You may have seen the news today—here , here and here—that I'm leaving OgilvyOne to join Zinio Systems and VIV Magazine as the global EVP and CMO on Feb. 18. I just wanted to stress that while I'm moving on from OgilvyOne—which I'm leaving in great hands—I am NOT leaving (nor will I ever be leaving) the eec. This year we're going to rock the email world even harder than we did last year, starting with our first annual Email Evolution Conference next week. See you in San Diego!

—Jeanniey Mullen

While major online retailers do a great job of honoring unsubscribe requests quickly, there's plenty of room for their opt-out processes to improve—most notably in the areas of providing subscribers with alternatives to opting out and of lowering barriers to opting out. For instance, only 66% of retailers use their opt-out processes to engage subscribers in order to address the issue causing them to want to opt out—and few do more than a superficial job of it. When looking at opt-out barriers, only 9% of major online retailers employ a one-click unsubscribe process, while another 35% easily could, but don't.

Those are a couple of the key findings of Email Experience Council's first annual Retail Email Unsubscribe Benchmark Study, which looked at the opt-out practices of 94 major online retailers. The study looks at trends in the opt-out process itself, including the alternatives to opting out, opt-out methods and friction in the unsubscribe process; and examines the honoring of opt-out requests, including CAN-SPAM compliance.

"Email is a relationship channel, and opting out of the relationship is just another step in the lifecycle," says Kara Trivunovic, director of strategic services at Premiere Global Services Inc., the sponsor of this study. "Ignore it at your own peril."

Increasingly one of the most important benchmarks for your unsubscribe process should be the single click of the "report spam" button. Some consumers already regularly use it to unsubscribe from email that they no longer want. So if your process becomes confusing or cumbersome, consumers know they have an easy-to-use fallback. That makes it more important than ever to have a frictionless opt-out process.

It also makes it more important to honor opt-out requests quickly, as delays increasingly look like failures. Thankfully, more than 86% of retailers honored opt-outs within 3 days, with most of them effective immediately, as evidenced by the number of emails received after opting out. Another 4% honored opt-outs within 7 days, and 3% more within 14 days. One percent took more than the CAN-SPAM-sanctioned 14 days to honor unsubscribes, and another 3% of retailers had their opt-out processes fail.

Other key findings from the study include:

• 73% of retailers sent no more emails after receiving an opt-out request.

• 16% of retailers give those trying to opt-out an opportunity to reduced the frequency at which they receive emails.

• 17% of retailers solicited feedback from those that had opted out

• 4% of retailers were in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 by either failing to honor opt-outs or taking longer than 10 business days to do so.

Get the Full Report
Visit the Whitepaper Room to download the full 30-page report, which is free for eec platinum members, available at a discount to eec gold and silver members, and available for $179 for non-members. Not a member? Learn more about becoming a member of the Email Experience Council.

And as part of a special promotion, attendees of the eec's Email Evolution Conference can receive the study for free. Visit www.emailevolution.org for more information and to register.

Today the Email Experience Council announced the five finalists for its first annual Email Performance Award, which recognizes an organization that has created an email marketing campaign that demonstrates the full power of the channel. The winner of the Email Performance Award, which will be selected by the eec's members, will be presented during the Email Evolution Conference, which will be held February 12-13 at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina in San Diego.

In alphabetical order, the five finalists for the Email Performance Award are: Accor, AOL, Genentech, REI and Wacom.

For more details on each of them, including copies of their nomination forms and supporting materials, visit the eec's Email Performance Awards page. Congratulations to all the finalists.

The Email Experience Council has extended the deadline for Email Performance Award nominations to Monday, Dec. 17.

We're looking for an email marketing campaign that demonstrates the full power of the channel, one that provides further evidence of email marketing's unsurpassed return on investment and inspiration to others seeking to elevate the performance of their own programs.

The members of the eec will select the winner from among the Email Performance Award finalists, which will be determined by the eec's leadership and announced in mid-January. The winner will receive free admission to the Email Evolution Conference at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina in San Diego, where the Email Performance Award will be officially presented on Feb. 13, 2008. So get your nominations in by Monday, Dec. 17.

–>Read the submission guidelines and download the nomination form.

Want to cruise the San Diego harbor with more than 250 of the best minds in email marketing? Then register now for the Email Evolution Conference, which is being held Feb. 12-13 at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina in San Diego. The next 25 registrants will get a free ticket to join the conference speakers and sponsors on the cruise on the evening of Feb. 11 (a $199 value).

>>REGISTER TODAY

Today the Email Experience Council announced its call for entries for its first award competition recognizing email marketing excellence—The Email Performance Award. The award will be presented to an individual or organization that has created an email marketing campaign that demonstrates the full power of the channel.

Entries will be evaluated for their marketing strategy, creative components, and, most importantly, results. Permission-based email marketing campaigns from any industry vertical — including B-to-B, B-to-C, nonprofit, education, etc.— are eligible for entry into the award competition as long as results described have been achieved within the last 12 months.

The Email Performance Award offers email marketers a unique opportunity to showcase the best-in-class strategies, design, and tactics that make them successful. We look forward to recognizing the brands that lead by example, and hope they provide inspiration to others seeking to further leverage the power of the email channel in their marketing mix.

Nominations close on Monday, Dec. 10, 2007. For more details about submission guidelines and entry forms, click here.

The members of the eec will select the winner from among the Email Performance Award finalists, which will be determined by the eec's leadership and announced in mid-January. The winner will receive free admission to the Email Evolution Conference at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina in San Diego, where the Email Performance Award will be officially presented on Feb. 13, 2008.

The winner of the Email Performance Award will also be placed into the semi-finals of the Direct Marketing Association's International ECHO Awards. Since 1929, the ECHO Awards, which are presented each October, have recognized the world's outstanding multichannel direct marketing campaigns based on excellence in strategy, creativity, and results.

For additional information about eec membership or the Email Performance Award, please contact Ali Swerdlow, the eec's Marketing & Sponsorship Manager, at ali@emailexperience.org or 888.804.4521, ext. 3.

Following the announcement we made on this blog last week regarding the availability of the session schedule for the Email Evolution Conference, yesterday we released a more formal version of that announcement to the media, adding some new details. For instance, the conference's 34 sessions will include more than 85 speakers. Over the past few days we've updated the conference program with more of those names, which include executives from National Geographic Society, Conde Nast, American Express, Gannett Co., Allstate, Live Nation, Cisco, KeyBank and eHarmony.

We also promised that each of the 27 breakout sessions will include at least one marketer, so attendees can be sure to get real-world advice on everything from deliverability and list hygiene to acquisition and multichannel marketing.

In addition to all the educational sessions, we also announced that the conference will include an Experience Hall, with exhibits from more than 40 of the industry's top vendors and service providers, including Message Systems, Puresend, Habeas, and the conference's exclusive title sponsor, ExactTarget. The Experience Hall will feature special pods instead of booths, which will allow for better networking and make you feel less like a mouse in a maze of booths.

For more information or to take advantage of early bird rates, please visit http://www.emailevolution.org.

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.

As email marketing continues to evolve, the way we think about email must also evolve. Email has become the way that almost every one of our consumers not only communicates, but manages their lives. This means that as marketers and advertisers we must create email communications that not only facilitate fantastic relationships, but also integrate seamlessly into the lifestyle and personal management choices our customers employ.

Email is more successful when it is not used in a vacuum. Even if the integration is as simple as acknowledgement and awareness of other media elements the consumer may interact with (social networks, blogs, search, display, print, TV), email is much more powerful when it can generate engagement with other modes of communication.

With that said, at the eec, we want to practice what we preach, and do a better job at integrating our emails with the other ways and places people interact.

Please join our founder, Jeanniey Mullen, on LinkedIn or on Facebook to engage in real time conversations about email, and help us keep our email content as relevant as possible. (Don't forget to add Ali, Chad and your other eec friends to your friend list!)

On Facebook, join the "unofficial" eec group and definitely take a second to rsvp to the first eec event (coming in February).

Enjoy!

The eec team

News last week that the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary's latest edition dropped hyphens from about 1,600 words provides further proof that the time has come for marketers, publishers and dictionaries to drop the hyphen from the word email.

Show your commitment to adopting the 21st century spelling of the word email by signing our 'Hyphens Equal Disrespect' petition. So far, more than 160 people, representing companies both large and small, have signed the petition, signaling that they would spell the word sans hyphen in their emails, press releases, whitepapers and other publications. If you'd like to add your name to the list of supporters, just click here, let us know your name and the company you represent, and we'll add your name (but not your email address) to the petition. As the number of signees grows, the EEC will use this list to convince publishers to change their spelling of the word.

Reacting to the news from the Shorter OED, Rob over at the Serial Comma blog has a great examination of the email vs. e-mail debate. He also quotes Angus Stevenson, editor of the Shorter OED, as commenting to the BBC that e-mail—with the hyphen—is 'starting to look like something your grandmother might write.'

We couldn't agree more. Spelling email with a hyphen is antiquated and adds extra length to the word without adding clarity. As we pointed out in our May 8 'Hyphens Equal Disrespect' Petition Update, the majority of references to email on the web are spelled without a hyphen, proving that people aren't confused by the word sans hyphen.

Help us honor email's evolution into a ubiquitous and rich form of communication and sever its connection to its less evolved text-only ancestors by dropping the hyphen. Sign the petition today!

—Chad White