If your business is seasonal, back-to-school time and the pre-holiday months of late summer and early autumn are likely major tipping points for driving revenue and ensuring you end the calendar year on a high note. More than ever, this is the time that marketers, especially those with a retail and/or e-commerce business, need to harness all the tools they have at their disposal and implement smart email program decisions.

After all, the bottom line isn’t graded on a curve and there’s no such thing as summer school when it comes to missed opportunities for recognizing ROI from the email channel. When Sam Cooke sang, “Don’t know much about history. Don’t know much biology…” his “Wonderful World” put academics second and love first. Unfortunately, email marketers can’t afford to ignore their IQs when it comes to email intelligence.

While being an A+ student in all aspects of email marketing might be unrealistic, there are a few subjects that marketers definitely shouldn’t ignore:

1. Security: Phishing and spoofing activity has never been more rampant and marketers need to be proactive in protecting their brands. Contrary to popular belief, fraudsters aren’t just going after financial institutions like banks, payment services providers and credit card companies; they’re targeting any legitimate brand that subscribers may be familiar with. This includes social networking sites, shipping companies, wireless phone and internet providers and many more. A phishing or spoofing attack has the power to undo all of the good ground work that has been laid for optimizing inbox placement rates and performance metrics. If a subscriber’s personal details or finances are compromised as the result of clicking on a link in an email that pretends to come from your brand, you’ve not only lost an email subscriber and potential (or existing) customer, but your brand reputation has plummeted. In this age of social sharing, that negative outcome likely includes anyone in that subscriber’s network of friends and family as well. What can you do? Protect your brand by using an anti-phishing and anti-spoofing tool that monitors fraudulent activity and blocks any attempts to hijack your domain. Learn more about Return Path’s solution here.


2. Inactivity: Having a large portion of non-responsive addresses on your file is the equivalent of blaming the dog for eating your homework. Not only does this segment reflect poorly on your list hygiene practices, but the inactive portion of your file isn’t going to diminish by ignoring it or pretending it isn’t there.  Most major ISPs such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL are factoring engagement metrics into their filtering decisions. This includes metrics like whether or not the message was opened, replied to, clicked on or added to a subscriber’s address book. The more messages being sent to inactive addresses, the greater the likelihood that sender reputation and inbox placement will be impacted, negatively affecting response rates and overall program performance. In addition, depending on how long these addresses have lingered on the file, there could be a large percentage of spam traps. When it comes to email intelligence around inactivity, marketers should have a solid and ongoing plan in place for communicating to pre-defined inactive segments with a specific strategy to reengage and ultimately remove any persistent non-responders.


3. Skimmability: Optimizing your creative templates has never been more important as subscribers increasingly use their mobile devices to check email. Return Path’s latest research study “Mobile, Webmail, Desktops: Where Are We Viewing Email Now?” shows that email opens on mobile devices grew 82.4% year-over-year and Apple devices account for 85% of all mobile email opens. Designing email for mobile viewing has its own unique set of best practices to experiment with based on the devices your subscribers are using to view email. Whether it’s testing single-column or multi-column layouts, trying a variety of “finger-friendly” sized buttons that allow for easy clicking, using a text size that can be easily read on a variety of screens or designing mobile-friendly landing pages and websites that support on-the-go conversions, email messages read on mobile devices need to work even harder to be skimmable. The decision to click-through on an email viewed on a mobile device is made in a split-second, so the clearer and concise your message is, the better.

 

When it comes to realizing ROI from the email channel, what you don’t know can definitely hurt you. The good news is that with a little studying (along with testing, adjusting and optimizing), you can go a long way toward ensuring your program makes the grade for the back-to-school season and beyond.

Margaret Farmakis
Senior Director, Response Consulting
Return Path

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

This month’s highlights:

• The changing face of email (literally) - a look at how ISPs are allowing more scope to email design, including dynamic content.  
• Are you getting the most out of your newsletter content; such as using it to reach beyond the inbox and attract new subscribers?
• How’s your in-house list doing? Growing? Stagnant??? Need some tips to kick start it? Collecting permission everywhere you can.

Mobile email...it's more than just your emails delivered via a smartphone. To succeed as email marketers on the little screen (as opposed to the big screen), we have to change our mindset.

We have to have a Mobile Mentality.

That means everything we do in email we do while considering mobile at the same time. Everything, including:

- Subscription process
- From name
- Subject line
- Copywriting
- Offer
- Headline
- Banner
- Design
- Graphics
- Call to action
- Buttons
- Frequency
- Testing
- Design
- Rendering
- Links
- Landing page
- Metrics and benchmarks
- Reporting

In particular, pay attention to your From address, subject line and headlines. These are the items subscribers are going to initially react to when viewing emails on their mobile devices (and in that order), so it’s important the appropriate message is relayed in the space provided to achieve the most optimal results. An underlying message here, pardon the pun, is that the message must take priority over the design on a mobile device. You won’t have the screen space to wow with pretty pictures or glitzy graphics. When it’s mobile, you must wow with words.

Your From address must make sense. If you haven’t yet tackled the From conundrum, do it now. The From address is the first item people look at when deciding whether or not to open an email. Yours needs to be clear and compelling. Would someone rather open an email from donotreply@yourdomain.com? Or Frank@yourdomain.com? It matters on the PC, but it might matter more on the mobile.

Keep subject lines short-er. You’re used to writing short subject lines for your emails, right? Now you get to write even shorter ones so they’ll be attention grabbing on the small screen. If the first few words of your subject line are just the buildup to the last few words of your subject line, then the buildup might be all the subscriber sees on their iPhone or Droid. Make those few words count by making them words that hook, interest and compel the subscriber.

The headline is now the headliner. Graphics aren’t going to cut it on the mobile device if you’re relying on them to earn you a click through and conversion. Plus you’re dealing with an even shorter attention span. Your headline is doing even heavier lifting than before. In fact, it might be all they see if they decide to open your email! It absolutely must compel the reader to scroll down the email for more.

You're not limited by mobile, only required to think differently. Your email rendered on a smartphone or PDA is not an end in and of itself, only one step in the process you ultimately hope will lead to a conversion. Where does one go from an email? To a landing page...
 
Mobile-friendly emails need mobile-friendly landing pages. Otherwise, you might lose that hard-won click through. Some might wait until in front of a computer before clicking through, but if someone wants to take action while on the go, we want to make it easy for them by designing a landing page that works on a mobile device. With that in mind, here are a few tips for making landing pages as mobile friendly as your emails.

Design your landing page for mobile with the same mindset as your email design, with narrower widths and a single column.

Be brief when it comes to copy...and make that copy count. Consider using two landing pages, the first which is optimized for mobile and says the bare minimum and a second they can click through to if they need more information.

Make everything shorter: headlines, line lengths, chunks of text. As with the email, think bare minimum to get your point made and your prospect clicking.

Avoid using Flash. Replace it with HTML5 or JavaScript. For best results across devices, our design team recommends building landing pages optimized for mobile as straight HTML, CSS, and minor amounts of Java.

Design for fingers, not mice. Make links and buttons a size that is easy to read and easy to navigate with a finger. You don’t want someone getting frustrated when they are trying to click through and the button or link is too small! Also remember there’s you don’t get a hover state for a touch screen on a smart phone.

If you have a form, ask for as little as possible. Ask only for an email address if you can.

You must test the rendering of both your emails and your landing pages.  You can put countless hours into the From line, subject line, headline and design of that email so it will have maximum impact on a mobile device, but if you don’t test and check how it renders in real life on all kinds of devices, all your work could be for naught. Ditto for your landing page. Test, tweak, test again.

Also remember the growing use of iPads and other tablet PCs. Smaller than a laptop, bigger than a smartphone, it’s hard to know yet where these computing devices fit into the scheme of things, how people will use them, and the best way to market to people who use them.  Don’t overlook them, however.  Being prepared for these smaller devices is only one part of having a Mobile Mentality.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

So we are deep in a recession economy, marketing budgets and headcounts are being cut, yet we are seeing an increase in requests for the outsourcing of email production and campaigns. Why is this?

Well let's take a little time to explore the variables in play here.  As marketers turn to more cost effective channels, email is becoming more popular than ever – according to a recent Forrester study the number of marketing messages for the average email user is predicted to double by 2014.  This makes the email channel even more competitive and crowded, causing a dilution of open, click and conversion rates.

The only way to genuinely attract attention and boost performance is to send more relevant and personalized mails.  To experienced email marketers this will not be news, and it is common wisdom nowadays to absolutely progress beyond broadcast (or blast) mailing tactics to attain any kind of click thru and conversion response.

There are a number of campaign types that increase relevance beyond broadcast, such as 'life cycle', 'clickstream' and 'targeted'. JupiterResearch states that these types of campaigns are up to 18 times more profitable than broadcast.  Each of these types leverage known intelligence about the recipient, whether based on a user triggered event, online behavior, or persona driven.  BUT in order to actually create a highly relevant campaign, each mail needs to be customized to each identified audience segment and ideally personalized for each recipient - both of which increase the number of steps and effort in the overall process of producing a campaign from start to finish. 

You have a choice here: do you create individual email templates for each audience segment, or minimize the number of actual email templates and leverage conditional email content for a more dynamic 'data driven' approach.  More email templates means more production effort to create, optimize and test each and every template – whereas the data driven approach needs more advanced skills/technology to design and test more complex templates. 

Are we at a tipping point?  Has the amount of extra effort, technology and skills required to execute more advanced email campaigns pushed email campaign production to a point where outsourcing makes more strategic and tactical sense?  Perhaps.  Organizations need to be competitive and need to consider ways to execute these types of campaigns.  The tremendous ROI (as stated by Jupiter) more than outweighs the additional operating cost, so each and every marketing department who takes the email channel seriously will need to formulate a strategy here.

With headcounts diminishing, outsourcing is an obvious path forward.  Having a tried and tested production team getting your mails out of the door in good time, with great quality (...under SLA), allows you to not only benefit from advanced campaign performance, but to focus your time on higher value marketing initiatives!

 

- Andy McCartney, Vice President of Strategic & Account Services, Premiere Global Services

Andy runs a team of email marketing gurus and specialists who help clients of all shapes and sizes with their emarketing initiatives.  Advice and service engagements are delivered in areas such as strategy, campaign production, list health and deliverability.  Andy has over 20 years of experience in marketing and services with hi-tech companies, including 10 years in business intelligence and analytics and 12 years in interactive marketing leadership roles.

Email marketing copy can sometimes start to feel stale. For instance, how many ways can we say "sale"!? It's often necessary for us to actively seek ways to refresh our messaging. As spring begins, let's take a look at some strong, unique copy treatments. Let's look at words with fresh eyes.

Choosing from our favorite brand "artists," we've compiled a "mix tape" (or, these days, an iPod playlist) of copy treatments. Check it out and see if it inspires any new moods.

I Saw the Sign: Subject Lines

• Boden subject line: "A Boden offer to get your knits in a twist." Including branding at the front of the subject line has shown to boost open rates in some studies, implying that some subscribers just scan subject lines without looking hard at the "from" name. Boden picks up this tip and also entices subscribers with the promise of an offer inside. Love the "knits in a twist" rhyme .

• Sephora subject line: "Pick 5 samples!" This short subject line stands out amongst the longer ones and engages the subscriber with a direct call-to-action and a fun offer. While there's some debate around subject line length best practices (check out Chad White's Email Insider article), most email marketers aim for between 35 and 45 characters. Some of the most attention-catching subject lines are shorter than that, though, like this one.

• Nordstrom subject line: "Dive In: New Swimwear from Miracle Suit." The subject line is clear about the email content, and the unique punctuation and fun intro "Dive In:" may garner some extra attention.

RESPECT: Preheaders

• Staples: Last week, Chad White blogged about Staples' preheader in his Retail Email Blog. Staples used clever copy to appeal to their subscribers' point of view, asking them "Is your coupon not displaying correctly? Prompt to view." as well as prefacing their whitelisting request with "Don't miss the savings." Staples recognizes that their subscribers don't care about missing emails, they care about missing savings, and the copy conveys this understanding.

• Piperlime: Because their (adorable!) headline "Tailor Made" probably wouldn't make sense to someone viewing the email without images, Piperlime writers include a different headline for the preheader text, which maintains the playful tone but adds clarity: "Turn it up in menswear-inspired heels. Shop now."

I Heard it Through the Grapevine: Forward to a Friend
Most "forward to a friend" links are direct and clear, but some brands spice it up.

• J.Crew asks subscribers to "spread the word" to their friends as a main CTA in this message.
• giggle includes their FTAF link prominently at the bottom of their email and prefaces it with "Psst," to give the impression that they are inviting their subscriber to pass on a secret.

Greased Lightning: Headlines

• Apple always has great headlines. Their recent email for iPod Touch games is particularly genius: "Score major points this Valentine's Day." The play on "scoring points" is fun and, coupled with the image of the iPod Touch Scrabble game spelling out "LOVE YOU," the whole message is playful and engaging.

• Urban Outfitters: The headline on this email, "YOU LOST" is hilarious. It came long enough after I entered this sweepstakes that I'd forgotten all about it, and the headline caught my attention and led me to read the rest of the email, which contained a special consolation prize discount offer.

• J.Crew's headline "On it way…" freshens up a shipping message that would otherwise be drab. Cool copy can make the simplest messages satisfying for the subscriber.

Baby One More Time: Subheadlines

• Barneys New York's subheadline, "You really need to read today's barneys babble," sounds like an urging from a friend. The subscriber feels like she'd be missing out if she didn't check it out.

• J.Crew gets a third shout-out for their subheadline from a while back. It reaches subscribers right where they are—on their computers, presumably working on something—and invites them to take a quick shopping break.

Twist and Shout: Body Copy

• Land of Nod has some of the most consistently strong copy in the industry. The body copy in this email reaches out to its audience of mamas by making it clear that Land of Nod really understands what it's like to have a newborn. "We know it'll be hard to put the baby to sleep", they're saying, "but at least you'll have this cute bedding to look at."

• Sephora's body copy in their main message and submessages often appeals to the senses, enticing subscribers with quick snippets.

Jack and Diane: Personalization

• Virgin America (whose copy always rocks!) took a fun approach to personalization in this message. Saying "Hey Darrah," instead of "Hi," or "Hello," is conversational enough to immediately engage the subscriber in a dialogue. While "Hey," doesn't fit the voice of every brand, it's worth considering the perfect form of personalization for your subscriber base.

Where Are You Going: CTA

• Piperlime: Piperlime shows some sweet spring sandals and then calls subscribers to "Find Yours". The CTA make sense coming off the body copy. We feel like the perfect sandals are awaiting us if we just click.

• Anthropologie's "See for Yourself" CTA fits nicely into the theme of this email, which introduces some loud and unusual prints and challenges potentially-skeptical subscribers to see how good they'll look.

• Backcountry uses the straightforward-and-proven "SHOP NOW" CTA in their primary message area, but they get creative in their secondary messages with "Get Layered", "Skin Up" and "Little Stuff." A nitpicky point is that the third CTA would have been stronger as a verb phrase for the sake of consistency, but we'll let it go since all three links are so fun and inviting.

Bye, Bye Baby: Conclusion
All brand "artists" mentioned above have consistently on-brand, unique and compelling copy. If you aren't already on their subscriber lists, you might consider signing up for some new ideas. The most important consideration, of course, is the harmony between the design and the copy, so get collaborating and see what jives.

Dance party, anyone?

Feeling the Beat,

Alex Madison and Lisa Harmon, Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Are you happy with the structure and performance of your email program? If you wish you could just blow it up and start over, we dare you—no, we Double Dog Dare you—to consider this challenge from Loren McDonald, vice president of industry relations for Silverpop:

Start your email program over from scratch. Shut the door, turn off your phone, IM and Twitter, and get out a plain, old-fashioned sheet of paper or clean off the office whiteboard. Ask yourself these questions: What would I do differently if I could start our email program over? What am I doing purely out of habit or because everybody else is doing it? What do I wish I could do but I can't because I don't have the budget or backing from management?

As you stare at the blank page or whiteboard, ask yourself these questions:

● List growth: Are we focused on quantity rather than quality? Are we using questionable acquisition methods just to hit some arbitrary list-size targets? Are we still using pre-checked boxes and single opt-in because my boss couldn't care less about spam complaints, list hygiene and delivery rates?
● List churn and inactivity: Do we understand how active our database is? From one-third to three-quarters of our list is likely inactive; so, what are we doing to reactivate those subscribers that have tuned us out? What programs do we have to deliver greater value to our loyal customers? What can we do to minimize unsubscribes, spam complaints and bounces?
● Design and format: Are our image-heavy emails with lots of administrative information located above the fold still the right approach? Is it time to start from scratch and have an email-design professional create a template that renders well on mobile devices and in preview panes with blocked images? Should we redesign our masthead and navigation links to better correspond with the actions our subscribers want to take?
● Welcome program: Is it time to chuck the text-only confirmation email for a well-designed, multi-message welcome email program?
● Message types: We've been sending the same basic emails for the last two years—our "Weekly Specials" email and monthly "Close Outs." Should we blow this up and let subscribers select different categories and frequencies? Can we add a slew of new email types—birthday specials, reminders, surveys, refer-a-friend promotions, geographic-targeted messages, educational or tip-oriented emails, etc.? Can we wrestle the transactional emails away from IT and design them to cross-sell and up-sell?
● Batch-and-blast: Is it time to stop whining, "How can I move to a lifecycle-, behavior- or trigger-based approach when it's all I can do to get the weekly batch-and-blast emails out the door?" Could I swap one or two batch-and-blast emails a month so I can start testing some more targeted approaches?
● Metrics: Are we tracking the right performance metrics? Our open and click-through rates are doing well, but my boss doesn't seem to care and wonders why we spend so much time on email marketing. Is it time for me to tackle proving the contribution of email to lifetime customer value, cost savings and direct ROI?
● Incentives: Have we gotten hooked on incentives —free shipping and 10% off? Should we test some targeted emails sent only to people that clicked on specific links and use no or reduced incentives to see if we can improve our margins?
● Preference centers: Our unsubscribe page is so ugly and doesn't offer any alternatives. Can I get some design and Web resources to create a worldclass unsubscribe/preference page? Speaking of preference centers, can we continue without one?

If you take up this dare: Let us know by commenting below. Did you overhaul your email completely or just tweak it here and there? What's the first thing you would change about your program if you could? Finally: Which of these changes, if any, could you actually make in your present program? And if you have a Double Dog Dare for the eec community, let us know about that, too.

–>See more Double Dog Dares.

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

TailoredMail: Connect 1:1
In today's world, email marketing is no longer a simple strategy. Marketers need to make their message stand out with personalization and relevance by communicating effectively with customers and prospects to promote dialogue. Check out this great whitepaper from TailoredMail for some great tips and information.

Welcome Email Checklist
What elements to include and to consider for a high impact welcome email. Compare your welcome email design against this checklist before approval.

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

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

Synchronicity Marketing: The Four Essential R's of Email Marketing
These terms serve as guideposts to ensure your campaign s not only optimized for delivery, but also maximum response.

Silverpop: Unlocking the Secret World of White Listing
Insight for Enterprise Email Marketers

Premiere Global Services: 8 Thursdays 5.0
Cutting edge tips and tricks to help you and your email program reach its maximum potential.

LSoft: Stop Guessing and Start Knowing
Using A/B-Split Testing to Increase Your Email Campaign Effectiveness

ExactTarget: Email Marketing Design and Rendering
The New Essentials

Listrak: Email Frequency
How Relevancy Tactics Changed the Rules

Constant Contact: The What, Why, and How of Email Authentication
What it is, why it's important, and what you need to do to authenticate your email.

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

Aside from testing, are there any minimal requirements that any email marketer can follow that will improve display on a Macs, PCs, and/or mobile devices? Or are there completely separate standards for each email client? —K.G.

The Voices of Email had this advice:

Deirdre Baird: First, ensure the HTML is valid according to either W3C or WDG standards. This is the single best protection for universal rendering.

Second, try to ensure the integrity of the message (branding, calls-to-action, etc.) are communicated even if images do not display. While alt tags are useful, they do not display universally in all email clients, so do not rely exclusively on alt tags as an alternative to image display.

And third—and this is more of an FYI—some mobile readers display the HTML version as text instead of displaying the Text part of a multi-part message (as many assume). If a significant percentage of recipients are assumed to be using mobile devices to read emails, then consider not only the text part of your multi-part but also what the HTML part will look like when rendered as text. If possible, ask customers at sign-up if they'd like a "mobile version" of the email and/or create a mobile version that folks can subscribe to.

Chip House: The goal is properly recognizing the differing needs of your subscribers and customizing the content and format to best meet their stated or observed needs. The first way to do this is to ask their preferences (HTML or text) at the time you capture the opt-in. If you don't get that information, then you have to try to optimize for how you want your subscribers to use and/or respond to your communication.

Let's look at mobile first. The challenge appears bigger than it actually is. For example, when you look at the total possible number of rendering combinations for mobile devices, which vary by mobile phone manufacturer, top ISPs, mobile data providers and mobile operating systems, you get 3,780 unique rendering possibilities. However, what we've found via our research is that 56% of users are less likely to read commercial email and/or newsletters on their mobile phone as they are on their laptop or desktop. The message there is you need to optimize the email for both the mobile and laptop/desktop computer environment. In fact, our testing showed that commercial email sent using multi-part MIME (includes both text and HTML parts) was the most versatile format. By this I mean it is most likely to render as HTML only for those systems that can display HTML well, and render as text elsewhere—such as on many mobile devices. However, the advantage of multi-part MIME over text here is that when a user saves or flags your email to look at it on their desktop/laptop, they'll get the graphic-rich HTML version you'd love them to see—which is also likely to deliver a higher click rate.

Testing the rendering of your email campaigns across a number of email clients and ISPs is the best way to overcome the difference in those systems. We use Pivotal Veracity's eDesign Optimizer heavily for this purpose, which allows for preview in a number of different mail clients (including Mac). Each has its own unique page break and image rendering rules, for example, which need to be optimized around. With a little testing, however, you'll be able to get your HTML in tip-top shape for nearly all recipients.

Stephanie Miller: Let me focus on optimizing for mobile. What actually renders on a PDA or Smartphone is determined by four factors:
1. The operating system and software (e.g., Palm OS, Blackberry OS, Windows Mobile)
2. The service provider (e.g., Sprint, Verizon, T-mobile, etc.)
3. The device itself (e.g.: Treo, Blackberry, HP IPaq, iPhone, etc.)
4. The user's settings

Yes, it's messy. And totally different than reading email on a PC. There is a temptation to just deliver text to mobile users, but I don't recommend this. First, because it's hard to know who is a mobile user (there is unfortunately no "sniffer" that tells the sender what device is being used (PC vs. mobile). Second, because mobile users are not just mobile users. They also read email in their PC-based email clients, where a nicely formatted HTML email still yields higher responses in most cases.

The best bet is to rely on Marketing 101—Know Thy Customer. Ask subscribers if they regularly read your newsletter or promotions on their PDA. Many mobile device users sync their device back to the PC and read newsletters there rather than on the road. If you believe that many of your subscribers read your email on their mobile device, then offer a mobile-friendly format (simple HTML with text) that can be selected at sign up or in your preference center. If you believe that many of your subscribers are sometimes mobile readers but often PC readers, then format your HTML (particularly the masthead and preview pane) to minimize the number of image links and other code that readers must scroll past to see the actual content.

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.

–>Read other Reply to All posts

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

CMO Council: 2007 Marketing Outlook Report
A study designed to identify key trends from 2006 and capture insights and opinions about where and how marketers are focusing their efforts in 2007.

eec Webinar Archive: 10 Seconds to Email Success, May 17, 2007
View all of the slides from this webinar.

Chad White: Reportlet - Mr. Bluelight and Deal-a-Day Emails
Examples and strategies for deal-a-day retail email programs.

Chad White: Reportlet - DomainKeys Adoption to Follow Sender ID Past Tipping Point
A majority of the top online retailers have already adopted Sender ID; DomainKeys adoption is not far behind.

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