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

Attendees:

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

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

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

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

The 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.

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

Attendees:

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

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

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

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

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

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

When we first heard about the eec's S.A.M.E. project last year, our minds immediately flashed back to conversations with email marketers from years past regarding the confusion caused by email metrics. The idea that standardization might become a reality was something we welcomed with open arms.

This isn't a knock against those marketers mentioned above, either. With so many elements to consider each time a campaign is sent, email marketing is already challenging enough without the added complexity of "fuzzy" reporting metrics. We've talked to marketers who wondered how their click rates were holding steady even as "open rates" were decreasing. We've talked to marketers who didn't think a message could be considered "open" until it was viewed outside of the preview pane—after all, it's just supposed to be a preview. Then there were the people who asked about improving their "read rate" — a misleading synonym for the already-misleading "open rate" metric. Their confusion was understandable, and frustrating from our perspective because such an avoidable issue was causing headaches for the marketers that power our industry.

By committing to adopt the standards of the S.A.M.E. project, we forced ourselves to reevaluate the way metrics were presented to SubscriberMail users. Even though we offered a pop-up window explaining that an "Open" merely indicated that images had been rendered for a given message, the fact remained that we were still using the term "Open" on our reports to avoid causing confusion/uproar by changing such a familiar label. The S.A.M.E. project gave us the push we needed to take that risk, replacing "open" with the more accurate label of "render."

Along the same lines, we had long discussed the idea of combining the number of recipients who rendered images with the number of recipients who did not render images but did click a link(s) in a given message. In our discussions with email marketers, we always came back to the issue of image blocking and how open (render) rates did not necessarily indicate how many recipients engaged with their messages. Implementing the eec's "Unique Confirmed Open" metric improved our reports by including this more accurate representation of overall engagement.

Once the S.A.M.E.-related updates were in place and approved by the eec, we were faced with the difficult prospect of rolling out changes to the reporting metrics on which our clients so heavily depended. As email marketers ourselves, we took this very seriously—our system users depend on the metrics provided by SubscriberMail to show the success of their marketing efforts, and we did not want anyone to think those historical metrics had been eliminated or skewed in any way. Through email alerts and phone conversations, we explained to clients why they would soon see changes to their reporting metrics, and what those changes meant. We explained that largely the same data was being presented in our reports, but it was being presented through labels that more accurately reflected the nature of the data collected. And, in some cases, new metrics were available to make our reports even more valuable.

Of course, we fielded a few phone calls post-release, but to our surprise even those inquiries were born more out of curiosity than any kind of panic. In the end, our clients proved that they were ready to embrace clarity over convention when it came to their email reporting metrics. When every email service provider does the same, we'll have done our job of moving the email marketing industry forward with a more knowledgable and better-equipped user base than ever before—and we can finally retire the "open rate" debate once and for all.

— Dave McCue
Marketing Manager
SubscriberMail
@DaveMcCue

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

The eec members have spoken wisely – our new roster of Member Roundtable co-chairs is an impressive list of industry luminaries.  Please welcome our 2010-11 Roundtable Leadership:

• List Growth & Engagement Roundtable: Amy Bills, Bulldog Solutions; Nate Romance, ExactTarget
• Deliverability & Rendering Roundtable: Dennis Dayman, Eloqua; Michelle Pelletier, Return Path
• Speakers Bureau: Diksha Dua, Clementine Digital Boutique; Lana McGilvray, Datran Media
• Email Design Roundtable: Lynn Baus, Responsys; Megan Walsh-Regard, Williams-Sonoma
• Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable: Jeff Chamberlain, Aprimo; David Hibbs, Responsys
• Member Initiatives Roundtable: Joel Book, ExactTarget, Stephanie Miller, Return Path
• Measurement in Email Project: John Caldwell, Red Pill Email; Luke Glasner, Glasner Consulting

Thank you to all who voted and congratulations to our winners!  We look forward to another great year of productive and useful work on behalf of the industry.

New projects are starting in September; what would you like the eec to be working on?  Want to join our initiatives?  Check out the Roundtables and sign up today by emailing Ali.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get Involved

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

Now, where did all the Rabbits go?


- Fred Tabsharani
Port25 Solutions, Inc.
@tabsharani

I’ve had the pleasure of serving on the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable of the Email Experience Council (eec) for the last few months. One of the goals of the Roundtable is to promote a new set of email marketing measurement standards called the Support Adoption of Metrics for Email (SAME). The new standards are a dramatic improvement over original metric definitions. They provide more insight into the true results of a campaign and paint a more accurate picture of your campaign performance.

It’s important that all Email Service Providers (ESPs) adopt these new standards so that we have a common set of definitions industry-wide. Right now its not possible to compare campaign results from one system to another as they don’t follow the same calculations in their metrics. And forget aggregating any industry-wide metrics, even something as simple as an open rate, because that metric is calculated differently by various ESPs.

Earlier this week the Roundtable announced that Email Transmit was one of the first two ESPs to adopt the new metrics standards. Read the press release and the DMNews article, "Inbox Insider: E-mail measurement should be standardized". They also mentioned 11 more ESPs have committed to doing so in the next six months.

We’re clearly at the beginning of a significant improvement in our industry. With the work of the Roundtable members we hope to get other ESPs to adopt the new standards and for other email platforms to use the metrics in their reporting definitions too.

If you’re interested in supporting the S.A.M.E. Project, start by signing the petition, then read the definitions. Make sure your ESP or email delivery platform has plans to implement the new metrics into their system. Hopefully in the near future we’ll all be able to abide by a common set of metrics and have usable industry-wide benchmarks based on the same definitions.

- Adam Holden-Bache
Email Transmit

I'm new here, but I've been around a long time. I've seen the confusion and frustration that non-uniform report metrics can cause, both for marketers and for agencies and vendors providing email services and technology.

Email marketers are almost universally judged based on program performance. For them, every click, open, delivered, bounced and sent matters. So when there are multiple email systems in play or marketers are considering a new email solution from a different vendor, there are always headaches around what the report metrics are and why they don't match.

The marketer gets mad because things are different and there's no way to compare apples to apples. The vendor gets mad because some performance metric in their system is not coming out as well as some other vendor's, so they look bad. The marketer's boss gets mad because the numbers don't match up between systems, so they lose confidence in ALL of the metrics.

It's all-around bad for everyone.

I volunteered for the eec's Measurement Accuracy Roundtable because I believe that accurate and consistent reporting is key to improving not only email marketing programs, but all marketing programs. Metrics that marketers have faith in and trust provide the data they need to do more advanced targeting and segmentation, which creates a unique and more engaging experience for recipients.

Isn't that what email marketing has promised all along?

Accurate and consistent metrics give marketers the confidence to add bold elements to their programs because they can count on the data on which they make their decisions. Reporting data that is consistent across programs and providers lets businesses make informed decisions about which solutions best serve their needs, not just which one has the most forgiving formulas in their reports.

But now I put on my vendor hat and say, "Why should I do this? It's not a competitive differentiator. I haven't seen this on any RFP. What's in it for me?"

On the surface, nothing, but underneath, it says a lot about what's important: the email marketer. Your customers. Your users. Your industry.

Sure, as a vendor, there are a ton of new features, enhancements, and fixes that need to be added to the application, but this one is not just about your current users or prospects. It's about the email community. It's about making A = A. It's about fixing something that is broken with our industry.

What will you do for your industry? Will you join us in helping fix a long-time issue that affects all email marketers? Together, we can do it!

- Ivan Chalif
Director of Email Product Marketing
Alterian

Read Fred Tabsharami's post on the SAME project.

Read more about standard email metrics.

Email marketing, like any career, is likely to include working and collaborating with people who are not in the same physical office.   If you are the remote person, you probably have concerns about keeping in touch with others on the marketing team or in your department, and if you are managing people who are remote, you have to pay special attention to keeping them in touch with the rest of the group.

In an eec Member Initiatives Advisory Committee meeting on the Career Paths project last month, we discussed the impact of this dispersed workforce, and how it affects an email marketing team.

Angela Baldonero, VP, People of Return Path, reviewed four broad trends for career development among the diaspora:

1. Technology keeps us connected, and enables a broad dispersion of the workforce.  However, it also causes some practical issues. For example, we have an employee in Berlin reporting to a manager in California. It raises the question:  Is Skype enough?
2. Social interaction is good for the business.  Bringing on people in new geographies can be challenging for on-boarding as well as collaboration.  It's harder for new people to be remote.  However, people who have already built relationships in a core office and then move away can be successful in a remote environment.
3. Dispersion affects the talent development lifecycle.  For example, the key needs of top talent are relationships and recognition and it's hard for people to build relationships if they are not there.  Lots of good work happens when you are in the same room – including discussing the creative for the email campaign while you look over my shoulder, or brainstorming subject lines by the coffee machine.   Plus, it's hard to "make your mark" if you do not have access to casual interaction, and the only time you "see" colleagues is in formal business meeting situations.
4. It is easy to confuse connections with relationships.  It's easy to have connections. It's harder to build relationships.  However, it's relationships that drive recruitment as well as career advancement. Geography supports or inhibits relationship depth and meaning.

 

As the group discussed these ideas, we realized that these are challenges for workforce, but also for proving the value of email marketing within the organization.  We can't earn the respect we need for resources and a seat at the table just from the numbers; the relationships matter, too.

Other impact areas:

• Geographic dispersion and even business unit silos within the same geography also affect the collaboration and governance of different brand/business unit email programs.
• Participation in eec meetings is a way for geographically or functionally isolated professionals to network and be educated. It's also always helpful to hear that other marketers have the same challenges!
• Remote employees don't have access to impromptu conversations which can help your career and move your projects forward.  Baldonero quoted, "A lot of work gets done when you talk about nothing."  Relationships are not built just talking about business and trust is built when you know the whole person.  If you just talk business, you may actually have less trust, because you only know one aspect of that person.
• Sometimes there is a perception that if you are working at home you are not working as hard.  Jennifer Carmichael of Tenet Healthcare noted, "Some remote employees work harder or longer hours because they're 'always on.'"
• Relationships drive loyalty and the extra effort needed to get something done.  If I need help with a project or getting something run up the flagpole, it's a lot more successful to stand in that person's office, than to IM them.

 

In all this, we discussed that building relationships is a shared responsibility.  If you work remotely, you need to make time for making these connections since they don't happen organically. This is both the responsibility of the individual and the organization.  If a business hires people remotely for email marketing or any task, there needs to be a commitment to support this relationship building.

Some ways to build your own long distance relationships or help make it easier for remote employees to engage:

1. Stay an extra day when you do visit the office. Make time for coffee and hello's.
2. Corporate social networks can help facilitate information across offices.
3. Seek out similarities – find the connections outside the office with your colleagues. This might mean taking a bit of extra time on the phone or in an email to get to know the person.
4. Managers can facilitate team building prior to the business meetings. Build time into the weekly phone calls or hold quarterly in-person meetings that have time for socializing.   "This is a great idea that I can implement tomorrow," Carmichael said.
5. Conferences like the Email Evolution Conference are a good way to meet new people.   However, we are all busy; we have to make time for establishing these connections.  Nancy Atwood of Anchor Computer said, "In some ways, we are victims of technology – we can work all the time and we are always connected. So the "doing the work" is taking priority over "building a network."  We invest our time in replying electronically rather than establishing a personal connection."
6. Corporate HR or someone needs to accept some level of administrative support and education, as well as the remote employees themselves.  Be proactive. If no one is reaching out to you, reach out to your manager or the HR team, Baldonero recommends.
7. Working long distance is a reality for most email vendor/marketer relationships. Many of these same principles apply to good account management and client service. "Think of your colleagues as clients, and that might change the way you relate to them," Atwood said.

 

Lastly, we discussed some things that the DMA/eec can be doing to help facilitate career growth and help us all build these relationships internally and around the industry:

1. A member directory of names, company, industry, geography. Restricted access and "no sales calls."
2. Local events for members to meet and network and learn from each other. Perhaps in cooperation with local DMA groups.
3. Ensure there are strong networking opportunities prior to and during the main DMA conferences.

What are you doing to build relationships with remote colleagues, clients and employees?  What else would you like the DMA/eec to do to help the industry? Please leave your comments below or email Stephanie Miller at the Member Initiatives Advisory Committee.

 

 

In what we believe to be the first collection of bounce codes in one public location, the Get Satisfaction site is now the official home to the eec's Deliverability Roundtable bounce string project.  It is the culmination of many months worth of effort from industry veterans with experience in email deliverability and the technical aspects of sending and receiving email.  We decided to place it here since the site allows for dynamic updates as codes change in time and also provides a forum in which users can discuss deliverability issues and receive insight from folks in the industry. 

Why is this useful?
The most common form of communication for an ISP to communicate with a sender on a one-to-one ratio is a bounce message.  If an email is successfully handed off to an ISP, a success bounce is issued (250 ok).  However, if the message is not successfully handed off, an ISP will usually put pertinent information into a bounce message letting you know what the issue is and, in an ideal setting, what you need to do to avoid that bounce in the future.  The more failure bounces you collect, the less mail is getting through to your recipients.  If you're concerned about the highest level of delivery penetration, you'll review the bounce codes to spot trending and actionable items you can do to get your mail through to an ISP.  That's where this site comes into play.  We've amassed a list of the following ISPs that have standard bounce codes you should be aware of.  If you see a bounce from one of them, you should check the Get Satisfaction site to see if more information is available. 

• Hotmail/Live
• Comcast
• ATT/BellSouth/SBC
• Yahoo
• AOL

Who should use it?
Anyone who has a responsibility around message delivery, most likely your IT or development team, will want to take a look at this.  Bounce messages are collected at the email server level so, unless your email application allows easy access to data in a useable format, you'll need to have someone review the bounce messages at the server level to see the actual ISP message. 

How do I use it?
Let's say you send out a mailing today.  After watching the initial delivery numbers, you see that Yahoo has taken a dip in delivery (meaning there's a delta between the delivery numbers you're seeing and what you usually expect).  Either by using the ESP's delivery tools or by having someone on your team provide the information, you discover there's an accumulation of the following bounce strings queuing up on your outbound email server. 

"451 Resources temporarily not available - Please try again later [#4.16.5]" 

You then go to the new bounce site and search for this string.  You should find the following match: 

"What does bounce code 451 Resources temporarily not available - Please try again later [#4.16.5] from Yahoo mean?" (check it out). 

After you click on the link, you see that this is a bounce message Yahoo! will serve up if their servers are over capacity and are pushing back on mail to allow them to catch up.  This is not a sender related bounce but rather a Yahoo! infrastructure one – all you can do is retry the message later and hope Yahoo! has some available cycles at that time (which you should be doing on most soft bounces anyway). 

See?  It's that easy.  And in most cases there's a link to the ISP's postmaster page which will provide further information on what to do or context around why you're receiving this bounce. 

How can you help?
There is no uniform standard amongst ISPs mandating that certain bounces be stated a certain way.  As such, you see a huge variety of bounce messages and what information an ISP will provide.  Also, as ISPs deem necessary, bounce codes change over time making existing ones outdated and adding new ones.  Please help the email community stay on top of the changes by contributing to the GetSatisfaction bounce project site when you see new bounce codes that aren't listed or know one that's already listed has changed.  By making this an industry effort, we can ensure all of us are up with the latest news.  Feel free to ask questions on the site as well.  We have a few deliverability folks monitoring it.

Who put this together?
The following folks were involved with this project and we extend our gratitude!

• Joshua Baer - Founder & CEO - OtherInbox/Chief Evangelist - Datran Media
• Dennis Dayman, VP, Privacy, Eloqua
• Michelle Eichner, VP, Pivotal Veracity and Co-Chair, Deliverability Roundtable
• Stephanie Miller - VP, Global Market Development - Return Path
• Jack Sinclair - Co-Founder, COO & CFO - Return Path and Co-Chair, Deliverability Roundtable
• Chris Wheeler - Director of Deliverability - Bronto Software
• and other members of the eec Deliverability Roundtable

- Chris Wheeler, Director, Deliverability, Bronto Software and Member, eec Deliverability Roundtable

The past year has flown by and as we approach the last lap of the 08-09 eec Nonprofit Project, the team wanted to share two key accomplishments—these are just two of many wins from the eec team and the Agassi Foundation since last July.

1.) New creative strategy and assets—convincing the Agassi team to transition from sending a digital version of their print newsletter to a more email friendly one was easy. But no one imagined the bump in response they saw! With open rates close to 40%, the new newsletter creative saw nearly a 390% increase in click thru activity. Check it out here.

2.) On the social side, the eec team looked for ways to help the Agassi Foundation add to their existing partnered presence in the "social" world with organizations like Athletes for Hope. Enter the badge download page: view it and download your own Agassi Foundation badge here.

Even though the 08-09 Nonprofit Project isn't over yet, it certainly has been rewarding for the team to help out such a great organization, cause and group of people. We'll be back at the end of the project with a full wrap-up.

*If you haven't gotten involved yet, now's your chance to sign up and do something—the eec just announced the 09-10 project - the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation (DMEF). Contact Ali for more information and to join the team.

- Chris Frasier & Rachael Anderson, BlueHornet
Agassi Project Team Leads

Email is perhaps the most transformative technology yet devised. It has changed the way we communicate, work and shop. Yet, despite its ubiquitous nature, widespread confusion remains about email in the minds of consumers. Issues of permission, privacy, technology and volume are pervasive with regard to email in a way that simply doesn't exist elsewhere in marketing. When was the last time you complained to DirecTV about getting channels for which you didn't opt-in?

The eec has taken on the sizable challenge of educating consumer users about all things email, and we need your help.

On Tuesday, Oct. 7 at 2pm EDT, DJ Waldow and I will be kicking off the newly formed Consumer Education Roundtable. The mission of this roundtable is to help consumers separate myth from fact and become better, safer and more responsible users of email. In doing so, we aim to provide an important feedback mechanism for the email industry, to assist them in understanding consumers' challenges and opinions regarding email. (Because let's face it, it's awfully easy for email professionals to lose sight of how tricky email can be for inexperienced users).

The first project (and it's a doozy) for this new roundtable is to build the definitive website where consumers can learn key truths about email topics such as opting in and out, phishing, inbox management and other elements critical to a successful and positive email experience.

We have secured volunteers to build the actual site, but we very much need eec members to assist in content creation. Again, our first roundtable conference call will be on Tuesday, Oct. 7 at 2pm EDT, and will be devoted to determining overall features and functions for the new site, and discussing specific assignments and timelines. This strategy brief outlines our current plan for the new site.

If you have a passion for making sure consumers understand our industry, please consider joining the new Consumer Education Roundtable. We'd love to have you. To join, simply contact Ali Swerdlow at ali@emailexperience.org.

—eec Consumer Education Roundtable chair Jason Baer of Convince & Convert

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

2008 Retail Email Rendering Benchmark Study
Message Integrity & Email Design Issues in an Images-Off Environment

Women's Bean Project Case Study
The Results of the eec's 2007 Nonprofit Project

FreshAddress: Build or Buy?
Real-Time Email Address Validation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wireframe Sample:

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

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

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

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

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

—Jeanniey Mullen of the eec

During a recent eec Clients-Only Roundtable meeting we got the discussion going with a very simple question: "What keeps you up at night?" We hope the vendor and agency side is listening because what we said—and heard—speaks volumes for unmet needs. Here are our top three issues:

Value Proposition of Email
With marketing dollars being stretched across more investments than ever, virtually all of us have a crying need to re-justify spend on email programs and infrastructure. For some companies, email is still ramping and its value is still not fully established against more traditional media. For others, the need is to reframe email as a great ROI investment against the newer and sexier Web 2.0 capabilities that are diverting attention and budgets from email. And finally some companies need to update or expand aging systems or databases just to keep the lights on.

Since this is the same No. 1 pain point we talked about a year ago, it's disconcerting that we are still struggling to find a good answer to this key question: Why invest in email marketing over other tools in the marketing mix?

Every one of our agency and ESP partners have a vested interest in helping us get this value proposition right. It's clear that they all work hard to create evidence to support an investment in their point solution. But that's simply not enough anymore. The question mark is higher up "in the stack," as we technology marketers like to say.

Upgrades to Aging or Outgrown Systems
A couple of us are looking to expand beyond our first generation ESP partnerships to support growing use, while other companies need upgrades to their aging or inadequate systems. This forces email marketers to put on their IT hats: writing RFPs, assessing vendors, justifying internal IT projects and all the rest. It's messy, time consuming and distracting work and in some cases we don't have the skills we need to get it done. Vendors and suppliers who can make this easier get an inside track to the business. But look back at Item 1 above—if you can't demonstrate that your solution supports a clear value proposition for email marketing, you might still lose out.

Email Governance
Even smaller companies are complex organizations with unclear boundaries regarding who "owns" various audiences, and especially the data about them: "the house list." Drawing up business rules for appropriate use of the audiences in our house lists is becoming increasingly complicated and urgent. Fear and greed are driving the big challenge here: Don't chase off valuable and hard-to-acquire prospects on the one hand (opt outs), but make sure they don't simply loiter in our database either. This is as much art as science: balancing business needs with the desire to nurture and woo customer and prospects. Here we've seen some good work from our outside partners helping to develop and refine contact strategies, but we still need in-house leadership to create protocols and policies that stick. Otherwise we risk falling into frequent debates which can stop campaigns in their tracks.

How would we measure success? A new top three list a year from now!

—eec Clients-Only Roundtable chair Brian Ellefritz of Cisco Systems

We're happy to unveil the schedule for the Email Evolution Conference, which is being held in San Diego, Feb. 12-13. This initial schedule includes speaker details on our four exciting keynotes:

1. Pete Sheinbaum, the CEO of Daily Candy, will be speaking about his company's successes with email.
2. Jerry Cerasale of the DMA and Eileen Harrington of the FTC will discussing the state of privacy and marketing laws in the U.S. and abroad.
3. Dylan Boyd, one of the main people behind eROI's blogs; Tamara Gielan, the author of the BeRelevant! blog; and Chad White, the author of RetailEmail.Blogspot, will be talking about our blogging efforts, why we do what we do and where we get our ideas.
4. And JupiterResearch's David Daniels, ExactTarget's Chip House, Microsoft's Craig Spiezle and the eec's Jeanniey Mullen will be…well, it's difficult to explain. But it's sure to be unforgettable.

Outside of the keynotes, the conference is organized into three tracks:
- Fundamental, which is geared toward the Email Deployment Manager/Coordinator;
- Intermediate, which is intended for Interactive/Direct Marketing Managers and Directors; and
- Advanced, which is for Executive Marketing/Advertising Leads and CMOs.

We've all been to conferences where we sat in sessions that were either totally over our heads or didn't tell us anything new at all. The three-track format is designed to ensure that all attendees are getting information tailored to their expertise levels. As you can see from the agenda, the sessions cover a wide range of email marketing topics, from acquisition and list management to multichannel marketing and our charity work with the Women's Bean Project. It should be very educational and a lot of fun.

We'll be releasing more details about sessions, events and speakers in the weeks ahead. We have lots of cool things planned, so stay tuned.

The Email Experience Council's charity project this year is the Women's Bean Project (WBP), a nonprofit that 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 the gourmet food production business. More than a dozen eec members have been working on building the WBP an email marketing program basically from scratch since July. We've been really busy, as you can see from Stephanie Miller's September update.

My major contribution to this initiative is competitive reconnaissance, so the WBP could learn from other organizations similar to their own. I've shared some thoughts at various points in our discussion, but wanted to put together a more comprehensive report and post it here so that more people could comment and get involved.

Competitive Set
The WBP is nonprofit that uses retail sales to support its activities, so we wanted to look at other nonprofits and particularly those with a clear retail angle. I looked at Aid to Artisans, Dress for Success, Habitat for Humanity, Newman's Own, Ten Thousand Villages, The Enterprising Kitchen and World of Good.

Sign-Up Process
World of Good and Ten Thousand Villages used a double opt-in process, while the others used a single opt in. The subscription process at Dress for Success and Newman's Own failed, as I never received any emails from them, so it's possible that they use a double opt-in system as well.

After a spirited discussion, we decided that a double opt-in system would be best for the WBP, as it would increase list quality and reduce some of the list management needs for the nonprofit.

Welcome Emails
Only Aid to Artisans, Ten Thousand Villages and World of Good sent welcome emails—none of which were very good. They mostly missed the opportunity to use their welcome email to reinforce their brand positioning, communicate their mission statements and get the new subscriber involved.

Ten Thousand Villages and World of Good both had a strange sign up system. First, they sent a text-only subscription confirmation email (double opt in), then an HTML email confirming the successful subscription, and then a text-only welcome email that had less information than the previous HTML email. The only new information that it had was an unsubscribe link. Upon a successful opt-in confirmation, the WBP should definitely just send an HTML welcome email and forgo any kind of opt-in confirmation email.

None of the welcome emails included whitelisting instructions, which was a huge missed opportunity.

For those that didn't send welcome emails, they were slow in sending their regular emails. Since many only send emails monthly, if you subscribed right after they send one out, you'd be waiting nearly a month to receive anything from them.

Aid to Artisans had the best welcome email of the bunch (see below), since it had HTML branding and links to its store, donation page and events listing. But it lacked whitelisting instructions, an unsubscribe link, and any kind of statement of mission. Also, the centered text was a bit hard to read, especially since there were no blank lines or special typography to break up the text into more easily scannable bites.

Regular Emails
There are several things worth noting with their regular emails. First, only Ten Thousand Villages make good use of navigation bars. Aid to Artisans' nav bar is at the bottom of most its emails, just like it is in its welcome email, although sometimes it's on the left-hand side in column form. And Habitat for Humanity (see below) has a listing of "More Ways to Get Involved" at the bottom of their emails, but no nav bar.

Second, World of Good and Habitat's emails featured a modular design that made it easy for them to add items to the newsletter. As you can see in the World of Good email below, it's a little unsophisticated, but when you don't have many people to manage your email marketing this kind of design can simplify email construction.

That email is also a good example of my third point, which is that some of these marketers make a point of highlighting the people that their activities help. Obviously the people angle is a lot of why people purchase from or get involved with these organizations. I think that profiles of the WBP's workers, messages from staff members and pictures from events should play prominent role in the WBP emails.

All in all, Ten Thousand Villages' email design (see below) is the closest to what we've developed for the WBP so far. It includes a personal angle by featuring an artisan and combines it with product images and descriptions.

If anyone has any recommendations or thoughts on any of this, please comment below. If you're an eec member and you'd like to get involved with this project, please contact Ali.

—Chad White