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.

I am no longer satisfied looking at program dashboards that roll up multiple messages and present average/mean performance numbers without a measure of variance. This wasn't always the case.

When I first cut my teeth as an email marketer in the late 1990s, it had been a while since I'd taken a math class. Having attended a small liberal arts school in the Midwest, I was never asked to crunch a single number, and happily concentrated on the subjects that most interested me at the time—Cultural Anthropology and Sociology. So when I went to report on those first campaigns, I didn't have a whole lot of tools in my belt to analyze them. I calculated the basic performance metrics—open rate, click through, etc.—and when trends or anomalies presented themselves I took notice.

Since those good old days, I have brushed up considerably on my analytical skills. Now I still rely on many of the same KPIs, and a few more, to judge program performance, but I definitely see the data in different ways.

As mentioned above, now I can't look at a set of data without calculating their standard deviation. It's of course useful to know, for example, what the average open rate is for a group of messages, but without a measure of variance, the average doesn't yield much useful information. For example, I could have two different campaigns of three messages each that both have an average open rate of 30%. If we stop there, we could deduce that both programs are performing similarly with regards to opens—when one program could be comprised of messages with open rates of {29%, 30%, 31%} and the other could be {3%, 19%, 68%}. The standard deviation of the open rates for the first campaign is 1—not much variance—but the standard deviation of the second is 33.87, indicating some substantial fluctuations. Again, both have mean open rates of 30%, but there are probably different things going on in data set #2 that warrant further exploration.

If you don't currently calculate the standard deviation of your campaign metrics, I suggest you try it. Don't concern yourself that the standard deviation is the "root mean square deviation of values from their arithmetic mean," just type =STDEV into excel and select the data. It only takes a second, and I believe you may find the information useful.

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

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

Listrak - Beyond Open and Read Rate
A guide to email marketing metrics that will help marketers understand how recipients are using their email campaigns.

Artegic: 2008 Mobile Email Marketing - German Language Whitepaper
Artegic's latest report. Please note: this whitepaper is in German.

*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:

MailerMailer: Email Marketing Metrics Report
Metrics and trends

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

It was refreshing and inspiring to hear Arend Hendersen, VP of analytics for third-party offer service Q Interactive, speak here at the Email Insider Summit in Utah about how their optimization of the subscriber experienced resulted in higher ROI for both Q and advertisers.

Using lifetime value (LTV) rather than the standard open, click and conversion data is actually quite innovative. Surprising perhaps, but true. Too many email marketers view email success in a campaign vacuum—reviewing results by the revenue generated by mailing, and not expanding the measure to include subscriber level success metrics. Only when you look at the subscriber level can you start to understand the key drivers of subscriber satisfaction and revenue.

At Q, the standard response metrics are used as diagnostics to inform the LTV, but Arend's vision was to optimize the type, number and cadence of messages so that each segment—active, less active, rarely active—of the database earned the highest return.

Not only was this a smart, customer-centric approach, but it turns out took an enormous amount of corporate fortitude. The first 30 to 60 days showed a 20% drop in value to Q (although there were some good measures to point to more promise), so Arend reports he was in a constant sweat for a few weeks. However, his vision was based on sound data and statistical analytics, so at 120 days the program broke even, and now with more than a year of data, they've improved the return by 30%.

How wonderful to hear about how focusing on the subscriber earned higher return for the marketer! Let us know how you are measuring the success of your email program.

—Stephanie Miller of Return Path

Fellow eec blogger Chip House recently blogged some good points on email marketing sustainability in response Michael Specter's recent article, "Damn Spam" in the New Yorker .

As Chip notes, Specter's piece is a fascinating piece of historical reporting on the origin of spam. Too bad Specter misses the whole point of how the spam problem is being tackled today—and how, I believe, it will eventually be solved.

It's really challenging, both from an intellectual as well as corporate resources standpoint—for receivers of all stripes—ISPs, universities, corporations, etc- to keep up with the spammers. Spam evolves. Specter reports, "Indeed, most anti-spam techniques so far have been like pesticides that do nothing other than create a more resistant strain of bugs."

Return Path responded to the article by correcting Specter's suggestion that using reputation analysis (i.e., Is this sender good or bad?) is susceptible to gaming by spammers in the same way that content filters (i.e., does this email look or read like spam?) are today. We also blogged about it here.

Our response was written by Return Path CEO Matt Blumberg and GM of Deliverability Solutions George Bilbrey. Since they are a lot smarter than I am, I quote their letter in part:

"In fact, reputation metrics, if used well, are impossible to fake for more than 24 hours. A server that sends email that garners lots of complaints from recipients cannot make those complaints disappear. A server that has a spammy configuration (like open proxies or open relays) can't fake those technical settings. Spammers can, and do, switch servers and IP addresses, but these "no reputation" IPs are viewed with suspicion by receivers until they accumulate enough data on them to develop a reputation.

Even if they spend time up front establishing a good reputation by using good sending practices, no true spammer can ever get or keep a good reputation—a standard that is increasingly becoming the only path to inbox placement. But, legitimate email marketers—retailers, publishers, non-profits and others—can establish good reputations that make sure that consumers get the email they sign up for and want to receive. Reputation systems offer the best of both worlds—a decrease in unwanted email and a decrease in false positives. For this reason, more and more internet service providers and corporate email administrators are moving to reputation systems to stem the spam tide. While spam may never completely end, the improvement of these systems will surely have many spammers looking for a new line of work."

Please let me know your thoughts on the article, and what role you believe sender reputation plays in reaching the inbox today—and tomorrow.

—Stephanie Miller