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.

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

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

When I read this article promoting the death of Forward to a Friend (FTAF) written by Ed Henrich over on ClickZ, I admit I was disappointed. While the stats say Share With Your Network (SWYN) usage is steadily increasing and FTAF usage is steadily decreasing, I have to ask everyone to take a step back and ask "Why?".

Let's get real for a minute: today, neither SWYN nor FTAF produce gang-buster numbers for your email marketing campaigns. The reality is that very few of your subscribers will choose to share your content to their friends, family or network.  But when they do -- oh, when they do! -- my belief is that you'll want them to do it through an email forward versus social sharing.

Because it's my belief that emails that are forwarded to friends, whether through the FTAF mechanism or not, have more traction and a higher conversion rate over SWYN all day, every day.

Hear me out:

The metric that we can actually report on -- those that click the forward link, fill in their friends' email addresses and hit submit -- vastly under-reports the true number of forwards. I don't know about you, but when I want to share an exciting deal from LivingSocial or sale at Old Navy, 99 times out of 100 I use my email client to forward versus the FTAF link.

The same could be said about SWYN, so I'll move on to my next point: views. Ask yourself this question: "If you were to receive an email forwarded from a colleague or friend, how likely are you to open it and check it out?"  Most probably, your response is "very likely."  How likely are you to, first, see a tweet/Facebook post/Digg/Tumblr post... that a friend posts and then click the link to read more? I would imagine the likelihood here is much smaller.

The stats for social sharing and views are highly debated with only anecdotal numbers to date, but the latest study reports that it produces an 1% lift in views and a 24.3% increase in reach when shared on social networks.  Please note that views and opens do not equate to sales, which I imagine is an exponentially smaller number.

So let's get to the bottom line: people aren't just going to magically share your emails; you have to ask them to take action and give them clear reasons to do so.  I encourage clients to include a FTAF link due to, to borrow a Dela Quist term, "the nudge effect" of including a request in the email. If you don't ask, it's not likely to happen.

Having folks share your content is a big win regardless of the medium, but in my opinion FTAF wins in the epic battle of FTAF vs. SWYN (if there should even be one or the other) every time.

For or against FTAF or SWYN? Weigh in with your opinion in the comments section.

- Kelly Lorenz
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
@KNLorenz

 

The email marketing industry needs standard reporting and metrics.

Today it is impossible to compare and benchmark response and deliverability rates across the industry because marketers get reports with different terms based on different calculations. Marketers are restricted in comparing reports and synchronizing data when looking to evaluate or change email broadcast vendors.

Inaccurate or inconsistent metrics diffuse the credibility of email marketers.  If our own metrics cannot conform to benchmarks, we lessen our ability to convince senior management and fellow digital marketers of our success.  It also hinders our ability to negotiate for resources.

You can help.  Read the quick background here and then take action with the links below.

The email marketing industry may be ignobly unique among direct and online marketing disciplines for our lack of measurement standardization.  For the past two years, the members of the eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable (a volunteer member committee)  have wrestled with the problem of a lack of a consistent and unified standards for the most basic email metrics such as delivered, open and click.

 
Through our work, the Roundtable has built a foundation for industry standardization for these basic but important metrics.

We have created (and vetted) new definitions of key measures so that they are not only accurate, but the names accurately reflect the measure.  (You can read in past eec blog postings about the struggles and debates to come up with terms we could all support.)  Latest definitions are here.

We have surveyed dozens of email broadcast vendors (ESP's and MTA/on-premise providers) in order to audit existing reporting and gauge the level of variance across the industry.  Please note that the eec Roundtable does not support or claim that any one provider's method of calculating common metrics is better than any other.  Many ESP's and other broadcast vendors participated in the development of these definitions.  We are very grateful for their support.

The Roundtable has repeatedly come to the industry – practitioners, eec members and thought leaders – to gather feedback and insights.

Now it's time for action.


Here's how you can help us start the ball rolling.  Join our launch efforts now.

Voice your support (or dissent) for standardization of metrics in our industry.  Take this one question survey.

Read the definitions

Tell us your thoughts and send in any corrections to the Roundtable.

Commit.  Sign the petition to advance standard metrics now.

Join the Roundtable (eec members only).  Just email Ali at the eec.

Please place your comments below.  And stay tuned!

Thanks to the hard working members of the eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable! 

- John Caldwell & Luke Glasner, eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable Co-Chairs

 

 

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.

 For the past few years, the eec's Measurement Accuracy Roundtable has been conscientiously working to standardize email metrics. Standardizing these metrics is crucial to improving the quality of reporting and to enhance the creditability of the email industry. As part of the standardization goal, the Roundtable seeks congruent email reporting across existing Email Service Providers.

 
Research done by the eec's Measurement Accuracy Roundtable shows that ESPs use several different methods of measurement for the Click-Through Rate (CTR) metric.  During our discussions we identified several methodologies for calculating the CTR.  Two methods, delivered-based and open-based, emerged as the most common based on an online poll conducted by the Roundtable.  Here are the poll results:



The majority of respondents calculated the CTR using clicks divided by delivered, similar to how direct mail calculates its response rates.  Clicks divided by open was the second most common method and is similar to other online advertising methods that are impression-based such as banner ads and search sponsor links.  Companies often use more than one tool and therefore choose the methodology that makes the most sense for their media mix.  Having to normalize their data may create additional work for IT or marketing departments when they want to report and analyze results of their email program overall or roll up information into higher level reporting and analytics dashboards.

What can email marketers in the field take away from this survey?

• First, it reminds us to check with our ESP to determine how they calculate metrics in their reporting to help maintain comparability and consistency while comparing results across or within email campaigns.
• Second, we should also check how metrics are being calculated in other systems that email impacts, such as web analytics, to determine any necessary adjustments to normalize our reporting for cross-media analysis.  
• Third, it demonstrates the need for email marketers and ESPs to come together to standardize metrics.

For the past two years, the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable has been working to standardize email metrics to improve the quality of reporting for the email industry and provide more uniformity in reporting for email marketers and email service providers alike.  You can learn more on this blog or show your support for the program on the Roundtable's online petition.

Special thanks to Peter Roebuck of AllWebEmail for contributing to this post and to all the Roundtable members for their participation.

Luke Glasner
Co-Chair
eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable

 

 

 

 

If you're still managing your own email marketing campaigns without any outsourced expertise, you might want to take a look at the benefits of outsourcing. Here are just a few of the many benefits of outsourcing for better managed email marketing:

• Increase your deliverability rate
• Improve your email design and email rendering
• Gain a deeper and more actionable understanding of your reporting and metrics · Protect your online sending reputation with expert advice
• Have more staff time for other initiatives
• Add the highest caliber email marketing expertise to your team without increasing your payroll
• Draw on more and broader email marketing experience with seasoned professionals guiding you
• Spend more time on strategy and planning, less on implementation
• Enjoy a solution that automatically scales with your growth
• Know you're working with the best email service provider for your business
• And ultimately, improve your email marketing ROI!

If you want to learn about better managed email marketing via outsourcing, reach out to ClickMail Marketing for more information.

 

Gmail reported in their blog this week that they have developed a way to provide their users with an opportunity to report spam and/or unsubscribe from emails they receive in their Gmail accounts. The article, titled "Unsubscribing Made Easy" is a positive change for Gmail, but still falls short of where most legitimate senders want to see.

Like many complaint feedback loops (also known as FBL's) offered by a number of ISPs, Gmail's new functionality is mostly a good thing. I applaud their effort, and it certainly helps when there is this cooperation and transparency in the sender/receiver relationship. It is better for everyone. This is why the Abuse Reporting Format was met with applause by senders when it arrived a few years back.

Here are the good parts. First, Gmail's new feature provides the subscriber with a chance to mark a message as spam, which should allow Gmail to better filter their email. Second, in addition to the option to just report spam, the end user may also choose to "unsubscribe and report spam." This second option apparently is just provided when Gmail deems the sender to be reputable. See the image below for an idea on what the subscriber sees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In his blog, Brad Taylor outlines the reasons Gmail pursued the development of this new feature.

"For those of you senders who are interested in this feature, the most basic requirements are including a standard "List-Unsubscribe" header in your email with a "mailto" URL and, of course, honoring requests from users wishing to unsubscribe. You'll also need to follow good sending practices, which in a nutshell means not sending unwanted email (see our bulk sending guidelines for more information).

With an easy way to unsubscribe, everybody wins. Your spam folder is smaller, and senders don't waste time sending you email that you no longer want.

Update (1:50pm): If you want to unsubscribe without reporting the message as spam, click "show details" in the top-right corner of the message, then click "Unsubscribe from this sender."

It is this piece that leads me to a bit of concern on the implementation. If Gmail is doing their usual checks on authentication, reputation, content etc. to determine which senders are legitimate, why then force the end-user to either mark something as spam, or go through "show details" (which nearly no one will do) to unsubscribe? Why not also provide an unsubscribe button on the interface in addition to the "report spam" button?
I can understand why Gmail would forgo providing the email address back to the sender at the user's discretion. However, even the FTC has a study showing that unsubscribing from spam doesn't really lead to more spam. In the FTC's 2002 study, they report that "In no instance did we find that any of our unique email accounts received more spam after attempting to unsubscribe."

Gmail has the opportunity to educate their subscribers on legitimate and unsolicited email. Why not provide just an "unsubscribe" button for legitimate senders, and explain why they are doing it, rather than propagating the unfounded fear of unsubscribing?
Also, other ISPs have gotten around this privacy concern by not passing back the actual email address back to the sender. Many senders use other forensics to determine which subscriber complained so that this subscriber can be removed from the list.

Engagement Matters
We advise clients to look at all sorts of engagement metrics, and unsubscribes and complaints are equally as important as opens and clicks. When possible, I'd like to know the ultimate intent of the subscriber when they choose to get off of a list. I always say I'd rather have someone unsubscribe from my email than ignore me.

As for which email this is enabled for and which not, the folks over at Word to the Wise looked at this a bit deeper and do some testing. They found that:
"Conditions where the unsubscribe option is presented include:

• The mail is authenticated
• The sender has a good reputation
• The email has a mailto: option in the List-Unsubscribe header
• The recipients marks the message as spam"
  

Read more about their tests here http://blog.exacttarget.com/blog/the-exacttarget-blog/0/0/gmail-offering-unsubscribe-option or here http://blog.wordtothewise.com/2009/07/gmail-offering-unsubscribe-option/.

Either way, legitimate senders do benefit from this, but it is fun to dream of having both unsubscribe and report spam options available to subscribers.

 

- Chip House, Vice President, Industry & Relationship Marketing, ExactTarget

Chip is responsible for industry research and relations, and owns the targeted marketing programs that ensure the satisfaction and success of ExactTarget's client base.  Chip also manages the teams responsible for marketing research, deliverability compliance, and privacy initiatives.  As an established industry leader, Chip writes regularly for online marketing publications and was named to BtoB Magazine's 2005 "Who's Who in B-To-B" for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email. Chip brings 20 years of direct marketing and twelve years of internet marketing experience to ExactTarget.

I've been hearing a lot of questions surrounding the best application of social media to the marketing mix, but one that has been slightly overlooked and under-discussed is who should really own it within an organization. And until you can figure that out, it is really difficult to hold any one internal resource responsible for devising a solid and actionable social plan.

To that end, StrongMail Systems recently conducted a survey to see how marketers were approaching the social space and who planned to own the channel. More than 500 marketers responded, and the results validated our suspicions. Social media is emerging as a direct marketing channel, and marketers are planning significant investment in email marketing and social media programs in the second half of 2009.

One thing the survey clearly conveyed is that ownership of social media within the various facets of marketing is still up for grabs, with 29% of respondents stating that responsibility is owned by multiple departments. But for 36% of the respondents, social is owned by the direct marketing organization, which allows for significant alignment with email marketing efforts. Social media was initially seen as a terrific vehicle for public relations, but surprisingly only 9% of respondents reported PR organizations owning the social media channel, which suggests that marketing teams value social media more for its demand generation potential than awareness building. A paltry 5% have a dedicated social media department.

Other notable facts from the survey include:

66% of respondents plan to integrate email and social channels in 2009

48% of respondents have already formulated a strategy for achieving email and social integration

Of marketers planning to increase budgets in 2009, 83% will increase spend in email marketing, followed by social media at 62%

If you are asking yourself where to start, don't worry, you aren't alone. 55% of respondents report that one of their biggest challenges with integrating social media and email marketing is determining metrics by which to measure success. At 48%, establishing business goals for the program is a close second. So here are a few tips on where to start:

Establish goals for the social channel. Is it your objective to use the social outlets for brand building, email list growth or increased revenue? While your objectives could be multi-fold, understanding what they are is the right place to start.

Prioritize your social goals. Now that you have your goals established, apply some logical business measurements to effectively prioritize the goals. Which objectives will require the least start-up versus the need for longer lead times coupled with programmatic implications that can result?

Develop an action plan. It is not realistic to think that you can hit the social world and accomplish all of your objectives by simply posting a Facebook page. Devise a plan and put your best foot forward – you don't want to rush to market with a half-baked plan in any marketing channel, but the viral aspect of social magnifies those mistakes multi-fold, so be cautious.

Based on these findings and what is known about the power of social media, it's clear that it deserves some serious attention and has grown to the stage where it needs an owner and a purpose within marketing.

- Kara Trivunovic, StrongMail Systems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justify your marketing strategy

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

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

Know what works and what to improve

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

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

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

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

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

- Marco Marini, ClickMail Marketing

The email marketing industry has never had a consensus around metrics, something that contributes to its reputation as an immature marketing channel. When I heard about the Measurement and Accuracy Roundtable at the eec I was excited to join the metrics conversation and help contribute to solidifying some table-stakes metrics.

Less than a year later we've come up with a proposal - one that represents a large step forward for email marketers. However, it also means a good bit of work. Many email marketing service providers (ESPs), email marketing vendors and individual marketers now have to start considering some new numbers.

This proposal not only calls out where everyone should eventually be, it also provides consistent names for related metrics. For us at ESPs, it means that we can immediately make it clear to our clients where we stand.

A great approach is to embrace an "Educate, Enhance and Evolve" approach. What does that entail?

1. Educate your clients on where they currently stand
Is what you've been calling 'Opens' now defined as the Action Rate? If so, then let them know, that doesn't mean you need to change the name right away, but you should provide a tool tip or a more detailed description in your help guides. Also link to the new standards, or provide your own copy of them within your application. This will empower them to do more with their data.

2. Enhance your current reports with some of the new metrics
You may have been showing just one number, the one you thought best represented 'Opens'. But we've opened the door, there are a number of different metrics which each tell a different story. By providing more of this information you allow your clients to dig deeper into their statistics and gain a better understanding of their recipients. Of course with more information comes more questions; be sure to provide detailed information about how these numbers are calculated as well as why they are important.

3. Evolve from the days of 'Opens'
That's right, the goal here is to stop reporting 'Opens' at all. Do we expect the industry to forget about 'Open Rates' by tomorrow? No, but we do expect the experts to start moving away from it soon. When industry leading ESPs follow suit it will help to create momentum and drive the whole industry forward.

By defining and adhering to industry standards we are enabling all email marketers to converse with the confidence that they are comparing apples to apples. This is a big step in the move towards getting email marketing the respect it deserves as a mature marketing channel.

- Adam Covati, Bronto Software

Following the eec announcement of the Render Rate, some have asked why? Who cares? And what makes the Render Rate better than the other proposed metric—Action Rate—or vice versa?

As outlined in the previous post, How Opens Are Tracked and Reported, there are a large number of scenarios where an open might be tracked. At the most basic level, there are two methods of tracking opens:

1) A unique tracking image inserted into the email was loaded: confirming that the images in the email were rendered.

2) A link in the email was clicked: since obviously a link cannot be clicked if the email was not opened, this method allows us to track some of the people missed by the first method.
Render Rate is calculated using only the first method, while Action Rate is calculated by combining the unique results of both methods.

Advantages of Render Rate

Render Rate has the advantage over Action Rate in two ways:

1) Pre-conversion testing: At the end of the day, most marketers want to look at conversion of some sort. Even so, evaluation of pre-conversion dynamics can be helpful in optimizing a program. Because Render Rate measures only one thing, it is better suited for testing in pre-conversion testing scenarios. If we want to look at the ability of a subject line to get people to look at the email, The Render Rate only measures that one thing. If we use Action Rate to evaluate subject lines we are actually testing two different things: 1) which subject line got more people to view the email with images, and 2) which subject line got more people who didn't view the email with images to click. Since Action Rate would evaluate success based on two different criterions, it is difficult to determine what the subject line actually does best. A better approach is to use Render Rate to answer the question, "Which subject line got more people to look at my email?" and use Click Through Rate to answer the question, "Which subject line gets more people to click on a link?"

One could take subject line testing a step further by analyzing the results in two stages – first look at which subject line had better reach, and then we can look at which subject line eventually drove more people to the landing page. Then we would optimize the landing page to further increase conversions (e.g. sales) in its own tests. In theory, optimizing each step in the process will increase overall conversions, but there are exceptions, so a final test using conversions from emails delivered is recommended.

Render Rate also improves testing of creative elements in email because it limits both the control and the test groups to only a version of the email where we could be sure that images were seen by all subjects in both groups. When addressing the question, "Which creative is most effective at getting people to click?" conduct the test based on the people who we know saw the creative (as measured by renders) and then look at that segment to determine which creative version got the higher percentage of people to click through. This type of evaluation is impossible using Action Rate since by definition, anyone who clicked also opened, which inaccurately implies 100% effectiveness of the creative.

Limiting to the render rate only means that both the control and the test group see the same thing. Some examples of tests – types of imagery used in pictures, call to action placement (preview pane or below), button vs. text links. This can be particularly important to those that write emails that have few links in them (or even just one) – where the placement of that link, whether it be a feedback method or the call to action itself moves based on image rendering.

2) Ad impressions: Many advertisers sell display advertising in email. Render Rate provides accurate measures for how many of those ads were displayed. Since it limits the value of the metric to specifically image based opens (renders) it gives us the true number of total impressions using the total emails rendered. Keep in mind, for image-based advertisers, there is no value of an email for which no images are rendered—Action Rate would provide an artificially inflated view of performance. We could also use the Render Rate to determine reach and frequency in a specific email. Here the unique number of email renders is the reach and the total number is the frequency. When combined with monetization via ad revenue we can construct a traditional direct marketing RFM model.

Of course, Render Rate has its challenges, which is why a second metric has also been proposed.

Advantages of Action Rate

Action Rate has the advantage over Render Rate in two ways:

1) Less Inaccurate Measure of "Opens": Render Rate underreports the number of people who seemingly looked at your email more than Action Rate. However, Action Rate still underreports this number. In reality, no reliable method for determining how many subscribers actually looked at your email exists. Both proposed metrics are estimates. Both are low estimates. Action Rate is simply a slightly closer estimate of the number of people who presumably looked at your email.

Under reporting is one of the primary reasons the eec Measurement Accuracy Roundtable recommends a move away from the term Open Rate. Unfortunately, this term has left many marketers with an incorrect understanding of what the metric provides. Worse still, "Open Rates" are calculated different ways by different ESPs—thus the need for standardization.

2) Text-based advertising: Again using the publishing realm as a basis of example, publishers often need to provide reports on text-based advertising. For this purpose, Action Rate is a better standard metric for the reasons listed in the prior section. The Action Rate, which reports, "opens" based on either the rendering of a tracking pixel or a user action (i.e. a click) we can better judge the true number of ad impressions based on action rate. Currently, to our knowledge there is no other industry metric that is defined and standardized that accomplishes this goal.

Use Both to Gain Additional Insights

Finally, using both the Render Rate and the Action Rate together we can learn more about our subscribers and the ways they use emails. For example if you see a regular reader appearing in the list of subscribers that typically views emails with images on and then suddenly drops off the list of those that fit the render rate definition and starts showing up on the action rate only, this may indicate that the subscriber has begun reading their emails with a mobile device. It may also be that they have not added you to their white list, or another set of circumstances may have occurred. The point here, is that using them both we can identify little differences in subscriber behavior that may alert us that it would be worth it to request more feedback from that reader or set off a trigger email to them.

The members of the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable think that if you do adopt our proposed metrics – whether via your ESP or in your own email deployment and reporting in-house system that you will find the Render Rate, the Action Rate and their associated metrics to be superior to current methods—which are inconsistent and sometimes misleading. For those of you that are already defining your open metrics using the Render and Action Rates we congratulate you on being ahead of the times and welcome your support on this initiative and help to spread the metrics throughout the industry so that all email marketers and our stakeholders can have clearer understanding on how our programs work and their effectiveness.

- Luke Glasner, Rodman Publishing & Morgan Stewart, ExactTarget

As the first quarter of the year recently ended, I would like to take this opportunity to discuss a question that I keep getting asked by current and prospective clients: "What is the industry average for delivery rates?" As much as I've talked about this with clients and in public forums, the question still comes up – and my answer is always the same: most marketers should not spend their time being concerned with industry averages for email delivery.

Here's the problem. When marketers focus on what others in the industry are achieving, they are spending less time focusing on their own programs. To me, it shouldn't matter what others are achieving; it matters what you're achieving.

If the industry is getting an 88% delivery rate, but you are getting a 90% delivery rate, does that mean that you should stop trying to improve it? Instead of sitting back and enjoying the fact that you are getting 2% more of your mail to your users, it would serve you better to try to increase that delivery rate by another couple of percentage points and increase your ROI.

Of course delivery rates aren't the only things marketers focus on; opens and clicks also get a lot of attention. The standardization of these numbers is important for the industry, and especially for senders — not only for properly evaluating the services of a prospective provider, but also for making sense of all the studies that discuss these numbers.

For example, say a company comes out with a study that finds that for industry "x", the average delivery rate is 85% and open rate is 5%. Without standardized metrics, how do we know if all of the companies that were surveyed actually determine their numbers the same way? What if the open rate for one company was determined by number of messages sent, while another was calculated by number of messages delivered? Depending on their independent delivery rates, this discrepancy could have a huge effect on the reported results.

As you look at all your numbers, remember that while it's good to know what others are doing, it's more important to track how you are doing and continue to improve — no matter what your numbers are.

Here's the other thing to remember when reviewing various reports, surveys and other data points that may or may not make you feel good about your programs: You can never control what someone else does; you only have control over your own actions. That means, as always, report on this information for your own company, or perhaps your own division. Then watch it, track it and use it.

Are you seeing the same thing with your clients? Let me know in the comments, along with any other feedback. Good luck and good sending.

- Spencer Kollas
Director of Delivery Services at StrongMail Systems

The eec blog post introducing the new "render rate" (by the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable) has drawn dozens and dozens of comments to date – from supportive to some that question the value of the standardization initiative.

There were also a number of comments and questions that indicate many people still don't understand what the open rate does and doesn't measure and how open rates are actually tracked. This blog post will be the first of a series from various members of the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable that address the comments and questions posted on the blog.

Before diving into a detailed explanation of how the open rate works and what it does and doesn't measure, I wanted to remind everyone of the core objective and purpose of this initiative.

The Measurement Accuracy Roundtable was formed with two primary purposes:
1) To ensure that email industry metrics that were widely adopted accurately measured what they were designed to measure;
and
2) That the metric was measured consistently by vendors and marketers. The intent was not to eliminate metrics or pose our opinion or preferences on email marketers.

With that background and reminder, let's dive into the basics of the open rate, which hopefully conveys why the eec took up the initiative to standardize this popular email metric…

How open rates are measured: Your email technology automatically inserts html code that references an invisible (often referred to as a "clear" or "1×1″) tracking image in your email, usually at the bottom of the email.

Like the other images in your HTML emails, they are actually hosted on a server, not embedded within the email. When a recipient opens the email, and images are not blocked, the image is called/pulled into the html message from the hosting server. As the image is pulled into the message, it is appended with a unique identifier that is associated to the receiving email address. That rendering of an image associated to an email address has been commonly referred to as an "open." Now, it gets more complicated.

When an "open" is counted: With the above definition in place, let's look at the scenarios in which an open is counted or reported:

Images are not blocked when the recipient fully "launches" or opens the email.

Images are not blocked when the recipient views the email in a preview pane (a feature on an increasing number of email clients and services).

A recipient scrolls through the inbox slowly enough to allow the tracking image to load, even though the email was not actually viewed in full or in the preview pane.

A recipient clicks on a link in a text email. This particular email service provider or software counts the clicked link as an open. Even though there is no way to track whether the text message was opened (because it has no tracking image), we assume the recipient had to open the message (or view in preview pane) to view the message or click the link. Note: In this example the email tracking software would report one and open and one click.

A recipient clicks on a link in an HTML email that is fully opened, but images are blocked or disabled. The text-email logic applies here.

A recipient clicks on a link in an HTML email viewed in a preview page, but images are blocked or disabled. The text-email logic applies here, too.

A recipient views an HTML email on an iPhone, iTouch or other mobile device that automatically renders HTML emails with images enabled.

A recipient clicks on a link on a text or HTML email on a mobile device that does not render images. The text-email logic applies here.

When an "open" is NOT counted: OK, with me so far? Now, it gets even more confusing. Here are the scenarios when an open is NOT counted or reported:

Images are blocked when the recipient fully "launches" or opens the email.

Images are blocked when the recipient views the email in a preview pane (a feature on an increasing number of email clients and services).

A recipient scrolls through the inbox so fast that the tracking image doesn't have time to load.

A recipient clicks on a link in a text email. This particular email service provider or software does NOT count the clicked link as an open. In this case the rationale is that although an open can be inferred, it was not actually captured. Thus, the metric is kept "pure" and the open not counted.

A recipient clicks on a link in an HTML email that is fully opened, but images are blocked or disabled. The same text-email logic from the previous example applies here.

A recipient clicks on a link in an HTML email that is viewed in a preview page, but images are blocked or disabled. Again, the text-email logic applies.

A recipient clicks on a link on a text or HTML email on a mobile device that does not render images. The text-email logic applies here, too; thus, no open is tracked. The same text-email logic applies.

The HTML or text version is read on a BlackBerry or similar mobile device that does not render images.

An HTML email is viewed on a Blackberry (as above) and is later opened in Gmail (or other email service/client) with images blocked. The email has been opened and read twice, but no open has been counted.

I could probably come up with more scenarios that show how inconsistently an open is or isn't counted or reported, but you should have the gist by this point.

My fellow Measurement Accuracy Roundtable members will contribute a follow-on series of posts to further explain our rationale for the proposed render rate.

In the meantime, if anyone still doesn't understand how opens are tracked and reported, please post your question in the comments, and I'll give it another shot.

Lastly, I'd like to personally, and on behalf of the entire Measurement Accuracy Roundtable, thank everyone for their feedback and comments posted on the eec blog. Are you really passionate about this and other email measurement topics? Join the eec and our Roundtable!

- Loren McDonald, Silverpop
Co-Chair of the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable

One of the largest problems facing email marketers today is the lack of industry standards for email metrics. One such much maligned measurement is the open rate. To help fellow email marketers, the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable was formed by service providers and other industry members of the Email Experience Council (eec). For the past several months, we have been working on finding a way to solve this problem, working specifically with the open metric. We have developed a group of definitions and standards to develop a new, better metric, the Render Rate. Through a lot of participation and hard work, the Measurement Accuracy Roundtable come up with what we believe is a clear and consistent definition, but we need the participation of one more person - YOU - our industry colleagues.

We seek feedback and input from email marketers, email solutions providers, agencies, publishers and other online marketing colleagues. You can download a copy of the definitions, how they are calculated and other information from the eec website here. Please post all comments here on the eec blog, so members of the Roundtable will have a depository of all industry comments to review and incorporate into this new industry standard.

The comment period for industry and other public feedback will run from today until the end of March. During April, we will assemble and review all comments, and revise the definitions as necessary to incorporate your input into this new industry standard. The final version is tentatively scheduled to be released in early May. We hope our fellow marketers and email solutions providers will support this initiative by adopting the new names and including them into their reporting systems.

Additional information will be posted on the eec website.

The Roundtable wishes to offer special thanks to the following members for their contributions: John Caldwell, Adam Covati, David Daniels, Luke Glasner (co-chair), Loren McDonald (co-chair), Stephanie Miller, Morgan Stewart and Chad White.

- Luke Glasner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks, Simms.

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

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