that their main message makes the first impression, as in this Janie and Jack email.

• Graphic Representation vs. Product Imagery: Most brands avoid product imagery in their sale messaging, instead using graphic treatments to create interest, as in REI-OUTLET.com's use of logos. Another graphic approach, still fun and fresh, takes the form of discount tags, like those of Chicos and Old Navy.

With the upcoming months economically uncertain, all we can do is hold on tight and keep an eye to inventive and engaging approaches.

Scoping out the sales,
Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison, Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

I wanted to take a minute to thank you for all of your support of the eec so far. Thanks to fantastic people like you, the eec continues to grow in both size and stature within the email industry.

Over the past three years, the eec has been able to create a community that offers those from all areas of the email marketing industry the opportunity to come, learn and act collectively in positive ways that help change increase the respect and value that email receives from the marketing and advertising worldl.

Collectively, we have helped increase the ROI of email marketing, lobbied for better laws, stronger relationships with ISP's and better integration into other channels like social marketing, mobile markeitng and even search, display and TV. A few of us even wrote books about it!

With all that we have accomplished, we can't sit back and be satisfied. We need to strive for more! More effective email campaign results, more impactful creative, more leverage with ISP's, more innovation with the technologies we use, and more networking to strengthen our collective spirit.

It is with this call for MORE that I am pleased to extend a personal invitation for you to join me at EEC09 in Scottsdale, Arizona, February 9-11th. Use discount code JAN09 to register for just $999* (register at www.emailevolution.org).

Join me, Jeanniey Mullen, as well as our well respected powerful keynote speaker and father of Direct Marketing: Stan Rapp, along with David Daniels, Bill Nussey, Kath Pay, Peter Horan, David Baker, Stephanie Miller, Dela Quist, Ali Swerdlow, Loren McDonald, Stefan Pollard, Jeanne Jennings, Dave Hendricks, Bill McCloskey, Skip Fidura, Dylan Boyd, Aaron Kahlow, Chris Baggott and many other email superstars at this year's event.

In challenging times like these, attending conferences that offer insights and actionable learnings is critical. And, sometimes the networking that happens at the event proves to be even more beneficial. You have my word that you will not be disappointed at this event.

I really hope to see you there. And, if you can make it, drop me an email when you register: jeanniey@emailexperience.org. I would love to say hi at the event and spend some time with you.

Sincerely,

Jeanniey Mullen
eec Founder and Executive Chair

*Only applies to new registrations

Sponsored by:

The Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council signed up to receive promotional emails from 120 of the top online retailers tracked via the Retail Email Blog. Findings indicate a trend toward richer subscription processes.

One highlight of the report shows that the percentage of retailers using only a one-click sign-up from homepage method to collect email addresses declined to 51% this year from 63% last year. That shift accompanied increases in the amount of data collected from new subscribers. Research also demonstrated that the number of retailers providing sample emails and allowing subscribers to choose email topic preferences was up.

"The old adage applies here—you never have a second chance to make a good first impression," says Dave Lewis, chief marketing officer of Message Systems. "Your opportunity is to convert a prospect's initial interest into a long-term, brand loyal relationship. Your challenge is not to 'kill' that interest (and the opportunity) with an intimidating or intrusive subscription process."

This year retailers are also putting more focus on list hygiene. Thirty-eight percent of retailers ask subscribers to confirm their email address by re-entering it, up from 27% last year. Also, 5% of retailers now use a confirmed (double) opt-in process, up from 3% last year, which also improves list quality.

Retailers are also taking greater advantage of their email sign-up process to promote other channels such as direct mail, blogs and RSS feeds. For the first time this year, research indicates that retailers are promoting SMS subscriptions, social networks and widgets along side or within their email programs. While the percentage of retailers promoting those new channels is currently small, it signals a new trend which is expected to grow significantly over the next year.

"Communication behaviors and preferences have changed," says Lewis. "Virtually all of us utilize multiple channels of communication, both online and offline. And how we want companies to communicate with us depends on the nature of the message, where we're at and our personal preferences. Yet, companies have badly lagged in their ability to deliver messages through our channels of choice. So I'm very pleased to see this trend developing, even if just in its infancy. It means we're moving beyond defining 'relevancy' just in terms of the content of the message. It means we're getting closer to realizing the direct marketing mantra of delivering the right message at the right time in the right place."

Other key findings from the study include:

● After falling from 27% in 2006 to 8% last year, the percentage of retailers using sign-up incentives rebounded to 13% this year, despite growing concerns about the quality of subscribers that are attracted by sweepstakes and other incentives.

● With recent evidence suggesting that putting privacy policies front and center during the subscription process actually reduce sign-ups, only 36% of retailers mentioned their privacy policy this year, down from 45% last year.

● Despite quicker subscription fulfillments overall, 29% of retailers took 15 days or longer to honor opt-ins or failed to honor them all together. That figure was the same as last year.

Get the Full Report
Visit the Whitepaper Room to download the full 39-page report, which is free for eec platinum members and available at a discount to eec gold and silver members. Not a member? Learn more about becoming a member of the Email Experience Council.

Dear Zappos:

If you are listening—and I know you are (Twitter, Google Alerts, some other cool way)—please help me understand the following:

I've heard a rumor that you are working on revamping your email marketing strategy. I'm not sure when the unveiling is scheduled for public consumption, but my guess is that it hasn't happened yet. Or maybe it has. On Sunday, I received an email from you in both my Gmail and AOL accounts. That is the good news (you're sending email).

But, you missed the boat in a few critical areas. Specifically…

● In April, I signed up to receive Zappos emails using my AOL address. I used your old school, hidden subscription landing page (start video at 1:45). However, last Sunday was the first email I ever received from Zappos. No confirmation/welcome message…and a 6+ month delay between signup and the first email. Oops.

● I also received the same email in my Gmail account. The only problem is that I never gave you my Gmail address.

● A few months ago, I dinged you because of your lack of a clear call-to-action (start video at 3:42). This email was not much better. A giant laundry list of sale items? Really? What was your goal of this email? Was it for me to read it? To click on the link to visit all sale items?

Zappos. If you've read this far, I hope you know that I love your focus on customer service. I love that your core values are public and you live by them. However, I still think that your email marketing efforts are inconsistent with Core Value #1 – "Deliver WOW Through Service." I am certain I speak for all of us in the email marketing community when I say that we'd love to help.

—DJ Waldow of Bronto Software

Inbox advertising has long been considered an effective direct marketing vehicle. Sending relevant offers to receptive segments has been a recipe for success since the channel emerged. Most emarketers also realize that indiscriminately blasting potentially non-relevant messaging to large segments can negatively impact list size, deliverability and ultimately, brand equity. Fewer marketers, however, fully realize the tremendous role email advertising can play in positively stewarding a brand—driving brand awareness and brand favorability.

I must admit that as a novice email marketer I highly discounted email as a branding vehicle. In fact, I remember telling a colleague once that branding [through email] was just an excuse for not generating conversions. I have since learned that inbox advertising can be an excellent vehicle for driving brand equity and awareness, and believe that those of us who view the channel exclusively through the direct marketing lens, may be interested in the following.

In August, Datran Media and Dynamic Logic researched the impact of an eHarmony email campaign from a branding perspective. The study revealed that inbox advertising provides significant branding benefits:

• Inbox advertising made 37.7% of people aware of one of the tested eHarmony campaigns.
• Unaided brand awareness increased 11.5 percentage points.
• Brand favorability increased 7.3 percentage points.
• Brand awareness and favorability both improved when those researched were exposed to the campaign more than once.

I found the research quite interesting. To learn more, check out the Datran Media brand study here.

Have you done any research to test the impact of your campaigns on brand awareness and favorability? If so, please share.

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

Please help us get the word out about the eec Speakers Bureau by including the following item in your next client newsletter or on your blog:

Email Marketing Experts Available to Speak at Your Next Event

Do you belong to an organization or group whose members could benefit from learning more about email marketing? Then please tell them that the Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council wants to help. The eec's Speakers Bureau has experts available across the U.S. and Canada who have committed themselves to helping email marketers maximize their return on investment and avoid pitfalls such as CAN-SPAM violations and being blacklisted. These industry veterans have waived all speakers' fees and can talk on a wide variety of topics, including…

● How Email Compliments Other Channels
● Obeying CAN-SPAM and Other Laws
● Getting and Maintaining Permission
● Ensuring Your Emails Are Delivered
● Growing a Large and Active List
● What to Send to Your Subscribers

To learn more and to request a speaker, please visit the eec's Speakers Bureau.

*Help us spread the word about this initiative by re-running this item in your client newsletter or on your blog. Thank you.

This 4-hour seminar in New York is part of a ground-breaking series of email compliance-focused events. This specific seminar will cover the LashBack and UnsubCentral processes and deliverables within a framework of educating participants as to the need for comprehensive compliance process as a foundation to successful email marketing and email reputation protection.

Participants will learn the 10 Guidelines of CAN-SPAM compliance, with drill down on unsubscribe compliance, unsubscribe processes including suppression list best practices, the new FTC unsubscribe rule and compliance's overall impact on reputation and deliverability.

Email Compliance: The Foundation of Reputation and Deliverability
Produced by the Email Experience Council and the Direct Marketing Association
Monday, Nov. 3 at 1pm
eec/DMA Seminar Center, New York

Speakers:
John Engler, Vice President and General Manager, UnsubCentral
Bennet Kelley, Esq., Founder, The Internet Law Center
James O'Brien, Director of Marketing, LashBack

This seminar is $99, but eec members can get $20 off using the discount code "eecM."

>>Register Now for this seminar!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks, Simms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Chip House of ExactTarget

Over the past four weeks or so, I have been playing with a free outlook plug-in that has transformed my inbox into a much cooler place to be. It's called Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards) and I can now report with conviction that it is one of the more useful pieces of software on my PC. It fundamentally changes how I use Outlook, and actually increases the value of the email I have stored there by providing me with far easier access to it and the specific information contained within. Besides being very cool software, I believe Xobni and other new products out there on the horizon will be altering the landscape of the inbox in the near term and fundamentally changing how consumers interact with their email.

Xobni indexes all of one's Outlook email and makes it easily searchable—an extremely useful feature. What is most interesting, however, is how Xobni extracts data from ones emails and analyzes it. For one, the software examines the "To" and "CC" lines of emails, combines it with frequency information, and makes inferences about personal connections, featuring these connections as a "network" of contacts. It's interesting to note in the screenshot below that both 'Marketing Daily' and 'MediaPost Publications' are featured right at the top of my network.

The software extracts phone numbers from email signatures as well, and displays this information for convenient access. It also aggregates access to all of the files exchanged between certain senders—very useful stuff.

One of Xobni's coolest features is called Xobni Analytics—the interface provides a fascinating view into one's email patterns. It features "time to respond" information by recipient, as well as email traffic by hour, domain, type, etc. For someone who eats, breathes, and sleeps email, this information is fascinating.

I believe the development of products like Xobni and others on the horizon will absolutely change user behaviors around the inbox. For me personally, it has vastly increased the value of my archived newsletters, as I now can search them all by keyword and quickly access all of that stored information. For example, a quick search for "deliverability" in my mail account yielded 148 relevant results—most listings were from saved newsletters.

I believe it's probably too early to adjust email marketing strategies to accommodate these new products, but exciting developments in email clients are definitely coming down the pike, and I believe they will only increase the value of authentic, relevant email.

Check out Xobni and let me know if you think it's as cool as I do. And if you've seen other inbox plug-ins that you think may help shape the future of the email inbox, please share.

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

Image blocking has become pervasive, with approximately half of all email users suppressing images by default. However, email marketers have not fully adjusted to this reality and reflected it in their email design.

The two strongest weapons in their arsenal in the fight against image blocking, HTML text and alt tags, aren't used nearly enough. Only 42% of the 104 top online retailers included in our study designed emails that were a good mix of HTML text and images, and only 63% used alt tags adequately or extensively.

Consequently, emails from 23% of the retailers reviewed in this study were completely unintelligible in an inbox environment—and there were some significant shades of gray among the 77% that were intelligible, because of lackluster HTML text and alt tag usage.

In addition to our observational study of retailers, the Email Experience Council and SubscriberMail, the sponsor of this study, surveyed 472 marketing executives in March. When it comes to designing for images off, only 47% of the survey respondents said that their company had taken action. Those actions ranged from adding alt tags or a "click to view" link to minimizing images above the fold.

Of the 38% that had tested to see whether the changes they made produced results, 32% have seen more opens, 32% have seen more clickthroughs, and 17% have seen more conversions—with 47% seeing at least a 10% improvement.

"Email marketing currently generates an estimated return on investment of $48.29 for every dollar spent on it, according to the Direct Marketing Association," says Jeanniey Mullen, the founder and executive chairwoman of the Email Experience Council and chief marketing officer of Zinio. "We conservatively estimate that if all marketers optimized their emails for image blocking, email's ROI would jump to $52.69. Not paying attention to rendering impacts revenue directly."

"The results of this study underscore the importance of proactively designing email to compensate for image suppression," says Jordan Ayan, the CEO of SubscriberMail. "Specifically, email marketers must design emails to work with and without images present and test to ensure optimal image rendering. Marketers whose design accounted for image suppression reported impressive lifts in key performance areas—the results speak for themselves. Still, a significant percent of email marketers realize this issue, yet fail to take action to address it."

Other key findings from the study include:

• 14% of retailers compose their navigation bars with HTML text rather than images.

• 3% of retailers used HTML call-to-action buttons rather than images.

• 88% of retailers include a "click to view" link in their preheader text.

• 63% of retailers include whitelisting instructions in their preheader text.

• The emails from only 21% of retailers displayed meaningful snippet text.

*Please note that this report does not cover rendering on mobile devices, a subject that is worthy of its own separate report.

Get the Full Report
Visit the Whitepaper Room to download the full 41-page report, which is free for eec platinum members, available at a discount to eec gold and silver members, and available for $219 for non-members. Not a member? Learn more about becoming a member of the Email Experience Council.

Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission announced that it has approved four new rule provisions under the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003. Intended to clarify CAN-SPAM's requirements, the new provisions address four topics:

1. An e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender.

2. The definition of "sender" was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act's opt-out requirements.

3. A "sender" of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act's requirement that a commercial e-mail display a "valid physical postal address."

4. A definition of the term "person" was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM's obligations are not limited to natural persons.

The Direct Marketing Association is hosting a conference call, which is only open to Email Experience Council and DMA members, to brief members on what the new CAN-SPAM rules mean.

FTC's New CAN-SPAM Rules
Hosted by the Direct Marketing Association
Friday, May 16 at 1pm EST

–>If you are an eec or DMA member, you can register by emailing government@the-dma.org.

I want to share something inspirational that's happening in the email industry (Oh, and you can learn some best practices too!). It's a recap of the Email Experience Council's current Nonprofit Project. The project originated as a manner to enable peers and competitors in the email marketing industry to put business aside and work as a team to create the best email efforts for a good cause.

In 2007, the eec selected the Women's Bean Project as their project focus. Stephanie Miller, from Return Path, volunteered countless hours to lead this initiative and its team on behalf of the eec. I spoke with Stephanie about this effort to get the inside scoop on the project:

WHO IS THE WOMEN'S BEAN PROJECT?
The Women's Bean Project (WBP) helps women break the cycle of poverty and unemployment by teaching workplace competencies for entry-level jobs through employment and by teaching job readiness skills in their gourmet food production business.

WHY WERE THEY A GOOD CANDIDATE?
The WBP was sending one-off donor and volunteer announcements from a database created in FileMaker.

The WBP came to the eec with the following needs and goals:

1. Efficiency: Communicate effectively and efficiently with donors, volunteers and buyers (online and offline).

2. Impact & Choice: Retain donors and buyers through a higher number of touch points—ensuring that each touch is meaningful but also reducing costs and the amount of staff time required for each. Also, allow each customer/donor to select the method of communication (online or offline) that works best for them.

3. Cost Savings: Continue to reach every customer, even as the number of buyers increases by 30% each year (raising the costs of printing and postage significantly).

4. Practicality: Launch and manage a program on a very small staff—literally one-quarter of one person was dedicated to email marketing for all three audiences (donors, buyers, volunteers).

HOW DID THE EEC VOLUNTEER TEAM LOOK?
It is a testament to the email industry and the eec membership that very quickly we had 15 talented professionals volunteer to help, and several vendors step forward and to provide tools and services free of charge. ExactTarget provided a free basic sending license and also graciously donated nearly 15 hours of support throughout the project. Return Path donated a free rendering and deliverability account. Other companies represented included Blackbaud, BlueHornet, Future Integrated Marketing, Industry Mailout, Leapfrog Enterprises, Merkle and Wolters Kluwer Financial Services.

WHAT WAS ACCOMPLISHED?
The team focused on six specific areas to create the program—content, design, infrastructure and list growth.

Content Strategy:
● Identified ways that email can support the WBP mission
● Developed a content strategy
● Debated and finalized permission standards (DOI)
● Developed a calendar for promotions around the holidays, including promoting some local events and fundraisers
● Advised on sending an email counterpart for the annual appeal to donors (direct mail)
● Promotional content recommendations: (1) special offers: 10% discount for National Soup Month; (2) developed concept, copy and photography for a Valentine's Day email that would have viral impact; and (3) developed a year's worth of promotional themes based on holidays in order to boost sales during non-peak months (e.g., soup sales in summer are very slow)
● Set up Google Analytics so WBP could measure success of the email program for driving sales and page views
● Helped train the WBP team to review campaign results with an eye toward optimization

Design:
● Developed wireframes for four types of emails
● Designed templates for newsletter, postcards, DOI/welcome and donor appeals
● Loaded the templates into ExactTarget and tested them
● Helped launch an inaugural issue—which included list hygiene and deliverability with an old file, as well as an opt-out strategy for the existing database

Infrastructure:
● Worked with the team to set up an ExactTarget account
● Upload the templates; Access the self-service training
● Testing and mailing
● Course Correction: Aligning with with Yahoo! Store and cleaning up templates

List Growth:
● Starting point: 75% valid records
● Developed organic, offline and viral list growth ideas
● Recommended ways to optimize data capture on the website
● Reviewed the subscription flow for permission clarity and growth optimization

Wireframe Sample:

HOW DID IT TURN OUT?
Here's a quick rundown of the results:

1. We launched a program! It is practical, earns results, garners the praise and kudos of subscribers, donors and the WBP Board of Directors and has legs—the WBP can continue this email program when the volunteer team disbands.

2. Subscribers love it! The inaugural issue of the newsletter generated:
● 32% open rates
● 15% clickthrough rate
● 3.1% bounce rate on new data (25% bounce rate on old list data)

3. Subscribers are great WBP customers! Page views from email subscribers are two times higher than other sources.

For more details on our work with the Women's Bean Project and past Nonprofit Projects, visit the Nonprofit Project page on the Email Experience Council's website.

—Jeanniey Mullen of the eec

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

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

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

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

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

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

—Elie Ashery of Gold Lasso

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

At this morning's kick-off to the eec's first annual Email Evolution Conference, eec founder Jeanniey Mullen showed a number of "man on the street" interviews with "real people" talking about email.

It was amusing and insightful to hear people talk about their inboxes and how they must actively manage them (you can watch one of the videos here). Better, the comments completely synched with Return Path's Fourth Annual Holiday Email Survey, where subscribers told us that they mostly just delete unread most of what they get from marketers—defined as "junk from companies I know but is just not interesting to me."

What really struck me was the video participants' storytelling. They talked about email as a sort of stew—our marketing messages are mixed up in there with notes from grandma, various lovers and a three-year-old's parents and even one gentleman's new job announcement.

Subscribers know intellectually the difference between personal, transactional and marketing messages, but it's an emotional decision to open or delete when faced with inbox clutter. Subscribers view their inbox holistically—we are not only competing against others in our industry, and transactional messages for purchases and e-statements, but we are competing with grandma's message, too.

The classic example of defining your competitive marketplace by benefit and not by product is the statement that Amtrak is in the transportation business, not the train business. So too, we email marketers are not just in the retail or travel business, we are in the business of creating compelling and interesting subscriber experiences.

We can't forget that—and frankly, it's the secret to all e-marketing success. That is why it's so hard. This is especially true as we tackle challenges around mobile and SMS messaging. What the DMA is calling "The Digital Lifestyle" still translates to subscriber experiences. The word "subscriber" is important because it's about permission. The word "experience" is important because it's about a dialogue and interactivity. It's direct marketing, so it's about driving response through targeted and well-timed messaging. And it's marketing, so it's about serving customers and demonstrating brand value.

At the center is the subscriber. Wow her, and you win. Good for Jeanniey and the eec for launching today with an engaging, inventive and visual way of showing us that the subscriber is still in charge. I'm looking forward to a great conference where I'm sure to have dozens of valuable conversations about creating compelling subscriber experiences. Look forward to hearing from you as well. Just email anytime!

—Stephanie Miller of Return Path

When the DMA's email marketing council merged with the Email Experience Council last year, we maintained the eec name in large part because many of us believe the consumer experience would increasingly take center stage in differentiating email marketers. We also fundamentally believe that if marketers focus on building an exceptional email experience they will not only develop deeper, strong relationships, but they would sell more—further accelerating the enormous ROI attributed to email. Our hope is that this council continues to provide our members with the tools and guidance needed to build exceptional email marketing programs. That guidance—which includes all our research, best practices, educational events, advocacy and the sharing of ideas—has no doubt been helpful to many of us and has often positively impacted our email efforts. However, we still have much to do, particularly as it relates to being able to learn from each other and showcase great email marketing practices that drive results.

That is why I would like to start the New Year off with a new series for this blog entitled "You've Got Email." Each month, You've Got Email will highlight great email marketing programs from the consumer's perspective. I'll dissect best-in-class email practices ranging from exceptional preference center practices to compelling win-back marketing programs taken from a review of real email messages sent from hundreds of brands. I'll show the good, the bad and the ugly in hopes of inspiring you to do better. Best of all, because I am an independent consultant right now and don't need to worry about alienating a client or potential prospect, I'll be refreshingly honest in the hopes of pushing many of you to do better.

To be clear, I completely understand that many of you reading this still face some very significant data and operational challenges that prevent you from doing the kind of email you would love to do. However, in my experience, very few marketers have taken the necessary steps to bring about the changes needed within their own organizations to evolve their email communications. How many of you have really spent the time building a customer-centric marketing strategy, or leveraged cross-functional customer-facing teams to inform your email marketing strategies or tactics? Or even audited your existing company-wide email marketing initiatives? Be honest—you haven't—because if you had, we would be seeing a lot more great email marketing. So let's make this year the year we leave the excuses in the office and focus less on spam and deliverability and more on the customer. Because when you build a great email customer experience that is timely, relevant, wanted and valued, those old issues almost fix themselves.

Finally, I want this blog and column to be interactive, so send me your questions, challenges and even marketing programs you admire or want evaluated. In February we'll focus on building great email preference pages. Till next time,

—Michael Della Penna

Waking up Tuesday morning to CNBC's Becky Quick telling me the Dow Jones Futures were down almost 600 points after a surprise three-quarter point Fed rate cut really put a damper on my day. As I watched the real-time chart tick lower, my stomach started to knot leaving me in a dizzying stupor. It's times like these that bring me back to my days as a small cap equities analyst where I would question CFOs about where they planned to cut and by how much. The first answer out of their mouths was almost always "non-revenue generating jobs," such as customer and administrative support. The second most common answer is "advertising and marketing." The second answer always baffled me especially from companies that aren't leveraged. In a time of a recession, companies with access to capital have an unusual opportunity to take market share as they are able to sustain or increase their marketing budgets. Whenever a CFO with a decent to strong cash position told me that he or she was going to slash their marketing budget going into an economic downturn, I eventually sold the company's stock and bought a competitor's that kept theirs intact. This strategy worked well—especially in the services sectors.

Although most people do suffer from a recession, winners do emerge and I'm confident that email marketing could get a gold medal. During the 2001-2002 recession, email marketing was just on the cusp of becoming widely adopted but had yet to make the necessary penetration to become a formidable part of the promotional mix. Most notably, the cost per email hovered around $0.05, way below the cost of a direct mail piece yet still prohibitive for most companies to implement two or three times a week on a large scale. Fast forward to 2008, email marketing is now one of the least expensive marketing channels, and according to the DMA, a very high performer. Today, most email marketers are paying under a penny per email, but email marketing only claims a small part of the average marketing budget. Even though email marketing has become widespread, email marketers, on a larger scale, are still not leveraging the medium's true potential such as advanced personalization, delivery monitoring and management, and integration with third-party systems.

This gap, coupled with a potential economic downturn, presents a unique opportunity for email marketers to lobby their CEOs and CFOs for a larger slice of their marketing budget. Email marketers have already proven that email marketing works well. Now is their opportunity to reclaim it as the most relevant push channel available and the biggest bang for the buck.

—Elie Ashery of Gold Lasso

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