Wow, that hour went fast!  The estimable Shaun Brown, partner, nNovation LLP, a law firm based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, spoke about the new Canadian privacy legislation – referred to as Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL – an acronym that many speak like the word “castle”) – that has many email marketers confused on compliance requirements and timing.  Listen to the November 10th webinar (and we highly recommend it) for free here.

Brown compared CASL to something many of us already know – the U.S. CAN-SPAM law of 2003.   Bottom line:  In many areas – permission, notice, coverage and risk – CASL is much broader.

• Scope:  CASL covers not just anti-spam, but also anti-malware, anti-hacking, and through related amendments to other legislation, control of content and misleading information, as well as privacy of personally identifiable information (PII) (harvesting, dictionary attacks).
• Application/Jurisdiction:  CASL covers any message sent from or accessed by a computer in Canada (regardless of where the sender is located).  We are talking about all electronic messaging – email, instant messaging, SMS, social – plus anything new that comes along.  (Fax and voice are covered by Canadian do no call regulations.)
  1. Note that there is no minimum number of messages. So sending one message is enough to put you under jurisdiction of the law.
• Coverage:  CASL applies to commercial activity, defined pretty broadly.  For example, Brown said in the webinar, if you are promoting a person who normally promotes a product or service or business opportunity -  even if you are not specifically promoting that product, service or business opportunity in the message -  then your message is covered.  
  1. Note also that any message sent to seek consent is considered commercial – so you can’t send a request for consent. There are no exceptions for research studies, for example. “This will have to play out in the courts in deciding what is ‘commercial,’” Brown said.  “I would not be surprised if this was challenged.” As the law is enforced, Brown says, we will have more guidance on what is considered “commercial” under the Act.

Compliance with the anti-spam aspects of CASL encompasses three broad categories:

1. Prior consent – defined as either express or implied.  Both are acceptable for all situations and of equal value.  (Implied does expire, though.)
   
   a.    Express: Must include clear notice and the provision of a set of prescribed info from subscribers when providing consent.   The owner or any authorized user of the email address must give the consent.
   b.    Implied:  The Act deems implied consent when there is an existing business relationship (e.g.: a customer who has purchased in the past two years, or if there is a contract or a subscription which has been active in the past two years.)
   c.    Once consent is implied (e.g.: a purchase), you generally have two years to send messages in compliance (or obtain an express opt in).  An express consent never expires, and is valid until the individual withdrawals consent.
2. Information
   
   a.    Must include contact information for the sender and the subscriber.  It is not clear in the law what this must include.
   b.    Regulations are expected to define this further.
3. Unsubscribe
   
   a.    An unsubscribe opportunity must be provided in all messaging and be available for  60 days post delivery.
   b.    Unsubscribe requests must have no cost, and use the same means by which the message was sent (unless impractical), either via replyto: or a link.
   c.    Must be processed “without delay” (and within 10 days) with no messages sent after the request.  This aspect may also be defined further with regulation.  “Senders must be able to demonstrate that you put forth a best effort to act on unsubscribe requests quickly, with the intent to stop messages,” Brown advises.

CASL was created with both public and private enforcement opportunity.  The Canadian Radio & Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is charged with enforcement.  This is a civil enforcement agency, there are no criminal provisions.  There is a private right of action available to any individual impacted.

Right now, the law is not in force.  It was passed in December 2010 and regulations were published for comments this past summer. The Government is still working through those comments (there were many!).  No timetable is published for a second set of regulations; however Brown expects something by early 2012.   The government is also setting up a Spam Reporting Center, which will be a website to gather evidence and monitor trends as well as provide consumer education.


In preparation for enforcement, Brown recommends three primary areas for marketers and senders:

1. Check your lists. Do you have consent – and evidence of consent?  The burden is on the sender to prove consent.
2. Check location of subscribers where possible.  The law doesn’t care what the domain of the address is, or if the sender has a clue where the recipient is.  If the message is received on a computer in Canada then it applies.  If a sender does make an attempt to gather this data, This may be a factor in exercising the due diligence defense, where no one can be charged if they have shown due diligence to comply.  “Be sure you have a business objective in NOT complying with the Canadian legislation,” Brown says.  Note that reconfirmation of some permission grants may be necessary.
3. Watch for regulations re: content of messages. The regulations will clarify the information required when obtaining consent as well as when sending a message.

As with any legislation, the devil is in the details.  The Email Experience Council recommends that you have legal counsel review the law and determine the next best steps for your organization. In the webinar, Brown gave his thoughts on some key business issues and applications:

• Liability of service providers.  Telecom/ISPs are generally going to be exempt from liability under the anti-spam provisions where they merely provide the telecommunications service allowing the message to be delivered. However, it’s not clear if this applies to email delivery service providers.  “If you are merely providing a ‘do it yourself’ service and the customer manages the list and the unsubscribe, then it may be that the delivery provider is covered under the Telco exemption,” Brown says.  “This may be different if you offer a full service offering.”
• Ownership of the message, for example, placing ads in an editorial newsletter or providing the name of the email delivery vendor in the message itself is not directly addressed in the law.  “In my view it doesn’t make sense from any perspective to say that the ESP is sending on your behalf, for example identifying the ESP in the message,” Brown says.  There were a number of comments on this as the regulations were reviewed this past summer, and Brown hopes that some clarity will be offered in future revisions.
  1. This brings out the question of where an agency or service provider is vulnerable by trusting their client.  If the agency or ESP sends unsubscribe data to the sender, is the agency responsible if the client doesn’t take action?  “The law is broad, so if you are aiding or causing company to avoid compliance, then you are potentially responsible.  The way to manage risks like this is to inform your customers of their obligations, make sure you have the appropriate language in your agreements, and ensure the relationship agreements are clear who is taking responsibility for managing unsubscribes requests,” Brown advises.
• Transactional messages.  The legislation does not refer to “transactional” messages.   The law does cover some types of messages that could be considered transactional (e.g.: service notices or warranty information).    The law states that these types of messages require an opt out.  “This somewhat confuses the issue, by listing out messages that, in many cases, are likely not commercial electronic messages and therefore not covered by the Act to begin with,” Brown explained.
•   Point of Sale.  What if you ask verbally for consent at the POS?  Brown says that the original draft regulations from the summer declare that consent must besought in writing only.    However, this may be removed based on the amount of comments against it. “I would like to think that if you are entering this into a system form, and there is a date stamp, that this would meet the evidentiary burden under CASL,” he says.
  
  1. There is no legal requirement to send a follow up message, but “It’s always good idea to remind people of their subscription and why they have provided consent.  It’s more of a relationship issue than a compliance issue,” Brown says.
•  Is list rental dead?   A properly compiled permission based list is quite valuable, and the law does not forbid the rental of them.  “It’s not dead, but CASL places a higher onus on list owners and senders to make sure it’s done properly,” Brown says.
  1. The act of appending is not covered under CASL. It is likely covered under privacy laws, particularly if you are making changes to PII footprint without consent.  There may be some situations where appending data is allowed under CASL.   If you have a business relationship – e.g. purchases in the past year – then this append may be in compliance with the CASL legislation.
• Mobile Access.  No one anticipates that certain one-off situations will be covered under CASL (e.g.: a US citizen goes to a coffee shop in Toronto and checks his Gmail account).  Brown expects that the government also did not intend to the law to apply to Blackberry users worldwide when accessing email (e.g., through RIM servers located in Canada).   “I think the intention is not to apply the legislation so broadly,” he said.  It’s not clear how data centers for companies that are not Canadian based will be treated – although Brown expects that they will need to comply just as if the entire company was based in Canada. Messages sent from those centers will be “Canadian” under this law.

Many thanks to Shaun Brown and nNovation LLP for an excellent presentation and generous review of so many audience questions. nNovation LLP is a pre-eminent Canadian law firm that advises companies, industry associations and other private and public sector parties in their business relationships and practices, and in connection with a broad range of Canadian regulatory regimes. With several years of experience both in the public and private sectors, Shaun’s practice focuses on emarketing, ecommerce, privacy, and access to information.   

Thanks also to the eec's Deliverability & Compliance Roundtable, led by Matt Rausenberger of Return Path and Dennis Dayman of Eloqua, for sponsoring and organizing this event.

If you are not an Email Experience Council member, please join us for free access to these kinds of event and resources.  If you are a member and would like to join one of our member Roundtables (committees), please email Ali.


- Stephanie Miller
eec Co-Chair

The eec hosted a webinar this month highlighting the role of video in email.  Luke Glasner of Red Pill Email moderated and Justin Foster of LiveClicker and Rory Carlyle of Carlyle, Inc. contributed to the panel discussion.  The audience was engaged throughout as we learned about video email best practices, case studies, and technical requirements to achieve strong deliverability with video in email.  Download the webinar recording.

Top 10 takeaways from video email webinar:

1.  Video is a growing trend that email marketers need to pay attention to.  Video viewing time increased 26% year-over-year in the USA from August 2010 to August 2011.  180 million people, or 86% of the US Internet audience, viewed online video in August of 2011, according to comScore.  Marketers are taking notice, with video ad spend projected to increase 22% from 2011 to 2012 (eMarketer).  An August 2011 report by Forrester Research showed online video was perceived as the channel most poised to increase in effectiveness over the next three years by interactive marketers, behind only mobile marketing and created social media.

2.  Using video for video's sake is not a good enough reason to use video with email.  Marketers need to decide whether the application of video creates additional value for subscribers before deciding to employ this tactic.  Simply using video because it is "cool" is not a good enough reason; marketers need to first consider whether the storytelling power of video can be used to more effectively entertain, engage, or excite subscribers, build trust, stir the imagination, or persuade the subscriber to take an action vs. other techniques.

3.  Video is proven to be an effective tactic to boost email campaign performance, but only when best practices are applied.  Simply using the word "video" in the subject line of email has been demonstrated to help achieve increases in open rates of up to 20% vs. an identical message body without the word "video" in the subject line.  Video in email examples illustrated a 200% increase in CTR in a controlled A/B split in one example, 67% higher CTR v. average campaigns in another.  Still, if best practices are not used, video can annoy subscribers, distance marketers from subscribers, and even drive up negative metrics like unsubscribe rates.

4.  Video does not alter the fundamental rules of smart email email marketing. Relevance still rules.  Marketers need to think about who to engage with video; use of past clickthrough data, web analytics data, or customer demographic data are all possible sources of valuable targeting information.  Knowing which subscribers have watched video in the past can be especially helpful when developing segments for video email.

5.  Video production does not need to be difficult or expensive; marketers can make it so.  There are several techniques that can be used to minimize the amount of time required to generate videos for campaigns, such as: 1) use existing content developed in-house or by partners (just make sure you have permission) 2) If your brand is tolerant, carefully assess the production values you really need to accomplish the goal of the campaign.  It is possible to create HD video content in-house, with a full camera setup and set, for $4,000 - $5,000.  Hiring a professional or an agency is also an option, but many marketers make the mistake of thinking that video has to be expensive, when in reality video is only expensive when the marketer's production requirements make it so.

6.  Choosing which technique to use for leveraging video "in" email is a creative and cost decision.  Period.  There are benefits and drawbacks of each method of including video in email.  Concerns over deliverability, campaign send speed, or mail client support should not dictate the decision of "in" or "with" because technologies exist in the market to detect what email client a subscriber is using, and then automatically serve a compatible version of the video asset, animated .GIF video, or still image directly in the email based on what the mail client supports.  If a marketer has a creative aversion to using any of these creative treatments, it is easy to exclude the use of that treatment without having to cut the list.  Further, deliverability concerns can be alleviated simply by employing best practices in coding email messages.

7.  If using video in email, internal education is key.  Not all mail clients support full video in email, including Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010.  If you use one of these programs at your place of work, consider setting internal expectations so that stakeholders know what to expect.  While video in email support is not yet consistent across mail clients, as of June 2011 an "average" B2C marketer could expect to deliver "full" video in email to approximately 37% of the list, animated .GIF video to 50% of the list, and static image to 13% of the list.  Your results will vary based on your list's composition.

8.  Email marketers need to treat video as more than a "one off" experiment.  Since we belong to a metrics-focused industry, many email marketers choose to "one off" test video in email to see if it "works."  This is a terrible mistake because it does not allow the marketer to understand what about the video is driving results.  There are many different types of video content; some videos will work better than others.  Therefore, it is important when testing video to at minimum test over a series of campaigns (I recommend at least 3).  Only by looking at video in the context of several campaigns will marketers begin to discover what works and doesn't work for the brand.

9.  Know the lead times involved.  Most email marketers have not used video with email before.  If it's your first time, consider planning the video a full two months prior to the campaign launch.  Since video requires different techniques and tools to create and encode, try to give yourself a buffer and a Plan B far in advance.  If you already have access to video content, plan on adding an additional three to four hours per campaign for any testing or troubleshooting.

10.  Follow best practices.  Among them: 1) set the subscriber's expectation for video by calling the video out in the subject line (this is especially important for animated .GIF videos, which auto-play)  2) Use a "play" button in the video "player" to signal the subscriber can play the video.  3) Highlight in the email what "happens" when the video is clicked.  Because watching a video requires the subscriber to invest his scarce time, it is important to communicate the value you are promising up-front to prevent disappointment 4) Serve a "right click to play" message as the first frame of the video for Hotmail users (because player controls aren't supported yet in Hotmail) 5) Keep animated .GIF videos to 30 seconds or less.  Since animated .GIF videos don't support sound, they are most effective as "teaser" content.

BONUS TAKEAWAY:  Be clear with your campaign goals up front and do not over-hype or over-promise results.  Video email is still new and best practices are still emerging.  In my experience, the marketers that have gone on to be most successful with video email are those who took the time to learn about video in email, took the time to educate their managers and peers, and treated video email as an "experiment."  If you promise the moon, you'd at least better be able to jump off the ground.

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

Attendees:

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

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

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

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

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

Members of the eec Measurement Accuracy Advisory Committee have answered marketers' cry for new best practices around email measurement.  The Email Metrics Best Practices Guide will help marketers move beyond just reviewing render (open) and click rates to gain an understanding of their subscribers' behavior by including additional data available.

Download this document to learn what email marketers should be tracking beyond renders (opens) and clicks, what sources and types of data marketers can use to calculate various metrics, how to define key success indicators and finally, how to use them to reach marketing goals such as increased revenue, customer lifespan, engagement and more.  Get your copy from the eec Research Store today!

Guide Contributors:
Adam Holden-Bache, Email Transmit
John Caldwell, RedPillEmail
Luke Glasner, RedPillEmail
Loren McDonald, Silverpop
Stephanie Miller, Aprimo
Fred Tabsharani, Port25

eec members can access all eec research including whitepapers, best practices guides and more at no cost.  Find out how to become a member.

Plus, find out more about the eec's S.A.M.E. (Support Adoption of Metrics for Email) Project, also developed by the Measurement Accuracy Advisory Committee.


- Luke Glasner
Co-Chair of the Measurement Accuracy Advisory Committee

Triggered emails are getting plenty of attention these days. If you’re a B2B email marketer, don’t skip over those blogs and articles on triggered email. You can use them too.

Typically B2C sales cycles are short while B2B sales cycles are much longer. The consumer purchase is less expensive and time consuming, while the business purchase is costly and requires research and buy in. Often a B2B sales cycle is three or more months, with several people involved in the decision, while a B2C purchase can take place online in just a few clicks.

For all of those reasons, some B2B marketers think triggered emails don’t fit in their email marketing strategy.

Examples of common B2C triggered email messages are shopping cart abandonment, asking for feedback, reminder emails, welcome emails, and emails based on past purchases or behaviors. If you’ve been involved in email marketing for any length of time, you are probably familiar with some or all of those kinds of triggered emails. They are all intended to drive action.

B2B email marketing, on the other hand, is typically more about providing information on a solution without selling, and thought leadership. It’s a little tricky too, because if you have sales reps nurturing relationships with specific potential customers,  you don’t want your automated emails to interfere in some way with the relationship building the sales rep is doing. Finally, the goal of the B2B email is different. While the consumer counterpart is striving for the sale, the business messaging is usually striving to engage. An email recipient isn’t going to click on a call to action and invest $20,000 in a software system simply because your email was so compelling. But she might pick up the phone, download a whitepaper or register for a webinar.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use triggered emails! It means you use them in light of the different environment you’re selling in. Also consider that many types of triggered emails would be appropriate if sent “from” the sales rep, not the company. Below are some examples of triggered emails and how they could be used in B2B email marketing:

The welcome email
The welcome email is welcome in any industry! When a business customer signs up for your newsletter, webinar or some other offer, a well-written welcome email is a must. And I stipulate well-written because you don’t need a dry, boring, we’re-just-sending-this-because-we-have-to type message. Your welcome email should thank the recipient, remind them what they’re getting, and do a little to build your brand and relationship.

The “you might also like” confirmation email
Yes, this is typically a B2C email and a marketing technique made famous by Amazon, but why not use it after a whitepaper download or webinar registration? Surely you have papers or webcasts that are similar. It could even be that someone joins a group that makes them a likely candidate for something like a paper. Your confirmation email can tell the recipient about these other offers too. 

The post purchase email
OK, it’s not really post purchase, it’s more a follow-up. While the B2C world sends out post-purchase emails, the B2B marketer can do similar emails as a follow-up to a download, registration or event. You can set it up so these emails come from a sales rep.

The soliciting feedback email
Unlike the email you might send soliciting feedback from consumers who’ve made a purchase, you can solicit feedback after some other action a prospect has taken, like a download. There’s no reason not to ask if they found the case study helpful or what they learned from the webcast.

Triggered emails are an effective way to increase reach, relevance and conversion no matter your industry. Regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, there are rules you can and should set up to automate these communications.

Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

Two weeks ago, Ben & Jerry’s announced they were “giving up” on email marketing in favor of social media. Note: Later that day, the @cherrygarcia Twitter account reported that this was a UK-only change.

Update: Our friends over at The eMail Guide took the time to email the PR folks at Ben & Jerry’s. Here’s what their PR Director, Sean Greenwood, had to say – personally, I don’t think it changes the story dramatically.

As you can imagine, the email marketing industry was up in arms. There was a collective “Noooooooooo” followed by “Are they kidding?” The Inbox Insiders – an email marketing list created by Bill McCloskey that boasts some of the sharpest marketers from many of the largest brands in the world as well as a host of vendor side (email service provider) folks – decided to weigh in. Here is what a few of them had to say…

    21st century brands need to ‘behave’, not just tell stories, as behavior is tangible and real, and empowers Consumers to shape their own brand experience. That shaping is what drives advocacy and rampant love of the brand. Ben & Jerry’s clearly has heard what their customers want, and currently do not want, and are behaving accordingly. Sweet, creamy customer-centricity!

Andy Goldman*
SVP, Strategy & Integration
RAPP

————-

    The same discussion now about social vs email took place decades ago regarding radio vs newspapers and TV vs radio. History repeats itself. Of course some social evangelists and fan boys/girls will hoot about this vindicating social as better than any other medium, but comments such this are not motivated by any kind of insight. At this point they are driven by wishful thinking and personal agendas. In other words, this recurring discussion is more political than practical. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter are proprietary platforms controlled entirely by their owners, while email is a standard supported globally and that sets it apart.

Jim Ducharme
Editor
The eMail Guide

————-

    While Ben & Jerry’s UK marketing department is listening to their customers, which is always applauded, this is shortsighted from a business perspective. Email and social media are significantly more powerful when used together versus independently. Further, with email marketing, you own your email list, whereas Facebook and Twitter followers are owned by those respective properties. Rather than replacing email with social media altogether, Ben & Jerry’s should focus on improving the value of their email programs for their subscribers by integrating social elements and exclusive offers (e.g. use a 24 hr. “flash” discount to drive traffic into retail stores or use email to launch a social word of mouth campaign.)

Kristin Hersant*
Director, Corporate Marketing
StrongMail

————-

    Facebook and Twitter may be working well for them now, but will that hold true into next year? The year after? Five years from now? And if they disband their email program now and decide they need it later, how easy will it be to resuscitate those email relationships? I’m not anti-social media. It’s just that I’ve been on panels where the topic is “Email is Dead, Long Live X” where X = RSS/Blogs/MySpace, etc. And none of them have actually, to date, replaced email.

Jeanne S. Jennings
Consultant, Email Marketing Strategy
JeanneJennings.com, Inc.

————-

    The “inbox” – defined as a destination for content from both people we know and brands we like – has fragmented.  It’s online, on my device, in Facebook and Twitter and at a business address.  Great email marketing has always been about great content, and that is more true today as email marketers compete for budgets and customer attention with social, mobile and even offline marketing.  Why keep your investment in email?  Frankly, the question must be, How can we best utilize email to connect with customers and prospects in ways that help achieve our business KPIs?

    If you can’t come up with a strong strategy to answer, then you are either missing a big opportunity or won’t find ROI in the channel.

Stephanie Miller*
VP, Global Market Development
Return Path

————-

    Ben & Jerry’s made a bold move and now they are getting the media benefit of that decision. In the short run, I think they will benefit from this move. However, in the long run, they have made a decision that abandons a lot of paying customers that may have wanted to hear from them, but don’t actively engage in social media. In our research on how consumers engage brands through Email, Facebook and Twitter we see consumers layering these activities to get closer to brands. Consumers don’t operate in silos and marketers shouldn’t either.

Morgan Stewart*
Director, Research and Strategy
ExactTarget

————-

    Part of me has to think (hope?) that Ben & Jerry’s UK has run the numbers and determined that forgoing email marketing in favor of social media is the best option for them. I don’t understand why they’d abandon email marketing altogether. Why not give their subscribers a choice?

DJ Waldow*
Director of Community
Blue Sky Factory

————-

    Such a shame that brands can’t think “one to one” in the digital age and have to kiss goodbye to a fantastic relationship-building channel.  The skills needed to make a success of social media are not that different to email marketing, so I fear that B&J may be running away from email to an equally unforgiving world of Facebook and Twitter.  Lucky for them that the ice cream’s so good.

David Hughes
Founder
The Email Academy, Ltd

————-

    Most CPG brands struggle to create robust CRM programs with very tiny budgets. It sounds as though B&Js has simply made a budget-related decision to move to the least expensive channel available so they can reach out more often to their customers.  Email will still have a place in their communications arsenal despite the announcement – after all, how do all their Facebook fans know when they have a message from B&Js? Email. Of course, it’s an email that doesn’t cost B&Js anything to send – though it goes to a much smaller audience than they could likely send to directly.

Gretchen Scheiman
Partner, Associate Director, CRM
OgilvyOne worldwide

————-

    I applaud Ben & Jerry’s for getting customer feedback before making a very strategic decision. However, I think the mistake is that they abanonded email rather than letting customers choose their preferred communication channel. After all, this is a company that offers 108 flavors. Since many customers prefer chocolate to vanilla, are they going to eliminate vanilla now too?

Simms Jenkins
CEO
BrightWave Marketing & EmailStatCenter.com

————-

    Email is a core driver of many successful social marketing programs.  I’m just not sure if anyone has articulated this to Ben & Jerry’s or showed them an effective way to integrate email & social into an effective program.

Chris Baggott*
CEO/Co-founder
Compendium

————-

    Their decision certainly seems shortsighted. Are they completely overlooking email as a coupon distribution channel? If their subscribers were getting high-value coupons exclusive to being on the list, maybe they’d have liked the program more.  Although B&J doesn’t have quite the same distribution model as ColdStone Creamery, they could take a few lessons from their competitors in the retail ice cream space (I’m thinking of Rita’s Ice too).

Karen Talavera*
Email & Digital Marketing Coaching, Training & Strategy
Synchronicity Marketing

————-

    Each year Ben & Jerry’s kills 8 to 12 ice cream flavors. In 2010, at least in the UK, it looks like Email Marketing has gone to the ice cream Flavour Graveyard just like Peanut Butter & Jelly did more than a decade ago. But Ben & Jerry’s decision in the UK to pull back on Email Marketing and focus on new marketing flavors like Social Media speaks to their unique customers and marketing approach, not to any decline in email marketing’s popularity and effectiveness. After all, while Cherry Garcia is Ben & Jerry’s top seller, vanilla is still the most popular ice cream flavor in the world.

Loren McDonald*
VP, Industry Relations
Silverpop

————-

    Totally abandoning email in favor of social is short sighted and antithetical to Ben & Jerry’s efforts, since email marketing can be and is one of the most powerful drivers of social media participation. A survey conducted by Harris Interactive last year found that 96% of Americans were willing to provide companies with their email addresses in order to receive offers and discounts, compared to just 12% that were willing to provide their social media “digits” to do the same (e.g., their Facebook handle). Smart marketers are using email as the gateway to social — acquiring customers’ email addresses first, and then directing them down the funnel towards social media channels.

Jordan Cohen
VP, Business Development
Pontiflex

————-

Where do you stand? What is your take. Good (strategic) decision by Ben & Jerry’s or just plain madness?


- DJ Waldow
Director of Community
Blue Sky Factory

Read the original post.


*eec Member

1. Online Privacy Protection Bill:  A “Discussion Draft” of a bill to require notice and consent to any individual PRIOR to collecting or using personal information was released in early May in the US House of Representatives from Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL).  Industry and consumer groups alike are not happy with the draft, including the DMA.  Although it may seem at first that the so-called Boucher Bill was just about online behavioral advertising conducted by large marketers; it turns out that it’s very broad and far-reaching on privacy and data security.  During the webinar, Jerry Cerasale, VP, Government Relations for the DMA, gave a very good overview of coverage, exceptions and terms of notice.  Basically, it impacts nearly all kinds of “first party” senders as well as any other company that has access to that data as a “third party.”  It proposes coverage of an extensive list of “unique and persistent” personal data on consumers.
   
   “One potentially bad impact this could have on the email industry concerns the scope of covered data, including email address, IP address, and other unique, persistent identifiers,” says panelist Tom Bartel, CIPP, VP, Receiver Services at Return Path.  “If the exceptions for transactional and operational purposes and for service providers are not effective and clear, this bill could interfere with many industry collaborations.  This includes IP-based reputation systems – data that determines if email messages reach the inbox or not.  It may also impact the operation of Feedback Loops provided to email senders by mailbox providers like Yahoo! and Hotmail.  These feedback loops are a key component in how the industry keeps bad actors out of the email ecosystem."
   
   Both Representatives Boucher and Stearns have indicated a willingness to work with industry and have requested comments on the bill, due by June 4th.  Cerasale said the DMA will be commenting.
    
2. Expansion of FTC Powers: Congress is also considering significantly expanding the powers of the FTC as part of the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (HR 4173).  There is not a corresponding bill in the Senate, although Cerasale said in the webinar that one may be introduced later this year. 
   
   Part of the proposed regulation would give the FTC “unbridled authority” to create rules around “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” for many industry sectors.  Cerasale expressed concern about this, and said that more checks and balances are needed.  It is also unclear how this expansion will impact emerging technologies like social or mobile, he said.
   
   Another part of the proposed bill increases the FTC’s enforcement powers to seek civil penalties.  “That may be helpful in catching spammers and other abusers of email marketing,” said Rick Buck, CIPP and VP, ISP Relations and Privacy at e-Dialog.  “Marketers who feel they are exempt from prosecution because they are legal under CAN-SPAM may be following the letter of the law, but not the spirit.  I encourage everyone to go beyond the legal requirements and aim to provide email experiences that are welcome and engaging to subscribers.”
   
   The FTC’s Greisman said only that, “We welcome any support from Congress that helps the agency be more effective and efficient.”  There are some “tools that we lack which Congress may grant us the power to use,” she said.
   
   A third element to this proposed legislation is on responsibility/liability of the delivery provider (broadcast vendor, ESP, MTA Vendor) if their clients do not follow CAN-SPAM or other regulations.  “This aiding and abetting aspect is very concerning,” said webinar panelist, Dennis Dayman, VP, Privacy & Online Security at Eloqua.  “Blurring the lines between purveyor and sender may place an undue penalty on others in the ‘chain of responsibility’ for all brands involved in online advertising or other online acquisition efforts, like third party email senders and publishers,” Dayman said.

Greisman also reported in the webinar that there is no significant update on the behavioral targeting protection guidelines that the FTC has had out for comment for over a year. “Nothing will happen without input from industry,” she said.  Since the mandate from the FTC has been, “self regulate or else,” the webinar panelists Buck, Bartel and Dayman had a number of suggestions for marketers to follow best practices, including:

1. Ensure transparency in disclosure and notice of permission and use of data.
2. Be very clear about opt out vs. opt in.  CAN-SPAM requires only an opt-out, but that is the “bare minimum,” Buck advises.
3. Update your Privacy Policy and provide prominent links.
4. Audit your data usage practices.
5. Be clear on use of data in all web forms and at the point of collection/sign up.

Marketers and everyone in the email industry can support the FTC, Greisman said.  She suggests:

1. File a complaint.  When those complaints are also referred by the DMA, they are particularly helpful, Greisman said.
2. Make sure your opt out mechanisms are working.  (e-Dialog’s Buck recommends checking this at least annually, and preferably monthly.)
3. Be clear about the sender and the advertiser relationships.  (Return Path’s Bartel recommends first party senders consider “framing” the content from third parties or advertisers and clearly distinguish between editorial (original content) and advertising.)
4. Keep data clean, particularly around new sources.  (Eloqua’s Dayman also recommends care around affiliates’ use of data.)

The legislative update webinar was sponsored by Eloqua, e-Dialog and Return Path, with technology sponsor GoToWebinar.  The recording of the full event is free for eec members.  More details on these and other legislative issues important to digital and direct marketers is in the DMA’s quarterly government affairs newsletter, Politically Direct.

- Stephanie Miller
Return Path & eec

While each B2B marketer must consider its unique situation – products, purchasers, sales cycle, etc. – there is ample evidence of a shift from traditional media to digital tactics to facilitate growth for business marketers.  In fact, there are, in my analysis, seven trends in B2B marketing strategies and spending starting with …

1. The Internet has become the premier resource of information amongst C-Suite executives with search engine first for information. 
2. Digital marketing – in its myriad forms – along with email marketing, form an important part of B2B marketing outreach to generate leads and facilitate sales growth.  
3. Online social networking is emerging as an important tool in business-to-business marketing.  
4. Usage of blogs, microblogs, and RSS Feeds – currently segregated by generation – may eventually become essential contact points in maintaining B2B brands. 
5. Mobile marketing or the “mobile web” seems to be in its genesis amongst B2B marketers. 
6. B2B branding is growing in importance and directly correlated with increases in top-line revenue and market cap. 
7. Accountability is predominant – from analytics and front-end campaign tracking to back-end lead nurturing.
    

 
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

 

 

 

 

Building programs to re-engage dormant leads is a necessity for many email marketers, particularly those that have not had buttoned-up strategy for segmentation and targeted communications in the past.  List re-engagement and "win-back" program strategy was the open forum discussion topic at the February meeting of the Email Experience Council's List Growth and Engagement Roundtable.

"If you need to do re-engagement after a long period of subscriber inactivity, that is a failure of strategy," suggested Stephanie Miller, VP, Return Path and Vice Chair of the eec.  "Marketers who are trying to catch up have a steep road.  Rather, win-backs should be a consistent part of your segmentation strategy."

Bottom line, Stephanie pointed out, effective email marketers reach out early in the cycle and "shouldn't have a situation in which someone hasn't responded in a long time."

Ultimately, the question of glass half-empty or half-full regarding re-engagement may boil down to the buyer. In BtoB, noted Bulldog Solutions' Amy Bills, list re-engagement can be an effective way to generate more ROI from an existing database. "A lot of time and money has probably been spent putting together that list.  Marketers are looking at making the most of it."

Yael Penn of i360 Marketing reframed the concept of re-engagement as an ongoing effort. "In BtoB we're always thinking about reengagement strategies. We're planning re-engagement from the start.  BtoB purchases are more complex and the sales cycle is much longer. Sometimes a company is only doing the research now and they are not ready to make the purchase decision for six months.  In BtoC,  the reason to buy is impulse; in BtoB, because the sales cycle is different, re-engagement can be more effective."

On the BtoC side, ExactTarget's Nate Romance said, "There is risk to carrying a lot of dead weight. We're hearing re-engagement as a drumbeat in reputation management and deliverability. If you're beating on 60% of your list that is not responding, it's costing you something." (Some more on low engagement concerns here.)
A discussion of specific re-engagement strategies included:

• Ideas for engagement tactics including changing the subject line format, adding interactive elements like polls or surveys, featuring a high-value offer and highlighting exclusive information.  Sometimes just asking straight out can work, too.  "We hate spam, too.  Let us know if you want to stay on the file," can be an effective approach, Stephanie noted.
• Nate described test findings regarding language used to confirm a prospect's interest and willingness to stay on a list. "We did some testing and found that inclusion of the 'No' option caused more 'Yes' responses," he said.
• The preference center tactic—asking people to "update their information" had not been found by the group to be a compelling re-engagement tool. "With a true re-engagement we typically encourage a strong call to action," Nate said. "Not enough people do a good job of explaining what's in it for the recipient to fill out preferences. It's perceived by subscribers as the marketer's tool, having little value to them, he said.   

We hear a lot about engagement being effective and necessary – but the pressing need for re-engagement  is a reminder that engagement must be earned with every message sent, Stephanie suggested.   Nate agreed, "If you want to optimize the value of your email marketing asset, you must keep the file engaged and fresh.  That is more than a one-time win back campaign, but an imperative for your content strategy."

Place your comments below to tell us what you are doing to engage – and re-engage; we'd love to feature your efforts in a future blog post or as part of the Roundtable's discussions.   Also, check out the List Growth & Engagement Roundtable's 2010 Benchmark Guide to see how your list growth efforts stack up.

 

 

Are you struggling to increase your in-house email list in order to extend your marketing reach? There is a growing percentage of the online population that does not sign up for emails or newsletters. Instead they get their information predominately through social networking sites and portals. To reach them, one has to get to them either through their contacts, the groups they belong to, or those they follow. But email can be the vehicle to do just that.

Email can enable and even encourage content to be shared with social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. This then allows for an extended reach to those people who haven't opted in to receive emails from you. Plus the marketer retains some control over what specifically can be shared. For example, it might be a video, particular imagery, or a special offer. You as the marketer get to decide.

In addition to getting your content exposed to a much broader audience, sharing email content gives those doing the sharing the opportunity to add value to their respective networks. This is a huge motivator for many social networkers because it puts them in the role of trusted advisor. (Consider how often a tweet from someone in your network is simply a retweet.) This also allows a marketer to enable their audiences to evangelize on your behalf. 

This opportunity to reach the previously unreachable, and to simultaneously empower your audience to demonstrate value to their network, can lead to very high conversion rates, especially if your goal is to not only reach new prospects but also to add new subscribers to your in-house list.

The latest statistics indicate that the number of people seeing content increases approximately 24% with social networking/email integration compared to relying on email alone. That's a massive increase for virtually no cost. FTF (forward to a friend) has been considered an email best practice for years, and it's one marketers should keep doing. But social forwarding features blow it away when you look at the extended reach enabled by social networking vs. FTF email.

The typical social networker has approximately 160 connections. When they share something in their network, the message they are sharing is exposed to their whole network. Compare that quantity to the person who forwards an email using FTF: Typically 1 in 1,000 email recipients actually forwards via FTF, and of those that do, the vast majority forward to 3 people or less. And hardly any of them subscribe as the result of getting the forward. It's easy to see that when you provide interesting, valuable and relevant content into a socially networked environment (i.e. content people will want to share), some of the new people you've just reached will sign up with your company directly for future news or shareworthy information.

When you add social networking integration via a tool like Share-to-Social or Social Forward, be sure to provide instructions to your audience about how to share specific offers or content, and help them understand why they should. Language such as "Click the Facebook icon to the right to share these recipes with your network" tells the user the action to take (click to share) and implies the benefit (you'll delight your friends).

All of this, however, is predicated on having information worth sharing. Your content has to have value. It must be relevant, interesting and appealing. Period.

The organic list growth opportunity is staggering too, as the latest research from MarketingSherpa and authors David Daniels and Jeanniey Mullen* show that the typical lifetime value of a new email address is between $120 and $180 each! Growing your list by just 100 recipients would play out to something like a $15,000 lift to the bottom line. Cha-ching.

Email marketing still offers the highest ROI. Imagine what you can achieve when you multiply its reach by integrating social networking features into your email campaigns!

*In their book, Email Marketing: An Hour a Day

- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing

 

If you attended this week's Email Nirvana Webinar, you heard eec member Loren McDonald and founder Jeanniey Mullen give quite a presentation. It was so captivating that they almost didn't have time for questions. But they wanted to make sure everyone's concerns and questions were heard and so they agreed to answer some of the most frequently asked questions right here on the eec blog! More questions and answers can be reviewed on the Silverpop and OMS blogs as well. We will add the links soon.

Now, on to the questions...

How many words do you recommend for effective subject lines? I would think it would be 7 or less - any suggestions?

This is a great question, and one that can't really be answered easily. The real answer is, it depends on what the message is that you are trying to convey. Key points to remember when determining subject lines are: 1) Don't be cute- while you know what is inside the email and why your subject line might be a pun on the contents, no one else has opened it yet. They wont get the joke. The more direct the better.  2) Get to the point. Whether 7 words or 11, covey the main reason why you want people to open your email to avoid disappointment when they actually do. 3) There is no need to put your company name in the SL unless it is not in the from address. They just saw the email was from XYZ. They don't need to see that in the SL too. Start with these points, and test your way into improvements. Also- check out the eec whitepaper room for more subject line specific research and case studies.
 

What do you do if your emails are only relevant for a certain amount of time?

I love this question. Actually… emails never die. You might have seen this on TV in Law and Order, or some other crime show. You know, the part where the crime lab takes a computer that was on fire and somehow is able to restore emails? Well, believe it or not, the same is true for marketing emails. We have done studies at the eec where people show they will store an email from a brand that interests them for up to 2 years. The messages specific relevancy by that point has come and gone, but the brand impact is everlasting.  If your emails are only relevant for a short time you have one of two options: 1- add value added help links that make the content evergreen and give someone a reason to save your emails for years, or 2- test swapping out the non-relevant images behind the scenes and create and email that updates it's own content whenever opened, every so often.
 

Tips for B2B?

Anything you heard or saw in the webinar is true for B2B as well. B2B readers are also customers dealing with the same overloading email boxes, priority pressures and need to feel special that we all do in our personal lives. Start with a great B2C concept and email the eec for help if you need to/want to adjust for B2B.


What is the importance of the metrics particularly if you are emailing from a non-profit?

Metrics are important for any industry or vertical when it comes to email. They enable to you to, at the very least, set a benchmark for how your effort compare to other entities. One key measurement I enjoy reviewing is the click to open rate (what percentage of people who open your email click on the link). This lets you gauge how well your segmentation and targeting strategy are working. If less than 25% of these who open click, you are not reaching an engaged audience. Every year, the eec gathers a volunteer team of the best minds in email to help a npf improve their email. You can read the case studies right here on the eec site.

 
Are subscribers likely to fill out a form with all of those questions? How do you entice them to do so without making them skeptical about why you want the information?
 
This is always a tough question to answer because it is a business decision. Shorter forms get more completes, but lower quality. Longer forms drive more serious traffic. MotleyFool is one company who manages long forms very well. They incent people part way through. Ex Give us your email and name and get our email newsletter. When you do they say "thanks, now give us your mailing address and we will also send you a free whitepaper…. This happens many times until you unknowingly and happily have given every piece of personal information you have in small bits in return for value added products. Definitely worth a test.

 

 

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.

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.

One of my favorite quotes in the past few years is from David Daniels of Forrester Research who often says that "sending email to people that haven't opened or clicked in a year is like flying an airplane advertisement over a ghost town." Love it. That visual really brings the point home that mailing to seemingly unengaged subscribers is a waste of time, and often does more harm than good. I have always 100% agreed with it, however I now think it isn't always true. There may actually be life in parts of those seemingly deserted towns.

Let me start by saying that I still recommend all marketers regularly review engagement and modify content and/or frequency to those that haven't opened or clicked in 90 or 180 days. This is especially important for marketers that have deliverability problems, since many of them may improve their reputations and deliverability by cutting this dead weight. Unresponsive list segments, after all, are more likely to generate complaints or to contain spamtraps. In fact, earlier this year we were able to help a client get out of the bulk folder at Gmail by ceasing mailing any names that hadn't opened or clicked there in 90 days. Now, however, when I'm asked by a client if they should re-opt-in subscribers that haven't responded, opened or clicked for months, I'm forced to add the qualifier: "it depends."

Here's why it depends. There is growing evidence that many mailers have at least some subscribers that don't seemingly do anything, but they are valuable nonetheless. Here are a few camps to consider:

1. Hidden Segment #1: Subscribers that view and read emails with images off. There may be some email marketers that are in fact too good at rendering their email titles, main stories and calls-to-action in HTML text. I say "too good" since some (maybe lots) of their subscribers don't register as an open since they never enable images – yet they are actually engaged and reading the emails.

2. Hidden Segment #2: Mobile, invisible, but engaged. Mobile, email-enabled phones now represent a majority of some company's opt-in subscriber base. If they don't render images they won't render an open, but the recipient might be eating up the content day-in and day-out, and the marketer will never know.

3. Hidden Segment #3: Subscribers that never click, or shop online, but buy from your brick-n-mortar store. These actually could be some of your best customers, you just can't tell. Certainly there is life in this ghost town. Multichannel retailers should especially keep a watch out for these subscribers.

4. Hidden Segment #4: Fans that forward your email to friends, but don't use your forward-to-a-friend link. You can't track them since they are using the forwarding mechanism of their email tool, not your trackable link. Jeanniey Mullen's recent ClickZ article highlighted the story of Burntoast Marketing in Australia that had this problem. Some of their mailings to high-quality prospects had "…clicks come from other people both within and outside the same company who were not on the original mailing list."

The bottom line is if you're not looking at subscriber engagement, you are missing out on the ability to improve your deliverability, improve relevancy, and cut the unprofitable names from your list. However, beware of these hidden, engaged subscribers and develop strategies to make them visible.

First, rather than automatically re-opting in unengaged subscribers or discarding them from your list, try reducing frequency. A recent test of ours showed we were able to get 4 times the number of subscribers to reengage by reducing from weekly to monthly mailings when compared to sending a single re-optin campaign.

Second, entice your offline-only shoppers to use a coupon or other tracking code that will help them identify themselves.

Finally, provide a number of ways that recipients can share their emails with their friends – either standard viral links or via new technologies allowing sharing with social networks.

- Chip House, ExactTarget

Sponsored by:

The Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council signed up to receive promotional emails from 120 of the top online retailers tracked via the Retail Email Blog. Findings indicate a trend toward richer subscription processes.

One highlight of the report shows that the percentage of retailers using only a one-click sign-up from homepage method to collect email addresses declined to 51% this year from 63% last year. That shift accompanied increases in the amount of data collected from new subscribers. Research also demonstrated that the number of retailers providing sample emails and allowing subscribers to choose email topic preferences was up.

"The old adage applies here—you never have a second chance to make a good first impression," says Dave Lewis, chief marketing officer of Message Systems. "Your opportunity is to convert a prospect's initial interest into a long-term, brand loyal relationship. Your challenge is not to 'kill' that interest (and the opportunity) with an intimidating or intrusive subscription process."

This year retailers are also putting more focus on list hygiene. Thirty-eight percent of retailers ask subscribers to confirm their email address by re-entering it, up from 27% last year. Also, 5% of retailers now use a confirmed (double) opt-in process, up from 3% last year, which also improves list quality.

Retailers are also taking greater advantage of their email sign-up process to promote other channels such as direct mail, blogs and RSS feeds. For the first time this year, research indicates that retailers are promoting SMS subscriptions, social networks and widgets along side or within their email programs. While the percentage of retailers promoting those new channels is currently small, it signals a new trend which is expected to grow significantly over the next year.

"Communication behaviors and preferences have changed," says Lewis. "Virtually all of us utilize multiple channels of communication, both online and offline. And how we want companies to communicate with us depends on the nature of the message, where we're at and our personal preferences. Yet, companies have badly lagged in their ability to deliver messages through our channels of choice. So I'm very pleased to see this trend developing, even if just in its infancy. It means we're moving beyond defining 'relevancy' just in terms of the content of the message. It means we're getting closer to realizing the direct marketing mantra of delivering the right message at the right time in the right place."

Other key findings from the study include:

● After falling from 27% in 2006 to 8% last year, the percentage of retailers using sign-up incentives rebounded to 13% this year, despite growing concerns about the quality of subscribers that are attracted by sweepstakes and other incentives.

● With recent evidence suggesting that putting privacy policies front and center during the subscription process actually reduce sign-ups, only 36% of retailers mentioned their privacy policy this year, down from 45% last year.

● Despite quicker subscription fulfillments overall, 29% of retailers took 15 days or longer to honor opt-ins or failed to honor them all together. That figure was the same as last year.

Get the Full Report
Visit the Whitepaper Room to download the full 39-page report, which is free for eec platinum members and available at a discount to eec gold and silver members. Not a member? Learn more about becoming a member of the Email Experience Council.

It's a much debated number, but common marketing research (read: marketing urban legend) says the average person is exposed to 3,000 ads every day. Yet, while even most marketers complain about the shear volume of ads, we continue to add to the problem. Consumers and business people, however, aren't just struggling to find time to recognize the value from the chaff. We're all trying to keep track of the new ways to communicate with each other and the brands with which we do business. Managing our inbox has become a chore.

A decade ago I didn't need email, now I can't seem to get along without email, mobile email, text messaging, social networks…and most recently, Twitter. (Actually, I can do without Twitter, but I'm trying to play along). Younger people are significantly heavier users of text messaging and social networks when communicating with friends. Yet, even for this demographic, if one solution to tie all of these messaging tools together exists, it is certainly email. It has become the one-box portal. Not only does email cover bank statements, promotions, messages from friends, order confirmations, and newsletters…increasingly it is the gateway to social networks as it updates when someone reaches out on Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn.

Our joint research with Ball State's Center for Media Design showed that teens are more responsive to promotions via email than they are via social networks. Yet, the multitude of comments we received on our research, many commented on the need for a convergence of these media. One comment to a TwistImage blog commentary on the notion that "no one uses email anymore" said:

"I'm 23 years old—I probably receive a large majority of my messages through social networks (I don't have the email addresses of a number of friends—we keep in touch via Facebook), but email remains a vital hub for managing communications. Keeping up with all of the messages on these fragmented sites would be nearly impossible if alerts weren't sent to one central inbox. If email can maintain its position as a hub, it will stay relevant."

Will email continue to be the "hub," the one inbox to rule them all? I think there are many reasons to think it will. The first is the fact that it is ubiquitous—and certainly 99% of the population can't be wrong. It is similar to me to compare how English became the international language…not because it was better, just because it was already ubiquitous.

How do you leverage this as a marketer? Continue to ask for permission and ensure you are reaching your audience at their "preferred" inbox. Over time, they all may be the same inbox anyway.

—Chip House of ExactTarget

With pink emails filling our inboxes throughout Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the merits of cause-related marketing have come more prominently onto the Smith-Harmon radar. We wondered how well it really works, and MediaPost came through for us by publishing an article on this very topic. MediaPost reports that cause-related marketing can generate double-digit sales gains for brands—woah! No wonder so many companies jump on the pinkwagon in October. Not only do the companies get the satisfaction of contributing to important research; their customers also get to feel good about shopping.

Not surprisingly, there are complicating factors to consider. Paul Jones, president of Alden Keene & Associates, explores such factors on his blog about cause-related marketing. On the issue of transparency, Jones argues that "cause-related marketing trades on trust." Customers are more likely to trust in the sincerity of brands that are upfront about where money goes and how much money is going there.

An article by Steven Van Yoder also makes the point that the marketing focus should never be lost in the cause. Cause-related marketing is sustainable only if it yields mutual benefits for the charitable organization and the brand supporting it.

We looked at examples of how brands have used email to approach cause-related marketing for several important issues. Here's what we found:

● Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Judging by this month's inbox, pink is the new black. Among many others, Lucy encouraged subscribers to "Shop for a Cause," White House Black Market invited subscribers to "Give Hope," and Sephora asked subscribers to "get gorgeous while giving back." In each of these cases, the brands advertised products and donated a portion of their proceeds or advertised a window of time during which they would donate a portion of total sales.

Betty Crocker's message was a bit different, encouraging subscribers to celebrate women's health by making pink (Betty Crocker) cake and announcing General Mills' donation, which was not tied to sales of certain items. They also invited dialogue on PinkTogether.com, where cancer survivors can share stories.

● Women's Cancer Research: Saks Fifth Avenue also supported women's cancer research, but they stepped away from all of the pink of the month and partnered with Key to the Cure to donate funds to the Entertainment Industry Foundation's Women's Cancer Research Fund. At first this struck me as a little odd (was it just so that they could feature stars like Gwenyth Paltrow in their ads?), but with deeper thought it's clear how Saks' approach was on-brand, speaking to their audience of high-end fashion connoisseurs. Oscar de la Renta designed the pricey Key to the Cure t-shirt this year, and Mercedes Benz partners with the organization as well.

● St. Jude Children's Research Hospital: The Williams-Sonoma Inc. brands included banners in their emails last holiday season advertising their fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and they then sent out a thank-you e-card announcing the results of the fundraiser. Gymboree also supports St. Jude, but the link to the fundraiser in their email is tiny and very subtle. I wonder how results differ between this understated approach and the more prominent Williams-Sonoma Inc. treatment.

● The Global Fund (to help women and children with AIDS in Africa): This Gap email is almost wholly devoted to the Gap(Product)Red effort to benefit the Global Fund, featuring a special limited time promotion. The subject line: "Can the Shirt off Your Back change the world?" speaks to the headline: "This One Can." This message barely mentions regular Gap items, but because Gap has established (Product)Red as such a prominent element of the brand, the focused approach doesn't seem to detract from Gap marketing, and even solidifies Gap's charitable image.

● Musicians on Call: Boomingdale's "Charity is Chic" message looks pretty much like any other sale email. The headline is cause-oriented but vague, and only in fairly small print does the copy inform the subscriber of where their money is going. I wonder whether it's effective for Bloomingdale's to downplay the charity in their creative.

With the high sales increases reported from cause-related marketing, it's worth considering what could happen if brands began using it more frequently—monthly or quarterly, maybe, instead of at just one or two key points throughout the year. In addition to driving huge sales, brands could all do a lot of good. We're interested to hear what others have tried and discovered in cause-related marketing.

As ever,
Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison of Smith-Harmon

–>Read other Make it Pop! posts.

Inbox advertising has long been considered an effective direct marketing vehicle. Sending relevant offers to receptive segments has been a recipe for success since the channel emerged. Most emarketers also realize that indiscriminately blasting potentially non-relevant messaging to large segments can negatively impact list size, deliverability and ultimately, brand equity. Fewer marketers, however, fully realize the tremendous role email advertising can play in positively stewarding a brand—driving brand awareness and brand favorability.

I must admit that as a novice email marketer I highly discounted email as a branding vehicle. In fact, I remember telling a colleague once that branding [through email] was just an excuse for not generating conversions. I have since learned that inbox advertising can be an excellent vehicle for driving brand equity and awareness, and believe that those of us who view the channel exclusively through the direct marketing lens, may be interested in the following.

In August, Datran Media and Dynamic Logic researched the impact of an eHarmony email campaign from a branding perspective. The study revealed that inbox advertising provides significant branding benefits:

• Inbox advertising made 37.7% of people aware of one of the tested eHarmony campaigns.
• Unaided brand awareness increased 11.5 percentage points.
• Brand favorability increased 7.3 percentage points.
• Brand awareness and favorability both improved when those researched were exposed to the campaign more than once.

I found the research quite interesting. To learn more, check out the Datran Media brand study here.

Have you done any research to test the impact of your campaigns on brand awareness and favorability? If so, please share.

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

We as marketers sometimes get hung up on what to name things, especially in our multichannel world where there are many technology-based strategies and solutions, often with overlapping attributes, and a lot of these approaches seem to move through their lifecycles faster than doped riders in the Tour de France. Change is definitely a constant in our personal and business lives, the economy continues to keep us on our toes, and email is right smack in the middle of business—or should I say, your digital company?

I had the pleasure of presenting this week with Jeanniey Mullen from the eec and Zinio, David Daniels from JupiterResearch, and Des Cahill from Habeas. We came together with just under 200 attendees for a live Habeas Huddle webinar entitled "Your Digital Company, Today and in 2013: How to Leverage Email and Online Trust for Success."

Some serious ground was covered in one hour with great data and insights from two studies from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Ipsos, as well as David's ongoing work at JupiterResearch. We also discussed a number of case studies, best practices and takeaways, and Jeanniey helped bring it all together with a historical view of email and how to think differently about this proven, vibrant channel in our changing, digital world.

For the sake of grounding, the EIU provided this definition/food for thought: "The digital company is one in which the use of information and communications technology underpins virtually all processes and activities, as well as all efforts to improve competitiveness."

One could argue that if your business has a data center, is using the internet to attract and retain customers, and you rely on hosted applications and services (i.e. web meetings, social networking, blogging, email service providers, etc.) for marketing, sales and customer service—then you're working in a digital company. OK, enough with semantics. Bottom line: Business executives worldwide say email is their No. 1 communication channel today and in 5 years, and consumers feel the same way when it comes to interacting with preferred brands online. Your customers are also more empowered with technology and expect control and certainty (trust) when doing business online and with mobile devices.

Check out the complimentary webinar and whitepaper just published by the EIU entitled "The digital company 2013 – How technology will empower the customer." The co-sponsors of the paper are AT&T, Concep Global, Habeas, Nokia, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SAP and WebEx.

Both webinar and white paper provide invaluable information that was packaged from quantitative and qualitative research (businesses and consumer trends) that I'm sure will stimulate a few great ideas and help you get ahead of the pack. Maybe it will even enable you build a strong business case for more budget and a promotion!

—Erick Mott of Habeas