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+.  

 

 

The eec hosted a webinar this month highlighting the role of video in email.  Luke Glasner of Red Pill Email moderated and Justin Foster of LiveClicker and Rory Carlyle of Carlyle, Inc. contributed to the panel discussion.  The audience was engaged throughout as we learned about video email best practices, case studies, and technical requirements to achieve strong deliverability with video in email.  Download the webinar recording.

Top 10 takeaways from video email webinar:

1.  Video is a growing trend that email marketers need to pay attention to.  Video viewing time increased 26% year-over-year in the USA from August 2010 to August 2011.  180 million people, or 86% of the US Internet audience, viewed online video in August of 2011, according to comScore.  Marketers are taking notice, with video ad spend projected to increase 22% from 2011 to 2012 (eMarketer).  An August 2011 report by Forrester Research showed online video was perceived as the channel most poised to increase in effectiveness over the next three years by interactive marketers, behind only mobile marketing and created social media.

2.  Using video for video's sake is not a good enough reason to use video with email.  Marketers need to decide whether the application of video creates additional value for subscribers before deciding to employ this tactic.  Simply using video because it is "cool" is not a good enough reason; marketers need to first consider whether the storytelling power of video can be used to more effectively entertain, engage, or excite subscribers, build trust, stir the imagination, or persuade the subscriber to take an action vs. other techniques.

3.  Video is proven to be an effective tactic to boost email campaign performance, but only when best practices are applied.  Simply using the word "video" in the subject line of email has been demonstrated to help achieve increases in open rates of up to 20% vs. an identical message body without the word "video" in the subject line.  Video in email examples illustrated a 200% increase in CTR in a controlled A/B split in one example, 67% higher CTR v. average campaigns in another.  Still, if best practices are not used, video can annoy subscribers, distance marketers from subscribers, and even drive up negative metrics like unsubscribe rates.

4.  Video does not alter the fundamental rules of smart email email marketing. Relevance still rules.  Marketers need to think about who to engage with video; use of past clickthrough data, web analytics data, or customer demographic data are all possible sources of valuable targeting information.  Knowing which subscribers have watched video in the past can be especially helpful when developing segments for video email.

5.  Video production does not need to be difficult or expensive; marketers can make it so.  There are several techniques that can be used to minimize the amount of time required to generate videos for campaigns, such as: 1) use existing content developed in-house or by partners (just make sure you have permission) 2) If your brand is tolerant, carefully assess the production values you really need to accomplish the goal of the campaign.  It is possible to create HD video content in-house, with a full camera setup and set, for $4,000 - $5,000.  Hiring a professional or an agency is also an option, but many marketers make the mistake of thinking that video has to be expensive, when in reality video is only expensive when the marketer's production requirements make it so.

6.  Choosing which technique to use for leveraging video "in" email is a creative and cost decision.  Period.  There are benefits and drawbacks of each method of including video in email.  Concerns over deliverability, campaign send speed, or mail client support should not dictate the decision of "in" or "with" because technologies exist in the market to detect what email client a subscriber is using, and then automatically serve a compatible version of the video asset, animated .GIF video, or still image directly in the email based on what the mail client supports.  If a marketer has a creative aversion to using any of these creative treatments, it is easy to exclude the use of that treatment without having to cut the list.  Further, deliverability concerns can be alleviated simply by employing best practices in coding email messages.

7.  If using video in email, internal education is key.  Not all mail clients support full video in email, including Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010.  If you use one of these programs at your place of work, consider setting internal expectations so that stakeholders know what to expect.  While video in email support is not yet consistent across mail clients, as of June 2011 an "average" B2C marketer could expect to deliver "full" video in email to approximately 37% of the list, animated .GIF video to 50% of the list, and static image to 13% of the list.  Your results will vary based on your list's composition.

8.  Email marketers need to treat video as more than a "one off" experiment.  Since we belong to a metrics-focused industry, many email marketers choose to "one off" test video in email to see if it "works."  This is a terrible mistake because it does not allow the marketer to understand what about the video is driving results.  There are many different types of video content; some videos will work better than others.  Therefore, it is important when testing video to at minimum test over a series of campaigns (I recommend at least 3).  Only by looking at video in the context of several campaigns will marketers begin to discover what works and doesn't work for the brand.

9.  Know the lead times involved.  Most email marketers have not used video with email before.  If it's your first time, consider planning the video a full two months prior to the campaign launch.  Since video requires different techniques and tools to create and encode, try to give yourself a buffer and a Plan B far in advance.  If you already have access to video content, plan on adding an additional three to four hours per campaign for any testing or troubleshooting.

10.  Follow best practices.  Among them: 1) set the subscriber's expectation for video by calling the video out in the subject line (this is especially important for animated .GIF videos, which auto-play)  2) Use a "play" button in the video "player" to signal the subscriber can play the video.  3) Highlight in the email what "happens" when the video is clicked.  Because watching a video requires the subscriber to invest his scarce time, it is important to communicate the value you are promising up-front to prevent disappointment 4) Serve a "right click to play" message as the first frame of the video for Hotmail users (because player controls aren't supported yet in Hotmail) 5) Keep animated .GIF videos to 30 seconds or less.  Since animated .GIF videos don't support sound, they are most effective as "teaser" content.

BONUS TAKEAWAY:  Be clear with your campaign goals up front and do not over-hype or over-promise results.  Video email is still new and best practices are still emerging.  In my experience, the marketers that have gone on to be most successful with video email are those who took the time to learn about video in email, took the time to educate their managers and peers, and treated video email as an "experiment."  If you promise the moon, you'd at least better be able to jump off the ground.

My point to this post is this: all the marketing chatter around “email marketing best practices” and related subject matter are mostly garbage.  It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in “email,” how many emails you’ve sent in your career, what company you worked for, how well you code, and I definitely don’t care if you’re an “expert.”  At the end of the day, it’s about data; it’s about results and overall achievement of the channel in conjunction to the goals set for it.  If you don’t have goals on your email channel – start tomorrow.

Members of the eec Measurement Accuracy Advisory Committee have answered marketers' cry for new best practices around email measurement.  The Email Metrics Best Practices Guide will help marketers move beyond just reviewing render (open) and click rates to gain an understanding of their subscribers' behavior by including additional data available.

Download this document to learn what email marketers should be tracking beyond renders (opens) and clicks, what sources and types of data marketers can use to calculate various metrics, how to define key success indicators and finally, how to use them to reach marketing goals such as increased revenue, customer lifespan, engagement and more.  Get your copy from the eec Research Store today!

Guide Contributors:
Adam Holden-Bache, Email Transmit
John Caldwell, RedPillEmail
Luke Glasner, RedPillEmail
Loren McDonald, Silverpop
Stephanie Miller, Aprimo
Fred Tabsharani, Port25

eec members can access all eec research including whitepapers, best practices guides and more at no cost.  Find out how to become a member.

Plus, find out more about the eec's S.A.M.E. (Support Adoption of Metrics for Email) Project, also developed by the Measurement Accuracy Advisory Committee.


- Luke Glasner
Co-Chair of the Measurement Accuracy Advisory Committee

Thoughts from the first meeting of the Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable
co-chaired by Jeff Chamberlain of Aprimo and David Hibbs of Responsys.

The charter of the Roundtable is to explore cross-channel integration to provide education and/or information that would help eec members and the larger email marketing community in pursuing this goal.  Here are the themes to what we are trying to accomplish:

1. Address the needs to “get started” by helping marketers understand the initial steps that might lead to integrated marketing leveraging an existing email channel.
2. Utilize email marketing best practices to help inform what we decide to provide to the community.
3. Look at simple tools that are easy to apply rather than just focus on deep insights or case studies that are interesting but don’t inform clear action for marketers.

Our initial group (still welcoming new members) had a discussion on cross-channel integration. I’ll introduce the team through the discussion summary.  eec Vice Chair Stephanie Miller of Aprimo kicked off the call and started us down the road to group discussion.

Challenge #1 – What is Cross-Channel Integration??

Jeff Chamberlain of Aprimo suggested that cross-channel integration spoke to presenting a marketing message via multiple communication channels to address the different needs driven by preference, buying cycle stage, etc.

Sheryl Biesman of Pharmavite pointed out the channel also refers to distribution from a CPG perspective so we need to be clear about integrating communication channels or distribution channels.

Dwight Sholes of Sholes LLC offered the perspective to focus on direct channels (those designed to directly influence action or response such as email marketing or direct mail as opposed to awareness like print ads or signage).  We accepted the fact that there is a large definition of cross-channel integration and that we would narrow down our target as we come up with different projects…which led to some discussion/brainstorming on possible projects we could do to pursue our charge as a group (trumpets blaring charge heard in the distance…). 

Here is a sampling of the ideas discussed:

• Focus on nuts & bolts…how to get started…benchmarks…how to get it done.
• Provide metrics for how to measure success and case studies on how it has been successful.
• How to get it done easily.  Much of the material out there is intimidating on getting the resources (people, money) to get going.
• Create a checklist to help people know they are addressing the right issues - a Cross-Channel Maturity Audit
• Help people learn how to unify a single communication piece & communicate it across multiple channels.  Keep in mind how a message differs for different channels.
• Help people test.  How to choose the right channels.  How to choose the right campaigns for testing cross-channel integration.
• Focus on how to best combine traditional and new marketing channels (e.g. email marketing and social media, blogging and events)
• Since we are doing this for email marketers, maybe we should investigate whether one channel (e.g. email marketing) should be the hub of your cross-channel marketing strategy.

This would force us to think through the aspects of cross-channel marketing and define some logical next steps.  It could be a good way to gather status and thoughts from others.  Let's do it!

And so there you are…our first challenge…define the aspects of a Cross-Channel Maturity Audit.  We’ll dive in at our next meeting in November.

Intrigued and want to join us?  Contact Ali at the eec.


- Jeff Chamberlain, Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable co-chair
VP, B2B Solutions Marketing
Aprimo

We all want a big email marketing list, but we also want to respect subscriber interests, protect the assets of our email program and maintain a solid foundation for revenue growth.  There is a bit of a high wire balancing act sometimes when our organizational goals include having *both* a large and active file.

At this month’s meeting of the eec's List Growth & Engagement Roundtable, a group of industry practitioners discussed a common – and often uncomfortable – situation of email marketers everywhere.  The boss says in that big, growly voice, “Get me a big file of email subscribers - now!”  Yet, the types of tactics that grow a list aggressively can have real risks for response, loyalty and inbox deliverability – which puts your entire program in danger.  No level of growling will change that result.  Here are some ideas from the group about how to approach this somewhat tricky balancing act.   

“I remember a million member push program from one of our clients that was successful in building a big file, but created inbox deliverability and sender reputation problems for many, many months,” says Nancy Harris, Sr. Manager of Deliverability at Fishbowl.  A restaurant wanted to get one million subscribers in their restaurant e-club (a loyalty program).  The promotion was intended to encourage current members to invite lots of friends in order to win a big cash prize. The new member would receive a free meal for joining the program.  “It worked on one level,” Nancy says.  “It was successful in reaching a lot of people and they did reach their goal of one million subscribers.. 
 
“The problem was that the list quality was terrible.  We immediately saw blocking and blacklisting due to unknown users (bounces) and complaints, which took us more than a few months to correct.   Not only did this client have ongoing inbox deliverability issues, but there were also questions about the quality of the people who became new members.  They were not really interested in dining at this restaurant regularly, or receiving ongoing email communications from them.”
 
If that restaurant did the math, they may find that this program was successful in the short term. It cost them some number of tens of thousands of dollars to set up and run the promo and they got a million new members.  Remember, too, that email is a lot cheaper to send than printed postcards – and it’s very efficient in terms of time to market, so this ROI was returned quickly. The cost per new member was very small.    Short term, that could make sense.  However, long term, they destroyed their sender reputation and did not receive revenue from the majority of the new members – these people were not committed to the restaurant and did not frequently dine there.
 
This business cycle issue haunts many an email marketing decision, says Stephanie Miller of Return Path.   “Short term, you can broadcast to your file and you earn revenue.  Long term, however, you may see serious consequences, all of which have a real cost.”
 
Consider these factors in determining the cost of the new subscriber acquired through a sweeps or promotion like the million member push described above:

1. Depressing your sender reputation due to high complaints (which limits your email marketing opportunity for all subscribers by limiting access to the inbox) – this could be a drop in inbox placement of 10% - 50% of your file every time you mail;
2. Churning your file – people who leave by complaints, unsubscribe or filtering – and need to be replaced at some cost per subscriber;
3. Lower loyalty of good customers by bothering them with irrelevant promotions – the cost of this could be a penny a person or it might be higher depending on the type of brand relationship you need for your business;
4. Losing the opportunity for future email marketing because they unsubscribed, complained or are just ignoring you from now on.

“When you calculate the true cost of the aggressive list growth program, factor in these costs as well.  And then make a business decision based on long term customer value and satisfaction,” Stephanie says.
 
“We run into this balancing dilemma when we suggest a list hygiene or list cleansing audit,” says ExactTarget's Nate Romance who is also co-chair of the Roundtable.  Most clients see value in doing a re-engage and send a win back campaign to the portion of the file which is non-active, Nate says.  “However, many will opt for reduced frequency as opposed to suppression of those subscribers who have not responded in a long time. That allows them to keep a big number for list size.”
 
Nate says that when he starts to discuss these issues with marketers, some see the value in keeping “dead” or “nearly dead” records on the file because with a baseline of zero, any interaction will be a rise in response.  However, usually it takes more than just continued hammering at the inbox door, he says.  “Sometimes sending the best of the best offer that month rather than weekly will increase response rates,” he recommends.  The rest of the group agreed, however, that dialing back frequency has not ever significantly improved response rates.  “The risk to your sender reputation is real when you keep non responsive records on the file,” adds Stephanie of Return Path.  “I never think that risk is worth the small chance that a couple people will respond at some future point.”
 
Nancy from Fishbowl adds that a similar practice is common when marketers try to build a list quickly – they sacrifice quality for quantity.  “I see a lot of what I call ‘deceptive list building,’” she says.  This is when a marketer does a sweeps or promotion with vague email permission just to build the file quickly.  “That lack of express consent can be a problem for deliverability and response rates and has a real cost for determining the value of such a venture.”
 
Such practices often are not well measured, and so it’s hard to determine the impact – good or bad.  “When someone gets more aggressive they might do campaigns that are intended to build the list quickly and then they don’t track by source so that we can’t always associate the promotions with complaints and response (or lack of),” Nate from ExactTarget says.  “I always recommend that we tag these folks or track source so that in six months we can check the quality of the list and the real success of the campaign.” 
 
“It’s so interesting that we marketers are good at thinking about LTV of a subscriber when we pay for them – as in a media buy or PPC search campaign,” Stephanie adds. “But when we acquire email subscribers through these “organic’ measures, we don’t always track by lifetime value, we track by the initial sign up.” 
 
Nancy agrees.  “The value of someone when they are new to the file may be different than the same person six months down the road.  We often see that there comes a point, especially for smaller files, that the file stabilizes at a certain number because of loss. New subscribers come in at a steady pace, but subscribers are also lost due to list aging and fatigue,” she says. 
 
That is a very good argument for making sure that list growth is an ongoing commitment, and not a onetime promotion. 
 
What are you doing to consistently grow your email file with active subscribers? Do some of these points resonate? Please comment below, or join the eec List Growth & Engagement Roundtable to participate in future discussions like this.


- Stephanie Miller
Vice Chair, eec
VP, Global Market Development, Return Path

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

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

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

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

Andy Goldman*
SVP, Strategy & Integration
RAPP

————-

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

Jim Ducharme
Editor
The eMail Guide

————-

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

Kristin Hersant*
Director, Corporate Marketing
StrongMail

————-

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

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

————-

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

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

Stephanie Miller*
VP, Global Market Development
Return Path

————-

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

Morgan Stewart*
Director, Research and Strategy
ExactTarget

————-

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

DJ Waldow*
Director of Community
Blue Sky Factory

————-

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

David Hughes
Founder
The Email Academy, Ltd

————-

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

Gretchen Scheiman
Partner, Associate Director, CRM
OgilvyOne worldwide

————-

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

Simms Jenkins
CEO
BrightWave Marketing & EmailStatCenter.com

————-

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

Chris Baggott*
CEO/Co-founder
Compendium

————-

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

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

————-

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

Loren McDonald*
VP, Industry Relations
Silverpop

————-

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

Jordan Cohen
VP, Business Development
Pontiflex

————-

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


- DJ Waldow
Director of Community
Blue Sky Factory

Read the original post.


*eec Member

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

 

Video in email. Not a week goes by without a webinar, blog or email newsletter mentioning the topic. But is video in email the real deal? Or is it still too early to start whipping out the camcorders and hiring scriptwriters?

To get a better handle on the topic, I turned to ClickMail Marketing's CTO, Cameron Kane, for some insight. Cameron is paying close attention to the video vibe and was deploying video for clients way before the hype. But whether or not video is ready for prime time is the topic I asked him to speak upon.

First off, Cameron says you need to be clear on your motivation. Video can be a good tool to engage prospects or re-engage existing customers. But make sure you'll use it that way. Ask yourself, "Will this really help me engage the customer or am I doing this because it's the next shiny new thing?"

Next, Cameron cautions being aware of the different ways to deliver video. Which method you choose depends in part on your audience and in part on how much success you want.

1. As a static image that clicks through to video on a landing page – This is an image with a Play arrow on it indicating it will start a video. The video starts playing upon the click through.
2. As an animated .gif that plays in the email – Cameron says this is a good way to go if you can get the point of your short video across without sound. "It should be used as more of a lure than the full-blown video," he says. But it will not play if images are suppressed. And it only shows the first frame in Microsoft Outlook 2007, so when you're creating it, you must make your first frame a static image with an arrow (as above) so the user can click through. For this reason, it's a bad choice if you're a B2B marketer as so many business people use Outlook.
3. As certified video that plays in the email with audio (AOL only) – Right now this applies only to AOL, although other ISPs are joining, like Comcast. "I think the expansion into ISPs needs to widen a tad before we can really speak to this," says Cameron. "The home run is if they can get Hotmail, Livemail and Gmail. Then video will be pervasive," he says. Certified video has just come onto the scene and it will be very interesting in watching this playout. The implications on this front go wide and far. I think the best has yet to come.
4. As embedded Flash video: "Very bad idea," says Cameron. "We could do this 5 years ago, but no longer."

Of the four choices above, Cameron recommends using the static image for a B2B audience. If the audience is B2C, he says, start with an animated .gif and do an A/B split test. If the animated .gif works, filter your AOL audience and if that audience is big enough and a lift in revenue would be significant, use the certified video for that segment. "I would see this option as the best for large retailers," he says. Although he also points out Goodmail hasn't done their homework yet on the effectiveness of video and whether or not there's a lift in ROI. "They don't have conclusive data as of yet on the lift a sender would receive if using video," he points out.

If you use video in your email marketing, there are still email best practices to adhere to. Just because you're adapting a new approach and technology doesn't mean the old rules no longer apply. Things to keep in mind when using video in your email marketing include:

• You still have to be relevant and targeted
• It's still email. You're still trying to get the recipient to do something, to take some kind of action
• You still have to measure its impact
• You still have to test
• You have to consider bandwidth and rendering issues

Most of all, perhaps, and this is where the discussion about video in email gets fuzzy, you have to consider image blocking. A recent webinar on video in email hardly spent 10 seconds on the topic, but the reality is, if your recipients have images suppressed, it doesn't matter which method you choose to deliver your video in the email: They won't see it.

As Cameron says, "You have to get them to download images, then view the email and video, then click through. This is all before they hopefully convert. There's lots of room for drop out."

So maybe it's worth waiting a while before you "drop in" to the video in email camp.

 

- Marco Marini, CEO, ClickMail Marketing

 

 

 

 

 

Not every email marketing best practice is an obvious one. In fact, in our experience at ClickMail Marketing, there are quite a few best practices that companies seem to look over or deliberately ignore. The result? The opposite of best practices, or what we kindly call "common email marketing mistakes" rather than worst practices.

In an industry where a half a percentage point can make or break a campaign, it's our opinion that tweaking and optimizing every possible factor is worth the effort. With that in mind, I asked our staff to compile a list of the top 10 mistakes they see when deploying email campaigns on behalf of clients. The good news is that they only came up with nine. And the even better news is that these are all easy best practices to adapt and adhere to.

Below are the common mistakes seen by the staff at ClickMail, and what you can do to avoid them:

Common email marketing mistake #1: Sloppy Copy

• Check your spelling. Copy and paste into Word and run spell-check if you need to. Also check the spelling in your links. If your URL is wrong, so are you.
• Read the copy. Don't scam, skim or skip over. Reading is the only way to ensure proper use of language like "their" vs. "there" vs. "they're", missing words, incorrect punctuation or poor sentence structure. Best practice: Print it out to read on paper. Even better best practice: Read it out loud.
• Employ a second set of eyes for final review. Once you've written, read and edited the same piece of content many times, it is no longer fresh to you and errors are easily overlooked. Ask someone else to run spell check and read the copy. You may be surprised to see what you missed.

Common email marketing mistake #2: Crummy Coding

• Set the pixel width to 600. This prevents the need to scroll to the right—and the potential to lose interest if someone feels they have to do too much work to read your email.
• Don't use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) in your HTML coding. It is stripped out by many ESPs, meaning your message can be lost. Even if you've spell checked it and done all the best practices described above!
• Many ESPs also suppress images by default, as do email clients (about 80%). Do not create your email message out of one big image or your subscribers may only see a blank page with a little, tiny red X. If you use any images, to be on the safe side, utilize a View Online feature so they have another way to see images if they are suppressed.

Common email marketing mistake #3: Cold Calls to Action

• Your call to action (CTA) should be in text format, not an image because—as mentioned above—images are suppressed by default by many email service providers and email clients.
• Include two to three instances of your CTA above the fold (in the first 300 pixels). Make sure to include at least one graphical and one textual CTA.
• The top one-third and the left-most area of your emails are the most valuable real estate. Try to place a CTA those areas, in text and as minimal images.

Common email marketing mistake #4: Poor Subject Lines

Your subject line should be seven words or less (or 35 characters). Most people know this but might not know that the following conditions in a subject line can be flagged as SPAM:

• Percent of Capital Letters: Too many uppercase letters compared to lowercase letters
• Repeating Capital Letter: Too many upper case letters in a row (e.g., SALE)
• Gaps: When the words have gaps between letters like s*t*y*l*e
• Repetition: When letters or characters are repeated (*****)
• Special Character Flag: Overuse of special characters (e.g., & $ # @ ( )[ ] !)
• Punctuation Flag: Too much punctuation (…) or the type of punctuation (!)
• Word/Space Ratio: Spammers use blank spaces to catch the recipient's attention resulting in a high ratio of spaces to words
• First Character Flag/First Word Flag: Subject lines starting with a special character or punctuation. Words like "Free", "hey", "Sale" etc.

Common email marketing mistake #5: Obscure "From" Label

Your From address is key information used by subscribers to determine if your email is spam or not. If it's not relevant or recognizable, they may mark it as spam, or just delete it without opening it.

Common email marketing mistake #6: Floating From Address and/or Domain

Keep a static "From" address and/or domain, and ask to be added to the recipient's Safe Sender list at the top of each email.

Common email marketing mistake #7: Lazy Lists

• Utilize the Forward to a Friend (FTF) feature to organically grow your list.
• Practice good and consistent list hygiene. Most people know to honor opt outs in 10 days to be CAN-SPAM compliant but you should also clean your list(s) of hard bounces after each send, plus monitor soft bounces and remove from your list as needed.

Common email marketing mistake #8: Competing Links

Don't include competing links, period. Unless it's a newsletter, most emails should be single subject with a single call to action. If it's a sale, link to the appropriate sale items. If it's an invitation, link to the registration page etc.

Common email marketing mistake #9: Unfair Unsubscribe

The unsubscribe link must be the first step, per CAN-SPAM. Don't make people jump through hoops to opt out.

Now, I hope you read the nine common email marketing mistakes above and nodded your head in agreement, confident you're innocent of all.  If not, if even one of those nine listed tripped you up, go fix it now and increase your ROI later as a result.

 

- Marco Marini, President & CEO, ClickMail Marketing

Marco Marini is an acknowledged expert in e-marketing with over a decade and half's-worth of experience in the field. Before taking over as CEO, he was CMM's VP of Marketing & Operations. Marini has also held key marketing positions with CyberSource, eHealthInsurance, DoveBid and IBM Canada.

Though growing your email database takes time and effort, when done correctly, it will house your most qualified and responsive leads. A well structured email database will enable you to boost sales with more targeted messages and offers, extend the lifecycle of any campaign and increase customer retention with regular and relevant communications.

Consider the following techniques to acquire new leads and grow your email list with success:

1. Who is your ideal lead and how do you reach them? Create a profile for your best customer(s). This should include things such as age, gender, hobbies, job function, how they shop (online or at stores), where they shop, what they read, what websites they visit, etc. Depending on the product or service you are marketing, some of the above will be more relevant than others. For example, if you are marketing a clothing line, job function will be less relevant than where and how they shop, where as if you are marketing a trade publication, job function and industry will be extremely important.

2. Analyze your competition. Take some time to find out what your competitors are doing to build their email lists. Start off by going to their websites. Then do a web search on your competition as well as relevant key words, and take note of any banners / CPC ads that appear. Be sure to click through to check out what their landing pages look like and what type of information they are choosing to capture. If they have an e-newsletter, sign up for it. This is an easy way to start receiving their email campaigns. All of these steps will help you find out what type of promotions they are running, any marketing alliances they have formed, and how they are positioning their product or service.

3. Reach your best customer. Once you've created your customer profile(s) and finished your competitive analysis, you are ready to develop your list growth strategy. Your strategy can include initiatives such as: banner ads on websites that your target audience visits, a PPC campaign, direct mail or email campaigns to magazine subscriber opt-in lists, etc. You can also approach other products or service providers for co-promotions or mutually beneficial partnerships. Starting an e-newsletter or a blog for your company are great ways to grow your list as long as your content is desirable. The lifecycle of any campaign can be extended with behavior-based trigger emails.

4. Your offer is everything! Unless your offer is relevant to the recipient, they will not respond to your campaign. Your offer will need to prompt the recipient to make a purchase or willingly give you their information in exchange for something they want. For instance, you might send an email introducing your company to a magazine subscriber opt-in list that you know your target audience reads. By including a free downloadable premium such as an industry salary guide, a list of the hottest bars in town, or a best practices whitepaper – what ever might be most relevant to your target audience – recipients will need to provide their email address and demographic information in order to download the premium. Once you've captured their information and they've opted-in to your database, you will be able to communicate with that lead on an ongoing basis.

5. Your offer is almost everything! Unless the recipients receive your email, they cannot receive your offer. Therefore, be sure to comply with email marketing best practices: include a physical mailing address, an opt-out link and a subject line that reflects the content in your email. Also, when writing your email, try to stay away from words that are flagged by spam filters.

6. Create a landing page. It is extremely important to guide the campaign recipient through the entire process. By creating a landing page on your website that mirrors your campaign's message / offer, you will encourage the recipient to fill out the form with the ultimate goal of opting-in to your list.

7. Use a lead capture form. Your landing page can either link to a lead capture form or you can embed the form in the landing page itself.
a. Since people are more prone to filling out a short form than a long and drawn out questionnaire, limit the amount of information you are asking them to provide in exchange for their premium. Besides the basic name and email address, think of including one or two other demographic questions. These questions should be well thought out to provide you with information you can leverage for future email campaigns.
b. In addition to the demographic questions, your form should include a check box giving people the option to opt-in to your mailing list and receive information about your company and future promotions. According to the CAN-SPAM Act, if people do not explicitly say that they would like to receive emails from you in the future, it is unlawful to send them commercial marketing emails.
c. If you do not currently have a way to capture leads, an easy way to do this is through your email service provider. Most ESPs will provide you with both the lead capture form and a database to house the acquired leads. They will also manage your opt-outs for you.

8. Track your efforts. If you track your list building efforts, you will be able to pinpoint which initiatives are working the best and focus more of your energy on those. You might decide that others aren't worth your time. Easy ways to track your initiatives are:
a. Web Analytics: sign up for a free Google Analytics account. This will enable you to track how many people are visiting each page on your site and which campaign they are coming from.
b. In your lead capture form, include one question asking people how they heard about you with a drop down menu where customers can select from a list of your current list building initiatives.
c. Landing Pages: create a separate landing page for each marketing initiative so you can track page visits to these dedicated pages through your web analytics account.
d. Dedicated 800 numbers: there are services that will provide you with a range of 800 numbers that redirect to your main phone number. Including a dedicated 800 number on each landing page will enable you to associate each call with a specific campaign.

Remember, even if you are accurately targeting your best customer, your campaign will only be a success if you get them to act on your offer and opt-in to your database. Be sure to spend enough time tailoring your message and the offer to the people who will be receiving your campaign.

- Yael K. Penn, Founder and Principal, Imagine 360 Marketing

Michael Kelly, Director of Business Development at ClickMail, recently presented at the Silverpop Summit. His presentation on email marketing metrics that matter was so well received, I thought it fitting to recap it here.

Titled "Proving Your Worth with Metrics," Michael's presentation was partly drawn from MarketingSherpa's 2009 Best Practices in Email Marketing Handbook which Michael played a part in pulling together. Get Michael's presentation for a preview of some of the compelling stats and numbers.

Michael covered why to measure, what to measure, and the challenges of measuring, among other topics, including what to do with that data once you have it, and new tools for compiling and learning from that data in real-time.

But why is measuring your data so difficult? Lots of reasons, including conflicting metrics and not knowing what to measure. In the email marketing industry, we suffer from conflicting metrics because there are so many things to measure. We measure how many mailed, delivered, opened, clicked through on and more. The lack of consistency in calculating key performance metrics makes it impossible to establish industry benchmarks or to effectively compare results.

Sometimes we forget that email marketing is about more than just clicks. Email can achieve numerous significant goals beyond a sale. The purpose of email marketing is to trigger an action, not only to get a click. That action might be a forward to a friend, signing up, a visit to a brick-and-mortar store, attending an event, or simply being more aware of a brand.

And knowing all those actions are possible reactions to your email makes measuring even more of a challenge!

Again, we're back to metrics. Remember, if you can't measure it, you can't improve it.

Real danger lurks in not measuring the right factors or not measuring accurately. You could suffer lost revenue. You might not know which messages are working. And your sales team won't know what to focus on. On the other hand, there are huge advantages to knowing your numbers so you can:

Justify your marketing strategy

Prove email marketing is an integral part of your organization's marketing plan

Justify your budget by showing that email provides a far better ROI than any other marketing medium

Know what works and what to improve

Improving click-throughs is one thing, but don't forget to also measure against your company's organizational goals. What is the point of all that email marketing anyway? There is a master goal, the big Kahuna, the big pie-in-the-sky reward your business is focused on. Make sure your email marketing measurements align with helping to achieve that goal. This might be increasing brand awareness or increasing sales.

What we've described here is the ideal world of email marketing metrics. In the real world, they're not so easy to get. Your ESP won't be able to provide you with this kind of data, but companies have found solutions in widgets and what we at ClickMail affectionately call "reportals": online dashboards that use API system calls to access data from ESPs.

You probably already know APIs are highly effective at automating the launching of emails, and managing the flow of data between disparate platforms. Now we at ClickMail are using APIs as a fantastic tool for extracting data to produce actionable reports.

To read about two organizations that have benefitted from the metrics possible with "reportals" and how your business might take advantage of a similar approach, request a copy of Michael's presentation.

Until next time, remember to measure - it's the only way you can improve!

- Marco Marini, ClickMail Marketing

Type the phrase "centralizing email marketing" into a search engine and you'll be served up an impressive number of results (at this writing, about 247,000). And it's no wonder—email marketing continues to rank among the most popular tactics that marketers use to reach their audiences.

The arguments for centralizing are compelling: Managing emails through a single platform enables companies to not only more effectively manage their brand and good sender reputation, but it's also much easier to manage the frequency of communication—no one wants to frustrate their audience to the point of unsubscribing. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

Not so fast. According to JupiterResearch, only 38% of companies have a single department handling email communication—while 24% have six or more. With all the benefits of centralizing email marketing, why aren't more companies taking this approach?

For some companies, it may come down to resources and priorities. For example, within very large organizations, email is used to communicate with many different audiences—employees, partners, end user customers, and prospects—among others. Each of these audiences has different expectations for how they should be communicated with and likely, a different group managing that communication stream.

Because email marketing was often developed as a grassroots effort within each group, it's not unusual for larger organizations to be actively using several different email platforms to manage their campaigns. In these instances, transitioning to a completely centralized approach requires almost Herculean effort.

However, in the absence of a completely centralized approach, there are still things you can do to streamline email communications and ensure a positive experience for your audience. Here are three specific tips that are reasonably quick and easy to implement:

1. Develop and share an email marketing calendar.

Wherever there's a risk of message crossover, establish a marketing calendar to track these campaigns and assign a calendar owner. Although the owner is ultimately responsible for keeping the calendar updated, all groups should participate in the calendar development and notify the owner if campaign dates shift.

My team uses a web-based calendar hosted on our intranet site; however, tools such as Google Calendar or even an Excel spreadsheet are simple, no/low-cost alternatives.

2. Ensure that all stakeholders are on all campaign seed lists.

Whether you're sending a campaign to a house or rented list, be sure and add the appropriate people to your seed lists. You may want to send test seeds to a smaller group for review and feedback, and then to a larger group for live campaign drops. This is additional insurance that everyone is aware of what messages are leaving the building.

3. Share examples of campaigns and results at cross-functional monthly or quarterly reviews.

At least once a quarter, get together and share examples of campaign creative and results. Even if you're mailing to completely different audiences, best practices are sure to emerge that you'll want to apply to your line of business.

If you work for a large organization, the idea of centralizing your email marketing may seem difficult, if not impossible. But by doing a little detective work and implementing some quick fixes that don't require a lot of administrative overhead, you can do a lot to improve the quality of your email communications and set yourself up for more formal centralization in the future.

—Cheryle Ross, the eCommerce Marketing Manager of Xerox Corp.

*Cheryle was invited to be a blogger for a day after sharing her thoughts in our Voices from the Email Evolution Conference post.

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

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.

Before DMA07, we solicited questions from our members and subscribers, promising to post them in our booth at the show and recruit email experts in attendance to answer those questions. We got some great questions and tons of great answers:

1. How important is it for email creative to match the same look and feel as the order page/landing page?

Marc Pitre, Wampower.com: It's critical to keep the branding consistent between emails and landing pages. Both the creative and the message itself must be consistent to be impactful to the end viewer. It's too easy to dilute your message, so keep it consistent.

Andrew Osterday, Premiere Global Services: Landing pages are often ignored or an afterthought, but can have a strong impact on conversion. The flow from email to landing page should be seamless in both messaging and look and feel. Consider custom landing pages rather than linking to the site.

Stephanie Miller, Return Path: Very. Especially in promotional messages and prospecting. Be sure that the offer in the email is front and center—don't make me scroll. Using a custom landing page can improve conversion rates up to 50%. Definitely worth the investment in optimizing landing pages—they are the fulfillment of the promise created in your email message and it should be a seamless experience.

Michael Fishers, Alterian: It is very important—lack of matching in look and feel produces confusion, feels uncoordinated and impacts response accordingly.

Joel Book, ExactTarget: Providing creative continuity between the email and the associated landing page is vital for driving response and conversion. According to Forrester Research, "92% of business decision-makers go online to research products and services before buying offline." By using email to deliver relevant offers to customers, marketers are accelerating the buying process. The key is to make it easy for the customer to buy—having consistent look and feel for email and landing page achieves this objective.

2. Do the same elements found in traditional printed letters (salutation, closing, signature, p.s.) work for emails?

Melinda Krueger, Krueger Direct: Yes, to the extent that they reflect a personal, one-to-one approach to communication. Corporate "billboards" are easy to ignore; personal correspondence is not. Consider the "voice" and use the personal pronoun!

Elie Ashery, Gold Lasso: Yes, depending on personalized and relevant the message is. Personalization doesn't necessarily mean name, but rather actual content.

3. What do you consider best practice when it comes to accessing and changing email preferences? On one hand, it has to be easy for subscribers to go and edit their subscriptions. On the other hand, no one else than the subscriber should have access to change the subscriber's information. Do you recommend a login, a verification email with required action before changes take effect, a notification email notifying the subscriber that changes have been made, etc…?

Loren McDonald, J.L. Halsey: The simplest means is to include a link in the subscriber's email so that only they can click through to the preference center/update profile page. For sites that link registration (e.g., an ecommerce site), you can link the two processes. A notification email that confirms the changes is always a good idea.

Jeanniey Mullen, Email Experience Council and OgilvyOne: The preference center is a critical element of a successful email program. It can increase the life and engagement of your consumer. Keeping access to preference centers secure is critical but so is keeping access simple. Most companies offer encoded links to preference centers that allow you to bypass the logon elements. If you are using a secure center, password retrieval features are key.

Joel Book, ExactTarget: The key to using a preference center to gather customer needs and interests is to ask for only that data which is needed to deliver relevant and timely information through email. It is critical that you explain why you are asking for this information, how it will be used, and how the customer can update his/her profile. Remember, you are building trust.

Melinda Krueger, Krueger Direct: Consider a 1-2 punch. First capture the impulse to subscribe, then, as an optional second step, ask for more information. Consider offering an incentive (tied closely to your email value proposition) and explain that you are asking to avoid sending irrelevant emails.

4. Is there a proven happy medium between images and text in an email? Do too many or not enough images reduce response?

Elie Ashery, Gold Lasso: Email marketers today need to design their emails with the assumption that their recipients' have their email clients set with the images turned off. This means that the recipients should be understand the gist of the message without its images. Images should be used to enhance text, not replace it.

Chad White, Email Experience Council: The "happy medium" is per industry and depends on both your content and the reader in which the person will be viewing the email. For example, a B2B email that's likely to be read on a Blackberry should be all or mostly text. But retail emails where product images are so vital should be mostly HTML.

5. How can you tell if an email is being read in a preview pane only then deleted?

David Daniels, JupiterResearch: If someone clicks in a preview pane, can you hear them? It is all about behavior. If there are no clicks, there's no engagement, so attempt tactics for reactivation (survey, sweepstakes, etc.). The only real way to determine if an email has been read is by clicks.

Stephanie Miller, Return Path: Great question! Technically, there is probably not a way to get 100% pure data unless you put a "pixel" that is triggered by the scroll. However, you could track performance by proxy in one of two ways: (1) by putting a "morse type" link at the top (visible even when images are suppressed) that promotes the offer and "opens" the email, or (2) by analyzing clicks on text links below the fold which are not visible when images are suppressed. Frankly, I'm not sure why this measure is valuable if your preview pane is optimized, it will drive engagement, not a deletion.

Loren McDonald, J.L. Halsey: Open rates are tacked via a tracking 1-pixel image. So if images are enabled and a reader "views" the email (whether it is opened or not) it will count as an open. If images are blocked and the email is viewed in the preview pane (or fully opened), it will not count as an open. As a result, click-through rates are a much better gauge of email activity.

6. Can a newsletter sell or is it better for branding?

Jordan Ayan, SubscriberMail: Email marketing is about building relationships. If you approach it as a sales medium, you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. Can you sell with email? Absolutely, but for long-term success, you have to focus on delivering relevant content that highlights your brand and keeps recipients wanting more. Then they will give you permission to sell them electronically.

Kara Trivunovic, Premiere Global Services: A newsletter can sell if it is done right. The newsletter should be editorial in nature, with a majority of the content being relevant, value-add information. If sales copy is going to be included, it should be done as a soft sell, wrapped in editorial when possible.

Stephanie Miller, Return Path: Yes! Optimize to do both: (1) Educate customers about the full benefits of the products. (2) Engage subscribers to interact with your company, website, sales team, blog etc. (3) Lead prospects down the sales cycle by educating and asking questions.

7. Is it practical/realistic to budget for file growth from viral marketing? Can we count this as a tactic, or is it just "either."

Michael Salin, M.J. Salin & Associates: Yes! Emerging marketing genre are heavily based in viral practices…word of mouth, social networking. You should test and quantify viral programs – consumer talking to a consumer is the highest/strongest marketing communiqué. Quantify the send and free creative is a way to promote the idea.

Chad White, Email Experience Council: You can definitely budget for viral growth. In general, you can expect pass-along rates of 1%-2%, but it depends on the prominence of your send-to-a-friend links and how often you encourage readers to forward your emails. For instance, some retailers have "friends and family" event emails where part of the messaging encourages recipients to forward the discount offer to others. Doing emails like that will boost your pass-along rate.

8. If no legitimate ESP will allow the use of purchased lists in their system, how do data brokers and email appenders who focus on this market stay in business?

Craig Swerdloff, Postmaster Direct: Our experience has been that top-tier ESPs will send for lists that offer list rental, assuming certain requirements are met. They include explicit permission from recipients, proper list hygiene, good reputation scores, and compliant/unknown user rates within allowable thresholds.

Stephanie Miller, Return Path: The owner of the data sends the message on your behalf—so the initial mailing is from the data source inviting the subscriber to opt-in for email from you. Many marketers who send mail in-house, use internal append very successfully. There are best practices to ensuring your sender reputation is protected.

Loren McDonald, J.L. Halsey: List brokers manage the email databases for companies whose list members have agreed to receive third-party offers. The emails are sent "from" the list owner to the list member. Once the subscriber opts in to specific a marketer's program, they have given permission to the marketer. At that point, ESPs will allow the company to send to the subscriber.

9. What is the single most popular offer that drives people to register and share their information? We are desperately trying to collect emails from our customers and it's been very challenging.

Stephanie Miller, Return Path: As is true in all direct marketing, offer something perceived value for free. But the question should really be around how you can construct a powerful email experience that will entice and engage your prospects. While many will sign up for something that is free, your response and ROI will only come when the email program itself has consistent value.

10. What is the right frequency for retail email programs? It seems like many retailers are at 2x+ per week. Does not mailing at that frequency hurt my chances?

Austin Bliss, FreshAddress: Unfortunately, there is no "right" frequency. You should send on a schedule that provides value to your recipients—e.g. if you have daily sales, you can send daily. But if you have nothing to say 2 times a week, you shouldn't mail at that rate because you will have incurred complaints/unsubscribes.

Chad White, Email Experience Council: There are lots of factors to consider here, including the frequency at which your products tend to be purchased, the content of your email (both promotional and service-oriented content), the length of your email, etc. For example, Blue Nile emails once a month, recognizing that jewelry is not a frequent purchase. Home Depot, on the other hand, sends once a week, targeting subscribers' weekend projects. And then there's Neiman Marcus, which emails 7+ times a week, engaging its fashion hungry subscribers with info on new products, store events, discounts and video and article content.

11. If you send five or more emails to the same recipient and they aren't opened, does your domain/IP get reclassified as spam by the ISP? This obviously isn't standard across all ISP's. If this is in practice by some, which ones are they?

Stephanie Miller, Return Path: List quality is definitely a factor in sender reputation. Having a large number of non-responders on your file could reduce your "score" among ISPs/receivers. ISPs generally don't publish the "rules" that they use, as publishing them would expose them to abuse by spammers.

HAVE SOME INSIGHT TO ADD? Please comment below, just be sure to include the number of the question that you're answering.

Both SubscriberMail and Blue Sky Factory recently released lists of words that shouldn't be used in emails because they're likely to trigger spam filters. But I see some of these words—like "free" and "discount"—used routinely in the subject lines of commercial email that I receive. If I have a good reputation do I need to worry about content filters? Am I staying away from these words unnecessarily? —S.G.

The Voices of Email had this advice:

J.F. Sullivan: The answer should be no. If you have a good reputation then you do not need to worry about content filters. The actual answer is another question, as in it depends on two things: What's your definition of a good reputation, and which content filter are we talking about?

Everyone in the email marketing (and message security) ecosystem has a different view of what a good reputation actually means. For some it's as simple as making sure they are not on a blocklist; for others it may be that they are in compliance with a specific Sender Authentication implementation. In order to answer "yes" to the question, it may be more useful to provide a checklist summary of what a good reputation constitutes. So, if you can say "yes" to the following reputation aspects:

1. You have a good public reputation (not on blocklists, or have upset any ISPs).
2. You have good legislative adherence (e.g., CAN-SPAM compliance).
3. You have good infrastructure (e.g., DNS, MX records and the like).
4. You have good identity (e.g., you have a correctly configured SenderID record).
5. You have best practices (e.g., list scrubbing, opt-in, etc.).

…then yes, you do have a good reputation so you will not need to worry too much about content filters. And while your good reputation will work, say, 80% of the time, your actual delivery will still depend on the content filter you encounter to some degree. A subject of much longer blog entry for another day…

Rob Fitzgerald: You always need to be aware that filtering exists, but I don't think you need to be ruled by that existence either. It's interesting to lay out all the various releases, of all the various words that shouldn't be used within in an email, and see how incredibly long that list is. Sometimes it makes me wonder how you can actually put a string of sentences together without actually using any of them. Practically speaking, you have to use some words that may be "known" filter words. I don't think that should give you pause to run the campaign for fear of a lack of response. We've sent out many campaigns with the word "Free" on them that have performed very well.

I tend to look at it this way—it's all about moderation. Put together a creative with a lot of words that trigger filtering and it could be adversely affected. Give that same creative a diet, and keep some of those same words included, but not all of them, and I think you'll be OK.

Stephanie Miller: Despite the frequency that I receive this question, there is still no magical list of words to avoid, nor is the use of marketing terms like "free," "discount," "special offer" and "click here" an automatic block. Don't misunderstand. Those words can get you blocked. However, judicious, responsible and clear use of them usually won't.

Why? Because spam filters dynamically update to reflect current market conditions and spammer behavior. The only way to ensure your content does not depress inbox deliverability is to run every email through a series of popular message filters to determine your spam score before sending to your entire mailing list. You can do this through a service or on your own by setting up multiple accounts at different ISPs.

Here's how to optimize your message for response and deliverability: Write the copy as a marketer. Sell. Build the relationship. Clarify the offer. Make the call to action very clear. Then, test it. If you fail the spam filters, adjust it. Before you hit send, even if you pass the filter test, be sure to give your message AND subject line a "smell test." If your readers or subscribers will think it's spammy, so will the receivers. If you are using all capped, repetitive words that filters watch like "FREE SHIPPING THAT'S FREE" or using strange punctuation like ***NOW ON SALE***, then you are likely to be blocked.

Chad White: Inspired by this question, I did a little real world research and found that major online retailers have used many of the "dirty" words on SubscriberMail's list of words to avoid using in subject lines. How many have they used? They've used 27 of the 100 in the past two months alone. Some of the words—like "Free," "FREE," "Offer" and "Buy"—they used a LOT. So it's clearly possible to use these no-no words in subject lines under the right conditions. Based on that I'd say that you should explore using them but test to make sure your emails are getting through.

Have some good advice that we missed? Please add a comment and take part in the conversation.

Have a question for the Voices of Email? Email Chad your question at chad@emailexperience.org and we'll REPLY TO ALL by posting the answers so everyone can benefit.

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